March 18, 2007
MOOD
A bunch of young men and women in the Contemporary Museum are wielding evolution's greatest gift -- opposable thumbs -- with an agility Darwin would admire. Digits fly as each person responds to the anonymous text messages being sent to their Nokias, Sony Ericssons or LGs. [via The Washington Post]
Excerpts:
"The barrage of questions are part of a one-night-only performance of student-made, cellphone-based artwork. Called "Mood," it is the creation of a trio of Maryland Institute College of Art students.
Willing museum visitors are handed business cards upon entering the gallery telling them to send the word "mood" as a text message to a particular phone number in 240 area code. A few seconds later, a text message pops up on their mobiles. It comes in the form of a question.
... As numeric replies accumulate in the artwork's computer, a real-time image screens the word "MOOD," which changes color along with audience disposition. Tonight, the mood of these 70-odd visitors, many MICA students and their supporters, is predominantly blue.
Turns out this very current media art is based on that old hippie staple, the mood ring. Like that just-for-kicks bauble, "Mood" doesn't make claims to empirical analysis. In fact, Michael Ries, a 33-year-old MICA senior who is one of the work's authors, explains that "everything comes together and washes out." By the law of averages, one person's good mood cancels another's black one. The data collected in "Mood" collapses into a familiar bell curve. Ries and his two collaborators, Yeohyun Ahn and Joel Bobeck, hope to create an ever-expanding databank for future cellphone works.
"Mood" was performed at the museum Thursday night as part of the Contemporary Museum's larger "Cell Phone: Art and the Mobile Phone" exhibition, which runs through April 22. The show includes artists and collectives manipulating mobile phone technology in a variety of ways; Golin Levin conducted a cellphone symphony while Amsterdam-based collective Informationlab captures visitor phone signals that trigger dancing LED lights.
Related: - Cell Phone: Art and the Mobile Phone
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