Storage Closet and Shooting Gallery

Storage Closet and Shooting Gallery, 2007

100 x 99 x 148" with other components of variable dimensions

Electronics, lights, wood, fabric, steel, cardboard, rubber bands, mixed

media installation. Installed at San Jose State University in Gallery 3.

The behind-the-scene view of this

interactive piece.

This piece was constructed around the premise of turning a large art gallery into a utilitarian space, or a storage closet, that would return back to an art space after a viewer/ participant entered the “closet.” The art gallery is situated amongst offices, classrooms and other closets, so passersby familiar with the gallery would recognize the spatial and functional change of the space, while those less familiar might dismiss it as an open closet or question their memory of the space.

When the participant entered the closet, the fluorescent lights turned off and a false ceiling of tabletop lamps turned on. The false ceiling and false walls were skinned in carefully selected shear fabric that would allow just enough light and detail to make out the lamps without showing the entirety of the gallery space. The lamps were attached to a program that changed lighting patterns dependent on the actions of the participant in the room. The floor was covered in rubber bands and the boxes on the far wall contained targets. If the viewer struck the targets with a rubber band, a recording of one of eighteen graduate students saying the word “shoot” in a tone of frustration is played in composition with other sounds and instrumentation. These sounds affected in fluctuation, a series of lights that utilized the remaining unseen gallery space.

. The boxes of the left wall, when tilted, played found recordings that describe a place that could be the city of San Jose. The recordings were from cassette tapes found at flea markets and thrift stores throughout San Jose. Some of these boxes also changed lighting patterns. An old reel-to-reel recorder in amongst the boxes contained a 20 minute audio called “Dynamic Art Making.”