By Tom Austin
Special to the Miami Herald
April 29, 2012, Page 3M in print editionJillian Mayer
At Miami Beach’s Bass museum of Art, the Miami-based Jillian Mayer - a bright young thing in local video art circles - is showing Erasey Page. Mayer is adept at new media forums like YouTube: her short film I am Your Grandmother, with Mayer donning bizarre costumes, had more than a million views on the site. Scenic Jogging, a video that entailed Mayer chasing projected screensavers in Wynwood, was in the Guggenheim show YouTube Play.
Erasey Page, done in collaboration with graphic designer Eric Schoenborn, is contained in a small alcove by the rear entrance of the Bass. In the interactive installation, Mayer bites the hand that feeds her. She casts herself on a wall-mounted screen as an Infomercial star (“… Do you dislike the idea of space and cyber?”) and encourages viewers to type in any web address on the keyboard that’s part of the installation. The respective web page comes up and then seems to fade away.
Despite all of the jokes, Mayer is taking on a seriously outsize ambition, the role of virtual - as opposed to real - life in the modern world. The piece ends with Mayer’s salute to gallery-goers for casting off the yoke of the Internet, though Mayer, interviewed via telephone, is interested in “technological singularity, this whole movement to Internet immersion, where no lines are drawn between off-line and on-line life. I have a natural fear of all that, but I like the idea of human upgrades.”
IF YOU GO:
When: 12pm-5pm, Wed-Su, through Aug. 12.
Where: Bass Museum of Art, 2100 Collins Ave., Miami Beach, FL
How Much: Adults, $8; students & seniors, $6
Info: 305-673-7530; www.bassmuseum.org