Locative Media & The City

One of the things that I found most helpful and interesting in Redl’s presentation was that he explained his background, reaching all the way back to grammer school and his father’s occupation. When I visited his website before the talk, I felt somewhat disconnected to his work and didn’t understand what was the purpose of these large-scale lighting installations. However, realizing that he went through the frustration of feeling his nose hit the screen and inability to embody the virtual space brings another kind of life to his art. Also, I found the fact that he views his installations as coming alive when bodies interact and move through the space as intriguing as well. He said the visitors make the space a corporeal entity because of their organic body’s involvement with the technology. It makes sense to me that he wants to avoid taking any form, such as a circle, with his installations, because then more symbolism can be invoked. He said that already visitors sometimes claim to feel a spiritual experience by moving through the space, so what would happen to his intended purpose if they also found religious symbolism through a shape? In “The Texas Contemporary Art Journal,” Matthew Bourbon writes about Redl’s “Fade IV” of 2006 and says, “Controlling the modulation of light with a computer program, Redl manufactures a system of perpetual repetition. This constant fluctuation envelopes us in a task of detailed observation, dooming us to an unfulfilled, Sisyphus-like experience. There’s no denouement to this artwork— just ebb and flow, ebb and flow.” This Deleuzian ebb and flow concept seemed very plausible to me when Redl talked about his work, and I feel that it would become even more real to actually be in the space.

Also, I found parallels in Redl’s work to an article by theorist Elizabeth Grosz in Volatile Bodies, “Body Images: Neurophysiology and Corporeal Mappings.” She says, “Spatially, the space surrounding and within the subject’s body, is thus crucial for defining the limits and shape of the body image: the lived spatiality of endogenous sensations, the social space of interpersonal relations, and the “objective” or “scientific” space of cultural (including scientific and artistic) representations all play their role.” The space that Redl creates invites participants to be aware of their relations to each others bodies, their sensations, and the limits of the space. (Such as in the installation in Texas where Redl slowly sloped the lights until people had to stoop to move beneath the structure.) I wonder if Redl is aware of Paul Schilder’s work on the body image- or even cares when he is making these installations- but his work strongly seems to parallel that theory.