My First GIF awwwwwwwwwww

The dicotomy between narrative and digital technology

Authenticity and Lies / Internet Art

Versions 2010 (also available 2009, 2012)

Oliver Laric, Biceps

Karen Archey: Post-Internet Art, http://mapmagazine.co.uk/9520/report-internet-art-present-tense/ 

http://static.squarespace.com/static/51a6747de4b06440a162a5eb/t/51acf4eae4b0fca0d90ae310/1370289386051/Postinternetessay.pdf

Ed Fornieles: Content genetrating systems

Jon Nash: Cultural currency, and appropriation. Algorithmic grouping systems available online.

Rafael Rozendaal: BYOB (Bring Your Own Beamer) http://www.byobworldwide.com/

The way in which we interact with the internet and the realm of the internet with its own space and time is bizarre. The pseudo reality of the information realm impacts our senses more overtly then ever before, and increasing appears to blur the lines between non-fiction and fantasy. The surreal is revived not sculpturally or graphically as originally supposed, but now experientially as our position within our culture and available vantage points are in flux. We ride on Paul Virilo's dromospehric highway, im curious to explore our ability to navigate.

It almost feels like one of those impossible games have a go:

http://www.notdoppler.com/theworldshardestgame.php

http://www.hehegames.com/other/the-impossible-game.htm

Palimpsest 1: video proposal for exhibiton

We are exposed to a constant stream of image, text, and sound. In this age of information, we can consume just as instantaneously as we can upload and offload. Through my work I am exploring our relationship to information, the process of how we absorb this information and the ways it affects us.

I suspect contemporary information technologies such as the internet are changing the nature of human existence. This ontological interest is being cultivated through studying an array of subjects; time, otherness, chaos theory, the eastern notion of oneness, and technological singularity.

Palimpsest 1 is a development of my interest with video information. Using a set of stock footage I came by online I am attempting to create a narrative. Here I am using the editing process to symbolize and explore how we analyse and collate video on a daily basis. 

stills:

Kaliedoscope Concept

So I thought it would be a good idea to make a kaleidoscope out of a close up screen shot of pixels on an analogue television. Then Project this onto myself and stand in front of it with a t-shirt on. Here's some stills from the film below.

So having recorded the projection/performance I would now stretch the t-shirt I wore in the video like a canvas over a frame.

Then I re project the recorded video onto the frame with the t shirt on. The t shirt being on the frame not only acts as a screen but also has the intent to render me as the person in front of the projection naked. There is a metaphor for the t-shirt being like our ego our surface persona that weathers the everyday. 

I had thought about printing onto the shirts to add another physical layer of depth to the piece, and as I have been interested in the idea of self and reflection I am drawn back the story of narcissus. In Particular Oscar Wild's version of the story; where there is this relationship between the observer and the observed which becomes a representation of the human struggle with the existence of the other; This sense of separation.  Visually I am addressing this by using different layers or mirroring and repetition, across mediums. Print, textiles and video. Similarly to Velazquez in his painting below, I intend to displace the viewer, ask them to consider the dimensions of the work and their position in relation to it.

Here is an image of what I am considering printing onto the white shirt:

2 years in the making

'The Source' is a video installation that is currently at Tate Liverpool  and features filmed conversations with creative individuals – including Beck, Jack White and Tilda Swinton – as they share their thoughts on the roots and realization of the creative process. In summary it is an investigation into creativity; the versatility of the creative process from one individual to another and how these different approaches relate and overlap. He says in this vein "One thing I found really interesting about this project is how many avenues it exposed."

This  video is an extract from a conversation between Doug Aitken and the artist Ryan Trecartin. For me there are some seminal suggestions being made about the approach of creating art works. The liberation of different influences is discussed, along with a notion of transcending cultural and media boundaries. The two also discuss the role of the viewer in Ryan's work and how the narrative is created in a dialect between the work and the viewer. The segment of the interview I am discussing I have transcribed below.

R.T. "The editorial process for the viewer kind of happens inside themselves, cause without the viewer the arc isn't really there, cause there are so many potential arcs happening that you have to curate that narrative yourself."

D.A. "Your kind of empowered to make these links. . ."

R.T. "Yeah were able to see sort of the symbolic meaning and a vibe, rather then just an image."

