10 - The Michigan Daily - Monday, July 10, 2006

A lovely play
on words
By Mary Kate Varnau
Daily Arts Writer
FILM REVIEW * * *
On a weekend when the moviegoing options are huge-
budget adventure flicks like "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead
Man's Chest" and "Superman Returns,"
a tiny little intellectual giant of a docu- Wordplay
mentary comes to the Michigan Theater. At the Michigan
"Wordplay" is a neatly placed alternative
to the monotony of over-the-top-action IFC Films
and predictable blockbuster plots.
Half of "Wordplay" is a biography of Will Shortz,
the legendary New York Times crossword puzzle edi-
tor, and half is a documentary of the largest and most
prestigious crossword competition in the United States.
The film begins with Shortz's puzzle-making history,
from his boyhood fascination with solving problems to
when he created his own curriculum in "Enigmatology"
at Indiana University.
The audience is taken briefly through the history of the
crossword tradition at the Times, and into the beginning
of Shortz's career. From the streets of Manhattan to Stam-
ford, Connecticut, we're swept into the fast-paced Ameri-
can Crossword Puzzle Tournament, founded by Shortz in
the '70s and still directed and hosted by the "Puzzle Mas-
ter" himself every year.
"Wordplay" chronicles the historic aspect of the newspa-
per crossword institution, and it also gives the audience a
feel for the huge scope of its impact on a day-to-day basis.
More than 50 million Americans flip to the puzzle page
each week. The film features several cameos - some of
the United States' biggest names in politics, entertainment
and sports - expressing why the crossword is important to
them. Among Shortz's biggest fans are Bill Clinton, Bob
Dole, the Indigo Girls, Yankees pitcher Mike Mussina, film-
maker Ken Burns and The Daily Show's Jon Stuart, who
says, "I am a Times puzzle fan. I will solve the USA Today,

Surrealism comes
to UMMA off-site

"Look at my bowtie!"
but I don't feel good about myself."
The film is well-paced. It has a nice, easy-going, Sun-
day-afternoon sort of appeal, while the ACPT provides
enough action and tension to keep the audience interested
for an hour and a half. Its structure is impeccable, and
director Patrick Creadon strikes a nice balance with the
funny, light-hearted material and the crosswords-are-
serious-business feel.
The power in "Wordplay" derives from how it makes
the most ordinary activity feel special and universal. Most
audience members won't have thought twice about their
morning-coffee-puzzle routine before this film. "Word-
play" imbues the crossword experience with an impor-
tance and an esteem. But when the credits roll, it's hard
to shake the feeling that while the film is enjoyable, you
could probably stay home and watch something similar
on PBS for free.

By Andrew Klein
Managing Arts Editor
FINE ARTS REVIEW
When it comes to expressing or
understanding the human uncon-
scious - specifically through
art - it's an
understandable
cliche for the Gregogry
viewer/reader Barsamian:
to deem such Time and
exercises as Transformation
psychedelic, Now through
trippy or just Sept. 17
plain weird.
Right now, at Free
the corner of Atthe UMMA off-site
South Univer-
sity Avenue and South Forest Street,
there's some weird stuff going on.
Enter George Barsamian, an
Armenian-American, New York-
based sculptor, whose exhibit, "Time
and Transforma-
tion," running Barsamian's
through Sep-
tember, is the are not dedi
first to grace
the University's either the ur
Museum of Art's
off-site gal- or visual ph
lery. UMMA's the are a 4
website best y
describes Bars- combinatior
amian's unique
medium as
"three-dimensional animated sculp-
ture." Such a description hardly pre-
pares the viewer for Barsamian's
aesthetic.
A former bicycle mechanic, the
exhibit showcases how Barsamian
uses simple, dated techniques as his
foundation. The zoetrope, invented
in 1834, is a rapidly spinning hol-
low drum with images fixed along
its inner circumference. Slits along
the outside allow light to enter. As
the machine spins, the human eye
"fills in" the blank spots between

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the images, creating the illusion of
never-ending motion. Barsamian
uses this throwback technique, along
with strobe lights, and incorporates
the surreal vocabulary of the uncon-
sciousness. The result is an incred-
ible series of "three-dimensional
animated sculptures" that delight
the eye and stimulate the brain: Sal-
vador Dali in motion.
Since 1983, Barsamian has duti-
fully kept a tape recorder near his
bed for the purpose of immediately
cataloguing his dreams before they
slip back into their unconscious
beginnings. His observations are at
the center of what he calls a "three-
dimensional window into the world
of the subconscious where the emo-
tions run wild and self-deception is
an oxymoron."
It would be assumed, then, that
such imagery would be highly sub-
jective - ideas and emotions per-
sonal to Barsamian. As a viewer,
appreciating Sur-
sculptures realist art (such
as Dali's iconic
cated to images) seems a
crapshoot at best.
nCOfsCLOUs We might be able
to read a meta-
enomena, phor or two, but
- mC in the end, the art-
ist's unconscious
1of both. remains incom-
'prehensible. Bars-
amian, though, is
able to move beyond these limits.
In "Lather," two hands endlessly
wash themselves. The dripping lath-
er morphs first into a paper bag and
then into an egg, with cracks over a
human face with a third eye. Shock-
ing and playful at first, "Lather" is
not solely a snapshot of the artist's
inner mind. It's a satirized allegory
of humanity's obsessive need for
knowledge. "Untitled," perhaps the
exhibit's most dynamic piece, shows
a small room with a large paint-
ing of a writer. Balled up pieces of
paper writhe, slide and burn around
the room, as the figure in the paint-
ing tears up whatever it is he is writ-
ing and throws it through the frame
and into the room. Writers block has
never been so elegantly stated.
Barsamian's sculptures are not
dedicated to either the unconscious
or visual phenomena - they are a
dynamic combination of both. By
working with religious faith, the
artistic conundrum as well as other
universal understandings, Barsami-
an's surrealism doesn't isolate itself
as incomprehensibly subjective.
Whether the viewer attempts to dis-
sect his images, or simply enjoys the
exhibit for its innovation, Barsamian
succeeds on all levels.
Is Barsamian pointing to a uni-
versal unconscious? Probably not.
But his sculptures transcend bound-
aries of media and perception. The
unconsciousness is an intangible
balance of neural pathways and
faith. But Barsamian puts it into a
recognizable context, one that we
all are a part of.


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