A city known for its public art, Chicago has launched with much fanfare “Statue Stories Chicago,” an initiative to bring its statuary into the digital age. For the next ten months, statues and sculptures all over the city will “talk” to visitors if they use their smartphones to scan a code or go to a particular URL. Funders and the actors hired to record the voiceovers are rapturous in their praise of the initiative’s creative multimedia approach. “It’s a really wonderful idea. Everyone has their own story about, ‘If the walls could speak.’ Here we have the statues speaking,” said one.
Some things are better left unsaid. Contemplating a statue and speculating about its subject is a privilege to be enjoyed in tranquility. A digital voice disrupts the silent speculation. Is Dorothy Gale- a challenging voice to imagine without the influence of Judy Garland- so insipid? Does Cloud Gate (“The Bean”) of Millenium Park, a giant reflective abstract work, speak through David Schwimmer? Says who? Â Not the sculptor, Anish Kapoor, who has said, “Without your involvement as a viewer, there is no story.”
That a smart phone is required to hear the statues, rather than pressing a button to play a recording, adds insult to injury. We are already buried in our devices; why require them to appreciate a piece of public art? This gimmick, while it may well result in more visitors to the statues, robs us of the liberty to imagine. To be sure, we are free not to tune in, but the digital allure is hard to resist.
My view of the project softened when I read last week of a contest open to teens to submit an imagined monologue for “The Fountain Girl,” a statue in Lincoln Park that was originally commissioned by the Women’s Temperance League. Incentivizing children ages 12-18 to give voice to the statue of a child through creative writing is a prime example of how art can inspire imagination.
I was so taken by the idea that I regretted that my own daughter was too young to enter the contest. Then I thought of her voice, beautiful to my ears but alien to others. Does the world want to hear it as the definitive voice of The Fountain Girl, any more than I want to hear Ross as the voice of The Bean? I don’t think so.
{ 50 comments }
maidhc 10.06.15 at 11:06 pm
An art project that can only be perceived by the rich. How appropriate. For an additional technical challenge, maybe they could try developing murals that are only visible through the windows of a limo, but can’t be seen from a bus.
JanieM 10.06.15 at 11:59 pm
Reminds me of the people who pay a few pounds for headphones and a tape and then go obliviously, rudely, and irritatingly bumping around in the crowds at places like York Minster and Westminster Abbey. They always give me the feeling that they’re about as oblivious to the wonders they’re allegedly looking at as they are to the people they’re blocking or bumping into.
I can’t for the life of me imagine how gadgetry improves the experience. If you want to know a bunch of factoids about places like that, read a pamphlet beforehand or when you get home after the visit. While you’re there, drink it in firsthand.
Harrumph.
Anarcissie 10.07.15 at 12:34 am
I find the museum devices quite irritating. In the good old days, a ‘challenging’ work of art was graciously left alone by the crowds for me to contemplate in snobby solitude, but now they stop and stare at the most obdurate works while something rants at them — fortunately, I cannot hear it — explaining to them why they ought to see or feel something they evidently do not. The devices seem very popular. I attribute it to the growing schoolishness of the public culture, probably an aspect of its growing childishness. Well, at least the works of art have not been fitted with loudspeakers. Yet.
ZM 10.07.15 at 12:36 am
I was just reading about this sort of thing as an emerging area of urban design. I think there are some good things about the idea generally (interpretive apps for places, things, public art) although I have not heard of the Chicago example.
I think it is important not to think of these sorts of things as giving the definitive stories, you can always read more about the historical figures. With your last point I think maybe giving opportunities for interaction is important to make it more open ended.
There was a really nice example in The City of Melbourne where the council gave email addresses to the trees so people could report damage etc, but people started writing to the trees
“As part of the Urban Forest Strategy — implemented to combat the steady decline of trees following a 13 year drought — the city assigned all of the Melbourne’s 77000 trees individual emails.
The idea was residents could use these emails to report trees that had been vandalised or were in a severe state of decline.
Only, people decided to make another use for the email and began writing love letters to their favourite trees.
