Mariko Mori: Wave UFO
10 May – 31 July 2003
www.publicartfund.org
NEW
YORK: DEITCH PROJECTS
Mariko Mori: Oneness
10 May – 28 June 2003
Visitors to Wave UFO eagerly line up to
have a gel patch and electrodes stuck onto their forehead with suction pads.
Why? For the possibility of having their brainwaves read and played back
through a live feed into Mariko Mori’s latest futuristic artwork.
Shaped like an extruded teardrop, Wave UFO is a 34 x 17-foot pod that can
seat three. It could not look more out of place in the bamboo-filled
courtyard of the former IBM building at 56th Street. Yet it is this
juxtaposition that intensifies the experience of a public art project that
is enchanting both art lovers seeking out the work and unsuspecting office
workers who unwittingly find themselves donning white slipper-socks and
getting wired up. For those anticipating what they might learn about
themselves and the others in the orb with them, the work does not
disappoint.
Once inside, three participants (a number that is by no means unintentional) lie back on Technogel loungers. As the door slides shut the light show begins on the inner dome and kidney-shaped globules begin to pulsate, activated by the brain waves of the three people inside. The beta wave projections of one of Mori’s assistants to my left begin to blush a vivid red, indicating alertness or agitation. My own waves are, perhaps more astonishingly, a tempered blue, indicating alpha waves and a state of calm; but they soon begin to morph in shape and take on a pinkish tint that rapidly becomes more intense as I marvel at the kaleidoscopic colours and patterns overhead. The three-minute, computer-generated lightshow is followed by a three-and-a-half-minute graphic animation created by Mori – a dizzying yet mesmerising, electric display of colour, sound and motion.
The former professional fashion model was
born in Japan and studied at London’s Chelsea College of Art before moving
to New York in 1992. In earlier work, Mori took on the role of protagonist,
assuming various personas as a pop or fashion idol – as in the
three-dimensional photomontage Birth of a Star, made in 1995 – in order to
explore the changing role of women in Japan.
In her recent work – architectural installations that visitors can enter –
the spectator assumes the central character role, at once observing and
participating in the piece. Continuing to draw inspiration from pop culture,
Mori also makes overt references to traditional Japanese rituals such as
Buddhist meditation. Visitors to Dream Temple – a gleaming fibreglass
replica of Japan’s oldest Buddhist temple, Horyuji Yumedono, first shown at
the Fondazione Prada in 1999 – were invited to an audio-visual experience in
a meditation room for one. In contrast, the communal experience of Wave UFO
exemplifies Mori’s continued interest in the Buddhist principal of ‘the
interconnectivity of human beings’. Mori explains that her goal is to create
the experience of a ‘connected world’ where ‘people are physically connected
to the work and each other, removing the boundaries between them’. The work,
which debuted in February at the Peter Zumthor-designed Kunsthaus Bregenz,
Austria, and is being sponsored by the Public Art Fund in New York, takes
interactivity to new heights.
Wave UFO took three and a half years to make and is reputed to have cost over $2 million. New York gallery owner Jeffrey Deitch, who funded the project, explains his commitment to Mori’s work: ‘I am interested in artists who can bring together different aspects of art: performance, sculpture and spirituality, and fuse them together with tradition and the past, while at the same time embracing the future.’ In tandem with the presentation of Wave UFO, Deitch Projects in SoHo is exhibiting Oneness. Equally out of this world, the piece is made up of six Technogel life-size aliens standing in a circle holding hands. When hugged, their eyes light up, their hearts pound and their feet glow.
Both Wave UFO and Oneness have a child-like quality, yet the ideas they embrace and the minds behind them are by no means naïve. Ambitious in scale and technology, Mori’s work requires a team of engineers, composers, graphic designers, and architects, including Marco Della Torre, who has collaborated with Claes Oldenburg, among other artists. The Italian company Modelleria Angelino, which specialises in fabricating the bodies of cars for Lamborghini, were employed to develop the aluminium and fibreglass structure; Masahiro Kahata and Silicon Studio from Tokyo engineered the bio-feed brain wave system; and Ken Ikeda composed the music for the multi-media projections. Every detail has been fervently executed, down to the iridescent finish on the orb, which defies definition as a single colour and is made from the pigment used to create the holographic coating on Euro bank notes. Mori’s hope is that by creating an otherworldly experience, people can ‘leave behind any preconceptions in order to observe the world’.
Zoë Ryan