Community Partner Response Installation
The Center for Creative Connections promotes conversation and community by bringing in partners to share their unique perspectives on the Center's exhibitions. Approximately every six months, a new community partner installs a creative response in the main gathering area of the Center.
For each collaborative project, the Museum staff and partner participants work closely to develop and produce a final art installation. The result of the collaboration is a mutual understanding of each other's creative process—everyone learns something new.
Previous C3 Community Partner Response Installations
Agence 5970 - Frank & Kristin Lee Dufour
Skyline Architecture Cluster, Dallas Independent School District
University of North Texas College of Visual Arts and Design, New Media Program
Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts
School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA)
May 2012-October 2012
Free Association
South Dallas Cultural Center Artists:
Malik Dillard, Media; Patrick Washington, Media; Michelle Gibson, Dance; Vicki Meek, Visual; Harold Steward, Theater; Ava Wilson, Poetry
Definition: to foster creativity you "write down, without any falsification or hypocrisy, everything that comes into your head."
Although usually thought of as a psychological term, Free Association is a process employed in therapy. For the artists, it brings to mind what this project examines i.e. painful memories that inspire a creative, freeing response. It also infers the notion of limitations on the mind that cannot be "freed" unless one looks within without fear. Free Association also shares some features with the idea of stream of consciousness, the process of putting oneself into a state of quiet, unreflecting self-observation, to report whatever internal observations come to mind.This installation was designed so you may experience some spatial limitations –whether they be physical as you navigate the space or emotional as you experience the image and words. The are providing the chance to “free associate” using the prompts taken from the African American experience in this country. Some are very painful and limiting, some uplifting and inspiring but all providing food for creative expression.
Acoustic Shadows: An Exploration of the Sense of Space
Agence 5970—Frank & Kristin Lee Dufour
Acoustic Shadows is an audiovisual immersive and interactive installation based on a modern interpretation of the myth of Orpheus. The scene depicted in the projected images represents Orpheus, surrounded by shadows of the underworld and consumed by the physical manifestation or form of the particular shadow of Eurydice.
As you enter the theater environment, you are surrounded by a multi-sensory, reactive system composed of the physical space, three-dimensional sound, and projected images. The system actually “listens” for changes in the environment generated by your presence and movement. This results in noticeable changes to the sound and projected images. Your body reflects and absorbs sound waves to create the auditory manifestation or form of silent movement, which, in this context, is termed Acoustic Shadows.
Acoustic Shadows is not only an installation of the perceptual awareness of space but also a contemporary audiovisual reincarnation of this mythical tension between suspension and passage of time.
November 2011-May 2012
Accumulation Project—Annette Lawrence
"The length of a line can be used as a measure of time. Ten thousand feet is the length of a feature film at 1 hour and 30 minutes. A line that spans the distance of ten New York City blocks would be approximately one mile long. It takes about twenty minutes to walk one mile. That’s one mile, ten blocks, and twenty minutes."
The Accumulation Project has developed over the course of eleven months. There have been five workshops totaling twenty-seven hours in which Museum visitors have contributed to making this line out of paper. The process involved making narrow strips of paper and assembling them into a single line. Hundreds of families, both adults and children, have added pieces to the line. Many noted that they enjoyed the experience of spending time making something together. The line is 2,490 feet long.
March-October 2011
Sculpting Space: 299 Chairs: Skyline Architecture Cluster Dallas Independent School District
This installation was created by students in the Dallas ISD architecture magnet program at Skyline High School, led by teachers Tom Cox and Peter Goldstein. The students' goal was to transform the gallery through the manipulation of standard plastic classroom chairs. They began by exploring a number of spatial concepts such as open, dense, rotating, and expanding. Then, working in small teams, they used the chairs to “sculpt space.”
During this process, Gary Cunningham and Rizi Faruqi led the students in a series of hands-on sessions to assist with the challenges of connecting the chairs in order to shape the space. The students collaborated with Cunningham Architects to resolve details and to combine their individual pieces into a single spatial composition.
