In my art school days, I frequently thought about ways in which art could be interactive. I was always much more interested in the dynamics of direct human interaction with some mediated form. No doubt responding to the concurrent art history lectures which represented the art world, aka “the establishment”, in my mind this was a great leap of faith to let go of control over the medium and let people do what they do.
So installations like the Txt of the Living Dead tickle me to no end. Not only is it melding newish technologies like SMS to older technologies like film and projection, it’s interactive. Participants can text-message the display, which presents stills from Night of the Living Dead. 10-20 seconds later, the message displays on the screen in a cartoon text bubble. It’s uncensored and immediate, then it passes on to the next message. FUN!
Of course the messages themselves are a fair representation of the interactive population. You have philosophical messages, crass messages, declarations of undying love, stupid phrases, political statements, phrases which reflect popular geek culture (such as “all ur art are belong to us”), and one-word non-sequiturs. What I found most interesting was the fact that most of these messages were mostly fully typed out, instead of being txt-msg abbrevs. The spelling was hit or miss, but I have to admit I was expecting a lot more effort on my part to understand what was being expressed (I’m not so good with acronyms or abbreviations).
There’s a video here of another installation in Toronto. No zombies though. For zombies, go to Brooklyn, NY, corner of Smith and Pacific at 7:30 PM on Wednesday, October 31st.
(Wired Magazine’s recent article about the artist)
