Schnitzer Prize Winners!

Schnitzer Prize Winners! [by Ken Haggerty 11] Its summer! Which means that yet another academic year is completed, and as such, its also the time of year that MIT doles out various awards and honors to those whove made significant contributions to MIT life, culture, and academics. In the realm of [emailprotected], this means recognizing the winners of the Harold and Arlene Schnitzer Prize in the Visual Arts. So without further ado: *2010 SCHNITZER PRIZE WINNERS* FIRST PRIZE: Richard The (G) SECOND PRIZE: Jaekyung Jung (G) THIRD PRIZE: Sam Kronick 10 Last Friday I had the chance to check out all three recipients art as part of the annual exhibit of Schnitzer Prize winners at the Wiesner Student Art Gallery in the MIT Student Center. Richard The (G) ABOVE: Appeel (left) and Omnivisu (right) by Richard The (G). (Photos provided by Richard The) Richard is a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab and is a part of an art collective called The Green Eyl, named after three of its five members (Richard The, Gunnar Green, and Frdric Eyl, + Dominik Schumacher Willy Sengewald). As part of the Schnitzer exhibit, Richard showcased three of his pieces. The first, Appeel, was a large wall covered in peelable orange stickers. Viewers were allowed to peel, replace, and take the stickers as pleased, resulting in an ever-changing amalgam of graffiti, text, and images, all made from the presence or absence of the stickers. The wall has been displayed at a bunch of venues, including the famous Ars Electronica. When it was shown at Ars Electronica, some people even took the stickers with them and replaced them thousands of miles away. Richard told me that when he was in London, he found one of the stickers on a street sign. Its a kind of viral art, so to speak. Another of Richards pieces was Omnivisu, a temporary installation atop an interchange station in Berlin. The piece allowed an observer to look into a box which would then project the observers eyes onto the exterior windows of the currently-vacant office space which had once been owned by Narva, a light-bulb manufacturer and company that was part of Berlins new economy boom. The piece gave a literal face to the building that gazed out over the city at night, using the eyes of the citys inhabitants. Thats pretty cool. Richards last piece (not pictured here, unfortunately) was a giant mural assembled on a plaza using pennies, which was really beautiful and intricate. After the mural was unveiled, people were allowed to interact with the piece much like Appeel, but apparently a concerned citizen later called the police, who then came over and swept the piece away in an odd effort to preserve it. Jaekyung Jung (G) ABOVE: A video piece (left) and Hit Here If You Feel Victimized (right) by Jaekyung Jung (G). (Photos provided by Jaekyung Jung) Jaekyung is a student in MITs graduate program in visual arts (formerly VAP, now ACT). He showed two pieces at the Schnitzer exhibit. The first, an untitled video piece (or at least, I didnt catch the title) is a six-screen video of Jaekyung listening to comedy programs in six different languages (as rated by his friends). The video shows his reactions to the programs. For most, the expressions are subtlemore reflections of an appreciation that something funny is happening without understanding the precise nature of the joke. In the bottom left screen, Jaekyung listens and reacts to a Korean comedy program, and as a native Korean, you can immediately see the difference in reactions. Jaekyung told me that the piece reflects how he feels when trying to integrate in America. Headphones are provided so that you can listen along. I wish there was a mirror, though, so that the observer could compare his/her reactions to that of Jaekyung while listening along. Jaekyungs second work was a performance art piece he did for a VAP class back in September of 2008. He and friends walked around Boston with a drum bearing the phrase HIT HERE IF YOU FEEL VICTIMIZED. Anyone who wanted to could come up and take a whack at the drum. I asked Jaekyung about the people he met. He told me that most struck the drum in good fun rather than in frustration, although there were a few who stood out, including a homeless veteran who, despite his good demeanor, may have felt a greater emotional relation to the piece. As Jaekyung notes, The act of hitting the drum becomes the healing ritual. Sam Kronick 10 ABOVE: Walkinghouse (left) and The Microdot (right) by Sam Kronick 10. (Photos provided by Sam Kronick) Finally, the undergraduate! So Im a bit biased, of courseboth because its wonderful to see an MIT undergraduate doing art (and for fun!) and because, as a former architecture major, Im acquaintances with Sam. Sams work is really awesome. Walkinghouse, which he did as part of N55, an artists collective in Copenhagen, is a modern day Conestoga wagon. Its solar powered, surprisingly roomy, and even has a wood-burning stove. It reminds me of something Buckminster Fuller would dream up. Sams other piece (his Senior thesis) was the Microdot, an impromptu micro-nation he organized this past spring on MITs McDermott Dot. In addition to founding the nation, he and fellow friends used the opportunity to conceive of a novel culture, history, and politic, based on Sams previous studies and various precedents. Once its all done and published, you should check out his documentation of the Microdot project, which should be available in one of MITs libraries for public viewing.