Mural comprises a network of white walls on the 4th floor of the Whitney Museum that house, organize, and partition the retrospective exhibition, Scanning: The Aberrant Architectures of Diller + Scofidio. A dissident robot, designed in collaboration with Honeybee Robotics travels on a continuous track along the major partition walls of the galleries and sabotages the visual and acoustic isolation it they produce. Guided by an intelligent navigator, the robot randomly selects a point within a three-dimensional matrix of coverage and guides the drill to the location. The drill pierces the drywall leaving a 1/2” hole. The holes initially begin as lone blemishes on the pristine white walls but as the exhibition continues, the walls become increasingly perforated. Eventually, holes on both sides of walls align, opening views from gallery to gallery. Clusters of holes randomly open up sections of wall surface, making the wall increasingly unstable. The three-month performance work progressively contaminates the galleries with a constant background drone, visual distractions, and light leaks. Rather than securing a neutral background for the art works on display, the white walls actively compete for attention, thus resisting total submission to the collecting and mediating function of the museum retrospective.
