Carla Gannis’s “peep-o-rama” playfully examines what it has meant to gaze at a sculpture throughout the canon of art history. Inspired by one of Gannis’ vivid dreams, the piece was further informed by the Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-1678) peep box show at the National Gallery in London. To create the colors and forms in the peep box backgrounds, she trained an AI using images from Times Square pornographic peepshows (for the colors) and images from Dutch painting (for the forms). Once a collector purchases Gannis’ work, the mystery of the peep box’s contents is revealed through a variety of unique experiences, including a view modeled after one of Hoogstraten’s works, a single-person VR view (which allows you to visit the inside the peep box itself), and a social VR version where you can hang out with your friends in a space-age bachelorette pad. The peep box sculpture addresses such serious topics as gender and body politics in art history, the idea of public and private ownership of data, and how technology challenges the very notion of seeing.
