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Two Miami University students collaborated to create an art show with technological influences called "Spatial Sensed Experience: Phase 1."
Entering the Robert E. and Martha Hull Lee Gallery in Hiestand Hall, guests may notice a silver laptop placed to the right. Once inside the doorway, visitors are encouraged to sign the guest book via their Twitter account by sending a tweet to #GC Show.
Through the black curtains, guests enter the dark wood gallery intermittently illuminated by fading lights glowing in eight differently sized brick towers forming an octagon shape around the room.
Ten randomly dispersed brick pools lay low to the ground with barely visible black water that shines every so often when a light nearby reflects off it.
Graduate student Geoffrey Riggle and sixth-year Christian McLean created an installation called "Spatially Sensed Experience: Phase 1" being shown now through May 8.
The show's postcard that helps advertise the exhibition describes the installation as an "integration of craft and technology."
It continues with "McLean and Riggle create interactive sculptural forms utilizing light to capture the viewers' attention and provoke dialogue based on the theme of interior illumination."
Junior Lexi Lucchese said she enjoyed the show as she walked through the installation.
"I really enjoyed how it overtook the whole space, and you could walk through it and really experience the art," Lucchese said. "You were a part of the experience and almost part of the art."
Riggle said the collaboration began a year ago when both students were asked to create interactive artwork to be on display during the Armstrong Symposium dinner last spring.
"Since last year, we have worked on innovative projects that involve sound, data visualization and physical computing components," Riggle said.
The technology isn't apparent in this particular installation, but Riggle said they used a hardware and software platform geared towards artists and hobbyists called Arduino, which is a small computer that can be programmed to do certain things.
McLean, who has a focus in ceramics, said the installation is driven by software.
"We just thought light would be a good medium for this installation so we just went off of that,"
The bricks used for the installation are recycled bricks from when McLean took apart a soft kiln in the ceramics department last year.
Riggle said the meaning of the installation is complex.
"I'm thinking there's no direct meaning behind the columns, various things could be read into their arrangement," Riggle said. "The towers are facing the cardinal directions and are in the shape of an octagon. The arrangement was based on the space in which we were installing it and also the space on the circuit boards we were utilizing."
Riggle added the pools were a decision made in the process of the installation.
"Light can't be detected unless there is something for it to reflect off of and somehow react from," Riggle said.
Lucchese described the meaning she took away from the installation.
"It reminded me of some ancient cave, it was like being in an ancient temple," Lucchese said. "It was a very calming experience and not what I expected."
McLean said he is pleased with his project.
"It's a good step in building environments, which I'm really intrigued by," McLean said. "Just making objects - I get really bored with that and there's no challenge. This is creating an experience, which I feel like art needs to go."
