Installations offer ways of including the audience as a more active participant in the experience and creation of the work. This may mean surprising and out of context actions forcing the audience to reconsider what they have just seen, or a work tin which the audience member to moves in order to create their own personal experience of a work. The installation work of Ken James is varied from interactive video installations to very analog work related actions such as log dragging through the streets of New York City.
Inconvenient dances
Inconvenient dances are a way of creating a more active viewer. Theaters are designed for efficiency, both in maximizing income and in ease of viewing. Through creating inconvenient spaces or ways of viewing, the participant begins to make choices about what they will watch and how far they are willing to go to build their own experience.
Awkwardness is a first step toward a deeper investment in the work by the audience member. They swivel, turn, run, stay still, wait, follow, wonder, and decide. What they do not do is sit neatly in rows, immobile, watching other people move. The body in engaged, the senses are engaged both of which inform the viewing in different and (perhaps) more interesting ways.
Some examples:
like someone who wants to be alone with their laughter
A digital interactive dance installation consisting of a three-sided room with projections on the inside and outside walls. Dealing with themes of connection and separation, obscurification and clarity, this installation works to engage the audience so that they have a visceral, embodied experience of the work.
Goal:
The viewer is an active participant in their own experience. Their actions, or inactions, dictate the landscape of the work over the course of the viewing. Each viewer, or group of viewers, can have a unique experience based on their own volition.
More here!
Body Installations
Body Installations are work related movement actions which interact with the environment. One series works to convince animals to give up their very well deserved fear of humans, others bring the dancer back to a more elemental level of labor, such as dragging logs:
Audio Installations
I create multi-channel audio installations performed on handheld devices such as smart phones. These installations may be performed by groups anywhere in the world, merely by organizing the number of people necessary to go to the website start the audio files.
ken james 