Esther M. Klein Gallery, situated in the University City Science Center, has a mission to merge art, engineering and science while serving the public. Its latest exhibit, “The Vitreous: Of Eyes & Optics,” hits the mark. The national juried show of 22 artists is a jaunty group exhibition with interactive art, optical trickery and many pieces that get you thinking about the slippery nature of sight. The show is homey enough for the average viewer and challenging enough for those who demand the deepest concepts in their art.

Cynthia Greig, Representation no. 65 (Fan)

Vitreous is not afraid to be fun.  But the robotics, spinning disks and video interactive pieces go well beyond the arcade and propel thoughts about social issues like the place of robotics in our lives; the ubiquity of surveillance cameras; and the fact that regardless of what is before you, your eye and mind will see things one way and I may see things another.

No piece made me doubt my eyes more than Cynthia Greig‘s C-print, Representation no.65 (fan).  The photo of a simple white electric fan shot in a white space is so mundane you might not stop to contemplate.  Look closer and you see that there is something faux about the fan you can’t quite figure out. It looks flat and like a cardboard cutout.  Maybe the artist constructed a faux fan and photographed it, a la Thomas Demand, the German artist who builds trompe l’oeil sculptural constructions then photographs them.  But no.  What Greig does is simpler.  She takes a real object (a fan, a portable television) and paints it white, then she draws the edges and details on the object with a pencil and takes a photograph.  What results is a hybrid — a photo of a sculpture that is also a drawing. The work is lovely and makes you consider the humble fan anew.

David Bowen's interactive Infrared Drawing Device

David Bowen’s Infrared Drawing Device is a small wall-mounted robot attached to a piece of paper on the wall.  The robot is mildly interesting when at rest. But wave a hand near the motion sensors and the piece jolts to life and its robotic arm makes a skittery charcoal line across the paper.  Move your hand gently and get a gentle response from the robot; move your hand fast and cause the robot to buck and seize.  You are Dr. Frankenstein and you have responsibility over this techno-creature.

Sean Hovendick, Peep Show, a surveillance video kaleidescope

In Sean Hovendick’s Peep Show, on the other hand, you are the victim as your image is caught by a camera embedded in the wall and broadcast — fragmented in a color video kaleidoscope — on a monitor above.  Whether you want to participate or not you are part of this surveillance-art piece.

Candace Karch, Le Petit Diablo

Nearby, Candace Karch’s shiny x-ray images — decorated with pastel tattoo-like markings — are tribal and medical and great; and Lee Arnold’s flash animation of color fields embedded in black and white photos is mesmerizing.

Lee Arnold, Stadium, part of his video collage

Wade von Kramm’s Self Portrait, a crude plaster figure that casts a sophisticated shadow, demonstrates the importance of light in perception.

Wade von Kramm, Self Portrait, in plaster and shadow

The Vitreous: Eyes & Optics, to Sept. 5. Free. Esther M. Klein Art Gallery, 3600 Market St. 215 966 6188

The following is a transcript of a telephone conversation I had with Marisa Olson.Feel free to download the podcast if you prefer to listen, but I must warn you that the quality of the audio is appallingly bad.

The first question I asked was supposed to be “What is New Media Art?”, a question Marisa, classified as a new media artist herself and also curator-at-large and staff writer for the new museum’s new media component; rhizome.org, is in a better position then most to attempt to answer. However, I forgot to turn on the recorder for most of that answer.

Marisa, who lives in New York and has recently taken her oeuvre on tour to Paris, Berlin, and Cincinnati, Ohio, is in no fewer then two exhibitions in Philadelphia at the minute. A solo exhibition of her work, “Background Information”, opens at the Esther M. Klein Gallery TONIGHT! (she is also in Bitmap at Drexel):

New Media can be old

Annette: You mentioned earlier that New Media art doesn’t necessarily have to deal with new technologies because a lot of the [technology] used in [what's classified as] New Media art is now old. I noticed in your personal artwork there’s a lot of nostalgia, maybe, for artwork gone by. Could you address that issue?

Marisa: You mean for media that’s gone by?

Annette: Yes [sorry]. For instance on your blog you have an image of a [cassette] tape with your name on it which looks sort of “bubblegum pop”, and I noticed you’ve done a lot of drawings based off images you found on the internet that were of older headphones and recording devices. . .

