Harmon receives international recognition

OU School of Art and Art History student Riley Harmon recently received international recognition for his piece entitled, “What It Is Without the Hand That Wields It,” through an article featured in an issue of Rolling Stone Italy, as well as admittance into the highly competitive ArtBots 2008 robot talent show in Dublin, Ireland.
 Harmon created the sculpture as an assignment for OU Art Professor Adam Brown.
It was then set up in the basement installation room of the School of Art and Art History and remained there for a week that Harmon had a video game server running in another room that made it available for anyone in the world to connect and play in the game.
When a player was killed in the game, the server communicated it to the sculpture and a stream of fake blood was released.
 Harmon sent out  press releases over the Internet to advertise for players to come and play on the server.
It became syndicated on a number of art and technology Web sites and blogs, including that of a researcher at Stanford. The researcher runs a video game and art culture Web site.
He notified Harmon a few weeks later that he was a contributor for Rolling Stone in Milan. He interviewed Harmon, which led to an article being published about the unique installation.
The ArtBots 2008 robot talent show to be held in Dublin, Ireland, chose only 15 participants from an overwhelming amount of submissions. Harmon will travel to Dublin to install and show his work for the show in September.
Harmon’s installation is a semi-finalist for an Adobe(R) Design Achievement Awards (ADAA). It was also displayed at Momentum, an art show in Tulsa in June. 
Riley is the son of Kenney and Debra Harmon, Shawnee.  He is a 2005 graduate of Shawnee High School.