Author: audreymg

Walking into the UMMA’s Art in the Age of the Internet exhibit is an assault to the senses. Before you enter the gallery you can hear the art as a cacophony of deep booms, high pitched squeals, and slightly disturbing sounds weaving between them. This is the experience the curator wants you to have in this exhibit because the Internet is an assault to the senses. Everywhere you turn in this relatively small exhibit space there is bright and often disturbing art surrounding you. This exhibit is more than just a few dozen paintings or sculptures, it is an interactive experience which requires you to engage it. Some pieces engage you in very literal ways, requiring you to put on headphones to listen to videos, tracking your movements, or requiring you to interact with their piece to experience the art. The gallery was organized into sections with themes. One corner focused on surveillance and the dangers it holds. This section included a digital eye with an infrared sensor which followed you across the room. Another piece was a router in a thick plexiglass box which allowed you to browse the internet anonymously. Another section focused on video games. This portion of the exhibit showed the various applications of video games with one piece using old fashioned video games on multiple screens to create a landscape while another piece exhibited the simulation video games the military uses to train soldiers. My two favorite pieces were very different in nature. The first was a video which played in a dark room in the corner and was responsible for the thrumming bass that shook the room. This video featured a desktop screen with hundreds of different pages being pulled up featuring videos and images explaining the origin of the universe while a piece of music composed in conjunction with the piece played. The piece continuously returned to video footage of a man with taxidermy birds of various breeds and a woman drawing circles. The video was mesmerizing in a way that felt slightly off and even a bit disturbing. The other piece that I felt most drawn to was a 3-D printed sculpture of an artist whose work was featured alongside it. The sculpture featured an iridescent, greenish, female-presenting, naked person lounging on their side with long hair. On closer inspection, the figure was hiding male genitals behind a bent knee. The sculpture was meant to draw from the artists self-portrait which was featured in my preview. In this image the artist is painted a bright green with yellow box braids, kneeling on the ground. I still have many questions about these two pieces. I would highly suggest that any and everyone catch this exhibit before it leaves April 8th.

Image courtesy of Observer.com

As a former cellist, I know when I’m listening to music composed by someone who understands the instrument. Esa-Pekka Salonen understands cello. The Ann Arbor Philharmonia Orchestra’s performance of Salonen’s Cello Concerto Tuesday night was marvelous. I knew that it must be a fine piece of music after learning that it was partially commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and premiered by Yo-Yo Ma, but this was more than I could have ever expected. The piece was riveting, keeping me at the edge of my seat for at least half of the concerto. My view of Truls Mork, the featured cellist, was obstructed by several heads but I craned my head to keep eyes on him and his dark wood cello the whole time. In Salonen’s program remarks on his composition he mentions the desire to push the cellist to their physical and mental limits while performing this piece. I think that it did more. By the end of the third movement, I felt like I had been reading a complex article for class or doing mental gymnastics.
Salonen’s concerto truly pushed music to its boundaries. The program notes describe the first two movements well. Salonen describes the first movement as an amorphous cloud up in space and it truly felt that way. I struggled to get into this movement as it did not carry an easily followable melody, which I tend to prefer in music. However, the second movement took my breath away. He described this movement as a majestic meteor making its way through space and that is exactly what I saw in my mind’s eye. The piece utilized such a variety of textures and special effects. Mork strummed, plucked, and bowed his way through double stops and harmonics. At one point I became confused, knowing that I heard music being played by the solo cello but his actions not aligning with the music I heard. It later became obvious that the performance utilized a recording device on the solo cello and looped certain sound effects and melodies throughout different parts of the concerto. When the piece ended I found myself motionless and there may have even been a few tears in my eyes. I saw several people in the audience ahead of me get up and leave the auditorium and, honestly, I couldn’t blame them. I could understand going to a performance just to hear that piece performed live.
Luckily the orchestra took quite some time to rearrange during the intermission, giving me time to process the concerto. When Stravinsky’s Firebird finally began, I found myself a bit underwhelmed. Stravinsky was known for being a revolutionary of his time. When Rite of Spring premiered there were riots in the streets. However, compared to Salonen’s modern day masterpiece, it felt tame and classical. Firebird was a the perfect way to come down from the exhilaration of the cello concerto and allowed me to digest it to a deeper extent while enjoying the music of another time.

Picture courtesy of LA Phil website.

Wednesday I will be going to the University of Michigan Museum of Art to see the Art in the Age of the Internet exhibit. This exhibit centers on the way the internet has changed visual art from 1989 to today. The exhibit features a range of some of contemporary art’s greatest artists in a variety of mediums. The exhibit was first organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. The UMMA first welcomed this exhibit in December of 2018 and it will be closing on April 7th, so now is your time to see it before the exhibit closes! I was given a small preview of the exhibit before Spring Break when my African American History course took me to the museum for a special viewing of pieces related to our course. Before ending our class at the UMMA our guide took us up to the Art in the Age of the Internet exhibit to highlight a few pieces related to Black representation and activism today. We viewed a digital piece with a very literal representation of the internet featuring a grid of screens that utilized an algorithm to pull clips from the internet focusing on Black activism and police brutality. The piece changes daily, so I’m curious to see what this piece looks like Wednesday.