Curious about what the Towson MFA students thought about their work in the MFA Biennial? Read what Ursula Minervini and Peter Eide had to say in the excerpts below or check out their full responses here.

Peter Eide

Q: Do you feel the project was successful and if so, how? If you did not feel it was successful, how was it not?

PE: I think the piece was moderately successful. I think the participatory element was minimal enough that I would have expected to see more people engaging with it. I was a little disappointed that people were more interested watching the videos of our individual studio practices, rather than feeling welcome to place themselves in our “studios”. There were a few moments where I witnessed people playing around in front of the green screen, in relation to the content of the videos, and actually made it enjoyable to watch. The few that actually interacted with it, did so in relation to the specific content, which made it successful.

Ursula Minervini

Q: What would you have done differently?

UM: Having seen the video in action, I might rethink the placement of the green screen and projector. Working with the space we had, visitors were forced to walk through the video in order to enter the exhibition. I observed a number of visitors “running the gauntlet,” putting their heads down and moving right through, either out of shyness, embarrassment, or simply a desire not to block the entrance to the show. I wonder if there would have been a way to set things up outside of the main current of traffic, allowing viewers to enter the video and experience it in a slightly less public way. I enjoyed interacting with Sean Glover’s “acoustic mirror,” but probably wouldn’t have done so if I felt that I was in people’s way. That said, I was not able to stay late into the evening and also have not seen the video live during regular gallery hours. An audience might react differently after a bit of drinking or in a less crowded daytime setting.