copyright by james vincent ogden 2014
TRANSCRIPT
Copyright
by
James Vincent Ogden
2014
The Thesis Committee for James Vincent Ogden
Certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis:
Communication Through Artifact Creation
APPROVED BY
SUPERVISING COMMITTEE:
Richard M. Isackes
William Bloodgood
Supervisor:
Communication Through Artifact Creation
by
James Vincent Ogden, BFA
Thesis
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of
The University of Texas at Austin
in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements
for the Degree of
Master of Fine Arts
The University of Texas at Austin
May 2014
iv
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the artists who so generously allowed me to use their work
including Robert Schmidt, William Bloodgood, Stephanie Busing, Karen Maness, Nimer
Aleck, Jason Buchanan, Yago De Quay, and Ian Loveall.
v
Abstract
Communication Through Artifact Creation
James Vincent Ogden, MFA
The University of Texas at Austin, 2014
Supervisor: Richard M. Isackes
Communication Through Artifact Creation was an opportunity to design an
installation of artifacts in a new and provocative way. Using the inherent properties of the
objects contained within the context of the installation as the performative event, the
audience was able to shape their own narrative around these objects. Usually, as a scenic
designer, I am shaping a space that performers are allowed into but the audience is not.
There is a predefined narrative text that is the key element informing the designer
artifacts that I make as a representation of the sculpted theatrical space a performance
will take place in. For this exhibit the artifacts designed by me and eleven other artists
informed the structure that would house them, and the performative journey is open to the
interpretation of the audience’s imagination.
vi
Table of Contents
List of Figures ...................................................................................................... vii
Chapter 1 Introduction ............................................................................................1
Chapter 2 The Process ............................................................................................4
Chapter 3 Design and Fabricaton ............................................................................7
Chapter 4 Opening and Reader Response .............................................................12
Chapter 4 Conclusion ............................................................................................13
Bibliography ..........................................................................................................15
vii
List of Figures
Figure 1: Entrance to the Ferragamo Museum .............................................2
Figure 2: Collage of objects. ........................................................................5
Figure 3: Rough Ground Plan.......................................................................7
Figure 4: Installing the walls. .......................................................................8
Figure 5: Front entrance to exhibit. ..............................................................9
Figure 6: Main room of exhibit. .................................................................10
1
Chapter 1: Introduction
In the summer of 2013 I had the opportunity to take part in a study abroad
program through the University of Texas at Austin to Florence, Italy. Visiting museums
and art galleries has always been a passion of mine, and seeing different curation styles
from the august to the eccentric is always a joy. While viewing new museums in Florence
I had the opportunity to visit the Ferragamo Museum, where I was exposed to something
new, a museum that was focused around Salvatore Ferragamo and the creation of his
shoes.
Entering into the museum, seen in Figure 1, you are shown different ways to view
the products of Ferragamo’s creativity and labor. The rooms adjacent to this main room
were either very focused on a single idea or were devoted to a larger work. One had a
statue of a man with an outstretched arm holding a bird which itself was holding a single
shoe, while the surrounding walls had many small birds holding many different shoes,
illustrating the creative process of picking the one right object for the moment. Another
room was a small movie theater showing a fantasy film of Ferragamo’s childhood, with
the screen surrounded by the beautifully constructed props and sets of shoes from the
movie. Through all of these rooms the central theme of the creation of imaginative
footwear was explored and reinforced.
2
Figure 1: Entrance to the Ferragamo Museum
The mission statement of the Ferragamo museum included below from their
website. The museum is in the basement of the Salvatore Ferragamo Fashion House, and
like all fashion houses it is the primary location for the design and manufacture of the
Ferragamo brand.
The Museum’s mission is to design, organize, and promote exhibitions, seminars,
and other events focusing on contemporary fashion culture in the widest sense.
This reflects the sensibility of a major enterprise like Salvatore Ferragamo
regarding nascent phenomena in art, design, entertainment, advertising, and
information that influence the substance and style of people’s clothes and lives.1
The Ferragamo Museum would become the inspiration for my exhibit
Communication Through Artifact Creation. I wanted to design an exhibit space that
would evoke the immersive sensibility of this museum and apply it to another set of
objects. I wanted to frame designer artifacts as something more than communicative
3
tools. To do this I would build an installation space into a theatrical space to trouble the
notion of viewing these objects. The objects are used to represent the type of performance
that will be occurring or has occurred in a theater space like the Brockett Theater that
houses the installation. Seeing them mounted (physically) inside of an exhibit that is itself
mounted (performatively) within a theatre space will aid the conversation I invite the
audience to have with the objects by giving a specific context in which they are viewing
the objects.
