CV: Mocksim

More than buildings

The construction project of the Phoenix Gallery itself had to negotiate around the home of a Harriet Sylvester, aged 89, who refused to be bought out. White has worked into the edge of one room here, creating a human sized mouse hole. On entering we are faced with a narrow passage leading to a space which we can imagine Harriet Sylvester still occupies.

Reflections from the inside

Jon Gilhooly’s response, developed in the days before, was to place a tiny version of Anish Kapoor’s Sky Mirror, 23cm in diameter, on the grass near the giant piece just outside their makeshift barrier, to position a miniature fence around this, and to employ me, in the typical bright yellow vest of security staff, to guard the art and request that passers by do not step inside the boundary.

Playing the building

Participants queue up to operate the instrument on busy days, but to my untrained ear every tune sounded similar. This is amusing. In all probability players hope to add something new, imagine they are being empowered by the artist.

Lyon Biennial 2007 - Shilpa Gupta

There is no such thing as a passive experience. With ‘interactive art’ and the increased usage of technology by artists and in other aspects of contemporary culture this fact is often overlooked. A reasonable argument is that the less the inventor does to direct the users experience, the more the participant or spectator or navigator gets from it.