Control

In Control, Penrose/Bontrager design and play a game that explores the relationships between automated process, user and interface. The turn-based game takes place throughout the exhibition, which is open to the public from July 29th thru August 26th, 2011. Turn by turn, each artist develops his individual system in response to the sequential developments of the other. City Center Gallery becomes a battleground, lines are drawn, and the work is incrementally embedded into the space. This adverserial collaboration drives the evolution of the resulting total work.

Penrose/Bontrager are attracted to the stylized control panels that exist within the video-scape of film and television. Littered with flashing lights, switches, buttons and sliders, these control panels suggest a world of possibilities between user and abstracted, automated process. Through engaging these materials, the work poses such questions as: What does a button do? How does it do it? And what is done to the one who pushes it?