31 May 2013

...there's no ground

Opening tomorrow, Saturday, June 1, at the sim Vella is a new installation, ...there's no ground, by Eupalinos Ugajin and Suzanne Graves. I don't think Eupalinos's work is intended to be understood, outside of understanding that it's not understandable, and I'm always more interested in art that I don't understand (in the Cagean sense of purposeful purposelessness). It is, to be sure, playful, and it invites us to play and to play with it, puzzling and delighting over its curious juxtapositions. You'll need to click on things (clothespins especially) and to move about to trigger interactions. Don't miss the camera tour at the landing point—step into the small boat and set your draw distance up to at least 512, and make sure also to explore the area underwater, where more awaits.

I don't mean to speak only of Eupalinos, but it's his work I see as I explore, and so I'm left curious about Suzanne's contribution. It would be interesting to know more about the collaboration between these two exceptional artists. Update: Suzanne constructed the central tube (the bottom of which is seen in the next image below), which involved some significant mathematical calculations. It's a beautiful structure, and Eupalinos says that he and Suzanne will be able to have "explosions" occur—we'll have to see!

To help the art connoisseur understand his work, Eupalinos suggests a visit to the artybollocks generator, which does a rather excellent job of creating artspeak. Here's the first bit of what its random generator had to say about Eupalinos's work: that it "explores the relationship between postmodern discourse and UFO sightings." That's quite possibly true.

In addition to the contributions of Suzanne Graves, Eupalinos singles out others whose artistic participation is of essence: YT Recreant (who provided the space, courtesy of a connection via Quan Lavender), Simotron Aquila, Takio Ra, Oberon Onmura, pallina60 Loon and other unnamed friends. And Eupalinos has recently added some music to the build, a set of 30 tracks. Throughout your visit, be sure to have local sounds turned up. The region's windlight setting is important (I believe created by Liqueur Felix), but I'm not sure what to suggest for those who use viewers that don't automatically accept the region's settings. Perhaps just find something close to what you see here so that you can see underwater.

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