"Immersion/Interaction," a 12-artist exhibit organized by Allison Paschke and R.K. Projects in the old nuts and bolts factory, the Kellaway Center (461 Main St, Pawtucket, through October 27), invites another sort of participatory experience.

Rather than art for your eyeballs, Nestor Armando Gil asks you to walk a winding path of salt that crunches under your feet. Andrew Lloyd Goodman invites you to smash gears made of candy on a Plexiglass screen with a camera beneath that is supposed to record the action. Naho Taruishi asks you to close your eyes as you watch her video of flickering colors; you lose your sense of hue, but register an agitated pulsing. Paul Myoda's clear acrylic Glittering Machine: Ratchet spins into motion when it senses your presence and clanks a metal star like a little gong. The results are hit-and-miss — with the ideas frequently more interesting than the experience, as in Taruishi's video for closed eyes.

ART_Hypatia-SE-58_main
TOUCH AND LISTEN A detail of Paschke’s Hypatia.

The best work here is Paschke's Hypatia, which spreads across the old factory's vast space, filling it with intricate arrangements of hundreds of small porcelain sculptures resembling pyramids (some decorated with indecipherable pictograms) or whale teeth. She invites visitors to "touch, move, and listen." If you clack the pieces on the cement floor they sound a bit like shells or bells. But they're arranged in such careful designs that it can be intimidating to consider altering them. And they're pleasing just to scan as aerial views of sprawling ancient cities or. say, an Egyptian necropolis.

At AS220's Project Space (93 Mathewson St, Providence, through October 27), Rebecca Siemering presents sculptures of angel wings, a suit, and bonnets assembled from lottery tickets and betting slips. It's not clear what she's saying about the allure of the ups (and downs) of gambling. But her crafty transformation of the recycled materials impresses.

Read Greg Cook's blog at  gregcookland.com/journal.

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ARTICLES BY GREG COOK
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