Exhibition discussion: 2009.11.06 7pm in the SCI-Arc Gallery

Within and without Architecture? Blow x Blow stages a bout between two trends in exhibition: the claiming of gallery space by architects, and the ceding of that space to the ambient possibilities of new media. To chart this collision, techniques of cinematic projection and scripting are repurposed to spur new orders of spatial and structural sequencing, and new environments for communing with new art.

The installation derives first from the filmic, rather than architectural, relationship between script and projection - the former usually serving as the template or pretext for filmmaking, and the latter its (increasingly historical) mode of delivery and final fruition. Projection precedes script in our equation, with the parameters of the projected image ‘cast’ in roles of formal generation.

In one sense, Blow x Blow is a prototypical exploration for an on-going related project, a Media Center at Columbia College Hollywood. For the Media Center at CCH, we developed a series of scripting operations to model the throw and reflection, or umbra and penumbra, of film projection. The edges of a pyramidal cone of projection were allowed to extend as vectors and ‘bounce’ repeatedly through the available space for the Media Center, creating a kind of 3-dimensional ‘argyle’ pattern. The ‘argyle’ created by two back-to-back projections, in turn, became an armature for nine interrelated screening spaces.

In the SCI-Arc gallery, the initial ‘bounce-line’ scripting, in which a single projection-based vector was allowed to rebound ad infinitum through the space of the gallery, evolved in two more disciplined directions. First, the space of the gallery was reconceived as a 6’x7’x8’ gridded frame, the proportions of which allow a 4:3 televisual image on one face, and a 9:16 cinematic aspect ration on the diagonal. (The dimensions also mimic those of a prison cell.) Within this matrix, a randomized 16-part vector path was developed, in which each third vector point was triangulated back to its origin to create a continuous, facetted surface. A ‘braid’ of two of these paths supports two dual-screen projection areas. Rather than simply blacking out the gallery, the spanning surfaces of the vectorpaths create a ‘grey room’ condition in which viewers may see each other, but projected images are shaded from clerestory exposure.

The choreography of freedom and constraint in the design of Blow x Blow also keys to its inaugural programming, PRI/MUS: Architectures for Art and Crime, a study of prisons, museums and their complementary roles in contemporary high design and US urban renewal. Duration in exhibition, like sentencing in incarceration, is a variable we hope to test. After a two week-run of PRI/MUS, the installation will host work by leading artists working in new media in a series entitled Friends of Friends.

Friends of Friends Discussions
These informal discussions with groundbreaking artists working in new media will begin at 7:30 pm on Mondays in the gallery:

- Nov 9 - Ante Liu, with USArtists Program Director Amada Cruz
- Nov 16 - Andrea Fraser, with art historian Rhea Anastas and MoCA curator Bennett Simpson
- Nov 23 - Josh Melnick, with LA> - Nov 30 - Sarah Morris, with graphic designer Richard Massey