Anthony Caicco, The Ohio State University
Submission 0146
The project operates by transforming the notion suggested by the title, inside-out, into a conceptual strategy for making contemporary public space. The painting that once existed inside the cyclorama is reversed into an exteriorized boundary condition and mapped onto the site. In this way, it functions to subvert the picturesque distortion into an organizational strategy of a modulating landscape. The painting as artifact is now examined in the contemporary light of surveillance technology in order to translate the historic and latent condition into a continuous urban surface. The proposal unites a series of disparate programs into the public realm in order to dynamically animate the status quo of the contents of the BCA. The ability for this surface to bend and deform according to a set of functional and morphological logics allows it to flexibly make space. These spatial qualities then provide program for the contemporary urban space. The proliferation of technology and the domination of popular culture has provided a network of relational nuances such as entertainment and surveillance. In dealing with the study if public space one must recognize the rubric of controlled space. However, in dealing with this subject one starts to see the overlapping of controlled space and the voyeur thrill (i.e. reality television). Thus, the project positions itself within the gray area of these two cultural constructs. This then questions the boundary between the BCA and the public, by entertaining and subverting two critical notions of representation and space, causing the uninformed outsider to experience the BCA through technology’s capacity to repaint the boundary.
