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Screen - Teen Center
Screen - Teen Center
10th Street, San Francisco, CA, United States
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Screen - Teen Center
10th Street, San Francisco, CA, United States
Integrated into the window frames of a neighborhood teen center in San Francisco, Screen explores gestures of the human hand as a symbolic system. The work combines the logic of animation in a form suggestive of stained glass. The shapes and relative position of each hand is derived from video footage of real hands in motion. Arrayed like a sequence of animation cells, the hands produce the impressions of human gestures.
The hand shapes link together in chains. The chains in turn are arrayed in different lengths to form a multicolored composition that spans across a bank of windows. The work operates at two scales, for the close-up the viewer is aware of the gestures of the hands - sometimes the hands make a gesture of acceptance, sometimes the fingers point accusingly, and sometimes the fingers curl as if to cradle an object. From further away, the hands are subordinate to an overall composition across 30 windows that is suggestive of tie-died curtains. To organize the overall composition of the work and to manage the arrangement and fabrication of over 3000 distinct parts, custom software was developed.
Screen riffs on historic stained glass windows. The transparent colored hands transform sunlight into rich patterns of acid hues that project onto the ground and walls inside the Teen Center.
While the work has a distinctively aesthetic agenda, it also functions as a privacy screen, obscuring young people within the Center from view by passersby on the sidewalk.
While the work delivers the aesthetic splendor of stained glass, it does so without the expense and delicacy of this material. The hand chains are encased within a storm window system. In the event of damage, rather than replacing an entire pane of stained glass, a single hand can be swapped for a new one. The storm window system was produced by the building’s curtain wall contractor and can also be replaced economically and without consultation from the artist.
The hand shapes link together in chains. The chains in turn are arrayed in different lengths to form a multicolored composition that spans across a bank of windows. The work operates at two scales, for the close-up the viewer is aware of the gestures of the hands - sometimes the hands make a gesture of acceptance, sometimes the fingers point accusingly, and sometimes the fingers curl as if to cradle an object. From further away, the hands are subordinate to an overall composition across 30 windows that is suggestive of tie-died curtains. To organize the overall composition of the work and to manage the arrangement and fabrication of over 3000 distinct parts, custom software was developed.
Screen riffs on historic stained glass windows. The transparent colored hands transform sunlight into rich patterns of acid hues that project onto the ground and walls inside the Teen Center.
While the work has a distinctively aesthetic agenda, it also functions as a privacy screen, obscuring young people within the Center from view by passersby on the sidewalk.
While the work delivers the aesthetic splendor of stained glass, it does so without the expense and delicacy of this material. The hand chains are encased within a storm window system. In the event of damage, rather than replacing an entire pane of stained glass, a single hand can be swapped for a new one. The storm window system was produced by the building’s curtain wall contractor and can also be replaced economically and without consultation from the artist.
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