EVENT: A CD-ROM of Lessick's game Portrait/AntiPortrait, originally created for the Bellevue Art Museum. To buy a copy, call the Bank of America Gallery (585-3200); there's also a version available at www.lessick.net.
Tell me about Portrait/AntiPortrait. "It's an interactive art game: a two-person card game that takes a subject and an artist, and has them look at themselves through a series of 12 questions. It was originally created when I had an artist's residency at the Bellevue Art Museum for the exhibition Game Show in the fall of 1999. But one of the important things that I like to do with public art--the public way of making artwork--is to involve the viewer. Instead of a passive experience, the viewer is able to create an artwork through working in this game. Portrait/AntiPortrait comes up with two nine-part visuals that the players actually create. The game gets the participants in the artwork to talk about themselves--the most interesting thing for any viewer."
What's the purpose of the antiportrait? "The subject answers the questions, and the artist has to answer with the opposite. It's very conceptual."
And sometimes the opposites aren't obvious. "Sure. What's the opposite of what you perceive to be the greatest threat? There are obvious things like nuclear war and AIDS, but then there's also spouses, and vermin. So depending on the scale of what your answer is and how you see your portrait, it changes the composition. One of the goals of the game is to get the viewer to read symbols. The antiportrait acts as a visual mirror."
