Deep Walls

Scott Snibbe transforms reality through his interactive art. In a piece called Deep walls viewer’s shadows are recorded and then played back onto a screen. When first recorded the shadow is very large however after a small time the image joins 16 other small shadow recordings on the screen. It looks as if it is a cupboard of images. These images are played back over and over. Eventually when a new recording is made the oldest recording gets bumped out. Snibbe’s website states that “By collecting the viewers’ own shadows, the piece reveals how individual objects gain in symbolic meaning, while losing literal meaning, through organization, repetition and display.”

Deep walls relies on viewer’s participation to be successful. Once viewers become aware that they are being recorded they often will think of creative ways to record themselves. This piece is interesting as the creative ideas they get are also often built from ideas generated by viewing the prior recordings. So in a way it builds upon itself. This creativity on the viewer’s part could possibly also be fueled by the element of surprise that they are being recorded and the excitement that comes from it.

Snibbe State’s “One of the most fundamental Buddhist ideas is that everything is interdependent. In reality, everything that we have and are, physically and materially, comes from someone else… That’s why I went into interactivity to begin with. To make something interactive, you emphasize the artwork or the experience. You can’t experience (my artwork) without the viewer. The viewer is as much a piece of the art as the program and the graphics. It makes it really clear that every single perceptual experience is a transaction between the perceiver and the object, and that different people see things in a different way.” (The Herald, Monterey County, C. Martin)

Snibbe’s website states that the pieces title is in reference to “architect Christopher Alexander’s “Pattern Language”. His admonition to architects is to build the walls of homes thick, so that cabinets, drawers and windows can perforate the interior space, providing areas to store, display, slice through and ultimately provide more meaning within the home.” (Snibbe.com)

The walls of this piece certainly have been carved in a way to allow others to occupy it and thus make it more meaningful.

The piece can be viewed here:
http://snibbe.com/scott/mosaics/deep%20walls/video.html