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Multimedia Installation |
The New World Remix project culminated in a Multimedia Exhibit that included a dance performance under the direction of Elizabeth Hughey, a gallery exhibit of student artwork and an interactive exhibit where the audience could enter in, participate and create.
GALLERY:
Students of visual artists Mary Whalen (photographer) and Robert De Los
Santos (printmaker) created photograms with Ms. Whalen (photos of objects
that have personal meaning for them) framed by prints done under the direction
of Mr. De Los Santos which were populated by personal symbols. Other students
displayed artwork from the Kit Bag and Mixed
Messages components of the project.
INTERACTIVE EXHIBIT:
The interactive part of the exhibit included three large pieces that grew
as students added more on. These three pieces were The Tree, The Rainbow
Sculpture and The Giant Kit Bag.
THE TREE
A tree is an ancient and deeply moving symbol. It overflows with accessible
and elemental meaning. The tree offered our project an apt metaphor to
teach the interactive dynamics of the unique creative contribution each
individual makes to the beauty and vitality of a community. The tree begins
small, singular – the acorn – than soil, nutrients, air, water,
sun (elementals: earth, air, water, fire) – from roots, through
trunk, to branches and leaves, then back around with sun’s energies.
The tree provides a dynamic model of vital remixing: interdependence,
circulation of resources, give & take, singularity and plurality,
vital wholeness… a vibrant, living community.
The ever inventive artist/ teacher Lou Vidmar designed our project’s tree. Dr. Vasquez mixed metaphors by envisioning the roots to branches influence of each individual manifested by braids – another image of mixing – where students symbolized various abilities or dreams through colored yarns made into large braids intertwined in the community tree. Other gifts to the community tree included paper acorns attached to the tree or roots, photographic cubes or other paper shapes carrying names and messages that contributed to an emergent image, vision and feeling of how we each belong to a community.
RAINBOW SCULPTURE
There they are – found objects – all the same yet all different
colors – inviting us to “do something” with them. We
honor the human impulse to create together anonymously, impulsively, with
no plan, no wrongness, no ultimate form. The Rainbow Sculpture was an
interactive event that exercised our tacit understanding that each individual
cannot ultimately control the endpoint of our creative input in a communal
enterprise. Part of a community project is surrendering and welcoming
the remixing process. This experience embraces possibility and trust.
GIANT KIT BAG
This was a giant interactive version of smaller kitbags created in classrooms
(see KitBag project). On the giant version,
students chose pictures and captions that represented character traits
needed to support our life’s journey.
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