BEARHUNT

In America, the teddy bear got its start with a cartoon—reproduced in the
gallery to the left of the installation. Penned on November 16, 1902, the
original cartoon, drawn by Clifford Berryman and titled "Drawing the Line in Mississippi," showed President Theodore Roosevelt refusing to shoot a bear.

According to the tale, Roosevelt had traveled to Mississippi to help settle
a border dispute between that state and Louisiana, and his hosts took him bear hunting. The hunting was so poor that someone captured an older bear and invited Roosevelt to shoot. Roosevelt's reluctance to fire at such a helpless target inspired Berryman to draw his cartoon with its play on the two ways Roosevelt was drawing a line—settling a border dispute and refusing to harm a captive animal.

Inspired by the cartoon, I created an interactive installation that played with the drawing of lines. I also experiment with different paradigms of interactivity. For example, on a very indirect level, I provoke casual conversations and associations in the viewing audience in presenting them with nostalgic emblems of childhood play—stuffed animals and videogames.

The bear images scrolling on the monitor with the command, “Shoot me or Save Me" invite direct interaction with the keyboard. Viewers can choose to shoot a bear in a retro-styled Space Invaders game that ends not in a victory but with a drawing of bullet trajectories. Or, viewers can adopt a teddy from the wall.

In the case of a bear adoption, viewers must replace the bear with one of the artist’s line drawings and a survey form. The configuration of the wall of bears changes continually. In this case, at the end of the exhibition, only the artist’s drawings remained.