John James Marshall thesis.pdf - OpenAIR @ RGU - Robert Gordon ...

decision to attach the computer to the wall the way we did we had two plasma
screens running at the same time making everything evident enabled us to have
that very processed piece of work.
17. Did you think the exhibition was coherent?
Yes I did taken as a whole I think it was a good snapshot of practice at this time.
I think that maybe I expected the show to have more of the same types of pieces
of work and less a selection box. I’m very pleased with the selection box that we
got and the overall feeling that that had. I think that if I had seen room after
room of rapid prototyped objects or room after room of blobby architecture it
would not have been as satisfying a picture but we had enough contrast in there
to still make everything gel and stick. It didn’t feel homogenous that here were
fifteen pieces of work by fifteen architects and you could swap all the labels
round if you liked something else. What you got was a lot of work and a lot of
personality.
18. How would you sum up the core theme of the exhibition?
I think that fundamentally it was a design show. I don’t look at it as being a
visual arts show or even potentially a media arts show. Design was the key - it
had a strong quality of design to it and I think the technologies that we talk
about enable this varied convergence of practice they’ve all come out of the
design industry. Somewhere along the line they might have been fighter jets to
start of with but it’s fundamentally about design. Even for an artist to take that
type of technology there are design sensibilities coming out of the work.
Geoffrey Mann’s piece was perhaps the most artistic of all of them because it
had that one-off feeling about it. It didn’t feel like you could push a button and
produce another one although of course you could. I think overridingly it felt to
me like a design show and I think that also reflects the fact that media arts
practice is moving down a particular route in terms of object based practice,
device based practice and because of that it’s embracing much more to do with
design.
19. What did you most like about the total exhibition?
It did have a spirit to it there wasn’t anything fusty in there everything felt vital,
alive and that had as much to do with the juxtaposition of works because some
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