The Medium Is The Massage by Anna Ehrsam
Ryan DaWalt, Psychic Screen 2021
The Medium is the Message
by ANNA EHRSAM
Artist Ryan DaWalt’s work ranges from psychedelic light shows with experimental sound and light projections to rigorously complex, meticulously executed installations with sculpture, light and wall based objects. One common theme is his obsession with the properties of light and the electromagnetic spectrum. He is inspired by the light and space movement and the teachings of Marshall Mcluhan as well as his exploration of optics, vision and perception. DaWalt’s conceptual acrobatics may leave some feeling dizzy with his heady theoretical maneuvers, but he is more than generous with his work, offering sensual, architecturally scaled works and experiences which enable the viewer to engage with the phenomena of light, space and time in a deeply contemplative and meditative way. DaWalt’s immersive installation, “Psychic Screen“ presents a space for experiencing the optical effects of his handmade digital display screens with their transitional light, floresing colors, and other phenomena.
As I entered the installation I was drawn first to the luminous hanging wall sculptures made of wire, latex and glowing violet LEDs, which together comprise 5 networks of light arrays. I was struck by how the sculptures resemble the human nervous system running through the spinal column. Installed on the opposite side of the room, there are 12 handmade wall mounted panels which pulsate with red, green and blue florecing patterns made of pixel blocks. Standing in the space, transfixed by the lights and hyperactive colors, I became aware of the powerful energetic effects the environment was producing within my body. The work triggered numerous optical and neurological sensations as it connected through my optic nerve directly into my nervous system. The intensity of the retinal and corporeal effects created by the energetic waves of vibratory spectral colors pushed the range of what can normally be seen. The longer I looked, the more intense and visceral my experience became. The work and the space vibrated with excited florecing particles and waves of green, red, blue, and violet light energy. Gradually I became aware of my own bio-electric vibrations.
This architecturally scaled installation also consists of 12, 2’X3’ multivalent wall mounted panels. They are installed in the corner and radiate out approximately 12’ x 9’ creating a fully immersive environment of fluorescing patterns, colors and lights. The hand carved wood panels are layered with recycled wood shavings which are derived from the carving process. On top of the shavings is a layer of hand colored red, green and blue ferromagnetic particles which are magnetically engaged to the panels, forming a rhythmic grid pattern. The 12 panels are covered in a repeating pattern based on the photographic magnification of a digital liquid crystal display screen. The pattern shows how digital screens structure images with individual pixels or blocks of red, green and blue color. On DaWalt’s panels the red green and blue colored pixel blocks are made with his own proprietary brand of fluorescing, pigmented, ferromagnetic metal particles, which are held to the surface of the painting by magnets. 6 of the panels have the same repeating color pattern, and the other 6 panels are their mirror image. This mirroring makes a colorful undulating waveform that flows through the entire series of the 12 panels creating a hyper stimulating environment.
This body of work is based on the exploration of the phenomena of light, color, optics and vision as they relate to digital media, the retina and perception. Here the “Medium'' is an immersive installation environment which creates an experiential space in which the viewer can engage with the electromagnetic flux field of soothing vibratory light and color. Its hypnotic, calming waves enter the body directly through the optic nerve, while bathing the body in a powerful and pleasurable pulsating full spectrum light bath of color. DaWalt is concerned with how we see, how vision is structured, what we can see, and what is unseen. With this body of work, DaWalt examines the possibility that electronic media is an extension of our neurological system and explores how digital media structures vision, how the digital screen is structured, and how that structures us.
In “Psychic Screen” the body becomes the receiver, internalizing the light and color from the electromagnetic transmissions emanating from the installation panels. The viewer's body completes the electronic circuit within the installation and the work exists in a state of existential reciprocity within the viewer.
“ All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the message. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments. All media are extensions of some human faculty - psychic or physical.” Marshall McLuhan
“With the arrival of electric technology, (wo)man has extended, or set outside (her)himself, a live model of the central nervous system itself. To the degree that this is so, it is a development that suggests a desperate suicidal autoamputation, as if the central nervous system could no longer depend on the physical organs to be protective buffers against the slings and arrows of outrageous mechanisms. ” Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions Of (Wo)man
