By its very nature, installation art is hard to fund, because as stated in previous posts, it's often hard to describe. Further, only true "reward" is its realization so it can be exhibited.
Installation is about experience. How to describe that is the key.
Thinking out loud: Describing experiences--zip-lining, wave surfing, performances of all kinds is not the point. The activity of viewing/experiencing an installation work is fairly easy to explain: You walk through the room and see/hear _________(fill in the blank).
Reading about a work--and I'm writing very simply here--clarifies what? Would it read something like: "Seeing/hearing________ you get the feeling that you're in (a) _________(again, fill in the blank).
Perhaps this might resonate with some; but the artist wants the viewer to come in contact with their sensations/emotions in the presence of the piece. Great installations elicit visceral reactions. That's the idea of installation art.
Maya Lin's Viet Nam Veteran's Memorial in Washington DC travels along those lines. Stepping aside what the war was about and what it means, the design of the monument itself was steeped in controversy. At the heart of that controversy was that, in reading a description of it, many, many people responsible for its funding saw it for its face value: a nihilistic piece of stone (James Webb).1.
Maya Lin herself wrote: it took longer, in fact, to write the statement that I felt was needed to accompany the required drawings than to design the memorial. THe description was critical to understanding the design since the memorial worked more on an emotional level than a formal level.2.
Installation is about experience. How to describe that is the key.
Thinking out loud: Describing experiences--zip-lining, wave surfing, performances of all kinds is not the point. The activity of viewing/experiencing an installation work is fairly easy to explain: You walk through the room and see/hear _________(fill in the blank).
Reading about a work--and I'm writing very simply here--clarifies what? Would it read something like: "Seeing/hearing________ you get the feeling that you're in (a) _________(again, fill in the blank).
Perhaps this might resonate with some; but the artist wants the viewer to come in contact with their sensations/emotions in the presence of the piece. Great installations elicit visceral reactions. That's the idea of installation art.
Maya Lin's Viet Nam Veteran's Memorial in Washington DC travels along those lines. Stepping aside what the war was about and what it means, the design of the monument itself was steeped in controversy. At the heart of that controversy was that, in reading a description of it, many, many people responsible for its funding saw it for its face value: a nihilistic piece of stone (James Webb).1.
They didn't imagine what the shape and form represented, or what how its viewers would interact with it. They didn't think about the concert of the materials with the design elements of the work to create a genesis of reactions, each personal yet parallel. And they certainly didn't think that an installation (I consider it as such) would permit a profound level of identification precisely because its lack of ceremony. However, the abstract nature of the piece is what allows this.
Maya Lin herself wrote: it took longer, in fact, to write the statement that I felt was needed to accompany the required drawings than to design the memorial. THe description was critical to understanding the design since the memorial worked more on an emotional level than a formal level.2.
Only after it was a physical piece, could it be experienced. Only then, did it move, elicit, involve and include--thoroughly, yet silently.
Further reading:
Ambiguity as Persuasion, Sonja K. Foss, Communication Quarterly. Vol 34, Issue 3, 1986. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01463378609369643#.UYkWrr-TMj4
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