This Is My Sadness Nowhere

This Is My Sadness Nowhere

        This Is My Nowhere is an installation artwork created by Maggie Mullin O’Hara in 2017. It was done by recording many videos and playing them on 13 HD channel televisions. The videos are all about the same girl who seemed to set a certain amount of time each day for herself to record a video, and the videos convey her sadness and desperation to the audience. The color which those old vintage televisions show is a little gloomy, and the media she used to record the videos also processes the color into black and white. Each TV shows two videos at one time which is kind of a comparison that one shows the girl is little upset with relatively neat appearance while the other one shows more sadness with a bit of messiness. The media the artist uses, the color videos shown, and the scenes the videos record are combined together as This Is My Nowhere. Overall, the artwork explores how we communicate emotions. O’Hara is showing her desperation, but the viewers cannot communicate back with her or comfort her. Ultimately, this is a critique of how we use technology to convey human emotion.

        The media O’Hara chose conveys the girl’s sadness truly and directly. This artwork was created in 2017 when there are many other advanced technologies. The technology makes it easier to show anything to everyone. In the meantime, false information expands, and people get more and more unconcerned after being given false information by new technologies many times. In this case, using new televisions or other new media to play the video will create feelings of fakeness. Old televisions, however，are more reliable than these new technology products and are in connection with the content of the videos with their own nostalgic appearances and colors. Additionally, video can record expressions, sounds and movements, which also keeps the moment authentic. Playing the videos on these vintage TVs seems more convincing and easier for viewers to get the point than sharing the feeling by other methods. 

        The color palette creates the sad emotion which the girl in the video wants to show. O’Hara recorded these videos in black and white. The background is nothing but a white wall. The colors the old televisions show are black, cold grey, white, and sometimes green. Our impression of color is that cold colors such as black, blue and green represent unhappy emotions such as melancholy, sadness and depression. The reason why the artist selected old televisions rather than other colorful ways to present her idea is monotonous gray color shows the sadness more real and directly. The cold pictures in the televisions and antiquated scene of 13 old televisions convey the sadness to all the viewers who walk by, regardless of whether they watch the content carefully or not.

        The work’s size creates a sense of distance for audiences, which creates the feeling that people can do nothing to help. This artwork is not small, even though it is not large in installation art, so it can be appreciated close or at a distance. If one wants to see the whole work, they must stand a little behind. In this way, the artist keeps the distance consciously or unconsciously to reveal the phenomenon in the real world that technology helps people share feelings such as sadness with others, but the audiences cannot always give any feedback. People who see this artwork can easily get the information of her sadness but cannot recognize whether it is true or where it constructed. Moreover, they cannot touch her and comfort her. In other words, the girl’s sadness is nowhere even it is true, because there is no access to communicate back, and the distance still keeps audiences from helping.

        In conclusion, O’Hara used the videos in dark colors playing on old televisions to show sadness and isolation in technology. It successfully builds this small world for audiences which shows her sadness, and also evokes the ideas that sadness cannot be solved in reality through contemporary technology.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 1

Maggie Mullin O’Hara

This Is My Nowhere

2017

HD 13-channel Video

Image by Author