The chair of Melbourne’s Environment Portfolio Councillor Arron Wood said the response was an unexpected, but welcomed surprise”
http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/people-around-the-world-have-been-emailing-trees-in-melbourne-to-confess-their-love/story-fnjww010-1227445747796
John Quiggin 10.07.15 at 12:42 am
Veering a little off-topic, but even worse, to my mind is the omnipresence of unavoidable ambient music and other sounds. I found it annoying, but understandable, in the days before iPods and so on – it seems that many/most people can’t bear silence. But now, anyone who dislikes silence has an easy option to fill their ears with whatever kind of sound they like. For those who want silence the only option (highly unsatisfactory in so many ways) is that of noise-cancelling headphones.
JanieM 10.07.15 at 12:52 am
JQ — agreed. Not only is the noise omnipresent, a lot of the time it is unbearably loud. In certain situation I’ve gotten so bold as to ask waitstaff or store clerks to turn the volume down, and sometimes they do. But the occasions when I feel like it might do some good to ask are getting scarcer.
conchis 10.07.15 at 1:18 am
It seems that half the objection here could be addressed by democratising/crowd sourcing multiple voices for each statue, by letting anybody upload a story (much easier on an app than a loudspeaker, and likely less obtrusive for those who don’t want to listen).
I’m not really sure what the other half of the objection is, and perhaps this is overly harsh, but to me it has a distinct ring of “get off my lawn” to it.
conchis 10.07.15 at 1:21 am
@Anarcissie – I actually can’t tell whether that was meant ironically or not. Well done if so! (apologies if not.)
Colin Danby 10.07.15 at 1:46 am
#3: Brilliant: linger by Caravaggio’s Head of John the Baptist, and the head starts a conversation with you.
Anarcissie 10.07.15 at 3:59 am
conchis 10.07.15 at 1:21 am @ 8 —
Some of one, some of the other. I miss the museums of my youth, vacant as cathedrals.
Now as for other noises, ambient music, soundscapes, sound sculpture — long ago I frequented a little-noticed corner of a little-noticed mall in a small city in — in Florida! And there someone had installed a sound sculpture in a complex passageway. What you heard depended on where you stood, sometimes a low-pitched chiming sort of thing, sometimes a sort of breezy or windy humming or moaning. I don’t think it was electronic, but was generated by echoes of passers-by or the movement of the air. Needless to say, after a few years that particular part of the universe was demolished, for that is the way of things in that country, thus answering Elvis Costello’s plaintive question ‘What shall we do, what shall we do with all this useless beauty?’
Dean C. Rowan 10.07.15 at 4:32 am
WTF? That’s the pithy extent of my (unsolicited) response. Asking, “If statues could talk…” is like asking, “If carburetors could play poker…” Huh? Also, no, we don’t want to “incentivize” children to “give voice.” We want them to get hooked on thinking about what motivates the artist and the art, and to cultivate an ambition to express their own opinions about that art and to create their own art. We don’t want kids to think statues are almost real people who would say real things if they weren’t merely … statues.
leoFromChicago 10.07.15 at 4:48 am
“Reminds me of the people who pay a few pounds for headphones and a tape …”
Exactly. They’ve been doing this from time-immemorial. You could get a similar audio experience at the Chicago Historical Society or the Museum of Science & Industry, already in the 1960s. The fact that it’s through one’s smartphone means that it’s personal, and wholly easy to ignore.
What I can’t figure out is why people from Chi-town would need the blokes from “Sing London” to accomplish this rather modest and unimaginative task.
bad Jim 10.07.15 at 6:13 am
Didn’t talking statues go slightly wrong at the beginning of “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell?”
bad Jim 10.07.15 at 6:35 am
Riffing off Anarcissie’s comment @3: When I visited the Uffizi, a gaggle of Japanese visitors clustered in front of a Michelangelo silverpoint drawing and blew through the next room without a glance at Titian’s magnificently indecent Urbino Venus*, which allowed me gaze into it as long as I liked. Touring the Vatican I heard an American ask whose frescoes were in this room. When told he replied “I don’t care about Raphael. I only want to see the Michelangelo.” Only the superstars matter.
* At the Orsay nobody was clustering around Manet’s Olympia, either. Apparently some museum visitors are easily embarrassed.
