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JohnGabree.com Impractical Proposals

2004-10-04

Design: The Bauhaus at the Busch-Reisinger
("Extra Ordinary Every Day")

"A primary goal of the Bauhaus as an educational institution was to articulate modern culture through ‘new’ forms designed for everyday life. This virtual installation attempts to address the intersection of fine art and the production of useful things by means of thematic groupings based on visual analogies. The themes themselves are utilitarian, derived from products made by the artists that are represented in the Busch-Reisinger collection—lamp, chair, house, stage, and auto.

"Taking advantage of the electronic web environment, this installation combines mixed media, mobility, and linking to an online database. In the first case, the objects are materially diverse, and whereas gallery spaces in the museum tend to create divisions between works often based on medium specificity or fragility, these objects coexist in a virtual space of exhibition. Furthermore, the electronic web environment facilitates the possibility of showing movies in connection with the objects in the museum’s collection, such as László Moholy-Nagy’s film Lightplay: Black White Gray of 1930. Finally, the installation is augmented by links to other works by the artists in the database that represents the collections of the Harvard University Art Museums. The links in the exhibition text in black send the visitor directly to the collections online, whereas the links highlighted in red connect to objects inside the virtual exhibition.

"The organization of the installation highlights the alternately individual and collective aspects of creativity at the Bauhaus, and asks the visitor to consider what other kinds of connections might emerge amongst these objects." -- from the website. <http://www.artmuseums.harvard.edu/sites/eoed/index.html>