torolab

Torolab is a Tijuana-based collective of artists and architects that "explore the logistics of daily life in the twin borders of Tijuana and San Diego" as well as "the artistic potential of locative technologies." Participants of The Region of the Transborder Trousers wore clothing with GPS technology for five days to document their passage between Tijuana and San Diego.

This project is subversive in that it illustrates the ease with which one can pass between the two countries in spite of border control and security. However, Torolab focuses on this border as "an opportunity for aesthetic experience rather than overt political critique." Torolab seeks to create a huge billboard/pedestrian bridge on the border where people can enter text or image to be displayed on the face with a computer located at the foot of the bridge.

electronic disturbance theater

Electronic Disturbance Theater is a group of artists who seek to explore the intersection of art and politics with politically charged digital art. This group "initiated a series of online civil disobedience acts," including using code to disable websites so that they barely function or function very slowly.

The creator of EDT first worked as a member of ACTUP, an AIDS activist organization. This was interesting to me because ACTUP is known for the scale of its political protests and for its effect on AIDS policy in the US. Knowing that the creator of EDT first participated in this large scale political movement and then became the creator of an online-based political protest organization challenges that idea that digital protests are less effective than in-person ones.

jonah brucker-cohen and katherine moriwaki

In "Umbrella.net," Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Katherine Moriwaki explore "the aesthetics of mobile ad-hoc networks that form spontaneously between wireless devices." The umbrellas open when a wireless device is turned out and arches connect groups of people. I think that this is interesting because it depicts connectivity in an age where this is as simple as digital interaction.

Even in a world where we can be connected instantly with anyone via social networking sites, email, text messaging, and other things, people still feel alone. We're connected by wireless networks but that doesn't determine how disconnected we can feel sometimes because so much has turned into cold, digital interaction.

This work is notable because it was created by a team of artists and engineers, which is often a characteristic of new media art. Art isn't always just the concept and execution of one person, but rather a team effort.

natalie bookchin

Natalie Bookchin's web project "The Intruder" is based on the short story by Jorge Luis Borges of the same title. The story is about a pair of brothers who fall in love with the same woman and eventually sell her to a brothel. In the end, she dies and the brothers become friends again. Bookchin's work is created with ten short interactive sites modeled after early video games. In one segment, "the player is implicated in the narrative by the feminine 'ball' back and forth, symbolically taking the role of one of the brothers and enacting the cruel exchange of the woman as if she were an object with no agency."

On a larger scale, Bookchin's work also offers commentary on feminine identity in an art world dominated by male artists (digital media). Bookchin's other work is also overtly political. She has created a site critizing President George W. Bush, as well as a new project called "Metapet," where the viewer acts as a corporate executive controlling human beings.

ARTEVENT: Mary Stewart creativity lecture

Creativity (create!)

Mary Stewart lectured about creativity, but it was more of a workshop than a lecture. I was struck by a lot of the phrases that she used or ways she described things without stating them outright. She talked about creativity as a way of being "born" every day, of "piercing the mundane" or "having new eyes." She said that sometimes we focus on finding an answer to a question or problem that we don't realize that the question is more important, she urged us to "get rid of answers you already know."

She gave good advice like "try failing more" and "never hope more than you work." She also discussed Robert Frank's photography project, The Americans. Last year I saw this exhibit at the National gallery in DC and then again at the San francisco museum of modern art and it was especially inspiring to me. She made the point that Robert Frank took 27000 photographs for a book of 83 images. She also brought up several different ways of problem solving. She said, "The best ideas start at a place beyond conciousness."

During the lecture, I started remembering a lot of art that has been inspiring to me and scribbled a lot of artist names in the margins of my notebook. This came at a time when I was struggling with the vector self portrait project and it was really helpful in clearing up some of that frustration.

ARTEVENT: Amze Emmons artist talk

Interrupted Lives: Human Migration in War and Peace

Amze Emmons gave a talk about art, migration, and politics. When Dr Cain introduced Amze Emmons, he stated that there is a "mutual attraction" between art and political science, which was interesting to me because I am an art history and political science double major. I really enjoyed Amze Emmons' talk. He cited his main interests dealing with migration to be place and space, displacement by choice or force, tourist vs. refugee, things we carry and the things we leave behind, the politics of architecture, and images in visual culture. He took pictures of spaces that didn't really work or were odd to him. He also discussed the idea of global appropriation and how some things lose their meaning when put in a new context.

