Interface

Object NameInstallation

Artist / Maker Catherine Widgery ((American, b. 1953))

Date2021

MediumDichroic glass, copper screen panels, LED lights, anemometer.

ClassificationsSculpture

Credit LineIowa Art in State Buildings project for the Student Innovation Center. Commissioned by the University Museums and the Student Innovation Center. In the Art on Campus Collection, University Museums, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa.

Object numberU2021.14

Status

On view

Collections

CultureAmerican

Label TextInterface is an integrated public art work at the ISU Innovation Center. To enter this building is to pass through the artwork in the vestibules whose pleated dichroic glass walls break up and reconfigure our surroundings, so we see ourselves in relation to the world around us in a transformed way. Anyone passing through the vestibules is reflected multiple times in shifting fragments, a visually rich and always changing experience. The artwork in the interior courtyard on the second level is a series of suspended ‘floating’ lacy copper screens. Here, thin copper panels have been cut in a chevron pattern echoing the forms found in the building façade and the pleated forms of the entryway artwork. These open screens create a canopy visible from windows above, below and within the courtyard itself. Embedded in these screens are thousands of tiny LED lights linked via computer software to an anemometer mounted outside on the building roof. This sensor measures wind speed and direction so the lights dim and brighten sequentially in real time as they respond to the invisible energy of the wind. The screens themselves appear like sails providing a sense of open shelter like an open canopy in a forest or garden. Yet this structured canopy is animated by technology. The art embodies the interface of technology at the threshold between the natural and the human built world, reflecting SIC’s wish for innovative technology to be part of student’s exploration. What brings ‘life’ to the artwork is our capacity to monitor, record and translate information digitally. Technology translates into a visual experience the invisible energies to bring us alive to our environment through art. Interface also offers the possibility of bringing an interactive component into the lives of the students who will be able to ‘hack’ into the program and control the lighting in ways we can’t yet imagine.

Locations