By Caroline Rhoads
Viewers entering the SFCC Art Gallery in Building 6 will be met with the strong smell of popcorn and a place to relax from now until Feb. 6.
“Couch Potato” is a viewer-participant installation featuring video art. There are three couches and a large rug piled with pillows for viewers to spread out and watch a stream of videos that project onto a screen.
The playlist at “Couch Potato” changes daily.
“Somedays, it’s geared more towards a particular style or different artists,” SFCC student Susan Morski said.
Sometimes it is films and others are interviews with artists. There might also be videos about different pieces such as sculptures and performance pieces that are typically experienced live.
“It gives you exposure to obscurity,” Morski said. “We live in a sheepish world. As an artist, woman, and mother, I think the exposure is really important; there is so much more out there.”
Stephen Seemayer, Creator of “Young Turks,” one of the films presented at the exhibit, visited SFCC on Jan. 22 to talk about the film and some of his other works.
“Young Turks” documents the art scene in Los Angeles during the 1970s and 1980s, when artists could rent huge spaces to create their works for very little money. According to Seemayer, this created a very exciting community.
“That kind of energy created by a group of people getting together can be really good for the community,” Seemayer said during his presentation. “It’s important to document that to make sure that it doesn’t just fritter away into outer space, all that experience, all those images, all that music,”
Video art differs from regular television programs and movies because it does not necessarily rely on the same theatrical conventions.
“When I have a film, whether it’s “Young Turks” or “Tales of the American” or even if I make a film of my work, I am trying to tell a narrative story,” Seemayer said.
Doug Aitken’s “Black Mirror,” another video being shown during the gallery, was originally a video installation piece featuring multiple screens and mirrors that played and reflected a video all at once, completely immersing viewers not only mentally, but physically.
“It’s not the typical sort of storyline,” Tom O’Day, the SFCC Gallery Director, said as the video from “Black Mirror” played on the screen. “But yet there is this underlying element that builds the story. The viewer becomes part of that process of building the story; you have to kind of enter into it.”
Although it may not be immediately noticeable, Couch Potato also makes use of multiple screens. In addition to the big screen, videos can also be watched on the computer just to the left of it. In a small corridor at the entrance to the exhibit, a television allows viewers to watch the participants in real time, as well.
The cameras on top of the big screen capture what is happening in the moment, but are not recording.
”You kind of get to see the reactions to what they’re seeing; it’s really cool,” Teja Carlen, an SFCC student, said.
For students interested in creating their own videos, Jenny Hyde, who teaches film art at Eastern Washington University, will be doing a film workshop on Friday, Jan. 30.
“She is going to be here from noon to two, and she’s going to create a video that people will take a part in,” O’Day said.
“Just come over and hang out, some of this stuff is really fun and some of it is more challenging. It’s an experience that they won’t have in a regular theatre, so it’s gonna seem different to them. But, you know, come over and hang out, eat some popcorn.”
BoB of how long the gallery is open.