ARTCUBE

2011

Participating Artist

Location: Little Tokyo Design Week 2011, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Post cards, time-lapse video.

ARTCUBE contains a novel interactive sculpture comprising photographs of the artistic processes and techniques captured by Brandon Shigeta. Stacked into random arrays forming a single cubic massing the sculpture includes hidden signed cards and custom artwork on the surface of the postcards by artists. Perhaps qualifying the exhibit as the heaviest photographic exhibit ever, the sculpture consists of approximately 65,000 postcards of approximately 80 various images to be removed by visitors as souvenirs. The sculpture provides visitors with participatory spatial and tactile experiences in which they remove their favorite images to change the overall form of the mass to reveal new images below. A ceiling mounted camera will record a time-lapse image stream of the changing topography of the top of the sculptural surface over the course of the show.

ARTCUBE is a concentrated agglomeration of images that form narratives of artistic processes, assemblages and details like brush strokes. Those images also reveal their specific, sometimes even illegal, locations in city space and time. Ephemeral at their origin these artistic acts will be further dissolved by ARTCUBE‘s visitors into a flow of the fast paced and energetic cycles of aesthetic metropolitan consumption and production. They will become postcards from the present to a wonderfully fictional future city.

Awards
Golden Astro Boy Award
On July 13, 2011, the soft opening of Little Tokyo Design Week commenced with an opening ceremony along with a Jury Walk for the container and street exhibits. The prestigious jury included the following members Sylvia Lavin, Junichi Ihara, Jan Perry, Jeffrey Deitch, and Bill Watanabe. The Jury deliberated and came up with the finalist. The winner of the Golden Astro Boy award. Brandon Shigeta, was officially announced on the final day of Little Tokyo Design Week.

“There were a few reasons why I thought Brandon’s exhibit was the strongest. It wasn’t a piece that would have typically been found in a museum or gallery. He really conceived it for the container, and it worked well in that context. It also expanded the idea of what design is. And I think it was great how he engaged the audience in that it was filmed and people were able to take a piece of the exhibit. Brandon really thought out all aspects of this project and did a great job.”

-Jeffrey Deitch, MOCA Director

Press
Design Show adds touch of trendiness to Little Tokyo, Los Angeles Times, 07.11.2011