Raymond Lee

10/25/04

Pat O'Neill Exhibition

When one enters the Pat O'Neill exhibition, they see the interactive film on the left. There are three screens. Therefore, three people can use the mouse and interact with the film at one time. There are three sets of mouse and headsets. Each user would have a set to him or herself. There would also be music playing as one entered the room. The interesting feature about the interactive program was that it had so many features. There would be a map that would lead to several places. If one clicks on a specific area, it would link them to a movie clip. From that movie clip, the user can either click a right, left, up, or down option. Some links included videos from decades ago. Sometimes the screen would show people in a room talking and if the user clicked on the mouse again, the people would disappear; yet the music would continue. There would be no violent or graphic scenes, but the way that the program was designed, it would send chills up the users' back because the people in the film would appear and disappear. The seemed quite ghostly. This is because the people were mostly in black and white and there would be a lot of music and talking in the background.

If one continues into the hall on the right of the exhibition, they will see art works and sculptures. The art sculptures are always placed in the center of the room. There are also three works in the middle of the room that contain art works using film negatives. The artist had burned the photo negatives. As one continues into the other halls, they will see a film with two circles. The circle on top moves left to right and as it moves, it drops closer to the circle on the bottom. As this happens, the film also becomes blurry and darker. To the room on the left of this film is a video playing. It is the movie of the interactive film in the first room. If one sits there and watches it, they will realize that it is very artistic yet frightening. The images of people are shown very quickly and there are voices overlapping one another. The film is very frightening because of the voices, images of people and the music in the background. The video contains a mixture of old and modern radio talking and music. There are also movie clips that were used in this film that were from years ago. The whole film was based upon a hotel which celebrites and people of higher class would stay at. There was also a club that many famous people would go to. The president Kennedy was also killed at this hotel. This film is called decays of fiction . The main feature of this art exhibition would have to be the decays of fiction because there is an interactive program and film showing this art work. There is much emphasis in this area. If one took the time to study this exhibition website, they would realize that there is not much focus on the film and interactive program. It is focused on Pat O'Neill's art works: View from Lookout Mountain . The website also contains photographs of O'Neill's artworks displayed in the art exhibition. The audience for the Pat O'Neill exhibition would be web creators, artistic film directors, motion graphic designers, video and film editors, and digital photographers.

What I have learned from this experience is that one can make websites in a unique and different perspective than I have ever thought of or seen before. I was really interested in the interactive work that he had done. I could not imagine how much work he had put into this project. There were so many links to each site in the interactive program. And to put classic films in the program was a magnificent part of the work. This work has influenced me greatly. I feel that it took the ideas that I used for my webpage; which is strictly animation GIF files and took it to a whole new level. I hope that I may be able to create an art work like this someday.