 Karen Finely collaborated with ParkBench and the NYU Center for Advanced Technology in 1997 on “The Art of Offending”, an interactive piece for the show “Uncommon Sense” co-curated by Julie Lazar and Tom Finklepearl, a part of her Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Karen Finely’s description of this fine work “People were invited to write what offends them on a computer terminal connected to the Web. The typewritten words are then projected, so they appear to float on the surface of the pool of water in the fountain. The fountain is part of the park environment including park benches she created where the pool is a metaphor for a town square. At one time one could enter this URL to look at the entries: https://www.moca-la.org/fear Excerpt from LA Times article “Causes and Effects” by By Kristine McKenna March 16, 1997 12 AM PT “I wanted to make an elegant piece about this ridiculous story, and ‘The Secret Museum’ presents two similarly altered statues in a dark room painted midnight blue. Onto the offending areas of the statues I project imagery designed to illustrate that anything can be phallic, because pornography is ultimately created in the mind. So much has been said about me in terms of things I’ve allegedly done, so the piece also refers to things that have been projected onto my body.” 
In this same dark room are two trellises decorated with silk roses, park benches and a fountain, so the environment has the feeling of a park at night. A few yards away is a computer terminal where people are invited to type in what offends them onto the World Wide Web (https://www.moca-la.org/fear); the typewritten words are then projected so they appear to float on the surface of the pool of water in the fountain. |