FutilityUtility

A stenographer is stationed beside an empty wall in an otherwise traditionally filled gallery during the course of an opening. This court reporter is given one instruction: for the next three hours, capture everything that’s being said in this room. Every ten minutes the streams of coded paper are cut from the machine and hung on the empty wall, strip after strip creating a time-based mural.

Viewers become aware that they are being observed, something is being taken from them. The roar of echoing noise in the room however makes it nearly impossible for the stenographer to capture every sound but the illegible script on each strip of paper leaves room for viewers to wonder how much of them was captured.

This piece seeks to highlight the function and places of breakdown in human interactions. The viewer comes to see art but very quickly becomes implicated as an art maker and art object.

Reanimation #1 (FutilityUtility)

The hired stenographer from FutilityUtility translated the coded text from the strips of paper back into English. As expected, the minutes from the three hour gallery opening were disjointed and even humorous.

One month from its initiation, a new gesture in this piece was installed into the same gallery it first started. A collection of the confused poem-like phrases rotated through on a screen attached to a microphone and voice recording system. Viewers of the second gallery exhibit, many of whom also attended the first, were asked to reanimate the words into the microphone, ultimately closing the loop of sound to word to sound again.