Is there a secret you have kept forever that is now eating you up inside? Six studio art and electronic media arts design (eMAD) students addressed this feeling in the Victoria H. Myhren Gallery Thursday.

“Everyone is worried about their secrets, especially today with all the identity theft,” said Laleh Mehran. Mehran is the professor for the installation art class that presented their work at the gallery.

She described the show, Your Secret Here, as a “cathartic experience.” Experience is the right word to use because this show did not involve an audience viewing works of art. Rather, the audience actively experienced the art and was even encouraged to add to the show. The installation explored the increase of public life being publicly exposed with Internet sites like Facebook and MySpace.

The cathartic journey began with an invitation to write a secret on a small piece of paper and either post it on the wall with others or to shred it. Secrets posted on the wall ranged from “I cheated on four exams” to “I slept with my boss.”

The shredder had a live video feed projected on the large wall behind it. As a person shredded his or her secret the projected image shook and distorted the picture to ‘shred’ the secret visually in addition to physically shredding it.

“There’s shredding on many levels,” said Mehran. Another way secrets could be shred was by confessing the secret into a microphone behind a hung curtain. Instead of comprehensible words a booming distorted voice sounded to aurally shred the secrets. This was done with a software program.

“There is an organic element but the show is also very technical,” said Mehran.

After shredding a secret, participants were encouraged to add their shreds to the formation of shredded paper that lay on the floor behind the shredder. The meticulously placed shreds took up the majority of the gallery. Audience members were also able to walk through the carefully placed formation.

“The floor was a last minute addition to the show and it’s my personal favorite,” said graduate student Allie Pohl who worked on Your Secrete Here. The class was given the space and two weeks to create and install the art.

“With the huge white wall [at the back of the gallery] we knew we wanted a projection,” said Pohl about beginning the process of creating the installation.

The show provided an outlet for the audience to expose their secrets in a secure way and also to shred them on different levels.

Your Secret Here had an air of permanence and weight due to the subject matter of secrets, but, the installation was very temporary.

After being open to the public for only two hours, the shreds were swept up, the posted secrets taken down and the microphone, shredder and projector were put away. The interactive show that for a couple of hours was a place to purge the stress of having a secret became the Myhren Gallery again.