D.A. "And would you say that more about navigating in an intuitive way, rather then a literal way?"

R.T. "Yeah, like our intuitive intelligence is being developed, and were also more proud of it now I think, and were also recognising that its valid and important. Like our curatorial  our editorial, our hobbyest voices are all growing."

D.A. "I think in many ways, if anything its a form of empowerment . . ."

R.T. "Yeah."

D.A. ". . .and i really like that, because I don't want to be fed anything that's on the top of a pyramid."

R.T. "Yeah. TV, Movies, games, the Art world, Writing and journalism, its all gonna merge into creative programming. The intersection of all those things, it wont have a hierarchy, I don't think."

D.A. "Yeah, and simply just who you are, every viewer has their own energy source; and as they move through time, whats around them merges and transforms constantly."

R.T. "Yeah. I want there to be no such thing as reality or fantasy. It just is, you know. What it is, when it is." 

Elizabeth Price

     Recently whilst in London i took some time to see the turner prize shortlist at Tate Britain. There among the other three artists was Elizabeth Price's video 'Choir'. The film is part of a series of three films shown at her exhibition at the Baltic Center for Contemporary Art. They had to say about her work:

Elizabeth Price creates immersive video installations incorporating digital moving image, text and music. They draw upon existing archives of film, photography and physical collections of art to invent new, apocalyptic narratives.

Each video opens by establishing a particular setting: an auditorium, a sculpture gallery or, in her newest work, a wrecked container ship at the bottom of the sea. She draws upon historical film, photographic archives and collections of artifacts to generate fantasy episodes. 

The word 'fantasy' is used here and in the same context that Trecartin pursues a subversion of reality and fantasy, here Price crafts a narrative from various existing sources where differing from Trecartins approach, there is a more prescribed narrative that appears. Particularly in choir, separate situation and components are described quite literally and yet they are composed together in a way which is both imaginative and unexpected. Just as Price explains the link between hand gestures in an interview about Choir below:

Now to my work

     This week I had a meeting with a tutor of mine John Czernik. We hadn't met up this year and so i was trying to update him and we spoke about the work I had done and how my ideas and developed. After 15 minuets or so I He asked where my recent kaleidoscope video had come from and so i explained that I have edited a video i'd made on foundation 2 years ago. After agreeing that we felt the new kaleidoscope work was too 'pretty' in its abstraction, I showed him the original video. Watch below:

We sat and laughed, the video ended, and John tunred to me and asked me how long it had taken to develop the process for this result. I remembered back and realised that it had taken me a good 4 to 5 months of work to source all the programs and come to grips with it. He looked at me and asked why I would put all that work in and not use this technique more; At that moment I realised two things, one that the best piece of work I'd made was over two years ago, and two, that i wanted to make more of it. This thought has been renforced through exposure to the artists above.

Developing down this avenue, surprisingly talks very clearly to my interest in the palimpsest, and the overlapping of both culture and imagery in my recent works this academic year. Here are two works by Luke Fowler, the piece is a photo collage using both juxtaposition of imagery and composition to create a visual narrative:

 All Day Monday And Tuesday (Lost Lake), Luke Fowler,  2010

 All Day Monday And Tuesday (Library of Congress), Luke Fowler,  2010 

These two images serve as a metaphor for the sort of consideration I want to making in relation to the development of the video work. The playing off of imagery against each other and the narratives that can be created within that. Interestingly I saw this work at the Turner Prize alongside Elizabeth Price's; at the time it inspired me with the possibility of collage and montage, i suppose it was telling when put into context with my tutor later that week. Price uses text and audio in her collage. Audio I have tried, Text I have not, and this will be among my thoughts going forward.

Palimpsest And Kaleidoscope

              David Hockney, Nude, 1984                                      Pablo Picasso, Girl with Mandolin, 1910

To view things from multiple perspectives; the palimpsest is washed and rewritten imbuing the parchment with some sort of history, as if the paper were a vessel for information:

Here I have taken a film made years ago and transformed it into something Kaleidoscopic. 

"kaleidoscope" is derived from the Ancient Greek καλός (kalos), "beautiful, beauty",^[2] εἶδος (eidos), "that which is seen: form, shape"^[3] and σκοπέω (skopeō), "to look to, to examine",^[4] hence "observer of beautiful forms." Wikipedia