Kimberly Hahn and James Van Arsdale, eyeComputerWorld, 2011, Mixed-media installation: Acrylic, cast plastic resin, color organ, felt, latch hook rug, lights, gels and wood, Dimensions variable, Shown on view at the Arts Fund Gallery in 2011.
Inspired by films such as Tron, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and 1984; Kraftwerk’s prescient album Computer World; and youthful hobbies such as latch hook rugs, Lite-Brites, and color organs; eyeComputerWorld is an installation composed of a computer world environment in which the computer has substituted itself for the Eye of Providence/God and the Third Eye. The users, who were once builders of this digital utopia from humble, idealistic, and altruistic beginnings, have potentially lost control to the insidious reach of the dominating digital world and are subject to it’s output, whether positive or negative. The retro-futuristic style of the installation harkens back to 1970s and 80s, low-tech, simple looking constructions, which mask the complex nature of our current-day relationship with the digital world.