Last week saw three very different launches that begged the question just what do we mean by ‘experience’.
Good: 8,000 tiny clay commuters on the
streets of Manchester
Bad: Philippe Starck launches booze in a spray
can
Rather ugly: Anish Kapoors ArcelorMittal
Orbit at the Olympic Park
Good first: Human Resources is an ambitious
installation that appeared on the streets of Manchester last Wednesday morning. Some 8,000 tiny clay commuters where painstakingly laid out overnight in arcing lines all over the city, under the guidance of artist Lawrence Epps as part of the Future Everything festival.
People were encouraged to interact with them, tweet about them and generally get involved. And they did, in their thousands.
The #littleclaymen hashtag yielded a deluge of tweets and images as the public readily
adopted the tiny workforce.
The public were genuinely charmed by the industrious looking mini-commuters. People took them home, swapped them, photographed them in new poses and even customised them. One image published by the Manchester Evening News shows a clay man sporting a Man City scarf, hand painted by a
still jubilant fan. Another shot on
Instagram shows a miniature remake of the Abbey Road cover.
The striking thing about this, as a piece
of pure engagement, is that it works by letting people in. It’s art operating
at a human, accessible level that sparks conversations. The high concept
becomes less important when the execution is so playful and available. Art you
can take home, pop in your pocket or decorate as a city fan is art that
facilitates discussion; it’s art that lives on when people recreate it in their
homes and gardens.
Human Resources was more than an
installation. It was a public experience with fun, engagement, sharing, interaction
and digital dialogue at its heart. Brands take note.
The oddity of the week has to be the latest unveiling at the Olympic Park. After a host of successful trial events and schedule-beating openings the latest offering from LOCOG, by king of the grand gesture Anish Kapoor, didn’t make much of a splash beyond the usual design blogs. ArcelorMittal Orbit
is the name given to the huge structure that is as much a twister on the tongue as it is on
the eye.
If you’ve not seen it yet, it’s a
kind of snaking red tower that might be a vertical roller coaster with a couple
of viewing platforms held in its girder grip. It’s almost intestinal in its seemingly
random twistiness.
Orbit has divided opinion, as all
good public art should, and it’s easy to see why. It lacks the instant appeal
of his previous oversize works, but Kapoor is no stranger to creating
unsettling visions. Maybe we need to see it up close to fully understand it.
Indeed Kapoor insists that the piece cannot be viewed from just one vantage point:
“You need to journey round the object, and through
itâ€Â¦it requires real participation from the public”.
I’m trying to like it but I can’t help thinking that
he doesn’t really need us to. It’s not an aesthetic exercise for Kappoor. It’s
more about an experience or a visitor journey through the structure; ‘real
participation’ as he puts it.
Ironically, the ‘bad’ outlined above is the only one
of the three that promotes itself as an experience. Starck has collaborated with
science and art collective Le Laboratoire to create Experience 14 or to give it its snappier title WA/HH.
What the master of irreverent product design has given us is a small alcoholic aerosol that when administered orally (not unlike a breath freshener) delivers a brief feeling of lightheadedness and a burst of flavour. Or as Strarck puts it ‘actuations that provide a gustatory and olfactive effect
equivalent to a volume 1000 times as voluminous’. Ok, I think I get it.
The pen-sized alco-spray, activated by pressing on a
comedy plunger, is available in two flavours: Flash Quantum and Demon Quantum.
No room cranberry crush or melon medley then.
This is of course Starck at his pompous and subversive
best. This is the man that spent years trying to cultivate square Oysters.
It’s hard to imagine these tiny canisters on sale at
your local Wetherspoons and the idea of delivering ‘brief lightheadedness’, in
place of good old-fashioned tipsiness, is like a flash-forward to a sanitised
Kubrickesque future.
But aside from the utter folly of the thing, the
idea that squirting your tongue with 2 milliliters of flavoured booze is deemed
‘an experience’ is vaguely offensive.
Lawrence Epps delivered an experience to the streets
of Manchester. One that people could engage with to create their own, satellite experiences; one that charmed people and enlivened an ordinary Wednesday
commute. Anish Kapoor has created a huge monolith to experience. Irrespective
of how Orbit looks, it will deliver spectacular views at the very least.
Starck, on the other hand, has created a product. A product wrapped in brushed
aluminum and implausible rhetoric.
Creating a genuine experience takes an understanding
of people and of human behavior. It takes knowledge of space and time combined
with considered interventions. Well-executed public experiences can lift the mood;
change an opinion or cause debate.
Great events can often be enhanced with a cool beer
or glass of wine. Or if you prefer an explosion of sensation you could opt for
a squirt of Demon Quantum.
No? Thought not.
Any comments? Email conferencenews@mashmedia.net
