From 5th-12th July, the Visualise Summer Exhibition expanded to include more works under the theme, Games Artists Play, in the context of the Olympics Torch which arrived in Cambridge on 7th July accompanied by community festivities.
At the special Private View on 5th July Liliane Lijn’s Power Game Online (see elsewhere on the site) was played live on the big screen in the Ruskin Gallery and almost fifty people signed up to play online between 5.00 and 8.00 pm.
Artist Elena Cologni installed her highly original work - Elastico - at Anglia Ruskin under the Games Artists Play theme which reflects back on a game she played when a child in Italy and which also has a direct relationship to recent research work which she has been carrying out around Cambridge. This game requires collective effort from four people in order for one person – the fifth – to be able to play with it. Elena has also installed a fascinating series of drawings and projection near the work which is in Studio 103 just off the Ruskin gallery. The work can be viewed from 2.-00-6.00 pm Tuesday-Thursday inclusive this week.
Elastico - Elena Cologini (Image: Marina Velez)
From 2nd July at Parker’s Piece, Bettina Furnee and Dylan Banarse’s ‘Reality Rules’ has been open for participation by citizens until 12th July – you are invited to participate to dream up new rules for a fair society…. More information about Reality Rules at: http://futurecity.co.uk/12-artists-for-cambridge/ and http://2bok.com. Come along during period from 12 noon to 2.00 pm each day to receive Rules for the Day printed specially on letterpress for public distribution.
Bettina Furnee will also contribute work to the gallery exhibition; her piece, Powerhouse, made in collaboration with Tim Siddall of Anglia Ruskin’s Film Department, is a time lapse film that resulted from an eight week game which Furnee conducted with staff and users of the Cambridge University Library in 2008. It has never been shown publicly and Visualise Cambridge is delighted to present it as part of Games Artists Play within the Poetry, Language, Code exhibition. Furnee staged an 8 week continuous word association game at Cambridge University Library during Full Easter term 2008. The game started off on 22nd April with a single first word ‘powerhouse’ on display in the entrance hall of the library and came to conclusion on 13th June with the final word ‘albatross’. Over 53 days a chain of 483 words, linked by association, was displayed. Half of these words were submitted individually by library users or staff, who were asked to respond with the first word, which came to mind. This word was then displayed next, and so on. The rest of the words constituted collective dominant responses, polled from over 7,000 submissions made on-line. All words were colour coded by gender and origin. Of all submissions 61% were made by women, and 39% by men. The words most frequently displayed in the library were: ‘house’, ‘mouse’ and ‘play’ (4 times each), followed by ‘books’, ‘cheese’, ‘happy’, ‘control’, ‘power’ and ‘sad’ (3 times each).
Bettina Furnee - from Powerhouse game
In a very special contribution from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil (the next host for the Olympic Games) Mariana Manhães ‘s ‘Thisthose (window)’ (sent by post by Rio to Mill Road Cambridge) has been installed in the Ruskin Gallery studios from 5th July and offers a phenomenally interesting audio-visual insight into the reality of looking into a window in Brazil.
Mariana Manhães: ‘Thisthose (window)’
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