User:Themsen/McCall Review Text (500wrd)

General Impressions

I unfortunately missed the basement showing but according to the photos taken by my fellow colleagues the smoke machines seemed to play a large role during the presentation. McCall had mentioned these smoke machines as being especially good at creating smoke thick enough to make the rays of light more solid. It was hard to imagine how this installation would have worked with only dust, or tobacco smoke (the projectors might have been stronger though). The white room before the exhibition of the light-show was quite enlightening, what awoke my interest most though was the B/W Micro projector which took a little extra thought to view as the screen on which the images were projected was blurred. I had to look around the screen to see the images in greater detail.

User Interaction and Aesthetics

Even though the exhibition wasn't tactile (in essence) it still made one question the 'tactility' of social borders. The beauty of this coming-together of smoke and light created (especially in the cone of light) a "going towards the light" lightscape. The quietness which each partipant upheld in the exhibition also added to this otherwordly feeling, where it was the people and the lightshow in focus. The body and light, seemed to be the main theme of the light-show. Perhaps, because of the artist's, reference to movie projectors the exploration of bodies and light where one of the intentions with this exhibition. Stepping from the reasonably lit white exhibition room to the dark entrance of the installation room heightened the feeling of leaving one's 'comfort-bubble' in order to explore ideas stripped down to art-installations.

Thoughts on my own ideas and McCall's exhibition

The exhibition made me consider the eloquence with which borders can be invoked. The smoke of each installation made the illusion of tactility very real when it met the ray, and a liquid-like surface began to stream in the wake of the rays. Lefebvre's triad of social spaces (Production of Space, 38-39) come to mind when interacting with the virtual borders of the installation's light rays. They enclose, are immaterial yet highly material at the same time. They are part of the world, yet due to the un-tactile nature of both social spaces and the virtual spaces of light created by the installations they are both part of a mental layer in our mind which detects borders, and a good example of representations creating borders. The contrast between the light and dark juxtaposes these differences between social spaces and social borders. It becomes a participatory event when the spaces and borders all work in conjunction to generate a temporary system of order. This system of social space and borders is ubiquitous as the installation merely invokes the spatial systems we already use in our societies. The mere materiality of light sought me to question the post-constructivist concept of a networked, hence bordered global world; where the light of the optic fibre cables reign supreme; and the invisible yet effective light of the satellites and wifi modems allow a part of us to flow, like smoke, across the surface of the world.