One of the installations I thought was interesting was Jeffrey Shaw’s “landmark piece” The Legible City (Paul 72). In this work he setup a bike in front of a projection screen and connected both to a computer. The input device was the bicycle itself and on the screen was projected text mimicking a city. The viewer/cyclist would peddle and move about a city created entirely of words of varying sizes that corresponded to the height of the buildings in the actual city it was representing.
There were three versions mentioned in the chapter: Manhattan (1989), Amsterdam (1990), and Karlsruhe (1991). I thought another great element and interesting element in this installation was that in the later two versions the artist was able to scale the letters to make them correspond with the actual buildings they were replacing (Paul 72). The text itself was also very unique in all the versions. The first one, Manhattan, complied text and it was “presented in the form of fictional monologues by Manhattanites (Paul 72).” In the last two, Amsterdam and Karlsruhe, the text was “from archive documents describing historical events (Paul 72).”
The most interesting aspect of this piece for me is the connection to today’s interactive game consoles where the players movements guide the game play, just as in this installation the viewers movements guide the path of the bike around the city. I would like to see the Wii or Xbox come out with a cycling game. After all, it’s not that much different than riding a “bike” in the gym – just way more fun and entertaining! It is awesome how far digital art has come and continues to evolve.
Work Cited:
Christiane Paul. Digital Art. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2003.
Well done. Full credit for ch2.
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