Multi-media installation at Community Arts Center Apr. 7-30

HANCOCK -- TIME. SPACE. BEING is the exhibit in the Community Arts Center’s Kerredge Gallery this April. Artist Yueh-mei Cheng, associate professor of art and design at Finlandia University's International School of Art and Design, has created a spatial-temporal chess board as a collaborative multi-media installation.

Untitled Image from the multi-media art installation, "Time. Space. Being," created by artist Yueh-mei Cheng and collaborators. (Photo courtesy Finlandia University)

This New Media installation will be on display from Apr. 7 to 30. An opening reception for the artist will take place from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday, Apr. 9, at the Community Arts Center.

New Media art describes creative projects that make use of emerging media technologies such as digital art, computer graphics, computer animation, virtual art and interactive art technologies. Their aim is to explore the cultural, political and aesthetic possibilities of these tools.

Artist Yueh-mei Cheng arranges some elements of her multi-media installation, "Time. Space. Being," in the Community Arts Center. (Photo © 2009 Gustavo Bourdieu)

The genre emerged in the 1990s as the Internet and electronic communication methods began to pervade modern society. New Media projects are often completed in collaboration with other artists. To create the installation, Cheng is collaborating with artists Aaron Radzwilowicz, sound design; Jonathan Soper, computer animation; Donica Dravillas, glass design; and Karl Larson, electrical support.

During her work of setting up the installation in the Kerredge Gallery of the Community Arts Center, artist Yueh-mei Cheng, left, pauses for a photo with her collaborators, from left, Donica Dravillas, glass design; Jonathan Soper, computer animation; and Aaron Radzwilowicz, sound design. (Photo © 2009 Gustavo Bourdieu)

Cheng says the installation places each visitor in a unique position to play 3D visual chess. Derived from her meditative experiences, "TIME. SPACE. BEING" creates images that echo the existential reality of meditation.

She cites Albert Einstein as saying, "Space and time are not conditions in which we live, but modes in which we think. A human being is a part of a whole, called by us 'universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest . . . a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness."

Untitled image from the multi-media art installation, "Time. Space. Being," created by artist Yueh-mei Cheng and collaborators. (Photo courtesy Finlandia University)

Cheng adds that -- in art -- time, space and beings are interwoven and inseparable. She says that in this art installation, one’s internal vision is represented by pictographic images and metaphoric symbols. The letters of the alphabet become beings that live beyond the ordinary dimensions of perception, invoking the ancient mystics. The viewer’s sense of time and space is influenced externally by the artist’s imagined appearance of form, color, light and sound.

Yueh-mei Cheng's most recent book, Visual Chess (published in 2008), is also closely related to the topic of this installation.

Untitled Image from the multi-media art installation, "Time. Space. Being," created by artist Yueh-mei Cheng and collaborators. (Photo © 2009 Gustavo Bourdieu)

The exhibit is made possible with a grant from the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs with funding through the National Endowment for the Arts. For additional information, please contact the Copper Country Community Arts Center at 906-482-2333.