Presentation Series: Scott Snibbe

Last Wednesday, October 24th, a special guest speaker was lined up in lieu of regular N100 lecture. His name is Scott Snibbe and he is an artist - of sorts. He does, in fact, create works of art - but they aren't paintings or sculptures. Mr. Snibbe is a interactive artist, an artist who creates works of art that have immersive qualitites. Rather than being static visual objects, Mr. Snibbe likes to create art such that every individual can participate; and moreover, even have a totally unique personalized experience. The first work he showed was an "installation" which showed beams of light on the ground illustrating an individual's "personal space." If a person were to walk on it alone - nothing would happen. However, with each new person on the installation, the beams of light move to encircle each person's own space. Thus, the more people on the installation, the more the light has to change to adapt. Another type of art he does is screen based, many of which can be accessed at his website: http://snibbe.com. With these works he attempts to let people create their own dynamic art using stars, squares, and other shapes. Most of the programs are easy to use and quite enjoyable. Perhaps the most interesting of Mr. Snibbe's works are the ones in which he uses people's own shadows and movements. For instance he has a wall installation where people walk by and their shadows are caught in infinite loops that continue to pass by on the wall until another person "touches" the first shadow - which causes it to "melt" off the wall indefinitely. A second variation of this is another wall installation which shows a tree and a lion. The object is to catch the falling fruit off the tree without moving too much. When the person begins to move too much, their shadow turns red and the lion is alerted and will eventually attack the person's shadow and "kill" it.

I think the idea of interactive art is very exciting and quite frankly I'm surprised that there isn't more of it around already. I'm not exactly sure if Mr. Snibbe is one of the big pioneers of the field, or has just managed to gain more of the spotlight - but either way, I'm a fan. I especially like the idea of having these sort of works at boring places where people have a lot of waiting around and time to kill - like airports, train stations, etc. Not only could these sort of works be enjoyed by all different ages and kinds of people, but they would help to engage children as well so they aren't being troublesome and obnoxious. I thought Mr. Snibbe did a pretty good job of presenting his work - though he seemed a bit nervous and shy. I learned that a lot of psychological data and considerations go into creating projects like these. It makes perfect sense why they would use information such as proxemics (the study of personal space) and cultural ideals (different cultures have very different concepts of personal space), I just never thought about using them for something like this. I hope that Mr. Snibbe's work will help open up new ideas about what public art is, how it can become interactive, and where said art is viewed as "socially acceptable."