I was attracted to his work. Amze Emmons creates scenes of displacement without any people in them, which leaves you feeling sort of haunted when you're looking at it. His use of color and line were notable to me. Also, in the backgrounds of many of his pictures (an the one I have here), what's interesting is what isn't there rather than what is. For instance, the skylines are not colored in, but they're what you notice. Similarly, you notice the lack of human presence almost right away. Art is really successful when you are still thinking about it days later.

John Klima

John Klima is a new media artist with a background in photography as well as programming. He went to school at SUNY Purchase. His piece Glasbead, an interface that "exemplifies the convergent nature of new media art." Klima was inspired by Herman Hesse's novel "The Glass Bead Game"which has been described by some as a sort of "metaphor for the internet."

Klima's piece "enables up to 20 simealtanous participants to make music collaboratively." Users can pull the stems of this flower like orb to create sound.

I find this piece interesting because it combines visual and auditory tools to provide an interactive place where music can be created. Klima approaches his work from both an art as well as a technological background, which is true of many new media artists.

Vuk Cosic

Vuk Cosic is a Slovenian artist first trained as a archaeologist whose ASCII History of Moving Images depicts scenes from popular films using letters, numbers, and computer symbols to create the images. This project is seen as a "critique of the utilitarian that underlies new media development and a celebration of the purposeless." The article calls this a "retro futuristic" aesthetic. I like that this art is sort of a critique of itself but that it does not dismiss the idea of art for art's sake. Not everything needs a purpose; sometimes it's just about expression.

I found it interesting that they discuss the fact that this artist created the term "net.art" after seeing the two words put together in an email by mistake. There is a lot of analysis about how this term was created and it is compared to Marcel Duchamp's readymades.

MTAA

MTAA "exemplifies the processual nature of most Net art." MTAA is most famous what they call art historical "updates" in which they recreate art done in the 1960s and 70s with a modern take on techniques and processes. Famously, they do a digital recreation of Sam Hsheigh's One Year performance (Cage Piece), which originally was a collection of photographs documenting a year that the artist confined himself in a cage. In the update, MTAA artists took videos of themselves in identical 10x10x10 rooms eating, sleeping, reading, and doing other activities. On first look, it would be easy to assume that you were seeing it live, however, because it is an online video, there's no way to know where it comes from. As it turns out, in this project the artists just have the same images on a loop.

The idea of updating previous works of art is interesting to me as an art history student. You wouldn't necessarily think of art works as needing updates even as the techniques with which they were created become obsolete. Art represents more than just its subject; art is also representative of the moment during which it was created. When it comes to MTAA's update of One year performance, it kind of just seems to cheat. And maybe that's the point, but it doesn't really do it for me.

Cory Arcangel

Cory Arcangel is a digital artist best known for hacking super nintendo games. These works are considered "fundamentally subversive" as well as "anti corporate," but they are also sort of just fun. In Super Mario Clouds, Arcangel hacked into this particular video game and removed a lot of information to create an image of pixelated clouds moving on a blue sky background.

I think that this is interesting because of the way that it makes something (the background) that was not supposed to be the main focus of this video game the only thing that you see. If you have some cultural knowledge you sort of can tell that these clouds are at least from a video game, although many people will probably find them distinctly Mario-esque. To watch video game clouds move on a blue background sort of gives you the sense that you're waiting for something to happen. And nothing else happens. There's a disconnect between what you expect to be there and what is there, so you have to reevaluate your expectations.

