“The Messengers,” an interactive installation by Vermont-based artist Kathy Marmor, will be on view through March 16 in the Artist Project Space at the University of Oregon’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art.

Marmor gave an artist talk about her display on Jan. 15.

“The Messengers” relies on user content to create Twitter-influenced mash-ups, which are displayed in LED lights. The random sentences that result depict abbreviated communication gone awry.

“The Messengers” encourages visitor participation to create written communications that vary from nonsense to poetry. An electrical fan displays a message inviting the viewer to use his/her cell phone to text it. The fan displays the text message, and then a customized program sends the message to Twitter Search and returns with a specified number of Twitter posts. These posts are rearranged to form new sentences that contain some of the words in the original text message. 

Marmor's performances and interactive multimedia installations aim to function as feminist commentaries on modern culture. Her work focuses on the intersections of power, gender and technology to reveal the psychological and cultural constructions of self-identities.

Marmor has exhibited her work in the United States as well as at Ciber@rts in Bilbao, Spain, and New Forms festival in Vancouver, B.C. She has been an artist-in-residence at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, N.Y., and Light Work in Syracuse, N.Y.

Marmor has a master's of fine arts degree in imaging and digital arts from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where she is currently a professor of art.

The UO exhibition is made possible by a JSMA Academic Support Grant submitted by Colin Ives, associate professor in the Department of Art, to support his courses in Interactive Digital Arts and Emerging Technologies.

- from the UO's Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art