About this Item

Title
Miss Communication
Date
2014
Description/Summary
"Communication is supposed to be easy," Pansum Cheng, sculpture technologist, Fine Arts, said while watching people connect with his new site-specific sculptural installation, Miss Communication, outside of the Pomerantz Center. "It's the most direct way to interact with someone."
But this assemblage of 2,400 empty cans attached to two walls with a grid system and connected with fishing wire—at once simple and enigmatic—gives the viewer no instructions on how to use it. "That never even occurred to me," Cheng said. "Because communication is a very personal experience, allowing people to figure out what to do with it is in and of itself a form of communication."

Each can is attached to the one directly across from it on the opposite wall by the fishing wire, creating a familiar communication mechanism: a telephone device like the ones children make. "Before technology, communication is play," Cheng said. "It's childlike innocence.

Cheng also enjoys watching the juxtaposition of people using mobile phones near his installation, dealing with the distractions of city life, while others are trying to figure out the intricacies of the sculpture. "I see people play with it but also get frustrated with it."

But there is another way to look at Miss Communication, which came out of a proposal Cheng, who is from Mainland China, submitted to the FIT Diversity Council. It can be viewed as a means to examine the experience of being an outsider in an ever-changing subculture, which can be arduous when trying to identify both with peers and strangers. Through the various experiences that people have with the installation, the aim is to challenge them to explore different mindsets of a multicultural society.

"It was born out of the experience of people not being able to align with each other in a common experience," said Cheng. "Age, sex, background, and every experience can change the way you look at things. The project is a very simple idea, but every idea that's simple is never really that simple when you elaborate on it. I was looking for something everyone could relate to. I read a lot of philosophy, but I don't have big ideas for my art. I only have personal ideas that people can connect with."

The Diversity Council chose the project, in part, because it speaks to the issues of difference in culture and because it serves as a platform for communication.

The installation, which took nearly five months to install, will be on view through February.

--from Press Release on December 18, 2014
Type
Still Image
Exhibitions (events)
Exhibition installation photographs
Program/Course/Exhibition Information
Project dedicated to Joseph Arcoleo, Director of Environmental Health and Safety at FIT
President's Diversity Grant
Rights
In Copyright
All images in this record are created by the Fashion Institute of Technology ("FIT") and the properties of FIT. FIT expressly prohibits the copying, displaying, or uploading to a website of any portion of these images, except for the purposes of fair use as defined in the copyright laws, without express written permission from FIT. These images have been made available online by the Fashion Institute of Technology Gladys Marcus Library strictly for research and educational purposes. If you are the copyright holder for content in these images and have any objections to this work being made available online, please notify us immediately at [email protected].
Identifier
FIT Repository ID: ex_2014_0007
FITDIL Photo Project ID: 20141124_1

Citation

Miss Communication. (2014). FIT Institutional Repository. https://institutionalrepository.fitnyc.edu/item/405832
Miss Communication. 2014. FIT Digital Repository, https://institutionalrepository.fitnyc.edu/item/405832
"Miss Communication." FIT Digital Repository, 2014. https://institutionalrepository.fitnyc.edu/item/405832