Bay Area Exhibition at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

A Trap in Soft Division

In March, several of my fellow grads and student-friends took a day trip down to the Bay Area to see some art. One stop we made, not our first stop, was at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on Mission in the Soma area of San Francisco. One of my favorite things in this museum, perhaps my only favorite, was Samara Golden's site-specific and multi-media installation A Trap in Soft Division. It is tucked into a side room when you first enter the museum, off to the left side in room that acts a bit like a cul-de-sac off the main area of the building.

Caiti Chan and I looking down into the mirrored floor of A trap in Soft Division, 2016

When you first enter the space you are faced with a disorienting scene. Squared off in the center of the room is a white wall/fence surrounding what at first feels reminiscent of an indoor ice skating rink. The whiteness of the room hits you next, so that while you are trying to place the idea that you are potentially standing before an indoor rink wishing you had your skates, you are dazzled by the stark yet beautifully clean, pale, yet bright scene before you. By now you have reached the waist-high white wall and are trying to comprehend the "ice" of this rink, but the perspective is confusing. Then you look up towards the ceiling and the confusing view begins to register within your understanding of physical space.

Looking down to see up, A Trap in Soft Division, 2016

The "rink" that one is presented with upon arrival is not actually the core of the work. The floor within the square white box is covered with mirrors, reflecting the ceiling far above the viewer. In the alcoves of the room's ceiling are small everyday environments which are shown in the glazed floor of the space, creating an engaging and nauseating sensation of vertigo. Even when you know that what you are seeing is an illusion, the space-shifting sense that you are looking down into a series of rooms stories below you is hard to shake. The initially innocent view of the room as it is primarily presented to you falls away and you are left with this shocking sensation of expanding space. You are fighting your own awareness, and it is this experience that causes you to see your present surroundings differently. 

Panorama of A Trap in Soft Division, 2016

Samara Golden claims a desire to create a "sixth dimension" - a place in which the future, the past, and the present exist simultaneously, with the goal of creating a hypnotic, hallucinatory space that draws the viewer in completely.  Quoted from the following Youtube clip of the installation, Golden creates her work to "gesture towards the materializing the impossible."

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

The second work from the YBCA that day that I found powerful and impactful was Out of Sight, Out of Mind. Designed and completed by Pitch Interactive, a data visualization studio based in Oakland, this short narrative data visualization documents every drone strike carried out in Pakistan beginning in 2004. The visualization can be viewed here: http://drones.pitchinteractive.com/. 

Film still from Out of Sight, Out of Mind, 2013

Above is a still from the visualization which shows the moment right before the data punched me in the gut with the force of its presentation. In YBCA this was shown in a small black room with only two minimal rectangular stools. The screen is large enough to spread from edge to edge of your visual field. It is presented in a manner where all other stimuli seems to melt away and you are left face to face with this stylized and effectively delivered flow of data points. The data is simple; since the start of the conflict in the middle east there have been an assortment of drone strikes in Pakistan, this data visualization merely presents them in conjunction with a specific time line. However, the manner it which it is presented is impactful and clear. The data points, shown as the missiles fired from the very drones they represent, hit home with surprising resonance. The firm states that this visualization sprung out of the "inadequacies of other attempts to report the effects of an invisible technological war." 

Film still from Out of Sight, Out of Mind, 2013, showing more detail in the data points.