This document will outline the creative process, design, and response to
Communication Through Artifact Creation which was open to the public from March 24th
through March 28th
, 2014 in the Oscar Brockett Theater at the University of Texas at
Austin.
4
Chapter 2: The Process
While reading the work of theorists involved in museology and exhibit design to
understand how I could alter the experience of the audience, I came across a quote from
Brian Eno, an English musician, composer, singer and visual artist, who wrote: “Stop
thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for
experiences.” 1 This became a log line, which is a term most often used in the film
industry to provide a creative team with a short synopsis and also an emotional hook to
continually stimulate interest, that would be used to influence many of the choices made
both in term of choosing work from the artists with whom I was working, as well as in
designing the structure itself. I chose mainly those works that I found to provide this
trigger.
The logline would also provide a strong influence on designing the exhibit itself
because it constantly forced me to question how my design could shape and environment
which would allow room for the reflection necessary to allow an emotional/visceral
response triggered by the art works displayed. Roland Barthes, an influential theorist,
philosopher, and semiotician, wanted to understand the fundamentals of photography. In
his thinking there are those images that are part of a “community of images” 2
and there
are those images that stand out as an encounter. In the collection of essays Theatre and
Performance Design: A Reader in Scenography edited by Jane Collins and Andrew
Nisbet, his work in this area is summarized as follows:
1 “A Year With Swollen Appendices: Brian Eno’s Diary” by Brian Eno 1996 2 “Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography” by Roland Barthes Reprinted 2010
5
He introduces the terms the studium and the punctum as a means of describing our
encounters with the photographic image. Both pre-exist within the photographic
frame but it is the punctum which stands out and triggers a personal response in
the viewer making that photograph stand out from the multitude of other images.
This exhibit was attempting to manufacture a punctum offering a variety of spaces
that gave people room for reflection and questions to ask themselves about how they
were viewing the objects. It was Barthes assertion that the punctum existed only in
photographs, and that it must be accidental. I was attempting to have an audience
experience this not through a photograph but paintings, sculpture, set models, and set
renderings. These objects either detail referential information of a performance that may
or may not have happened or are works of art that have their own inherent reflective
worth. See figure 2 below. Leaving room for people to form a response rather than giving
them an idea of the response that they could be having I believed offered a higher chance
of them discovering a puntum in the work that was available to them.
Figure 2: Collage of objects.
6
Scattered at intervals throughout the installation are pieces of text framed to blend
in with the other objects on display containing questions about art and the viewing of art.
The questions that are asked, about what these objects are in conversation with, what is
informing them, what the dialogue they are having with you, are questions that are used
in the study of art objects, but are not as frequently used when looking at a designed
performance artifact after it has been used to represent a performance. They are viewed
within the parameters of this one performance, rather than a range of other performances
that are possible within the designed space of the model or rendering. This exhibit
allowed that dialogue to exist in an open forum where the audience is encouraged to
question without knowing the purpose that this object once served in the construction of a
previous performance.
7
Chapter 3: Design and Fabrication
The process of researching a theoretical framework for the installation having
been completed as highlighted in the last chapter, I set about arranging ground plan
configurations over the layout of the Oscar Brockett Theater. The initial designs were
unsatisfactory because they were based more around a gallery formation of a few walls,
with a very linear viewing pattern from beginning to end. I came back to the log line and
initial inspiration to formulate a footprint that was more like the Ferragamo Museum, as
you can see in Figure 3 below.
Figure 3: Rough Ground Plan
8
The ground plan having been formulated, it was time to decide on materials and
the overall look of the space. I made a few simple elevations of construction drawings so
that I could budget materials for the project, but since I would also be building all of the
walls for the installation I found it unnecessary to make a large number of detailed
drawings. I relied on my background in scenic construction to extrapolate the ground plan
and elevations, and this also allowed me to shift the design as needed while building and
installing the individual pieces. The installation in progress can be seen in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Installing the walls.
The entrance to the exhibit, which is found by entering the Brockett Theater
through one of its two main entrances, would be a larger wall than the interior walls at ten
9
foot tall by fifteen feet wide. This wall seen in Figure 5, like most of the walls inside,
would be painted a flat black to give structure but allow the focus to remain on the works
themselves.
Figure 5: Front entrance to exhibit.
Once inside the main room, which had a footprint of ten feet by twenty feet with
eight foot tall walls, I designed five other doors besides the entrance as seen in Figure 6.
