Tony Godfrey believes that since installation art has never been clearly defined, it gets easily confused as to what the real meaning is. He stated that in installation art, “the artist is thinking about not an object, not a wall, but literally an entire space and how people move through it. ” An installation is more than a painting, or a sculpture, or many other types of artwork; it is an environment. Not only is it an environment, but it’s the feelings one experiences when they are in the space.
The installation that interested me the most was Barbican’s Rain Room. The Rain Room allows people to experience rain in a way that they would normally not be able to. It allows people to be surrounded by the rain, but also be comfortable. It is an installation that viewers can completely immerse themselves in. Unlike many other artworks that are made to cause certain emotions, the Rain Room has caused so many people to have such different feelings in reaction to it.
If I were given a room and a crew to create any type of installation, I would want to allow people the chance to be larger than life. I would create a scenario in which viewers tower over their surroundings. It would be like walking through the park: trees that come up to the average person’s waist, benches, fountains, picnic tables, all to scale. It would be as real as any other park, just smaller. I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but I have always wanted to know what it feels like to be larger than my surroundings.
