Recorders Exhibition vs Designed Disorder

Today I visited Manchester City Art Gallery and The Cube Gallery, to see two separate exhibitions.

At the Manchester City Art Gallery was the exhibition 'Recorders' by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. I had not heard of him before went into the exhibition without any information at all. When looking around the pieces, it seemed to me that they may not be classed as pieces in the traditional art sense. They were very audience based and it was the audience that initiated and made the pieces work and what they were. When walking around the space, there were different objects around the rooms that you had to interact with. In the centre of the room were a circle of microphones on stands which invited the viewer to speak into them. There was another piece in which you placed your personal items on a scanner that gave the illusion of scanning objects at an airport. In the entrance of the exhibition it also appeared that the first piece was a screen with blown up finger prints on, in which the audience placed their thumb in a scanner and it appeared on the screen, getting smaller and smaller every time one was scanned until it could not be seen anymore.
The exhibition was very enjoyable, but I didn't really know what the work was about and found myself just giving into interacting with the pieces as if it would give me some kind of answer.

Following on from this, I went to The Cube Gallery to see the Designed Disorder Exhibition.

This Exhibition, was part of the AND Festival, (Abandon Normal Devices) in which different events were held around Manchester.
Immediately I found myself dismissing the work and not really taking it in. Again, I didn't take the time to find out what the work was really about and I found that in this exhibition the lack of information I chose not to gain, really effected my opinion on the work to begin with.
James Gilpin was an artist there who spoke about his work, and how he created whiskey from Diabetic urine. His talk was interesting about his piece and how he created it, through distillation and other means. It also invited the audience in as they could taste a sample of the whiskey. It became clearer after hearing James speak that the work for Designed Disorders was about science and products, not art pieces.

When discussing the two exhibitions back at University with the course, they both unveiled different outcomes that were not expected. It appeared at first that the majority of the course enjoyed the Recorders Exhibition more so than Designed Disorders, because we found it entertaining and easy to interact with, it didn't matter that we didn't fully understand what the work was about, because we seemed to be too distracted by the things we could touch and speak into or scan.

Carrying on from this, to me out of the two exhibitions this one was more memorable. It didn't strike to obvious to me at the time, but everything that had gone on in the space was recorded, if you scanned your thumb, it was now recorded, same when speaking into the microphones. This idea seems quite un nerving and intrusive, but because we are so blind sighted with the fact we can touch things, and in an art gallery you usually can't, we don't realise this. This seems quite an intelligent aspect that may have been deliberate by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer.

Comparing it to the Designed Disorder exhibition, it became clear that the pieces were not art pieces but products. Each designer had created something that questioned something or experimented with an idea and changed it. It became evident through the discussion on the course, the Recorders exhibition was momentarily fun and entertaining which is why it seemed more preferred. The Designed Disorder was less obvious and allows the audience to take it upon themselves to find out more about the work when looking around.

It could be said Recorders was more popular because it was entertaining as opposed to Designed Disorders where the audience had to think, and in reality we didn't really want to. We expect to be entertained, and have become ignorant to Art. What we gained today, from discussion is that we have to not judge as quick and under the layer of work.