The chairs for the installation came from three Dallas ISD elementary schools: Urban Park, Medrano, and Dealey Montessori. The chairs resonate with memories as shown in the video that documents the thoughts and observations of the students who once used them. Video and editing services were donated by Brad Herbert and Rick Perez of Element X Creative. The chairs will be donated to local libraries after the installation.
September 2010-February 2011
Living Room: Faculty and Alumni of the Division of Art and the Center of Creative Computation, Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University
Living Room is the result of an intense collaborative process involving conversation, diverse perspectives, consideration of various models, and eventually the development of a coherent project taking on a life of its own. The space reacts to your presence through changes in its sensory aspects—its sound, its visual elements, and its bodily sense. Within a materially altered physical environment, a digital audio-visual system uses custom software to dynamically create an experience in sight and sound of 3D forms generated from mathematical expressions. The behavior of these forms is altered by the location and movement of persons in the room. This allows you to literally walk around the room integrating the physical and virtual space. Living Room invites you to confront space while space confronts you.
Artists:
Susan Barnett
Michael Corris
Ira Greenberg
Tom Lauerman
Teresa Rafidi
James Sullivan
Martin Sweidel
February 7-July 2010
Woven Records: Artist Lesli Robertson
Textile artist Lesli Robertson led a series of workshops with Museum visitors, volunteers, and individuals from community groups to create a collaborative work of art for this installation. Collages created in these workshops were woven into strips of cloth that were hung in rows. Text from the documentation of the groups’ contributions is projected on two giant interactive looms, which visitors were allowed to add to!
Other community participants include:
ARC of Dallas; Booker T. Washington School for the Performing and Visual Arts; Go van Gogh® volunteers; Ice House Cultural Center; Talented and Gifted Program at John F. Kennedy Learning Center; The Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe; Tulisoma Arts Festival at the African American Museum; and Museum visitors, teen docents, teachers, staff, docents, and volunteers.
Ms. Robertson’s interpretation of Materials & Meanings:
"Choices of material can express something about an artist or creator—the textiles are considered fragile and temporary while the concrete suggests permanence and strength. In this installation, I used concrete to suggest the lasting importance of the community relationships and the process of weaving to create a woven record of the individuals who are part of this community. Weaving the collages together allowed me to connect the participants in a new way. My intention is for them to see how they are a part of a larger community and how their contribution to it is vital."
July 2009–January 2010
University of North Texas College of Visual Arts and Design, New Media Program
Fourteen students and faculty repurposed and changed electronic and digital technology, equipment, and materials to make it behave in meaningful new ways—perhaps challenging our everyday notions of it. Computers, monitors, webcams, wiring, sensors, and arduinos were used in the works that consider the meaning of popular symbols, our physical relationship with the space around us, and ideas about paranoia and perception. The viewer also became a material part of the work because each work was dependent on the viewer’s presence via movement, vibration, and curiosity to activate it. The meaning of these materials is not realized until people interact with them and animate the space.
November 2008–June 2009
Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts
Printmaking students installed large-scale self-portraits inspired by the Janine Antoni sculpture Lick and Lather. Exploring ideas about the self and identity—ideas similar to what Antoni explores in her work—each student then created self-portrait prints based on archetypes. Medium-density fiberboard (MDF), steel, plastic, and fabric were chosen as the materials for the plates and prints. They are common materials that were adapted by the students for printmaking. Student Alice Armstrong stated, “In printmaking, the process of manipulating and printing the plate is a very delicate, nuanced, and sensitive one. We have applied that same sensibility to large-scale, construction-grade materials, transforming the printmaking process into a highly physical and tactile one. Working with these materials—steel, MDF, and plastic—becomes an act of construction. As we construct images from our materials, we are constructing ourselves through these images.”
May–October 2008
School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA)
Students and faculty designed three walls that consider the meanings associated with materials used by architects and interior designers to shape the spaces around us. “Materials are an essential aspect of how architectural designers convey meaning. Whether that meaning is strength and permanence or flexibility and impermanence, architects use materials to communicate ideas about the tactile world we live in. We have attempted to challenge the conventional perception of a familiar material by transforming the methods by which it is formed and installed. We seek to create a material quality that draws the viewer closer—to investigate and even to touch.”—Brad Bell, Professor