April 25th, 2013Top StoryStep Inside the Mechanized Fun-House Wasteland of Artist Jon KesslerBy Michael Hession In a bid for interactivity (a buzzword that many artists seek to exploit), Kessler has built an iPhone app that visitors can download as part of the installation. The app lets you take pictures that will appear on various monitors throughout the space. It's a bit of a gimmick, but does serve its purpose in turning an audience peering through their phones into part of the spectacle. The Web joins the long line of artistic ventures looking to critique our unrelenting smartphone-obsessed culture. The typical signs and metaphors are all there—the appropriated advertising imagery, the surveillance cams, even a mechanized automaton dummy stroking an ipad. We are slaves to our devices. We know. But no matter how much Kessler's installation basks in the conventions of cultural critique so ingrained in the art world, the real delight is in the visual and physical cacophony he so artfully constructs.  |
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