The fluidity of art, design, and music realized in Rice Gallery’s recent installation, One saw; the other saw., exemplifies the gallery’s interest in commissioning original works that challenge conventional conceptions of the boundaries of visual art. On display from September 21 to October 28, the site-specific piece was created by Los Angeles-based artist Jennifer Steinkamp and electronic music composer Jimmy Johnson.

Heralded as a “digital diva” in the heady domain of the techno-savvy, Steinkamp employs the latest in advanced technology to harness light and motion to dazzling and often disturbing effect. She frequently collaborates with Johnson to create engrossing environments that thwart the distinction between the virtual and the real.

One saw; the other saw. consisted of a tunnel structure that bisected the gallery, leading visitors from the rear of the space to a translucent screen fitted to the center panel of the gallery’s front glass wall. A stream of colorful, three-dimensional abstract animated images was projected onto the screen by a high-resolution, ultrabright projector perched in the back of the tunnel. Steinkamp designed the animation with high-end software more typically used to create special effects in the movie industry.

The continually transforming geometrical forms, projected floor-to-ceiling, suggested an unstable, surreal continuation of the physical tunnel built in the gallery. Rendered in cheerful, candy-store pinks, oranges, blues, and greens, the bouncing abstract forms promised escape into a delectable realm of funhouse whimsy. But this playfulness was apposed with disconcerting undercurrents—a mesmerizing swirl of white bars on the picture plane could be interpreted as threatening barriers to passage or outlet, and the jarring transformations of the images intimated the distressing possibility of the ground shifting and falling away beneath one’s feet. It is not surprising that Steinkamp cherishes it when visitors sometimes experience seasickness and vertigo while viewing her work. The installation’s curious conjunction of menace and caprice was amplified by Johnson’s soundtrack in which eerie, cavernously low tones were punctuated by perky bursts of sound reminiscent of video games. “The soundtrack creates a sonic dimension to the space,” Steinkamp observed. “The physical space is transformed by the audio.”

Interactivity was an important aspect of the piece, and visitors in the tunnel became integral parts of the visual movement as their shadows were cast on the screen. Outside the gallery, visitors and passersby could see the crisp silhouettes interrupting the otherwise intensely luminous plane of shifting shapes and colors, drawing them in as unwitting voyeurs. High-tech interactivity also played a role. Steinkamp and Johnson placed motion detectors in the tunnel and in the busy foyer outside that, when activated by visitors and passersby, caused the visual components to alter the tunnel’s apparent perspective and the audio to emit various electronic tones. Many visitors seemed to delight in getting to know the work’s idiosyncratic ways of responding to their movements and locations.

On view simultaneously in the small gallery, an earlier work by Steinkamp, Flutter Flutter (1997), brought into focus her central concerns and interests. A small, faintly quivering grid of white light was projected in the corner of the room. The grid seemed to shift between one-point and two-point perspectives so that viewers walking around the piece would perceive the transformation of the grid as if, Steinkamp explained, “the nonphysical projection had physical substance.” Toying with the conceptual divide between the virtual and the real, the physical and the immaterial, Steinkamp characterizes her creative process as “using light to dematerialize architecture.”

The deadpan narrative title of Steinkamp and Johnson’s installation, One saw; the other saw., announced the work’s probing of the dynamics of perceptual experience. “The piece is about looking and about shifting perspectives,” Steinkamp noted. “The work is intentionally playful; it creates an experience where complex ideas about perception can be enjoyed on a playful level.”

While Steinkamp’s work is included in the permanent collections of such major museums as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., she also has been tremendously successful in the commercial field, having created large-scale works for U2 concert tours and the Fremont Street Experience in Las Vegas. Jimmy Johnson performs with the electronic music group Grain, which has released numerous recordings on the labels Fragrant, Moonshine, and Astralwerks.

—Maria Stalford