Books
Sarah Oppenheimer: Sensitive Machine
Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art, Hamilton College
Sarah Oppenheimer: Sensitive Machine
How Oppenheimer’s complex artworks break down barriers between art, audience and architecture.
Edited with text by Tracy L. Adler. Text by Suzanne Keen, Sarah Oppenheimer, Seph Rodney
Designed by Tim Laun and Natalie Wedeking
Published 2023 | ISBN: 9781636810638
This publication documents the four interactive artworks by New York–based artist Sarah Oppenheimer (born 1972) created for the Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College in the context of her greater artistic oeuvre.With vivid and striking reproductions and insightful contributions by Tracy L. Adler, Suzanne Keen, Sarah Oppenheimer and Seph Rodney, the book explores the artist’s multifaceted approach to empathy, agency, audience and cocreation, among many other themes in her work. Oppenheimer considers the space of the museum as a site of experimentation, where visitors experience the curiosity and joy of transforming the artworks themselves. In Oppenheimer’s words, “You have to enter the temporal network in order for the work to exist.”