Others artists have dealt with the idea of clouds in their work. Clouds are interesting because there are a lot of ideas as to what they are supposed to look like but they don't necessarily always look so cartoony and perfect. Clouds never look like the ones that Cory Arcangel has created, but you still know what they are.

project 1

MARK NAPIER

Mark Napier, painter turned new media artist, creates online images that "demonstrate a refined awareness of color and shape." Napier's piece Shredder 1.0 is a website where participants enter a web address and receive the website with jumbled code so that it resembles its original form, but is completely different. I think this is interesting because, in traditional media, an artist uses pieces to create a whole. For instance, a sculpture is physically made from other things and if one of those elements is removed, everything is different. Digital art is on a screen and not something we can physically touch, but Napier's work illustrates the inherent similarity in all art. 

The image is of my shredded tumblr.

Olia Lialina

In 1996, Olia Lialina created My Boyfriend Came Back from the War, a web-based interactive digital art project that tells the story of lovers reuniting after one has been away at war. The website uses simple text and images to tell the nonlinear story of these two people. The progress of the story is determined by the order in which you (the viewer) click on different linked text and images. 

The artist uses simple html for the text, images, and frames (which split into smaller frames as you continue to click). What is striking to me about this work is that in spite of its simplicity, it has a deep and evocative message. Traditional media have an easier time of being successfully poignant. Viewers approach painting, sculpture, and drawing with the expectation that they may have an emotional experience. In a culture where everything is digital and everyone has instant access to everything, it may be hard to separate digital art from anything else that is digitally accessible. When viewing Lialina's piece, you might forget that you're staring at a computer screen.

Jodi

 Jodi is a web interface that "can be seen as a formalist investigation of the intrinsic characteristics of Internet as a medium." When a viewer sees the webpage, it is just a jumble of fragmented code and what looks like a glitch. However, if they know HTML, they can enter it in to see a plan for an atom bomb, conceptually close to exploding the internet. Jodi.org gives viewers the opportunity to experience a "disconcerting" view of the internet.

This reminds me of other art that lets you see into its process. For instance, painters who leave some parts of the canvas unpainted and unprimed, or media artists working with electronics that allow you to see the plugs and cables. When this happens, the process becomes the art. Art has traditionally been known as something that should be experienced from the surface, but new media artists force you to enter into the experience of the making of that art in addition to the finished product.

10 images

Shu Lea Chang

Shu Lea Cheang is an experimental new media artist. She works with combinations of video, photography, and what she calls "net-based installation" art. Cheang's work often confronts different sociopolitical issues, primarily including ones of gender and sexuality. Her most prominent works belong to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Guggenheim collections.

This particular piece is called "Brandon." Cheang was commissioned by the Guggenheim to create this piece of new media art based on the life of Teena Brandon, a transsexual who, in 1993, was raped and murdered because of her sexuality. "Brandon" can be found here. The viewer first sees the image of a baby becoming a woman becoming a man, which is a literal allusion to Brandon's life. When the viewer, clicks on the morphing image, the curser can be moved around the screen to illustrate different images relating to transsexuality, and more specifically, Teen Brandon.

As the curser is dragged around the screen, the images continue to change. It is unsettling and the viewer feels confronted or targeted. Phrases from newspaper headlines like "she's a he," "killed for," "romance," "all," "exposure," and "rage" make the narrative undeniably human and from there common. That the viewer can relate to the art is what is most disturbing and sad about the way in which Cheang has portrayed Teena Brandon's tragedy.

Ken Goldberg

Ken Goldberg is an engineering professor at University of Calfornia, Berkley. He creates video installation pieces that require audience participation and simultaneously operate without it. His piece Telegarden is an online based piece consisting of the image of a garden surrounding a robotic arm. The audience is instructed to water the plants and can then watch the robotic arm move to complete the action of the participant. However it is impossible to tell whether "the users' actions have actually contributed to the growth of the plants on the Telegarden website." Goldberg wants to challenge users to question the "suspension of disbelief" present when using internet programs such as this one. Audience members assume that they actually have control, but they also know on some level that they may not, that the entire thing could be "staged."

Goldberg's work reflects an interdisciplinary approach to new media art. For instance, his engineering background contributes to his ability to to construct the technical parts of Telegarden. This can be considered a quality of some new media art in that there is often an electrical, or more technical, knowledge necessary, which requires a different kind of training and background than more traditional forms of art. 

(from New Media Art wiki)