Art Students To Take Over the Salesforce Tower Display
The big screen on our skyline is about to be taken over by CCA art students. We liked the sound of that so much we started asking questions. Artists Maxine Schoefer-Wulf, Ava Morton, Efe Ozmen, and Judit Navratil all created videos to be shown on SF’s giant cone. So don’t forget to look up Saturday night, the video projects of four different artists will be lighting our night sky from 83opm -1230am, May 18th – May 20th.
The Salesforce tower’s Wizard of OZ, otherwise known as Artist Jim Campbell conspired with Professors of Film and Fine Art at California College of the Arts, Jeanne C. Finley & Lynn Marie Kirby, to bring in guest artists whose work will light up the 11,000 LEDs on the top of the tallest building in the Bay Area. It was only one year ago this May that the famous display first began playing Campbell’s ‘Day for Night’.
Normally I’d simply embed the youtube videos for your viewing pleasure, but the formatting for these videos is freakish. Not only is the screen on the tower the size of a 6-story building, it’s also tapered. It’s like trying to wrap a rectangular poster around a large traffic cone, in front of the +7 million bay area residents, no less. So if you want to see the videos as they were intended, you’ll have to look out your window over the weekend.
We asked the students to describe their individual projects, so you’ll have a bit of context when you gaze up Saturday evening and see their work playing. There are going to be 4 different videos (approx. 5 minutes each) in a roughly 20-minute loop playing over the weekend. “What is important is the collaborative nature of this project,” Explained Professor Finley, “Lynn and I are collaborators in the curation of students and the criteria and development of the student projects. And the students are collaborating with Jim on their projects. He has not set any criteria other than the ones set by his obligations as a public artist to the Boston Properties team, but he has, guided the students, given them feedback on what will work on that canvass, and helped them understand the roles and responsibilities of public art.”
Bellow, are the descriptions of the videos, from the artist’s themselves:
Artist Maxine Schoefer-Wulf
Maxine describing her project, “for this video, I used 100 feet of 16mm film that I later transferred to digital. I scratched a line into every film frame and punched a hole into every 29th frame to represent how the full moon reappears every month over our landscape. Having this video displayed on the tallest tower in San Francisco – where I was born – I also wanted to juxtapose this city’s rapidly changing skyline and landscape with the moon, which has been around for so much longer than any of us. www.maxineschoeferwulf.com
Ava Morton
Deharo to 16th (22)
Ava describing her project, “When we started thinking about making work for this project, I wanted to make a video that reflected the city. Since I moved to the Bay Area, I found myself in transit a lot. So I thought there couldn’t be a better place to start then on the bus. Before the project began I had been taking sound recordings of my commutes on BART, muni and on foot. I kept thinking about transportation as an intersection point where people come together in an intimate space. I took one particular set of recordings from the Muni 22 bus line from 16th-Deharo, which funny enough, I wrote this description for you in my notebook while I was on my way to my studio. I wanted to make these recordings visible through an analogue process, so, I started experimenting with water and sound. I took apart an amplifier, unscrewing the barrier so the cone was exposed, and placed a cup of water(with blue pigment to make the water opaque) on the cone. The vibrations from the sound transferred to the water, creating patterns. I then, cast a bright light over the cup of water so the light reflected off the wave patterns in the water. I filmed a segment of this experiment, which will play on the tower this coming weekend. While the video plays out, the light and wave patterns look energetic, like the movement of people coming in and out of the trains, buses, and public space.”
avamorton.myportfolio.com
Efe
Video Can Not
“The video starts with a white circle circulating on a blue background and with glitches it transitions into an error message that says ‘The video can not play…’. It is an adaptation of the blue screen of death, which informs malfunctioning even though it is functioning.” — By transitioning between graphics and an error message, which share a similar visual language, Efe Ozmen draws attention to the visual codes that surround us. We have become so accustomed to these gaps that we hardly notice this insistence anymore.”
Judit Navratil
LDS in virtual reality Social Housing Neighborhood
“Navratil explores the possibilities and dangers of ‘home’ in cyberspace. She tumbles through her virtual reality social housing neighborhood using her Long Distance Somersault practice—rolling as far as she can—seeking higher alternatives.”
Article cover image via www.newyorker.com
You Might Also Like
