Combining sight and sound, Jennifer Steinkamp’s Loop installation on view at the Corcoran Gallery of Art

The Corcoran Gallery of Art announces the reinstallation of Loop, a multi-sensory visual art and music installation commissioned specifically for the Corcoran’s 46th Biennial Exhibition Media/Metaphor by internationally known media artist Jennifer Steinkamp and renowned electronic composer Jimmy Johnson.

Media/Metaphor, the Corcoran’s 2000 Biennial, took as its theme the complex relationships between painting and photographic arts. At its center was Loop, a site-specific environment designed for the Corcoran’s neo-classical Rotunda. Steinkamp and Johnson’s special brand of transformative art interacted with both the building and its visitors, making the installation one of the most popular aspects of the exhibition. Now an important part of the Corcoran’s permanent collection, Loop will be on view now through the end of September 2005.

Using architectural qualities of this particular room, Steinkamp and Johnson situated electronic visual and aural patterns to dematerialize the space and accentuate its details. Entering into Loop, the audience is immediately surrounded by rows of multicolored digital rope, lifting and undulating, seemingly blown from anchors at the base of the high ceiling. While in the space, visitors observe their shadows in motion on the walls and actually feel like they are part of the installation – disrupting or eliminating traditional barriers that separate audiences and art. Like three-dimensional moving abstractions, the resulting environment is interactive, immersive and even hypnotic, challenging preconceptions about the relationship between people and their environments.

To create Loop, Steinkamp used a Silicon Graphics workstation, the same type of computer used by Hollywood animators, to “paint” her striking colors and shapes that now dance around the rotunda. The colors and shapes are projected onto the walls using six video projectors. Johnson then created music that it is played along with the moving projections.