Recently, with just an hour to kill, my friend Jesse suggested we go the Chrysler Museum of Art.

I have no great affinity for Tiffany Glass or French Impressionists. I was unshaven and it was cold outside. In short, the idea of a museum was absolutely ludicrous.

“What exactly are we going down there to see?” I said to Jesse.

“They have a new exhibit,” he said. “You’ll see. You’ll like it.”

“You realize I have to be somewhere in an hour.”

“That’s enough time, but you’ll want to go back.”

Daniel Rozin's "Snow Mirror"

He was right. The exhibit is Daniel Rozin’s Contrast: Interactive Work, tucked away in the Chrysler’s second-floor Frank Photography Galleries. Rozin’s works can best be explained as a series of abstract, technologically-enabled mirrors.

In Snow Mirror, you walk into a darkened room where an 8’x10’ screen is playing a stream of television fuzz – but oddly, some irregular movement is catching on the screen. As you stop to take a closer look, out of the chaos an image comes into focus. It’s you.

Despite boasting free admission for over a year now, most non-members still treat the Chrysler Museum as an attraction to gorge upon, in its entirety, in a single visit. That strategy makes sense at Busch Gardens, where each additional ride brings down the fixed cost, but the Chrysler’s new model asks visitors to savor each bite, not to cram it all in. The Chrysler wants to be tapas, not Old Country Buffet.

Their free admission is a boldly humble call: “Come by for lunch or just to say hello. Come by after work, after church or after Target. We know you’ve got other things to do, so come when you can and make art important for you. We want to be a bigger part of your bigger life.”

With possibilities as infinite as the viewer’s own creativity, it would be impossible to catalog Daniel Rozin’s installations. When you show up, it’s important to note that Rozin encourages people to bring cameras to record their experiences. Personally, I’d also encourage you to bring friends and props.

Have you ever noticed how the tone of brushed metal shifts in the light? This is the subject of Rozin’s more abstract piece, Brushed Steel Mirror, where a honeycomb of steel discs individually rotate to echo its subject’s form. The Chrysler special exhibit, on view through April, boasts five Daniel Rozin works in total, each providing a unique window back onto its visitor. I’ll be back for another visit again this afternoon, and I’m sure many afternoons to come.

I was intrigued not only by the end product of Rozin’s work, but also the technology that makes it possible. When I interviewed the New York-based artist, I wanted to dig deeper into both the immediate and underlying aspects of his work.

AltDaily: How did you select the Chrysler as a place to exhibit your work?

Daniel Rozin: I have been in touch with the Director, William Hennessey, for a few years now. He attended my exhibitions in New York and visited my studio and together we decided that it would be a good match. Mounting a show of my work, or any digital interactive art takes lots of resources and know-how. The Chrysler is very courageous to embark on this adventure and they have done a wonderful job in setting up the pieces and taking good care of them.

One of the most energizing parts of your work is that it interacts with the audience: most art is passive and requires the viewer to initiate contact, where yours is active.

Interactivity and viewer participations are themes that I explore with my art pieces, but they are also a very convenient way to keep the viewers engaged in the art. A viewer that is engaged in a playful dialog with an art piece spends more time with it and pays more attention to the details of the piece. This allows me to use different subtleties in the pieces that are perhaps not obvious in first look but reveal themselves upon further investigation.

Your artist statements are pretty much void of the “this is a piece of my soul” stuff.

Even though my statements usually do not include too much soul searching or Art with capital A language, every one of my pieces addresses a subject that I find worth exploration such as Time, Evolution, analog vs digital, self-reflection, interactivity, vanity, point of view and issues of image creation and human visual perception. The playfulness and immediate gratification that most of my pieces offer is a tool to explore these themes and to engage an audience in my exploration.

Daniel Rozin's "Brushed Steel Mirror"

I examined the X By Y piece carefully for how it was made and it made me think of automated blackout blinds that had been modified. Is this a casemod or original design?

The X by Y piece as well as my other pieces are made by me from scratch. The X by Y piece is totally hand made all the way down to the laminated wooden slats.

The mechanisms and circuitry required a lot of integration. What role does system integration play in your art?

I am very proud of the design and craftsmanship of my pieces and it is important to me that all aspects of the piece are done by myself. This includes the fabrication of the pieces as well as the mechanical and electronic development, the electronic circuits and the computer programming.

For other artists, with less technical skill, who deserves credit for their systems integration?

Just as collage, montage and assemblage pieces use found objects, digital and electronic artists can choose to use or modify existing systems, assemblies and components to create something totally new and original. The fact that I choose to design and fabricate my piece myself does not mean that every artist should do the same.

Ultimately, how do you define yourself: designer, artist or craftsman? Are the lines blurring?

I was trained as an industrial designer and the discipline and process of design is one I take with me to almost all aspects of my life, and certainly to the process of my art creation. I find that art is very much a design process; the main difference is that the client is yourself… but the need to communicate, compromise, compose and reiterate are common to both art and design. I take pride in the craft of my pieces, some of which is exposed and obvious and some of which is not such, as the computer programming and electronics. So I guess I am an artist, designer and craftsman, and I think that the borders between these disciplines are certainly being blurred.

For anyone planning to see your work here in Norfolk, what mindset should they go into the gallery with to best experience your art?

I hope that a visit to my show at the Chrysler Museum will involve a few layers of discovery for the viewer. The first layer of discovery is a purely aesthetic one; both I and the Chrysler Museum have put much thought and effort in making the pieces and space gratifying on an aesthetic level. The next layer is exploring the interactivity and playfulness of the pieces and enjoying them on that level. For most people this is followed by a period of time trying to figure out the pieces in terms of technology. Once these initial stages of exposure to the pieces are over, I hope that the viewer take a more contemplative view of the piece and try to figure out what is it that I am trying to convey. Unlike some museums, the Chrysler has placed pretty comprehensive labels by each piece and they have done an excellent job of articulating the important information about each piece. I encourage the visitors to read those labels to fully experience the pieces.

What are you working on now?

Even though I have been creating art pieces around the theme of mirrors and self-reflection for about 15 years, and I often feel like I should move on, I am still very curious about these themes. There are still a few mirror-like pieces that I want to build, using various materials and techniques. Currently I am very busy with my university job – I am an Associate Arts Professor at ITP, Tisch School of the arts in NYU – where I teach and advise tens of graduate students. Hopefully towards the summer I can resume my creative work and make new pieces.

We hope so. Thanks for talking with us, and you’re welcome in Virginia any time.

This Saturday The Chrysler is hosting an Art Forum about Daniel Rozin’s exhibition, Contrast. Daniel Rozin will give a lecture at 3 p.m. in the Kaufman Theater. For the Chrysler’s official page about Daniel Rozin’s exhibit, click here. The Daily Press also made a great video composite of the exhibit, available here.