Media Mindfulness

Read Part I here.

Dadadelica remixes the sublime: the awesome strangeness of the impermanent hybridreal that causes the human ego to flitter when facing the greater chaosmoses. Jim O’Roarke’s “Door 2005″ video installation does just that. On the peripheral walls are shuttering doors in stereo, presumably alluding to the doors of perception, and facing you is the slow-mo landing at dusk of an airliner, all accompanied by a minimalist, comforting dreamy drone of sound. (Unfortunately the Village Voice’s Jerry Saltz singled this out unfavorably).

Paul Chen’s mesmerizing video installation projected an oblong canvas on the gallery floor depicts a silhouette of a telephone pole (a stand-in for a cross) stabilizing our reference point as various objects like cell phones and eyeglasses float to the sky, reminiscent of the rapture. Eventually bodies fall from outside the frame no-doubt invoking the twin towers, but also to another Biblical allusion. Here sentient machines hum along while things blow apart are sublime, ecstatic, and trippy. The reflection off the floor created a beautiful splat of diffused video color on the wall, like a reverse reflection pool. It was funny to see how people were nervous to cross the boundry of the projection as if it were a real object. I was tempted to walk across it just for the sake of transgressing, but I chickened out. The institutional frame of the museum held sway over me.