Space Vacuum 2008

Description

A TV monitor on the first floor plays a live video feed viewing a room on the second floor. By moving the joystick that rests on the pedestal, the viewer moves the piece inside of the room on the second floor.

Artist Statement

Space Vacuum is controlled by a visitor at the console on the first floor near the gallery attendant office. Curiosity, delight and mischief are remotely played out through this human scaled low-fi interactive video game-like sculpture. Space Vacuum is rumination on a machine designed to rid us from the filth surrounding our existence. An appliance used to restore order to our local habitats expunging detritus. It also symbolizes the invisible workers that toil behind the scenes constructing the illusion of stasis. The vacuum further embodies gender and class role stereotypes that persist past the failed promise of the leisure society. As a reversal to the celebrated artificial sublime artists such as James Turrell and Olafur Eliasson, this gothic/minimalist/light sculpture recalls horror and sci-fi props of low-budget B movies. In a further sneer toward social contextual art practice, it takes on an anti-social and misanthropic cause. Appliances consume resources; robots will surely transform our world further fulfilling their own logic of survival. The enemies of the state scatter beneath the penetrating gaze of the sublime robotic eye. The great void is near…