Theaters of the 13th Dimension
an exhibition of the miniature worlds of Mars Tokyo
2 May 2003 - 13 June 2003
A.I.R. Gallery • Annapolis, Maryland
I first approached the mysterious Mars Tokyo [aka Sally Mericle] in 2001, in hopes of exhibiting her unique miniature theaters in connection with a Baltimore Composers Forum concert I was curating. I built a small display unit for her work that incorporated a low-voltage lighting system to illuminate the interiors of the her lilliputian works. After several successful “microscopic” art shows, we were ready to go on to something more ambitious, and the opportunity presented itself late in 2002, when the gallery director of Maryland Hall contacted Ms Tokyo about mounting an exhibition.
Needless to say, we were excited to have a larger venue at hand, and Ms Tokyo designed an innovative display method to show her art—a circular array of little doors hidden behind curtains, in which the observer had to become part of a process of revealing her art by drawing open a curtain and then opening a door. I was intrigued by the concept, which takes the traditional passive mode of seeing art and turns it into an active one, and so I set about the task of implementing her vision.
The original design called for smoothly curving walls, but I wanted to build a somewhat more practical (and portable) set-up, so I used a panelized modular approach and the techniques of theatrical set design (a nice resonance with the theaters themselves) to create an extremely flexible and scalable display system.
The design and construction took several months, but the final result, a sweeping, forty-foot long, six-foot high wall of alternating display and spacer panels, had a dramatic, inviting quality that was exactly what Ms Tokyo had had in mind when she penned the original design. The thirteen nearly self-contained display panels (each incorporating an enclosed display box with its own low-intensity illumination) can be combined with each other and with the spacer panels in a variety of ways, with either a concave or convex angle between panels so that the exhibit can be placed in nearly any setting.
As the final element in the exhibition, I designed an ambient sound installation (online samples coming soon) to accompany the show throughout its month-long run. Using a digital modular synthesizer, I designed a self-composing piece of generative music that used digital logic and a series of mathematically synchronized, very low frequency oscillators to take elements of rhythm, tone, and timbre and continually vary them to create a shifting, highly atmospheric piece of music that had consistent, familiar elements, and yet did not repeat itself during the more than 200 hours that the exhibition was open to the public.
The exhibition was well received both by the public and the press, and we plan to mount a new project soon, this time adding interactive elements, keyed to the individual artworks, to the ambient score.
- Joe Wall, 2003
In the fall of 2003, the show opened at the School 33 gallery, complete with the full interactive ambient music backing, triggered by visitor movement in the gallery and switches tripped by opening doors, this time displayed in a more intimate space. With the modular panel system configured to fit the room, the exhibit became even more “up close and personal,” without lessening the impact of the artwork.
