Experience by Proxy

From Richard Serra 's commencement address to this year's graduates of Williams College:

I have no problem with the virtual reality on your screens as long as you are aware that it is virtual. My concern is that experience by proxy is a poor substitute for the reality of the interactive space we inhabit.

As a sculptor I believe that perception structures thought and that to see is to think and conversely to think is to see.

The virtual reality of the media, be it television or Internet, limits our perception in that it affects our sense of space. It immobilizes our ability to apprehend actual physical space. Don’t let the rhetoric of simulation steal away the immediacy of your experience.

Keep it real, keep it in the moment. No one perceives anything alike; we only perceive as we are and it is our individual reality that counts.

Richard Serra's Torqued Ellipse IV (1998) and Intersection II (1992) being installed in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden at The Museum of Modern Art in preparation for Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years (June 3 - September 10, 2007).