Figure 9
Joel Slayton
b. 1959, Montgomery, Alabama
To Not See a Thing
1997, Digital information tehcnology, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist.
More than an electronic sculpture, To Not See a Thing is an analysis of the nature of art, the artist, and the spectator. Gathering data during the entire exhbition, the work will continualy evolve and will not be complete until the last visitor has taken his or her turn.
The participation of museum visitors is essential to the nature of this artwork. While people observe this complex electronic construct, it looks back at those viewers, analyzing the way they look at art. As visitors interact with To Not See a Thing, the computers record and deconstruct the information, building up a cumulative tracing of the viewers actions in moving the Plexiglass box [see text]. In the end, it is museum visitors who will have created the final product–a “map” showing the infinite number of ways in which we look at art–a valuable artifact that no one, including Slayton, can predict.
–Beth Venn and Cathy Kimball
Photograph: ©1998, San Jose Museum of Ar/tSue Tallon
Artwork © Joel Slayton.