Nick Urfe 10.07.15 at 8:26 am
I agree with the OP, but the self-congratulatory sneering that follows is distasteful. If a person doesn’t know about painting or sculpture, how better to learn than by listening to a lecturer, when you care to, while viewing the works in person? For those with a general interest but no idea where to start, surely the curated introduction of the headphone lecturer does one better than…well, wishing for the counterfactual of a different childhood, which, it seems, is the only suggestion any of the sneering commenters have condescended to offer.
Watson Ladd 10.07.15 at 11:19 am
maidhc, most people have smartphones, especially if they lack computers. $100 is not a lot of money in the US for a durable good that lets you stay in touch with everyone and access all sorts of information.
I agree the electronic tour guide detracts from the work of art. But we also have to contend with the decline in a liberal education that could reduce the necessity. A tour guide might just enable that kind of learning, situating the art in context and explaining its structure, even as it detracts from the immediacy of the experience.
Trader Joe 10.07.15 at 11:39 am
The comments so far exhibit a strong tendency to prefer the ideal to the real.
While no doubt a few people will stand and gaze thoughtfully at an interesting bit of sculpture, far more people will hurry past and give scant attention to it apart from noticing an errant swath of pigeon poo or a muttered “wtf, they earned money for that???”….if the talking sculptures causes one person to spend a minute learning more, even if its a contrived speech from “Ross,” at least some version of the art was extended to another person and maybe there’s the possibility it enriches that person.
I’d admit as well that I sorta like the electronic guides inside of various sorts of museums. I hate joining tours and having a docent tell me what I ought to care about, but enjoy checking something out and then listening to the spiel for additional background, the artists view or some other facet that I might not have appreciated on my own.
I find most of the time these guides are pretty well curated and enhance rather than detract if used in conjunction with, rather than in lieu of looking at the exhibit or work – though I fully agree that many allow the electronic to actually replace the experience – on that point I agree the devices are annoying.
Tom Slee 10.07.15 at 11:55 am
On the “electronic tour guide” thing, I’m a fan. One example from a couple of years ago: I it took a digital guide to tell me that one of the reasons a Monet painting in front of me was important was that nobody else was painting portraits of peasant women. Long captions by the side of a painting would do as well, of course, but many of us do need a bit of help to get the most out of art.
And I do like the penultimate paragraph of the OP. One of the most valuable things about public art is the way it creates a focus for other kinds of activity, and this seems to me one more example.
Phil Koop 10.07.15 at 12:04 pm
I’m impressed by the general level of support for this post, with which I have no sympathy whatsoever. You’re whining because of the awful possibility that you may witness some people getting information about some statues on their cell phones? Oh the humanity! The same goes for museum audioguides; I think it’s entirely helpful that museum goers should learn a little bit about the items on display, rather than just staring uncomprehendingly.
Now, if you want to complain about those people who take pictures of art instead of looking at it (so that they’ll have something to not look at later, I guess), sure, I’m with you. Get offa my lawn.
pnee 10.07.15 at 12:19 pm
These two complaints are somewhat at odds. A ‘democratic’ push button system is intrusive to all passersby. A smartphone interface offers at least a chance of private listening.
Push button audio is one of the worst ideas in trying to make museums interactive (more often seen in history or science museums, admittedly) because they are usually too loud and continue to play when the person walks away. Playing audio through a personal device addresses both of these issues to at least some degree.
The audio player system in museums can serve to democratize the experience of docent-led tour, the availability of those being limited by time and space constraints. I don’t see how that’s a bad thing.
Lynne 10.07.15 at 12:56 pm
What an awful idea. (And as a writer, I have to ask whether the writers of the statues’ conversations are credited.)
This project makes me think of picture books. The illustrating of a picture book is an art in itself—not just the artistry required to execute the drawings, but the smarts to decide what pictures to draw. The relationship between the pictures and the written story has to be tangential to really work; the pictures shouldn’t merely illustrate a scene in the story, they should add to it. There was a beautiful picture book produced a few years ago called Imagine a Night. The paintings were simply gorgeous, and they were the foundation of the book, which is unusual; usually the story comes first and the publisher hires an illustrator. Anyway, the words chosen to go with the pictures were dull. The paintings opened up the imagination, the words closed it right back down. A similar thing happened with Barbara Reid’s wonderful Plasticine-art picture books. The early ones had no words, only the pictures of Zoe on a rainy day, or Zoe on a sunny day. She was going for a walk, you would go through the book with a toddler and just look and look at the pictures, and take the walk with Zoe. Then for some reason the publisher added some lame commentary to these books, which entirely erased the charm. This is what I fear will happen with these statues.
