A Quote by Michael C. McMillen

I don't need to control the mind of my viewer. Now this might sound contradictory because I want to make these installations set up an environment that will produce a certain kind of experience in the viewer, but beyond a certain point, I take hands off and leave it up to chance and personal experience. So maybe it's a marriage of control and no control we're talking about where the artist produces the artifact or the environment and then walks away from it, and the second half of the equation is the viewer and their personal history and how they feel about what they're experiencing.
I want art to affect the viewer and for the viewer to take it away to enhance, embrace, and elevate life. That's the spiritual aspect. Painting is a spiritual practice, but sometimes it is hard to give up control!
I want to create objects that will stimulate the viewer in ways that I am stimulated by these objects. Now that's an ideal situation and the artist has no control over what his audience is going to think, but they can try to communicate some quality, some poetry through the work and just hope that the viewer has something in the vicinity of a similar experience.
I mean, I really don't want the federal government to be determining whether or not a person who feels certain ways about the environment or about animals or about certain religious issues should be considered an extremist. That to me is a type of thought control, mind control, which is very dangerous.
The expectations of the viewer are what you're asking about. And the expectations of the viewer are manifold. However, they are very fixed, given who I am in the world. People have certain expectations of me as an artist.
I am very conscious of the viewer because that's where the art takes place. My work really strives to put the viewer in a certain kind of emotional state.
There are two types of people: One strives to control his environment, the other strives not to let his environment control him. I like to control my environment, because I feel if I have my physical space in order, then I'm free to dream.
I remember talking to, 40 years ago, one of the leading people in the government who was involved in arms control, pressing for arms control measures, détente, and so on. He's very high up, and we were talking about whether arms control could succeed. And only partially as a joke he said, "Well it might succeed if the high tech industry makes more profit from arms control than it can make from weapons-related research and production. If we get to that tipping point maybe arms control will work." He was partially joking but there's a truth that lies behind it.
My personal feelings on marriage? Samuel Johnson once said that second marriages - although I could probably say this about any marriage - are about the triumph of hope over experience. I think that's true. I don't know that human beings were meant to mate for life or be monogamous. But, for me, the aspect of marriage that is troubling is that it's a contract that is governed by the state, and I don't want the state to have control over my personal affairs.
With VR, you are directing in a 360-degree environment. The biggest challenge is that the viewer can look anywhere. They might look at the the weakest moments, the very things you edit for TV. You don't control where they look.
It matters that we have balance and facts and push people when they need to be pushed so that we can give the accurate, fair, balanced piece to the viewer, and then it's up to the viewer to be the judge.
I am whatever you want me to be and I can't control that. My experience is my experience, but I can't really claim anything. I know when I take my wig off at night and I have to twist my hair up, I'm black. But I don't get too personal most of the time.
I cater to a viewer because that viewer's taste matters more than anyone else's, and I will keep him first in mind and then, if it also appeals to the critics, so be it.
Art objects are inanimate sad bits of matter hanging in the dark when no one is looking. The artist only does half the work; the viewer has to come up with the rest, and it is by empowering the viewer that the miracle of art gains its force.
I can't always control my body the way I want to, and I can't control when I feel good or when I don't. I can control how clear my mind is. And I can control how willing I am to step up if somebody needs me.
A lot of the pieces I've done over the years have involved alterations of scale and the idea of the viewer's relationship to the object and how we see things by either enlarging or reducing objects, it causes the viewer to look at them again. It's hard to do because our culture is so bombarded by images and media. How do you make something fresh for a viewer? That's a real challenge.
Hollywood films are alienating to the spectator because they use too much dialogue, too much explication and leave no space for the viewer. They depress me. I use direct sound, mono not stereo. Just direct sound, so for every shot there are only two sources. Sound creates an intimate effect: the sensation to feel the place. It makes the viewer enter. You have the liberty to hear what you want.
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