Marisa: Yeah. That work that I’ve done with mixed-tapes and headphones and that sort of thing, it definitely initially came out of a space of nostalgia, but as I worked more and more with it I’ve asked myself why I’m so interested and I’ve realized that I’m more into media change then anything. I’m more interested in what are the cultural or political forces that compel people to keep upgrading and keep making the new ipod or the new device that makes the old one obsolete. More so, what happens to those old things? Do they just end up in landfills?

These drawing’s that I’ve been making, these monitor tracings–sorry it’s really loud outside–

Annette: s’ok

Marisa: In a way they are about the google image search and the way the internet is becoming this depository for our memories of these things, these things that are sort of “out of sight, out of mind”. The other thing about these drawings is thinking about the monitor as the newest technology in the lineage of technologies that have assisted artists, like the camera obscura, the overhead projector, that kind of thing. It’s all kind of about the evolution of technology.

I’m really nerdy

Marisa: I’m really nerdy.

Annette: Actually, I was wondering how nerdy you are? Do have, like a degree? How much technology do you actually understand? I realize that you have to be able to manipulate it. . .

Marisa: When I was a little kid I was a total computer-programmer nerd on my Commodore 64 and now I write a lot of html, everyday, by hand, but I’m not like a hard-core programmer by any means.

Annette: Well html is kind of old isn’t it, if you were [hard-core] you’d be writing in something crazy, like not even Java Script anymore I don’t think. . .

Marisa: Yeah. I can’t really do any of that stuff. But I can understand what it can do and have conversations with people about it, which I like. I like learning more, it’s kind of mystifying and really interesting.

Speaking of degrees, I don’t really have a degree in computer science but in the course of working on my PHD one of my official field titles was “The Cultural History of Technology” so I have spent a lot of time studying the history of batteries, televisions, telephones, and video games. . .

Marisa Olson, Free Gift Economy, 2007, screengrab AFC, stolen from artfagcity.

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Annette: Is that like studying “The History and Philosophy of Science” or something?

Marisa: Yeah. Exactly, it’s very closely related.

Annette: I always liked those kind of courses. That sounds pretty cool.

Marisa: Yeah, me too. Thomas Khun is one of my favorite writers, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”.

Annette: Oh, yeah. I remember reading that in a class called something like “History and Science of Philosophy 101″ or something.

Marisa: I re-read it every single year. Twenty-four is my favorite page.

Annette: I have no idea what that refers to but I’ll look it up.

Marisa: It’s just this line about how science is trying to force nature into a conformed thought. It’s all about how science as a field is trying to confirm existing ways of thinking, existing paradigms, and you have to wait until enough things don’t fit into the box until you change the box. I dunno. I like stuff like that.

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[Cut out in acknowledgment of all of our sort attention spans

And, just a recap of all the myriad of things Marisa has been up to this summer.]

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Conclusion

Annette: I just want to end with a little bit more about your show at Esther Klein Gallery that is coming up on Friday. It’s called Background Information, what sort of spurred the ideas of the work in the show?

Marisa: All the work in the show revolves around images pulled from the internet that are not really meant to be looked at directly. I’m going to do a wallpaper installation of the background image on my myspace page, which a lot of these animated .gifs are referred to as wallpaper files. I’m actually making wallpaper out of it.

Then there are are other things like a flickr space search bale, it’s an image that flickr uses to cover up “inappropriate images”, or a comparison of the background images that really hide in the background of the web-pages for McCain and Obama, just showing only the background and you can kind of think about whose is whose, and other kinds of images that are meant to be peripheral rather then foreground images but have a kind of duty and cultural relevance of their own.

There’s also going to be a video animation that uses only icons from my facebook page.

It’s kind of a double entendre, background information in terms of background images, but also background information about myself and the kinds of web pages I’ve been looking at. It’s kind of a self-portrait in a way, the type of material that I tend to surf.

Annette: Yeah. Especially coming from your myspace page, that seems pretty auto-biographical.

Marisa: Yeah, even though looking at this wallpaper of glittery stars isn’t going to tell you that much about me, but that’s kind of funny too because I think that the whole discourse of auto-biographical art could use some critique.

END