Event #1

April 28, 2023

This week I attended Rita McBride's Particulates at the Hammer Museum. 

Particulates is an installation that uses high intensity laser beams in a rotated, hyperbolic parabola structure (Butler). The design uses falling mist and the dust within the air to catch the light of the lasers and bring the work to life. The installation lives in a room of the Hammer Museum that was once a bank, it even has a vault door still in the room! The location of the installation is central to the work as McBride created the piece in part as a commentary on capitalism (Weissman). 

[Image 1] Image taken at the event. 

An element of the event that I found to be most interesting was that while I was there an employee explained to me that the piece wouldn't be the same if it were placed anywhere else because of the way the light uses the dust particles in the air (Tokaly). Due to Los Angeles air pollution, the laser is able to be seen more brightly because it has more ambient dust particles to connect with in the air. Thinking about the use of time and space within the piece reminded me of our first week of content and the combinations of art, math, and science (Vesna). There's obvious geometry in the work and her inclusion of the installation's atmosphere makes it so clear that her artwork is a rejection of a two culture reality (Snow, 15). 

[Image 2] Image taken at the event. 

I've never seen artwork that used its space the way that McBride's Particulates does, however from the angle of Image 2 I was truly shocked by the mathematics that went behind calculating exactly how each laser should beam. Week 2's content around Math + Art are on full display with McBride's work, the spiral display made me think a lot about the Golden Ratio and how if you looked from a certain angle you can almost see that ratio here (Vesna). 

[Image 3] Image of me at the Hammer Museum!

Overall, I would encourage other students to check this installation out! It was extremely unique and I think the Hammer Museum as a whole has a lot to offer that I never knew about! After this event I will definitely be going back to see what else is there, I'm grateful this assignment pushed me to go. 

References

Butler, Connie. “Rita McBride: Particulates.” Hammer Museum, https://hammer.ucla.edu/exhibitions/2023/rita-mcbride-particulates.

Snow, C. P. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. At the Univ. Press, 1959.

Tokaly, Zain. Personal Communication. 28 April 2023.

Vesna, Victoria. "Mathematics-pt1-ZeroPerspectiveGoldenMean.mov." Youtube, uploaded by UC Online, 9 April 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMmq5B1LKDg&t=1719s.

Vesna, Victoria. “Toward a Third Culture: Being in Between.” Leonardo, vol. 34, no. 2, 2001, pp. 121–125., https://doi.org/10.1162/002409401750184672.

Weissman, Benjamin. “Benjamin Weissman on Rita McBride.” The Online Edition of Artforum International Magazine, 30 Nov. 2016, https://www.artforum.com/print/reviews/199102/rita-mcbride-59202.