It's not that Sarah Boxer is clueless. I don't believe that someone has to "get" interactive art to write about it. Maybe some of the artwork she skewers in her April 26 New York Times review of the Boston Cyberarts Festival, Art That Puts You in the Picture, Like It Or Not, is as "irritating" as she claims it is. What should concern her readers, and even more so her editors, is her apparent lack of perspective about contemporary art. Let us count the ways.
Boxer: Problem No. 1: potty-mouthed machines. "PS," by Gretchen Skogerson and Garth Zeglin at the Stata Center, is an oval mirror with a sign that bids you "lean in close." You do. A voice says, "I like to masturbate in public." Ack. Did anyone else hear that?
For his notorious and influential performance at Sonabend Gallery in 1972, Vito Acconci lay beneath the floorboards of a constructed ramp masturbating while his fantasies about the visitors above him were broadcast over loudspeakers. Ack.
Boxer: Problem No. 2: too much ritual, too little time. "1-Bit Love," by Noah Vawter, is a musical altar, a totem covered in foil and exuding a synthetic rhythm (a one-bit wave form). The pillar has red velvet knobs. People are supposed to lay hands on it and turn the knobs to modulate the sound. No one wants to be the first to paw the idol. And once you do, it's not clear what effect you are having. [emphasis added]
[Participation TV I] concerns a purely acoustic-oriented type of , with an integrated microphone. The later version serves a television showing in the middle of its screen a colored bundle of lines which explosively spread out to form bizarre-looking line formations the moment someone speaks into the microphone or produces any other type of sound. Depending on the soundē“ inherent quality or volume, the signals are intensified by a sound-frequency amplifier to produce an endless variety of line formations which never seem to repeat themselves or be in any way predictable. [emphasis added] (via Media Art Net)
Boxer: [P]roblem No. 3: ungraciousness. Machines make no bones about their own flaws, but are unbending about yours.
Let's just stick to photography (another machine art). Gary Winogrand. Diane Arbus. Lee Friedlander. Tina Barney. Lisette Modell. Shelby Lee Adams. Susan Meiselas (Carnival Strippers). Bill Owens. Walker Evans. Bruce Gilden. Nan Goldin, Richard Avedon (The American West). Stop me, please.
Boxer: [P]roblem No. 4: moral superiority. Consider "Applause," by Jeff Lieberman, Josh Lifton, David Merrill and Hayes Raffle. You stoop to enter a curtained booth. (Already you're in the weak position.) There's a movie screen divided into three parts, and in front of each is a microphone. Clap vigorously into one of the microphones and the movie screen in front of it comes to life, playing its movie. Stop clapping and the action grinds to a halt.
Now, wouldn't it be great if you could get all three screens going at once? You can! Just run from mike to mike, clapping in front of all three. Now they're all going! Uh-oh. It's Hitler giving a speech. And there you are clapping like crazy, you idiot.
Compare: Paul McCarthy, Documents(1995-1999). "Selections of 8 x 10 photographs with images of Disneyland and other American pop items and images from Nazi Germany, mounted and framed." (via) You should hear the docents trying to explain that one without making the public feel like idiots.
My point is not that the work at the Cyberarts Festival necessarily compares favorably with these iconic works of contemporary art, but Boxer's reasoning is lazy at best. And yet it is so commmonplace in the mainstream press as to be almost not worth mentioning, except that this hasn't always been true at the Times. To give Boxer credit, she does not fixate on the cost, collectability, or technology of the works, but neither does she provide even the most minimal sense of context, except her own apparent discomfort at being in the picture. This despite almost a half century of contemporary art that does just that from Michelangelo Pistoletto to Bruce Nauman to Dan Graham to Andrea Fraser to Janet Cardiff to ...
