Find out what it feels like to be trapped inside a machine.
Museum of the Moving Image unveils Dissolution in the Amphitheater Gallery on Friday, Oct. 27.
Created by multi-faceted artist David Levine, this jewel-box hologram—viewable from any angle—beams colorful pixels at 30 frames per second onto an oscillating glass plate that clatters like a 16mm film projector.
Melding analog and digital, Dissolution includes a 20-minute story arc on a loop that draws on 1980s movies and TV shows such as Tron and Max Headroom which depict human characters who are confined within the interior worlds of electronic devices.
Zapped into a machine and stuck in a museum, Dissolution raises questions about art’s value and the nature of value. The narrator — by turns anguished, insightful, humorous, and disillusioned — offers a provocative ambivalence about the technologies that contain its existence.
Levine will participate in an artist talk and reception on Oct. 27 from 6 pm to 8 pm. Dissolution will then be on view through March 1, 2024. Plus, Levine and artist press PPP Editions will publish a limited-edition broadsheet of the piece’s full text, accompanied by images. It’ll be available in the Museum Shop.
From January to March 2024, the ongoing Science on Screen series will show films on humans reconstituted into the interior landscape of digital devices.
General admission is $10-$20, and MoMI is located at 36-01 35th Ave. in Astoria’s Kaufman Arts District.
Not to be confused with The New York Review of Books illustrator with the same name, David Levine’s work encompasses performance, video, photography, and essay writing. He has exhibited and performed around the world. Currently, he’s a professor at Harvard University, but his resume includes a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2013 OBIE Award.
Editor’s note: Dissolution was created with support from MIT’s Center for Art, Science & Technology, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and three Harvard entities: the Lasky-Barajas Innovation Fund; Adrian Cheng and Jennifer Dean Fund for Innovation in the Arts; and Dean’s Competitive Fund for Promising Scholarship.
Images: Museum of the Moving Image