Provoking Magic: Lighting of Ingo Maurer

At the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in NYC, there is an exhibit of Ingo Maurer's work. Maurer is a world-famous German-born artist and designer who "constructs luminous atmospheres that play with traditional concepts of color, brightness, and shadow". I thought this would be an interesting case study because Maurer's installation work is heavily dependent on light and space (3-dimensionality), two things that are not easily captured by digital imagery. Indeed, I found that while the images were sufficiently detailed and I appreciated the multiple angles and close-ups, I do not think that the online exhibition could fully convey the scope of Maurer's work.

In terms of selection decisions, I believe that the Cooper-Hewitt included digital images of all of Maurer's works that are on display at the museum. For each piece, there is one larger image that shows the entire installation and then two smaller images that show alternate viewpoints, including details of the materials used.

The provided metadata for each image is slim: title, artist, date, media, and occasionally additional information such as if the piece is site-specific to the Cooper-Hewitt. It is difficult to get an idea of the size of the works, as they are often room-sized or bigger installations and no metadata regarding dimensions of the originals is given. And like all of the other online exhibits I have seen, no digital image specifications are given. The museum, which is part of the Smithsonian, includes its copyright policy via a link.

The JPG digital images range from are 430 x 700 pixels to 250 x 250 pixels. JPGs were clearly chosen as the image format because they are web-friendly. The images are quite good and clear, but as mentioned before, definitely lack the ability to convey fully the moods of these works. For example, Maurer has a whole series of LED furniture and walls (as seen to the right). In one of the photos, you can see Maurer himself either standing behind one of the twinkling walls or being reflected in it. The magical quality of his work is somewhat conveyed, but I think the photos simply make the viewer want to see the exhibit herself and interact with the installations.

The online exhibition is clearly intended for the casual viewer who wants to see what is going on at the Cooper-Hewitt and/or is deciding whether or not to go. In this case, I think the ineffectualness of the digital images to immerse the viewer in Maurer's work is actually a positive in that they attract the viewer but leaving enough unknown to encourage attendance.