The Leonardo Gallery

© 19941SAST THE LEONARDO GALLERY The work of the following six artists represents the strength and diversity of the membership ofArt & Science Collaborations. The selected artists work in different media: light, digital imaging, music , kinetic sculpture, holography and interactive sculpture. However, it is the blurring of borders that perhaps best defines the media they choose: sculpture that makes sound, digital images with audio track, a swinging pendulum hologram and holograms superimposed with video images, handmade musical instruments that are also found-object sculptures. This commingling of media results in forms that reveal layers of meaning, reality, wit and humor. Steve Bradley's work is meant to wake us up, and so it does, with powerful graphic images that have been "grabbed" from the public domain and broadcast television (the very source he criticizes and despises for its pervasive power). World Bank Babyand International Skeleton, both from his artist's book Sound Banking, illustrate Bradley's adept use of digital imaging tools to create seamlessly layered gradations and textures. A musician as well as a visual artist, Bradley adds another layer of physical reality with the audiotape that accompanies his book. The combination of these two formats enables Bradley to present his radio and sound/video performance work in a tangible form. Doris Vila has spent the last 2 years constructing a unique interactive environment. Only within this complex physical framework could her recent performance, entitled (A Self-Help Survival Guide to the) GlobalVillage, be realized. Like Bradley, Vila's sociopolitical concerns unfold through a layering of image, sound and text, but she adds the dimensions of space, time and interactivity. Metaphors abound in Vila's inventive and comprehensive use of new media technologies, and her poetic, nonlinear narrative finds a natural home there. While both Vila and Bradley layer and mix with extremely costly and highly sophisticated technological tools and materials, Ken Butler keeps his work decidedly low-tech. The "hybridization" of found objects is his specialty-items such as a shovel, pitchfork, tennis racket or suitcase are transformed into beautifully crafted instruments that are also strong art pieces. Like Vila, Butler is compelled to create interactive environments. Object Opera requires the viewer/participant to 'join the band"-becoming player, maestro and composer. Inanimate objects become fellow musicians, responding to the directives of the viewer/participant, who operates a keyboard. Another artist who relishes incorporating the elements of sound and surprise in his work is Robert Chambers. His sophisticated sculptures celebrate both the inherent beauty of machinery's form and its function of transmitting force, motion and energy from one part of a work to another. Untitledis a sleeping giant that comes alive with human intervention. The interactive element expresses Chambers's desire for experiential knowledge and reflects his process. Gross body movements are demanded to unleash the sculpture's underlying character, which is brash, loud and humorous. If Chambers's work aptly represents an "in-your-face" style, Mary Ziegler's intimate sculpture is equally effective at capturing attention. The small-scale detail and unseen magnetic energy fields of The Waypull the viewer's face into the activities of the mechanized sculpture. Viewers tend to hold their bodies still and listen attentively to the quirky, subtle sounds emanating from the interrupted path of the sculpture's moving element. Ziegler's fine sculpting in cement completes her aesthetic, creating an austere, odd, miniature landscape that shifts the viewer's reality long enough to allow a glimpse of another, metaphorical world. Light artist Matthew Tanteri's Horizon capitalized on and was inspired by the vast expanses of a vacant building's raw space and earthen floor, where Tanteri re-created the moment of the day when the sun hits the horizon and spreads. His ingenious installation method and knowledge of artificial light work hand-in-hand with a clear aesthetic vision. CYNTHIA PANNUCCI Art & Science Collaborations, Inc. P.O. Box040496 Staten Island, NY 10304 U.S.A. LEONARDO, Vol. 27, No.4, pp. 269-275,1994 269 Steve Bradley, World Bank Baby and International Skeleton, from Sound Banking, a 48-page artist's book, bluel black offset lithographic duoprints, 6 x 8 in each, 1994. The multimedia book includes a 90-min...