Phil Koop 10.07.15 at 1:03 pm
I do have a grump old man thing to say about talking statues, but it’s off-topic.
The puffed chutzpahs who run our local opera decided to mount a production of Don Giovanni that did not have a statue of Il Commendatore because, art. Oh, all the lines were sung, but they were delivered to the empty air. The costume of Don Giovanni – an ill-advised cross between The Highlander and an alcoholic flasher – merely added to the general air of dementia.
How hard is it to understand that if your entire plot turns on a talking statue, you need to have a freaking statue? Otherwise, your “opera” becomes an oratorio. What is wrong with these people?!
Lynne 10.07.15 at 1:11 pm
I second JanieM and JQ about musaz background in stores. I, too, have asked to have the music turned down (or, ideally, off) and my hairdresser obliges me, but the local drug stores and a nearby china store do not. I feel sorry for the staff in these stores because they are stuck there all day.
Lynne 10.07.15 at 1:12 pm
Duh. “musaz” should be “muzac.”
JanieM 10.07.15 at 1:34 pm
For Tom Slee and Phil Koop and anyone else who has come to the defense of museum audio guides: my own comment was partly tongue-in-cheek (hence the “Harrumph”), written in the self-knowledge that the older I get (65 now) the more “get off my lawn” is my reaction to certain things. Really, I don’t much care if someone wants to use a museum guide, or stare at their smartphone screen all day — as long as they’re not rudely bumping into me or interfering with my ability to navigate the museum or the public street safely and pleasantly. I’m sure you all don’t let gadgetry stop you from being mindful of your surroundings and the fact that other people are trying to enjoy public spaces too, but not everyone is courteous like that.
kent 10.07.15 at 2:20 pm
“Some things are better left unsaid. Contemplating a statue and speculating about its subject is a privilege to be enjoyed in tranquility. A digital voice disrupts the silent speculation.”
That’s your opinion and you are entitled to it of course. But what of those who disagree?
In any case, what’s stopping us from first contemplating it in silence, then listening to the voice, thinking about whether the voice has anything to add to the experience … and then contemplating it in silence again?
Adding entirely optional functionality to a statue – or to a museum – these are things that do nothing to harm you if you don’t use them, but clearly benefit those who find them useful.
This isn’t exactly “kids get off my lawn.” It’s more like “Here’s a public garden – but I’m going to be crabby if you find a way to enjoy it that I don’t approve of.”
Dr.S 10.07.15 at 5:07 pm
No art is produced to be viewed simultaneously with someone else’s interpretation
Trader Joe 10.07.15 at 5:37 pm
“No art is produced to be viewed simultaneously with someone else’s interpretation”
Undoubtedly true, but equally true is that no man is an island that cannot benefit from the input of others.
We’re a bit losing the strand here anyway – the vast majority of these statues are of the typical bronze variety and are fairly simple lifelike depictions of Abraham Lincoln or Ben Franklin in Lincoln park….Lief Erricson and Bob Newhart have ones too along with a dozen or so others who are undoubtedly historical, but I don’t really know much about.
While I appreciate there is artistry and craftsmanship involved, having the likes of Lincoln “speak” is more simply educational than providing a substitute interpretation for owns own opinion. There is one Miro and one Piccasso for which one might choose to adopt a more high-brow tone, but honestly…why not let the uniformed get informed if they trouble to be curious about a piece of art?
Anarcissie 10.07.15 at 5:40 pm
‘No art is produced to be viewed simultaneously with someone else’s interpretation.
How about R. Mutt’s ‘Fountain’ and its tediously innumerable progeny?
DCA 10.07.15 at 5:49 pm
Having seen “the Bean”: this is the most interactive piece of public art I have ever encountered, as it was (warm summer day) surrounded by people staring at it and walking around it, to see the reflections of themselves, other people, and the surroundings. There may be sculptures that need to draw more attention to themselves, but not this one.
I’m confused that the call to silence includes complaints about people with headphones listening to the audio guide–surely that is less intrusive than having a docent talking.
The Temporary Name 10.07.15 at 6:01 pm
Any book published with a blurb counts.
