The Salt Satyagraha

photo by Christine A Butler

Article by Natasha Chuk on http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=308



Second Life is a 3-D online environment that is created and maintained by those who virtually inhabit it. Much like the Sims, users interact with one another in a virtually created world. What may seem like mere child's play is taken a step further by Joseph DeLappe's latest project, The Salt Satyagraha, in which he virtually recreates Mahatma Ghandi's Salt March. Ghandi's march, which was about 240 miles long, was in protest of the salt tax by the British in 1930. The project includes a virtual landscape of India and an avatar that resembles Ghandi himself. In order to reenact the 240 mile long journey, DeLappe leads the Ghandi looking avatar through virtual India by actually physically moving his own legs in real life by the use of a treadmill. Along the way, Virtual Ghandi meets others in this virtual India and welcomes strangers to join him in his quest for peace. It takes DeLappe 26 days to finish his 240 mile journey, which he took very seriously.
This Article was very amusing to me because it showed that a piece of Art like this can be used to recreate important events in history. 3-D online environments, such as Second life can be used as a learning tool in order to teach important historical event and show political expressions of peace or violence. I think its very cool that he used a treadmill to actually walk all 240 miles, must have been a work out !!

Abscence/ Presence

The absence/ presence interview helped shed understanding as to how the absence of an object in a picture can bring about an immediate thought and response as to what that object is and why it is missing. By understanding and knowing what they are seeing, the viewer can have an immediate view experience that is appealing because it either narrative or specific or it is intellectual and shocking. According to Charles Cohen, the viewing experience usually has three effects; an immediate recognition of the missing object, an abstract effect, and a reflexive effect. The viewer interacts with the missing piece and thus has co-authorship because they can make it out to be whatever they think it is. For example, if a kid has seen the buff serious, he or she most likely won't know what that missing object is but if they had experience then they will most like understand what the missing object is. Thus in a way, the experience of a particular piece of art depends on the maturity and experience of an individual. The use of technology has helped many companies in its ad campaigns by the use of "cut outs" in their ads. However technology, as stated by Cohen, has made people isolated because mainly technology promises co-authorship and great interactivity.

I tend to mostly agree on what Cohan has said in terms of co-authorship and that an individual's own experience may ultimately help them figure out what the missing object may be. He brings up many good points in his interview when he talked bout apple and its commercials, and how they focus on the customer's impulse as opposed to a piece of art that focuses on thought and narrative.