Press release for "Panopticon (neural architecture no. 4)" and "Waiting for the End of The World"

              BEN MALTZ GALLERY at Otis College of Art + Design, Los Angeles
PRESS RELEASE
Media contact: Kathy MacPherson, galleryinfo@otis.edu, 310.665.6909. Images available.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: JULY, 2004
September 11 – October 30, 2004
Panopticon (neural architecture no. 4): an installation by Deborah Aschheim
&
Waiting for the End of the World: photographs by Richard Ross
Gallery tour with the artists on Saturday, September 11 at 4pm,
followed by a reception from 5-7pm.
Panopticon (neural architecture no. 4): an installation by Deborah Aschheim
Panopticon is part of Deborah Aschheim’s “Neural Architecture,” series of nervous systems for buildings: site-specific installations that consider the intersection of surveillance, electronics, neural sensing and architecture. “Neural Architecture,” imagines the automation of buildings by “smart technology” as an emerging organic network. She creates nervous systems for buildings to suggest a fragile new organism, a hybrid of surveillance electronics, neural sensing and architecture that emerges out of our heightened post-September 11 embrace of security technology.
Aschheim links clear vinyl tubing, light bulbs, and hundreds of “nerve cell” sculptures (hand sewn out of plastic bathmats) to home security motion detectors, infrared monitoring devices, baby-cams, miniature monitors, and small spy cameras to create a sprawling, sensing and reactive sculptural network. These electronic sensory devices infiltrate and react to the building’s daily functions like heating/cooling and seeing/recording. It also reacts to the human inhabitants of the building. The result is an unearthly, beautiful and slightly ominous entity as the sculpture is “aware” of the viewer and its environment at all times.
For the Ben Maltz Gallery, Aschheim’s organism is taking the form of a Panopticon. The installation references both Jeremy Benthem’s physical prison design by creating a core observational center and Michel Foucault’s metaphorical structure of controlling space and the oppressive use of information to enforce self-censorship and discipline. This project is fourth in a series of five and each organism grows smarter with each evolution. In addition to sensing and seeing, this particular hybrid actually becomes self-aware and develops memory. Aschheim’s kinetic sculpture bridges technology, biology and architecture to create a thought provoking and visually stunning installation that challenges our notions of safety, privacy and consumption.
Deborah Aschheim received a BA in Anthropology from Brown University and a MFA from the University of Washington. During the past decade, Aschheim has created installations for solo and group exhibitions across the US and Europe. She has received numerous awards and grants including the prestigious City of Los Angeles Individual Fellowship in 2003. She teaches in the studio art department at the University of California at Irvine and lives and works in Los Angeles.
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