I just saw a film meant to be shown in tandem with the film of its auction. Good piece.
http://www.metmuseum.org/metmedia/video/lectures/amie-siegel-provenance
nnyhav 10.07.15 at 8:06 pm
Too bad they couldn’t get Rowan Atkinson for Cloud Gate.
ZM 10.08.15 at 4:31 am
Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Salaam Cinema is a film of people auditioning to be in a film not knowing the film is going to be their auditions to be in a film, and at the same time Makhmalbaf was filming this another person was filming The Making Of Salaam Cinema. The multicultural broadcaster in Australia showed these at the same time, so I saw them one after the other, which I think made them more interesting as the person who made The Makng Of put in different things that Makhmalbaf had left out and more of a focus was on Makhmalbaf whereas his film had more of a focus on the auditions.
bad Jim 10.08.15 at 9:27 am
Context is nice, but where do you start, and where do you stop? We hear about the religious inspiration of art, but seldom about the inspiration of wealthy patrons who preferred depictions of a naked Venus to tortured martyrs or assumptions or annunciations. Socioeconomic considerations are generally scanted in art-historical presentations. For that matter, who’s reminded that Manet’s fat and skinny nudes are both the same model, Victorine?
I don’t understand why people need to be told what to appreciate. Sure, I grew up with Picasso reproductions in the kitchen, concluding that adults are weird, but hasn’t every grown-up person seen enough images to come to their own conclusions? Sure, some religious works need explanation when first encountered: Saint Sebastian has at most a tenuous relation to voodoo. The development of perspective is also worth a mention.
The critics have only described art in various ways. The point, however, is to look at it.
conchis 10.08.15 at 10:27 am
I’d really appreciate being able to contemplate this post in (digital) silence. Can everyone please stop commenting on it? Tks
rea 10.08.15 at 1:10 pm
I gather that Chicago has moved the old Haymarket Square statue to the courtyard of the police academy; otherwise, it would make for an . . . interesting recording.
Anarcissie 10.08.15 at 1:31 pm
bad Jim 10.08.15 at 9:27 am @ 35 —
There is Tom Wolfe’s contention in The Painted Word, which was that the Art business had evolved into pure theory. When narration and representation were removed from critically-approved practice (for example, Abstract Expressionism) words were needed to fill the vacuum their disappearance left. (At least, if prices were to be kept up. You’re standing in front of a Pollock or a Rothko; if you’re a critic or a gallery proprietor, you have to say something.) Something else happened, though; like that creature in the Miyazaki movie which, when struck, dissolves into myriad worms which vanish into the ground, Art dissolved and Mr. Danto said it was Dead. But it is still there and commanding higher prices than ever.
bob 10.08.15 at 5:48 pm
Lynne @21 – yes, the writers are credited. See http://www.statuestorieschicago.com/statues.php and click on a given stature to find the names of writer and actor. Scott Turow wrote the script for Lincoln, so I suspect it is fairly good. I haven’t seen the script for Altgeld, but I suspect that Turow would have done a better job of it. (And I suspect that anyone would have done better at reading that script than the inane Geoffrey Baer.)
Lynne 10.08.15 at 6:54 pm
Bob, good to know, thanks. I think if the scripts are in the nature of the information given in museums they can serve a purpose; historical figures and all. I’m more concerned about statues like Man with Fish than I am with the historical figures.
GHG 10.08.15 at 8:19 pm
I have to agree with Lynne @21 re. Barbara Reid’s Zoe series – the newer versions with words take away from the ability of the viewers (parent and child) to make sense of the gorgeous and detailed tableaux by themselves. (Some of her books *with* words are great, too – “The Party” is incredible).
The general reaction among many commentators to device-toting culture consumers reminded me of this XKCD comic; it’s about those who criticize tourists and their endless smartphone photos:
https://xkcd.com/1314/
Greg Hays 10.09.15 at 1:09 am
“Some things are better left unsaid. Contemplating a statue and speculating about its subject is a privilege to be enjoyed in tranquility. … That a smart phone is required to hear the statues, rather than pressing a button to play a recording, adds insult to injury.”
– The food here is terrible.
– Yes, and such small portions!
