Life… as seen on TV

What you see on TV might have more bearing on your life and relationships than you might think. So says Alysha Creighton, the intermedia artist whose new exhibit of work explores the nature of human interaction and the roles that technology play in it.

Proximities is primarily a video installation exhibit with a series of 14 monitors utilizing TVs, iPads, iPhones and projectors, all with images of people in different levels of positive and negative engagement. That means that sometimes the people on screen are doing things with each other; sometimes, they’re just ignoring each other.

“It was just an encounter I came across at a coffee shop. Obviously these people were together but there was such an avoidance of one another,” she began. “I was interested in that interaction or lack of interaction, such a face-to-face interaction. Neither of them was on their phones even. They were just full-on ignoring.”

It doesn’t really matter whether the subjects of her videos are happy with each other or not, or using technology as part of their interactions with each other or not.

Creighton’s intent is to use the video medium itself as a way of creating a third party to the interaction. As viewers, we are subjects too, and she wanted to stir the pot so to speak, getting us to witness simple ways that humans relate to each other and forcing us to question the role of technology in those relationships.

The figures perform simple actions with each other like folding a blanket, or write unseen messages on a windowpane. There are two women who have a conversation, although we only see disjointed snippets of the discussion. Each woman’s head occupies a monitor and so they face each other from a different screen.

“I’m interested in exploring that idea of the space between people and the ways that we relate to one another but within the context of how technology mediates those interactions and changes the ways we’re interacting, and creates new possibilities for interacting,” she continued. “To me, it’s an ethical question: how are we using the technology and how are we being used by the technology? What does it mean for the way we are with one another in the world?”

“In some instances, the artwork is connecting with the viewer. That’s my hope. I am exploring this idea that everyone is so disconnected from each other because we’re all on our phones, the other side of that being that there are maybe meaningful conversations that are happening there as well. I’m using the medium of video to do it … a digital medium. I’m interested in troubling some of those ideas. Maybe it’s not so straightforward that when you’re on your phone, you’re disconnected and when you’re face-to-face, you are connected.”

Even the way that the exhibit is set up is meant to create a level of viewer engagement. She said that the way Proximities is being set up would change the way that we view the images that are on them. Some of the displays are embedded into tables or chairs or on the floor or suspended away from the wall so you can walk around them.

“I’m interested in creating this quality of presence that, even though there’s no actual person in this space, sometimes you feel the presence of another. The way that the video pieces are installed creating that tension … the tension that we actually feel when we’re with another person. The space between us is activated in a way.”

One of the projections is even perched back and projected through a window, so we will see it at night.