Gallery #1 Solutions

This was a very interesting gallery and gallery experience. I found it invaluable as a participant in the gallery to be required to adhere to a deadline driven creative project with a setup and presentation process similar to a gallery. The gallery style itself was a very novel experience as well. The pop-up gallery provided an excellent opportunity to practice a temporary location-based exhibition space. The plurality of the projects I also believe offered a rich and diverse perspective on the variability of digital media art pieces. Patrick Zbella's project located on the fourth floor of the Joe was an immersive exploration of sound and image and presented a unique solution to the practice of digital media. Many of the exhibited pieces involved a form of interaction. Our own project, Utopia, also relied on user interaction. Other pieces were a bit more public as well as interactive. Skye Evans set up in Starbucks and proceeded to sing songs while simultaneously encouraging audience participation through playing keys of a keyboard where each note correlated with specific Starbucks sounds such as stereotypical 'white girl slangs'. Similarly, Wander, by Connor and Darius also required audience participation through the form of a game controller used to navigate a virtual landscape and explore various sound-emitting objects and areas within the game. Overall the various pieces throughout the Solutions exhibition seemed to embody the concept of digital media. The problems facing the medium are almost exclusively the medium itself. Electronics, programs, displays, etc.. each with more potential for problems than other classical mediums such as clay or paint. The Solutions gallery did an excellent job displaying how to navigate these problems in the modern day and age while evoking a sense of audience engagement that is not traditionally seen with other art forms.