U.S. artist and Assistant Professor of New Media at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Kevin Hamilton, created this piece for the space at the Gahlberg Gallery at College of Dupage last summer. The installation consisted in:
“[..] a grid of 60 inter-connected control panels. Through labeled LED indicators, each yellow panel purports to monitor a different condition in the gallery, campus, or the world. Through some actual sensing and some fiction, each panel audibly switches at a distinct rhythm. Interspersed manual switches offer or deny the viewer a chance to influence these conditions, through turnkeys and dials. Some conditions are visibly and audibly interdependent, others autonomous and even questionably verifiable.“
I worked at the gallery at the time of the exhibition and I observed the viewers, and myself, being first engaged by the object itself and its functions (lights, sounds, switches), and later trying to develop understanding and meaning related to the the text and use of the piece questioning its purpose and its content.
I think this is a good example of contemporary art in the sense that it is not only formally – as in form, groundbreaking but also makes the viewer participate and think.

Kevin is currently developing the Zeno Boundary Project, which through the use of photography questions public space and project collaboration. Go to the link for more info. Anybody want to create a group and join the project?

Irene Pérez