maniPulaTed sTaTes of consciousness: an arTisTic exPloraTion of PercePTion, sensaTion and immersion Bonnie Mitchell Bowling Green State University
The eyes of The gods Jane Chang Mi Honolulu Biennial, Pepperdine University and UCSB USA
USA
Artist Talks
Bonnie Mitchell’s electronic art installations explore the concept of perception and altered emotive states via interactivity, immersion and audio/visual stimuli. Over the past 20 years she has developed a wide range of electronic interactive installations that have altered the participant’s sense of reality, time and place. Her recent immersive installation entitled Shame on Us, invited the viewer into a room filled with scrim enclosed trees with projections of the results of both creation and destruction onto the multidimensional spatial elements. This holographic-like experience addressed the shifting politics in regards to the preservation of our natural resources. Encounters, an installation which invited the viewer to sit in a sensor-enhanced seat, provoked an etheral figure to emerge from a multi-dimensional stylized forest and ask thought-provoking questions. Internal Distance, used projections on walls along with figures trapped in hand-blown glass to create an environment that commented on internal conflicts. In Inhabitants, the viewer caught poetic animations falling from the ceiling onto hand-held projection screens to decipher the meaning of the piece. Experiential Extremism attempted to provoke the psychological states that entice people to gravitate toward thrill seeking, along with the emotional responses that occur before, during, and after extreme activities.
Ancient Hawaiians named the estuary that feeds Pearl Harbor, Wai Momi, or the river of pearls. Oysters (Pinctada radiate) once flourished in the harbor. The shells were used as scrapers to make cloth and rope; they were also carved into fishhooks. The mother of pearl was valued for its iridescence, often used to make the eyes of the gods. The Eyes of the Gods was a single channel video installation compiled from the underwater archive of the National Park Service World War II Valor. Divers from the team, video taped themselves surveying the USS Arizona, as well as, interning the ashes of survivors who have passed. I took part in this internment this December 7, 2016. Using both analog and algorithmic techniques I have found and compiled all of the images containing only the water and nothing else. This alogorithmic technique used to make The Eyes of the Gods is similar to face recognition and surveillance software utilized by the National Security Agency (NSA). I wanted to reflect this irony, as today the Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickman is the headquarters of the United States Pacific Fleet, including being home to the Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific (JICPAC).