Reception
Thursday | August 18 | 5-7pm
In Control, Penrose/Bontrager design and play a game that explores the relationships between automated process, user and interface. The turn-based game takes place throughout the exhibition's run as each artist develops his individual system in response to the sequential developments of the other.
City Center Gallery becomes a battleground; lines are drawn, and the work is incrementally embedded into the space. This adversarial collaboration drives the evolution of the total work. Penrose/Bontrager are attracted to the stylized control panels that exist within the video-scape of film and television. Littered with flashing lights, switches, buttons and sliders, these control panels suggest a world of possibilities between the user and the automated process. Through engaging these materials, the work poses such questions as: What does a button do? How does it do it? And what is done to the one who pushes it?