LO – My Inspiration

One artwork which immediately springs to mind when confronted with the term “interactive”, would be Pipilotti Rist’s installation, “Looking Through Pixel Forest.” This installation was shown as part as Rist’s retrospective solo show at the New Museum in 2016, and demonstrates her unique way of creating environments through light and sound. As you walk into the exhibition space, you are met with thousands of hanging LED light strings which gently pulsate soft shades of pink and blue and white. Against the wall, Rist’s immersive video works are projected, and the whole space is filled with the serenity of her sound pieces. For this installation, Rist collaborated with a lighting designer to develop custom scripts which ensure the LED lights would pulsate and change with the videos in a cohesive way.
What I admire about this work, is how Rist is able to create a sweeping environment by skillfully synthesizing visual, electronic, and sound elements. To work as a multimedia artist is challenging in and of itself, but to bring these elements together in a way which creates a new and one-off moment is impressive and will be a point of reference for light, video, and sound artists moving forward.

Pipilotti Rist is most known for her video works, many of which are inspired by the single-channel video artists of the 1980s, such as Nam June Paik. She was also a member of the performance art group, Les Reines prochaines. Perhaps Rist’s most famous video artwork, “Ever is Over All” shows a woman striding down a street and smashing in car windows with a flower-shaped hammer. This iconic video served as the inspiration for Beyonce’s “Hold Up” music video from her Lemonade album and a parody from the TV show, “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.”