10
These would allow the audience either to view objects inside of two closets, enter into
two adjacent rooms, or to “exit” from the exhibit into the backstage of the exhibit which
is the upstage of the Brockett Theater.
Figure 6: Main room of exhibit.
The two rooms adjacent to the main room were designed to be completely
different from each other. One is set up as a gallery space with framed works hung neatly
11
along the walls and overhead lighting giving you the space to go around from one work
to the next, investigating each one. The room across the main room from the gallery
features stud walls covered with plastic sheeting and lit from the outside to convey an
under construction environment. The first things you notice upon entering are four white
panels with an invitation to draw on them with sharpie, an invitation to become a part of
the installation. In the room down a short hallway is a table with a projector, computer,
and a ½” scale model with media being projected onto the back. A chair in the corner
offers you a place to sit while viewing the projected media and this is when a six foot tall
sculpted hammer comes into full view that looks as if it might smash down onto the
computer momentarily.
Once the audience has seen all of the rooms, or perhaps in the middle of viewing
the rooms, they will open the door opposite the front entrance and walk out into the
backstage area. Here is where they see a ghost light under a ladder, some lighting
illuminating the plastic lined room, and the untreated backs of the walls that make the
installation. This is a reminder that the installation itself is built into a theatrical space,
that this is another kind of performance. The kind of performance that usually takes place
in the Brockett Theater is configured so that audience area and acting area are separated,
there are the viewers and the thing which is seen. The performance taking place in
Communication Through Artifact Creation, though, is one that is taking place within the
mind of the audience as they move through the exhibit having emotional reactions to one
object or another. They may not react to every object, but somewhere they will find their
punctum and have their performance.
12
Chapter 4: Opening and Reader Response
For the opening of the exhibit I wanted two groups of visitors: the graduate
student population and design faculty who were given an email invitation to attend the
project, and the undergrad population along with non-design faculty who were not give a
formal invitation. The reason for this was I wanted to see what the difference for an
audience would be for a found experience versus a created experience. What resulted was
a frequent question from both groups asking if they were allowed into the space. The
distinction between being allowed versus being invited is a fine line but one that is useful
in investigating what an art exhibit means to the community in which it is placed.
While speaking with one visitor I brought up the notion that the best form of
communication that the designed models and renderings have is with the designer
him/herself. The visitor responded that an exhibit such as Communication Through
Artifact Creation is the closest that non-designers get to having the internal dialogue that
a designer has with the work they are creating. They are not being informed directly
about what the titles of any of the works in the exhibit are, so they have to ask themselves
questions about how the space in the model or rendering is sculpted and why. The
designs that these objects stand as a representation for could possibly be used for a
number of performances, but they were designed for a specific performance.
While the exhibit was open I felt compelled to remain at the front entrance to play
a selection of music while the visitors were entering and exiting the installation space.
This allowed me gauge whether the piece was successful in is purposes, because I did not
want to be present while the audience was participating in viewing the objects to have an
effect on the experience of the audience.
13
Chapter 5: Conclusion
Communication Through Artifact Creation gave me the opportunity to design an
installation of artifacts in a new and provocative way. Using the inherent properties of the
objects contained within the context of the installation as the performative event, the
audience was able to shape their own narrative around these objects. Usually as a scenic
designer I am shaping a space that performers are allowed into but the audience is not.
There is a predefined text that is a key element that informs the design artifacts that I
make as a representation of the sculpted theatrical space a performance will take place in.
For this exhibit the artifacts designed by me and eleven other artists informed the
structure that would house them, and the performative journey is open to the
interpretation of the audience’s imagination.
Having the ability to construct a performative journey through conceiving the
project, designing and shaping the structure, setting up the lighting, and choosing the
music that would be heard was a new experience for me as a designer. This is a process
and product that I hope to create again in the future with any number of subjects open to
me, but the creation of a space like this has a range of possibilities that I will endeavor to
explore.
14
Bibliography
McTighe, Monica E. 2012. Framed Spaces: Photography and Memory In Contemporary
Installation Art. Hanover: Dartmouth College Press.
Collins, Jane, and Andrew Nisbet. 2010. Theater and Performance Design: A Reader in
Scenography. London: Routledge.
Oberhardt, Suzanne. 2011. Frames Within Frames: The Art Museum as Cultural Artifact.
New York: Peter Lang.
Graham, Beryl, and Sarah Cook. 2010. Rethinking Curating: Art After New Media.
Cambrige: The MIT Press.
Godfrey, Tony, ed. 2009. Understanding Art Objects: Thinking Through The Eye.
Burlington: Lund Humphries.