season in hell

The visit to the "Season in Hell" exhibit proved to be very insightful and inspirational for me. Since i want to do an installation piece for my project, it was very useful to visit an actual installation where i had access to a lot of information that went beyond the piece itself. The fact that i personally knew the artist and that i was able to meet one of the performers became to me an integral component of the piece itself.
A piece of art that comments on and challenges the environment in which i live can be difficult to accept at face value. Viewing a still life by one of the Flemish Masters does not necessarily require enormous effort for one to understand its aesthetic quality. For me, even viewing political art from the 1960's feels as though i am viewing a slice of history and not active comment or statement.
Not so with "A Season in Hell". The fact that since i was in the eighth grade I have grown up with a war that is fueled by fear and individual gain at the expense of others makes the installation a lot more personal.
The narrative of "A Season in Hell" is a very playful and yet serious method for tying together many intellectual and factual aspects in a creative way. Documenting the journey of a well-developed semi-fictitious and semi-real character while he tries to gain understanding of a world that is so absurd that it might as well be a surreal artistic creation is frighteningly poignant. I feel that having a fictitious narrative using real characters and real events creates a unique glue that ties the artwork together.
This piece has made me consider how i can get the audience as involved as possible. sure it wont be possible for me to meet everyone who views the piece, nor are the subjects of Godel, Escher, and Bach current topics of much debate, but the notion of changing the viewer into more than just a viewer has become very important to me. maybe i can do this if i find a way for the viewer to understand how the piece operates by displaying and explaining different max patches or sensor arrays.