Hooray for Bollywood!

In commenting on his travels to India in 1895/96 Mark Twain (aka Samuel Langhorne Clemens) celebrates India:

"This is India! The land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, …..the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods,…”

He continues “the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for all the shows of all the rest of the globe combined.” Today, with its rapidly developing economy, newly emergent middle and upper middle class a visitor can be astonished by the extremes that hold true even for visitors a century ago.

This touch sensitive work invites the intervention of the viewer/listener to disrupt, remix & mash-up these global broadcasts creating a “found” digital video experience. “Touching the Sacred and Profane” recalls religious devotion by a “laying of the hands” evocative of the ecstatic. Repeated touching “scratches”, remixes creating a “train wreck” of the secular and sacred, of aesthetic intention and religious conviction.

SacredProfaneSingle

Touching the Sacred and Profane, Single Frame, 2007

Initially a viewer sees and hears religious figures preaching, lecturing, praying and singing.When the viewer/listener reaches (within 2”) and touches a framed LCD display, the video will randomly switch to one of a selection of “Bollywood” music videos.

TOUCHING THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE

The one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for all the shows of all the rest of the globe combined..

Mark Twain 1895/96
SacredProfaneTriptych

Touching the Sacred and Profane, Triptych, 2007
Touch sensitive capacitance sensing enabled metal frames

Touching the Sacred and the Profane is an interactive touch sensitive work that recalls the act of touching as a sign of religious devotion while simultaneously celebrating the possibilities of the emergent global village media remix. Capacitance Sensing metal frames decorated with Hindu iconography enclose LCD screens which display digital videos of India religious and pop music cable-TV channels. By means of user's interaction and intervention Hindu religious streaming broadcasts are remixed, remade or remediated with “Bollywood” music videos creating a streaming media mash-up juxtaposing the sacred with the profane.

View movie

The spectacle of the global village now includes webcasts, cable/satellite TV and streaming media that originates from nearly anywhere on the planet. Channels dedicated to religious content can be instantly juxtaposed with those dedicated to MTV-style music videos. No where else is this juxtaposition of religious belief and/or secular indulgence more evident than in India.

©2012 Greg Garvey
(203) 500-7820
Hamden, CT, USA