A digital redirection series that entertains and educates
How do you persuade someone to see something they have already stopped noticing?
During my travels in France in the fall of 2021, I wondered how anyone could absorb the extraordinary abundance of art surrounding them. Sculpture occupied gardens, public squares, building façades, and museum galleries. Centuries of creative achievement were everywhere. But being everywhere can become a peculiar form of invisibility.
Sitting in the Louvre, watching hundreds of visitors move past walls of monumental paintings, I began to wonder whether abundance itself could dull our attention. Each work deserved a sustained encounter, yet another masterpiece was always waiting a few steps away. People were looking, but I wondered how much they were still seeing.
That question became Who Is That?
The series begins with photographs I made of sculptures encountered during my travels. I place these figures in unexpected visual surroundings, introducing vivid color, animated backgrounds, and surprising forms. I think of it as “visual bling”: a deliberate interruption of the familiar, designed to catch the eye and awaken a question.
Who is that? Who made it? Why is it there?
The works appear on large LCD monitors reminiscent of the digital advertising displays in Paris Métro stations. Each image remains on screen for 27 seconds before another takes its place. This interval takes its cue from a 2001 study at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where visitors spent an average of 27.2 seconds looking at the artworks studied. That finding describes viewing behavior in a particular setting, not a fixed limit on human attention. In this installation, 27 seconds becomes an invitation to pause, become curious, and follow the image into a longer encounter.
Each image includes a QR code leading to a page on my website, where the transformed photograph appears alongside a photograph of the original sculpture. Visitors can discover where I encountered it, who created it, whom or what it represents, and what I have been able to establish about its history, purpose, and provenance.
The color catches your attention. The question gives you somewhere to go.
My intervention is an invitation back to the original work. The unexpected surroundings offer a second encounter with a sculpture that might otherwise remain part of the scenery. What begins as visual entertainment can become an art-history discovery—and, perhaps, a reason to look more closely the next time.
Twenty-seven seconds opens the door. How long you stay is up to you.
Research reference: Jeffrey K. Smith and Lisa F. Smith, “Spending Time on Art” (2001).