Blog post by Shequile Perry

The East Coast National Screen Print Biennial at The Arts Center of The Capital Region was very interesting. There were so many artworks to view, but one artwork that caught my attention is Brunvand Erik, Tube Screamer, 2014, screen print with conductive ink, electronics. His artwork is an interaction piece. Connected to the screen print are wires, and one separate wire that hangs from the artwork below. I had to take that wire and move it along the gridded black lines, and the different black shapes that form an outline of two light bulbs.

Every time you placed the end of the wire to the black spaces on the artwork you would hear a sound coming from it. I moved the wire up, down, and side-to-side creating these remarkable sounds. Some of the sounds were very low pitch and some were high pitch, and some of the sounds would fade in and out. I was stuck and very interested in hitting each and every black line within his piece. I stood there at least thirty minutes engaging in Brunvand Tube Screamer.

The screen print was very neatly put together and well formatted to function in a manner no other artwork could in the gallery. The idea of the artwork serving as a function wouldn’t take place without the viewer, and without the viewer the artwork wouldn’t come to life. The title spoke for itself although without the instruction telling you what to do I would’ve interacted with the piece the wrong way. Brunvand style is very mechanical, stylized, abstracted, and used a controlled palette.

Interacting with Brunvand piece was very important, because as a viewer I was so tempted to touch every other artwork to get the feel of the material the artist used, the texture, and presence of each artwork. Most of the artwork was framed or boxed off with tape, and kept the viewer away from seeing the detail of the work, but Brunvand bends the rules allowing his piece to be in a open frame allowing the viewer to interact and touch his piece.