Bringing his interactive projections everywhere from Romania to Munich to Brooklyn, Paul Notzold extends an open invitation to embrace street art as a creative exploration of the expressive possibilities of the space around us. With the TXTual Healing project, Notzhold encourages viewer-participants to think of mass communication not as unidirectional and predetermined, but as open to all-something Notzold believes is a fundamental social need.
Last Thursday, a prominent wall of the Free Library at 40th and Walnut Streets was transformed into a receptive textual space in which anyone could intervene. A sequence of film stills with speech bubbles attached to the characters contained the text messages sent in to TXTual Healing's interface in real time. Encouraging imaginative storytelling, a plot line defined by the spectators themselves progressed with new each text sent in. The film's original narrative quickly became unimportant, as the audience began to realize the possibilities of this mode of dialogue and to shift their attentions from the film to the ideas of one another.
A second projection consisted simply of an American flag with an attached speech bubble. Through texting, participants were free to attach an explicit meaning to this symbol of our nation, and to do so in a public forum. This was a project in building democracy. In an age where our country routinely commits rash acts in our name, it was a fabulous reversal: a microcosm of a possible world in which we speak for our country rather than having it speak for us.
So what is TXTual Healing? It is a project that facilitates a public dialogue by re-purposing a technology of private communication, which implies that we live in a public realm in need of healing. Paul Notzold's ongoing series of interactive installations is rooted in a utopian aspiration focused on reconnecting the public to each other. He strives, in a small way, to address some of our un-met collective needs and perhaps even to heal the fabric of modern life of some of its fragmented and alienated nature.
