Students rushing down the hall toward a class may want to pause before the Media Test Wall in Building 56, which this week features fidgety schoolchildren anxious to get out of class. "Classroom" by Anthony Goicolea uses photographs and videos to show adolescents acting out societal taboos and darkly humorous scenarios in hyper-realistic tableaux. On view through Sept. 19, the work portrays two anxious students: one tugs nervously at his hair until he pulls it out, the other constructs a set of chalk fingernail extensions that allow him to completely cover a chalkboard in one explosive burst of drawing. While nervousness is familiar to most people, these kids' humorously absurd coping mechanisms will not be. The video stills above show the young man before and after pulling out his hair (left) and his frantic-drawing classmate (right).
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on September 15, 2004 (download PDF).
