Measuring the universe

Measuring the Universe is an installation art by Slovakian artist Roman Ondák first installed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 2007. It was a white room filled with thousands of what at first seemed to be thousands of sharp black lines. It almost resembled a swarm of bees zooming around the museum, going around and around one small room in the contemporary galleries. Upon closer inspection, one realizes that each seemingly random line marked various museum visitors' heights. Accompanying the small black lines was text stating the name of the person and the date they were measured. The effect is incredible; most of the lines are near each other, so it seems like a giant black mass, with nearly purely white space on the bottom and top of the wall.

Sections

Materials

The materials are incredibly simple. The only items required for the installation were a white room and a few black markers. What began as a clean white space has been filled with letters and lines and numbers as people pass through the gallery. Each tiny line represents a different person. The thousands and thousands of lines show just how many people pass through the museum each day, how many people were, in some tiny way, affected by this installation.

Comparison

Ondák often utilizes the participation of strangers in his work. The resulting art is , according to Jens Hoffman in her essay "East by West", "a controlled study of collective imagination." Pieces such as ' 'Passage' ', in which Ondák gave five hundred steel workers chocolate bars and asked them to sculpt the wrappers, and ' 'Our City in 3000' ', which consisted of drawings done by San Francisco children about what they think their city will look like in 3000, resemble ' 'Measuring the Universe' ' in their interactive quality. Ondák has one observe how people differ and come together in their various works, and even in their heights. All show the unity, and some separateness, in how people think, feel, and even in how they look.

Analysis

Ondák, like performance artists, attempts to transcend traditional divisions between piece and spectator, between viewing something and being a part of its creation. He makes art interactive, bringing together both the artistic cognescenti and plain, everyday steel workers. He allows everyone to have some sort of artistic record of themselves, from the highest of critics to tourists from Omaha who just wanted to visit a famous New York City museum, and ended up being a part of a fascinating work of art. Ondák brings together total strangers in his work. He gives what could be interpreted by many people as cold and impenetrable pieces of conceptual "art" a warm, friendly feeling. He allows everyone to have a little piece of high art. Conceptual art is often perceived as something pretentious and inaccessible, but Ondák gives anyone and everyone the chance to literally be recorded in a museum. ' 'Measuring the Universe' ' also possesses domestic qualities. In thousands of households, one can find a spot in the kitchen or living room or basement in which children's heights are measured with a simple ruler and black marker, records of life and growing up. Ondák's installation allows complete strangers to come together in an intimate way. By bringing an action normally confined to private corners of people's homes to something as large and anonymous as a museum, he ties strangers together. They perform a somewhat intimate, comforting act together, bringing not only black lines to a white space, but a record of who they were and when they came to together. He fills a plain space not with meaningless symbols or lines, but records of real, actual people who appreciated his work.

Sources

• MoMA
• Networked Performance blog
• artbabble.org, Video Interview with Roman Ondak
• CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts