On a recent Field Trip Friday excursion with my First Year Seminar class, one of the students made a discovery.
The Field Trip included five stops to look at some important plaques and markers that often go unnoticed. It included a trip into Haymond Hall of Science (after studying about the beginnings of that building during the week). It included a stop in the Sleeth Gallery in McCuskey Hall.
On the way into McCuskey, I happened to point out a small sculpture which was attached to the side of the building.
When all was said and done, it was this sculpture that inspired one student to action. I explained that it was part of a series which had been installed on campus in 2015 by Ellen Mueller, who at that time was a faculty member in the Art Department. Click here to read more about Ellen.
A couple of days later, I received an email with photos of all of the pieces in the project. The student and a friend (not even in the class) had spent hours examining each building on the campus to try and locate the entire project. Beyond being intrigued by the pieces themselves, they found that they had many questions about the reason for these tiny sculptures and what the artist may have been thinking about.
Synergism
Ellen’s project was named Synergism. That word translates loosely to “working together” and that there are things that work better when combined together than they do as individual components. You can read more about it on her website.
In this project, there are five office-related objects, 3-D modeled in SketchUp and printed in 3-D in matte bronze steel by Shapeways. Each is designed to fit into a corner-space and are attached to buildings on the campus.
The Synergism project was featured in a journal article by Tiffany Funk in NMC/Media-N (Spring 2015; Vol. 11, No. 02).
Ellen Mueller’s Synergism series (2015) demonstrates how subversive, radical discourse can take the form of small-scale interventions. The series consists of 3D modeled bronze-steel sculptures, ranging from three to eight inches, of office paraphernalia installed in a variety of institutional spaces, including office buildings, city halls, DMVs, post offices, and schools.
Though Synergism takes its inspiration from street art, it disrupts institutional architecture through corporate camouflage; by mimicking the bronze, classical sculptures often gracing entrances and lobbies, while drastically reducing their scale, these absurd interventions signify larger issues of the effects of workplace monetization, namely the objectification of individuals.
Synergism in Curriculum
When I looked up the word Synergism in the Credo Reference database on the library webpage, there were 668 results returned. They were from many disciplines, including usage of the word in:
- Art
- Biology
- Business
- Chemistry
- Communication
- Computer Science
- Education
- Environmental Science
- Medicine
- Nutrition
- Pharmacy
- Philosophy
- Psychology
- Religion
- Social Sciences
- Toxicology
It occurred to me that all of these things contribute to what we call a Liberal Arts Education. Each one of the areas is important on its own, but combined together they are even greater. Synergism.
Collaborations, Connections, and Explanations
While I gave the best explanation that I could when asked about these pieces of art, I realized that I could do a much better job if I consulted the artist and made a connection with the student in that way. I asked Brenlyn what she would ask the artist if she could. Here are her questions and Ellen’s answers.
Question: Why Office Supplies and furniture? Why not art supplies or artists, or dogs, or panda bears or something?
Answer: I picked office supplies/furniture because I was very interested in bureaucracy and the systems that guide our everyday lives. These objects are completely intertwined with carrying out those systems of order.
Question: Why these particular buildings? How did you decide where to put them?
Answer: I put them on these buildings because I wanted to spread them out over the whole campus, and these buildings felt well-spread out from each other.
Question: How did you come up with this whole project in the first place?
Answer: I came up with the idea because I like bureaucracy from a personal point of view (I like things to be orderly), but I am also driven crazy by bureaucracy sometimes because I like to get things done, and it can slow things down!
