There is no screen time, just time. ”I Only Have Eyes For You” and its “Song 1” is the Californian multimedia artist Doug Aitken’s first solo exhibition in Finland, at the Kiasma Museum in Helsinki

At the 5th floor of the museum building in the very centre of Helsinki, where a small art museum cluster has grown into almost a district of exhibitions, Doug Aitken examines the effect of technology on the individual. “Where are we going”, he asks, “now that screen space has become seemingly equal to the physical landscape”.

At the centre of the exhibition there is a large video installation, a never-ending piece backed up by numerous versions by numerous artists of the nostalgic nearly a century old hit (The Flamingos, 1934), “I only have eyes for you”.

“SONG 1”, created 2012/2015, invites us to walk around the 360 degree video screen, in and out of it, or sitting on the floor watching the times go by. Aitken describes it as a comment on what it is to be an individual in a time of ever accelerating mobility of information and people. Technology forces us all to find the means of coping in the rapidly changing paradigm shift. In “SONG 1” we walk around changing every day scenarios in cities on the American west coast, confronting the future on our own terms and on the terms of technology.

“People see different things at the same time”, Aitken says in an interview to a Helsinki daily, commenting on why he finds the interactive status of the huge video installation essential.

As an audience each and every one of us change and develop along the way. Screen time equaling time in general takes us to an unknown territory. The rules of this territory are, however, still unknown.


Since you’re here …

If you liked this article, you can invite the author to a coffee, tea or whatever you feel like it   And it only takes a minute. Thanks to your contribution we will be able to continue offering the latest news about contemporary art in connection with science and technology.