Background

Can an artist compete with Disneyworld? In North Adams, Massachusetts, artist Eric Rudd has opened his own theme park attraction called the Dark Ride Project, and viewers get to travel through "creative space" on a space-age vehicle called the Sensory Integrator. "Dark Ride" is the term used within the industry to describe theme park rides in the dark, and Eric Rudd has combined theme park devices and new technologies to create an artist's version of a ride. Rudd's creative dream-come-reality is actually a large scale art exhibition - with a most unusual look and culminating with an actual ride into the art.

Even the entrance becomes an adventure. Walking through the front door takes the viewer directly into a cave environment with video monitors embedded into the "stone." In the next chamber, internationally respected museum director Walter Hopps gives an introduction to the Dark Ride concept in an illustrated fifteen minute presentation titled "A Future for Art."

Passing by additional information terminals, viewers (or Voyagers as they are called here) get to enjoy the exhibition highlight in an eleven minute ride on the Sensory Integrator. Boarding the Sensory Integrator is an experience in itself -- the computer controlled vehicle resembles a menacing spacecraft right out of a Star Wars movie. When a hood device lowers itself over the viewer's head and the vehicles moves, the only viewing port becomes filled with abstract imagery - created by the artist- as the Sensory Integrator travels in the darkness of creative space. The images appearing through the restricted viewing port is the artist's work- and the experience of seeing the art becomes part of the artwork itself.

After the voyage, viewers are directed into the cavernous dark "Space Sculpture Garden" where blue lighted trails encourage the exploration along various routes. Walking around the darkened space, sculptures made from space age materials polyurethane foam and GE Plastic's Lexan light up. One path leads through the "Purity Vacuum" of white figures suspended in a white cave-like environment. Additional galleries and information monitors complete the exhibition as viewers become totally immersed in the creative mind of artist Eric Rudd.

If Eric Rudd can accomplish for art museums what Disney has done in the theme park world, museums of the future may just have a new look and attract a whole new audience. The Dark Ride Project exhibition presents a revolutionary new way for artists to approach art and a new way for museums to overcome traditional obstacles for a media conscious audience. As Giotto offered an infinite new world for artists centuries ago with the use of visual perspective, artist Eric Rudd offers an equally new world by controlling the viewer's field of vision, enhancing the art in a time sequence and letting the viewing experience become the art itself. By blurring the definition of art museums and theme park attractions and by implementing multi-media technology, Eric Rudd combines the best of both worlds.

The Dark Ride Project exhibition encourages visitors who may have physical, cultural or educational obstacles when visiting traditional art exhibitions, to get involved. Various presentations are geared for younger viewers, translated in various languages, signed for the hearing impaired, handicapped accessible, and generally made fun to see. This is one museum exhibition where kids just may line up to go see.

Eric Rudd is a pioneering artist who over the years has built up an impressive record of important art, using technologically advanced materials. An introductory presentation, "A Future for Art," is hosted by Walter Hopps, one of the world's foremost authorities on contemporary art, whose historical overview traces the important roots leading to the new age art concept of the Dark Ride Project.

The exhibition is open in North Adams during the summer seasons. Other installations are being discussed for other museum sites. Located in the Berkshires (western Massachusetts), North Adams is an important art destination - home to the Contemporary Artists Center and the forthcoming Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as neighbor to the renowned Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute and the Williams College Museum of Art.

Major support for the Dark Ride Project has been given by United Coatings- Sherwin Williams Company, G.E. Plastics, Mobay Corporation, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, Cultural Council of Northern Berkshire, Berkshire Training and Employment Program, Walter Hopps, Martin Hatcher (Technical Designer), Joe Piazzo (MCLA Media Center), Jonathan Aceto (Ride Music), Joyce Wing (Project Manager) and many other participants/interns.