The Interaction of Coloreds was commissioned by the Whitney Museum’s Artport in 2002. The artwork was on display for the entire month of August. It’s creators were Mendi and Keith Obadike, a married couple whose work is mostly in the New Media field. The Obadikes have been collaborating since 1996.
The website blacknetart.com?IOCccs.html references using the Brown Paper Bag Test. This was used during slavery to see who was lighter and darker than the Bag. If a slave was lighter than the Bag, they were sent to work in the master’s house. If a slave was darker than the Bag, they were sent out to work in the fields. After the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the Brown Paper Bag Test was then used when African Americans sought employment, admissions black colleges, and even social clubs.
The Interactions of the Coloreds communicates the idea of colorism and racism and how it exists in today’s society. The audience gets this message by interacting with the Obadikes’ piece on the Whitney ArtPort’s website. It starts with a pop up window with four square sections with animations that circle through different parts of the body that are different shades of brown. When the user moves the mouse over each section, a different message is displayed: “If you’re white you’re right”, If you’re black get back”, “If you’re brown stick around”, or “If you’re yellow you’re mellow.” What Mendi and Keith are trying to demonstrate is how society groups different people together based on their skin tone and how that affects the privileges or exclusions that come with being associated with that certain group. Then the user is sent to a page that feels like an advertisement and is told to “Register with the IOC Color Check System and protect your community from unwanted visitors.” By using this specific language, the artists want to express to the user that by using the Color Check System, they will be able to see if they would be seen as “too dark” by the eyes of society that is instilled with racism and colorism. When the user registers for the IOC Color Check System, they are asked a series of basic and personal questions and then are asked to submit images of the skin tone. Then after a period of time, the user is given a hexadecimal code for their skin tone. All of these elements are telling the user a message through advertising and marketing to show a new and more advanced way to label people with color using hexadecimal codes for their skin tone. The idea is that people do this subconsciously and consciously, like the paper brown test, in all areas of society, including employment, education, and even amongst friends and family. Mendi and Keith’s Net.Art piece exposes this mindset in a modern technological way.
This project starts the conversation on the worldwide stage about systemic racism that was established in the 1600s, when the difference in status used to be rich or poor. Then one’s status was created based on skin color. The Interaction of Coloreds touches on the history of how there was even status created amongst slaves with the Brown Paper Bag Test and even states that this practice still exists today in some form. The Interaction of Coloreds is breaking down the idea of race labels. Getting a hexadecimal code for one’s skin tone would stop the labels of Black, White, Native, Hispanic, etc.… We could just be humans that have various shades.
Keith and Mendi are both very accomplished individuals and are more than just New Media artist. They have many showcased pieces of their music, art, and literature throughout the nation and of course the internet. The artist are known around the world. Examples of other works they are known for are; a 200-hour public sound installation at Northwestern University, a book and CD of media artworks, and a poetry collection. They as well have contributions within a wide range of musicians such as a score for playwright Anna Deavere Smith at the Lincoln Center Institute. Their list of accolated works is diverse as it is long. Their music has been aired on Chicago and New York radio, it has also been on Juniradio in Berlin. They are currently exhibiting in The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. They also are currently working on something new as artist in residence at the Weeksville Heritage Society in Brooklyn, NY. With all of their accomplished works they have been recognized with many honors and awards such as Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award, Rockefeller New Media Arts Fellowship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, and the Pick Laudati Award for Digital Art.
Mendi Obadike was born in Palo Alto, California and Keith Obadike was born in Nashville, Tennessee. Mendi’s parents were Stanford students, she later received her BA in English from Spelman College and a PhD in Literature from Duke University.
Keith’s parents was an electrical engineer and a Post office administrator, he later received his BA in Art from North Carolina Central University and an MFA in Sound Design from Yale University.
Though the two were raised in different environments they were both eventually drawn to one commonality in their lives, art and computers. Both Mendi and Keith were drawn to different genres of art and the new world of computers. They did not just use computers for what they were typically used for, at the time. They applied them to the world of art, whether it be for music or graphics. Through years of experimentation and going through their own careers, they were both driven to turn heads and provoke change through art regardless of the medium of choice; music, new media, literature, and more. Together they have done just that, turn heads and provoke change.