A scavenger hunt leading to hidden sculpture gardens across campus is only one of the interactive elements of "ON/OFF," a student art show running through Oct. 31.
Not only will the show feature new work from students in Rice’s Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts (VADA), ON/OFF has also been designed to offer a variety of virtual experiences for remote students.
“I think all of us have a few friends at least who are remote,” said Brown College senior Braden Perryman, a triple major in VADA, ancient Mediterranean civilizations and sociology who’s helping organize the show.
One could stumble upon the nine sculpture garden locations serendipitously walking around campus. But you can also seek them through the ON/OFF website, where an interactive map links to each spot.
As those on campus visit each of the nine sculpture garden locations, they’re encouraged to share photos on social media. Hashtags will feed those images into the digital scavenger hunt map and allow off-campus viewers to, in a sense, see the sculptures through others’ eyes.
It’s a clever solution for presenting 3D work in an inherently 2D format — a webpage — and a concept conceived in the spirit of offering as much access to the exhibit as possible for remote students.
“I'm just inspired by those friends who are so, so far from Houston right now, but yet are still actively engaging and trying to be a part of the Rice community,” Perryman said. “And we thought, like, one way that we could really actively involve them was through this show.”
Each sculpture garden is also designed to be additive. Only a few sculptures will be installed at first, with an open invitation for other Rice students to add their own pieces throughout the week.
“We hope that over the course of the week, as locations change, the show is constantly evolving too,” said Hanzsen College senior Isabel Samperio, a visual arts major who runs the student art gallery Sleepy Cyborg and has been helping with the exhibit. “I’m excited to see how it manifests.”
The main “gallery” space of ON/OFF is the courtyard of Sewall Hall, where the VADA students have installed a 360-degree camera that will livestream the space throughout the week.
The courtyard hosted a small opening reception Oct. 23, and performances will also take place through Oct. 31 — both planned and spontaneous. The Rice Marching Owl Band will perform Oct. 27 at 8:30, for instance, but any Rice student is encouraged to add to the overall show with their own ad hoc performances. “Easter eggs” will also be planted for viewers, with prizes for those who catch them.
“The more closely you watch the stream and participate in the scavenger hunt, the more you stand to win cool stuff or get featured on the website,” Perryman said.
The sculptures in the show are primarily the products of last semester’s sculpture studio course with VADA assistant professor Lisa Lapinski. There’s always an end-of-semester show — and always in interesting spots around campus, such as an empty swimming pool in Tudor Fieldhouse — but when the pandemic cut the spring semester short, Lapinski’s students weren’t able to show their work.
“So we decided to try to do it in the fall, but instead of just pretending like everything was normal, we decided to use the circumstances to do something new,” Perryman said.
“I think it really is going to be a groundbreaking thing,” Samperio said. “I don’t think there’s been an art exhibition in a hybrid format that’s all around campus, that’s livestreaming, that has performances, that has squirrels.”
Yes, squirrels.
Playing to the exhibit’s natural outdoors element, even campus wildlife is encouraged to participate in ON/OFF. The students are scattering seed around the nine gardens in hopes the famously ravenous Rice squirrels will interact with the sculptures and provide a few lighthearted laughs.
“We ordered 10 or 20 pounds of squirrel food,” Perryman said. “So there will be squirrels.”