Magical carpet ride at the Gardner Museum

Are works of art objects of great skill and beauty or the thoughts and feelings they stimulate?

At the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the Raqs Media Collective explores that question through a new exhibit that inspires profound questions about the role of art and technology in a media-saturated age.

Titled "The Great Bare Mat & Constellation, two installations by a trio of artists based in New Delhi, India, are at once, provocative, bewildering and illuminating.

Their first work is a hand-woven carpet in Calderwood Hall placed before "The Vinegar Tasters, a 17th-century Japanese screen from the museums collection. The screen depicts the ancient sages, Buddha, Confucius and Laozi, founders of three major Oriental philosophies, sampling vinegar beneath a pine tree.

While the screens image suggests, perhaps, the sages disparate teachings lead down similar paths to enlightenment, the carpets motif is far more conceptual and esoteric.

Woven by expert Bulgarian weavers, the carpets design references the heavenly constellation known as "Ursa Major, or The Great Bear, against a drawing that traces connections among three computers of Raqs members and the outside world during one hours time.

Raqs members said the intricate designs on the carpet reflect the complexity of contemporary communication contrasted against the elemental simplicity of stargazing.

Pieranna Cavalchini, curator of contemporary art at the Gardner, said the carpet will be "a space for conversation by visitors and a series of four scheduled "exchanges over the next four months. Each exchange will feature four speakers with a Raqs member as moderator, focusing on a theme such as "What does intelligence do to us (Oct. 25) or "Why does music move us. (Dec. 8)

The second installation in the Special Exhibition Gallery is a silent animated video that features images of mythical figures of beasts, birds and monsters made from art in the Gardners collection photographed by Raqs members.

Running in a silent loop, the animated video resembles Wayang, the Indonesian shadow puppet theater that relates traditional folktales using the shadows cast by puppets against a backlit screen.

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Magical carpet ride at the Gardner Museum