Sallyportal: Madly Blogging Reed

Reed Arts Week (RAW) 2015: <i>Might Now</i>

By Lauren Cooper ’16 on March 05, 2015 12:00 AM

Students gather at the RAW banquet/theme reveal Image by Jade Novarino '16

This year, Reed Arts Week (RAW), March 3–8, takes a turn for the understated and the peculiar, with the highlight of the opening exhibition being a fist-sized rock. The rock displays a smiley face on its surface, and its owner is attempting to sell it for $1 million on eBay, despite never having received a bid.

Other installations include a camera obscura inside Vollum lounge, which uses vibrations from Eliot Circle to create a subdued shadow world, and captures students walking to class in the form of indistinct silhouettes.

Reed College theatre annex with calligraphy

The Gray Campus Center features a “quiet room,” or traceless environment; the space is light and soundproof, completely cut off from the rest of campus. The intent of the room is to give students an experience of being entirely solitary, while still in the heart of campus. The sports center is home to the opposite effect, with an audio system set up in the racquetball courts that records the sound in the room and then plays it back a minute later, simultaneously with all of the sound that has been recorded previously. The cacophony will increase relentlessly throughout the week, resulting in a complete audio record of the room during RAW.

RAW works to include the audience and campus in the art in thoughtful ways that could only come from Reedies.

Download the RAW 2015 catalog from the website.

Tags: art, RAW