JAFD 10.09.15 at 8:17 pm
Over the course of a long life, I have probably walked once a week, on average, past the statue of Galusha Pennypacker (on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway at Logan Circle, in Philadelphia). Oneovdezedaze I’d like some explanation of the symbolism thereof…
bad Jim 10.10.15 at 2:51 am
Peggy Guggenheim’s little museum in Venice has a Pollock I actually like, though it didn’t change my reaction to the rest of his work, whereas hearing Debussy’s string quartet made me drop my hostility towards him and Ravel. There’s a difference between “okay, maybe there’s something there” and “Holy shit!”
ZM 10.10.15 at 3:04 am
One of the greatest controversies in Australian art was the decision of the National Gallery in Canberra to purchase Pollock’s Blue Poles for the sum of AU$1.3 million in 1973, the figure being so high the gallery director needed the Prime Minister to approve the purchase.
bad Jim 10.10.15 at 6:17 am
Wasn’t there a Renoir for sale?
ZM 10.10.15 at 6:46 am
A Renoir would not have suited the Prime Minister of the day since he was a very reforming Prime Minister, until he got dismissed by the Governor General and The Queen.
Another Australian art controversy in my State is the public art sculpture called The Vault or Yellow Peril. I would kind of like someone to give it a spoken word monologue, or several, on an app, as this could be quite funny and engaging and fitting
“Every so often it is decreed that Melbourne needs a landmark, an icon, something to denote the city. This ignores the fact that Melbourne already has its symbol – not as instantly recognisable as Sydney’s Opera House or Harbour Bridge, but probably more reflective of the city itself: Ron Robertson-Swann’s sculpture, Vault.
It says much about Melbourne that this sculpture is still better known by a nickname that preceded its creation: the Yellow Peril. Part of the blame for this must rest with the sculptor himself, as it wasn’t until September 1980, more than two years after his concept first attracted headlines, that Robertson-Swann settled on Vault.
Previously, he had referred to it as “The Thing”; the workmen who took more than eight weeks to construct it christened it “Steelhenge”. But the Peril it was, and the Peril it has stayed.
…
The City Square architects wanted something as a focus point for the square; something contemporary; sculpture a la mode. What the city got, after a competition decided in May 1978, was officially described as “a yellow painted fabricated steel construction, large in size and brightly coloured”.
It existed at the time only as a small balsa-wood model, built by Roberston-Swann, then aged 37, in his Sydney studio, with drawings of the proposed square pinned to his walls. The creative process was one of trial and error; the sabotage effort was more calculated and brutal.
It began in December 1978, when councillors first saw the proposed sculpture. They were soon split, with one faction led by Don Osborne (“Why can’t we have a pleasant fountain?”); the other by the much younger Irvin Rockman, who had replaced Osborne as lord mayor and championed a “startling and outstanding work”.
…
The sculpture was intended to be in place for the royal opening of the square in 1980. …
Even the Queen bought into the issue, reportedly wondering if the sculpture might be painted “a more agreeable colour”.”
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/06/16/1087244973120.html
sanbikinoraion 10.10.15 at 9:50 pm
The cultural elitism on show from the op is part frightening, part pathetic. How *dare* people trying and learn about art and history instead of uncomprendingly gawping at contextless statues of random old dead guys??
I go to so many museums which are case after case of unexplained old tat, lovingly stored and polished by someone who thinks they are so special that they don’t want to risk telling Joe Public how special they are, reserving them only for the ten people in the world who actually paid attention in that same art history class.
bad Jim 10.11.15 at 6:57 am
Its yellow color may be what I like most about The Vault.
Large public sculptures are inherently problematic, predictably traditional or boringly modernistic. One piece – in Amsterdam, perhaps – was reviled by some because it was too popular with pigeons. Doesn’t that make it a mobile?
Lynne 10.11.15 at 12:21 pm
@48 No, I don’t think that’s what’s happening. I think people are fine with the commentary for learning facts and history about statues, but not fine with the idea of commentary supplanting people’s experience of the statues as art. There is a difference between seeing a statue and learning which dead old guy it is and seeing a statue as sculpture.
ZM 10.12.15 at 2:30 am
“It’s yellow color may be what I like most about The Vault”
Rosalie Gascoigne has some beautiful yellow works. If you just do a google images search for her name the first results will be a nice selection of yellows.
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