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Learning to love HAL
‘Engaging Characters’ at Art Interactive; art-speak at the SMFA
BY RANDI HOPKINS

Lots of us talk back to our TVs, have pet names for our cars, rant at our microwaves, and otherwise invest emotional currency in the technology we live with, but we don’t expect our stuff to be listening to us, and we certainly don’t expect it to answer back. A new show at Art Interactive in Cambridge, aptly titled "Engaging Characters," explores our relationship with digitally derived characters. This smart and, yes, engaging exhibition goes beyond the technological to look into the very nature of character: how an invented figure becomes imbued with personality traits; how those characteristics are visually and aurally manifested. It also explores the interaction between digital characters and analog viewers (that’s us). The show, organized by New York based curator Kathy Brew, has been up since the end of July, but Art Interactive is open to visitors only on Saturdays and Sundays, from noon to 6 p.m., so you may have missed it. Well, lucky for you, AI is throwing a big closing reception next Friday, October 3, from 6 to 9 p.m., before the show’s last weekend. Come by and meet the cyber cast.

It’s a bit noisy when you walk into the show, but bear with it. Soon you will know each of the works intimately; you’ll even be calling them by name. My favorite is Pussy Weevil, an animated green blobby guy created by Marina Zurkow and Julian Bleecker. This squawking character is kind of cute, even as he (she? it?) bellows menacingly, stamps his feet, and gives a lively animated version of mooning you from his little square of video monitor. Come too close and Pussy Weevil will disappear altogether, waiting for you to step out of worrisome proximity. But walk away and the animated alien will relax, pace, and eventually lie down for a rest, his round green bum sticking up like a napping baby’s.

"If you would trim your nose hair, maybe you’d get a promotion," snarls the hard-bitten female character to her pot-bellied companion in Janine Cirincione & Michael Ferraro’s RL (Real Life), an installation centered on a richly animated scene on a 2D screen. Set in a crummy living room, with a crowded fly strip hanging from the ceiling and the remains of a big box of KFC on the floor, RL evokes images of family from American Gothic to Archie and Edith. The banter between the two characters is deeply mundane and very funny, and they actually are improvising, in a digital sort of way, responding to the people who are watching them.

Intriguing work by new media artists Julie Heyward, Toni Dove, Claudia Hart, and Larry Berkow, and Chico MacMurtrie of Amorphic Robot Works is also on view (so to speak). And there will be a related panel discussion at MIT’s Bartos Theater next Thursday moderated by curator Brew, with MIT Media Lab professors Bruce Blumberg and Joe Paradiso and artists Julia Heyward and Toni Dove.

Also coming up: the School of the Museum of Fine Arts has a great fall series of lectures by visiting artists and critics, including a talk this Tuesday by artist Michelle Segre, whose big sculpture of familiar stuff like a mushroom or a half-eaten piece of white bread (complete with crumbs) plays with Pop imagery and nature, and a talk on October 6 by Village Voice critic Jerry Saltz, who opines with humor and insight on just about everything "art."

"Engaging Characters" is at Art Interactive, 130 Bishop Allen Drive in Cambridge, Saturday and Sunday through October 5, with a closing reception next Friday, October 3, from 6 to 9 p.m.; call (617) 818-0162. "Engaging Characters: Between the Virtual and the Real" will take place at Bartos Theater in the MIT Media Lab, 20 Ames Street in Cambridge, next Thursday, October 2, at 7:30 p.m., following a reception at 7 p.m. Admission is free. Michelle Segre speaks at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, 230 the Fenway, this Tuesday, September 30, at 6 p.m.; Jerry Saltz speaks there on Monday October 6 at 6 p.m. Call (617) 369-3718 for further information about Museum School events.


Issue Date: September 26 - October 2, 2003
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