Art of Engagement

Visual Politics: The Art of Engagement is an art exhibition that’s taking place in the American University’s art museum, Katzen Art Gallery between April 19- July 30. The exhibit came all the way from the West coast, San Jose Museum of Art and its presence in Katzen Art Gallery is the only in the East coast, what an honor we art students of the American University have. The exhibit is divided into four sections, in which all of them deal with the interconnectivity between art and politics. What a strong concept especially with what has been happening in the last few years, with all the media propagandas on a national and international level. I thought the exhibit was very strong and appealing to me particularly because I’ve been involved for about a year now in similar concepts that deal with the view of politics and how to express it through art and media. The exhibit deals with important concepts such as Free speech, Vietnam, black power, gay rights, Chicano liberation, the environmental movement, poverty, immigration, and nuclear war. The artists of the exhibit explored these issues and translated their point of views and their visions through using paintings, sculptures, works on paper, mixed-media pieces, interactive videos, and an outdoor installation made of fabric. They also used a narrative method to express the concepts behind their work in the form of a book that you can get from the gallery. The main artists that I focused on in the exhibit were Tamiko Thiel, Anthony Aziz and Sammy Cucher, and Lynn Hershman. The main issues they dealt with in the exhibit were War and Violence and Racism, Discrimination and Identity Politics.

Utopianism, Technology, and the Avant-Garde: The Artist Shaping the Social Condition

The effects of art and Technology and there interference in the social and political discourse have been existing since the turn of the 20th century. Starting with the Modernist movement to the Futuristic. It has been always the artist that controls the vision of the society towards the social conditions and the government. That's because the artist is the warrior who goes against any ideologies or theories and opens the eyes of the society to see beyond these restrictions by the government. Another example is the Dadaist movement who went against the idea of the high art society and took a totally different approach with different kinds of art. During the 30s, the Bauhaus movement started defending against consumerism and the repetition of daily genres. They also went against the society's norms and treated some political and mass media figures in a God-like treatment, which affected the society's way of thinking about them and seeing pop culture. At the turn of the millenium, artists like Peter Weibel changed the way people look at the political and social conditions by emerging technology and the internet into the new ideologies. He created the net_condition exhibit that deals with the different conditions in the society. Our social conditions, political discourse, artistic and scientific developments, and our way of communication have changed because of the new advances in technology and the net. The net is becoming the driving force that is controlling the society's behavior and its members' way of communication.

Additional sources
http://www.zakros.com/bios/utopianism.html
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/isast/articles/shanken.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Lissitzky

Networks & Social Transformation

Globalisation in the 21st century is controlled by the net and the effects of technology on the economic, social and political conditions of the society. That is why they called the exhibit net_condition exhibit. Peter Weibel enforces the idea of how the new millenium is shaped through the changes that are happening in the media world and how every second is valued in the production phase and not the product that is valued. Basically, the consumption phase became more valuable and appreciated than the production phase and time became the number one priority for all consumers and marketers. Because our society became an information society, all it depends on is the data and how it communicates through technology and the net. Our social conditions, political discourse, artistic and scientific developments, and our way of communication have changed because of the new advances in technology and the net. The net is becoming the driving force that is controlling the society's behavior and its members' way of communication. It created a virtual space to make it easier from people around the world to exchange ideas, stories, and skills. For example, video games, blogs, net based music, net intallations, etc... The more our societies depend on this virtual force of the cyberspace, the more our social, political, and economic conditions will build based on it and will control us.

More on this topic
http://on1.zkm.de/netcondition/curators/weibel/default_e
http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/6/6176/1.html
http://easylife.org/netart/catalogue.html

A Prospect of the Sublime in Data Visualizations by Lisa Jevbratt

Jevbratt created a star map by collecting a number of IP addresses that are translated into colors. She started this poject in 1999 and updated it in 2001 and she is still adding to it. If you click on a certain color or IP address, it takes you to that specific address or website. She created the ping language to show how the internet and the internal functionality of the world wide web is working and how the information migrates through different IP addresses. Jevbratt is trying to communicate through the language of color and light. This language or map is not meant to guide the viewer to a certain place or time because it has so much information that they can't specify or limit. This map is meant to respresent the sublime and to make us ask ourselves the question "do we base the quality of the work on how relevant the information to us or the visuals and aesthetics are more important? This concept brings a lot of debate and contraversy where a lot of viewers think the starmapping approach of the sublime has no function and that it is completely tangible.

Links about topic:
http://jevbratt.com/
http://www.altx.com/mappingtransitions/jevbratt.html
http://jevbratt.com/projects.html
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/artist/jevbratt/biography/

Paik and Novak, Icons in the Multimedia World...

After the death of Nam June Paik, the father of multimedia, I realized how much he benifited the field of multimedia and as a multimedia student I should be thankful to him. He carried the concept of multimedia through his inventions through the decades to give new meanings and new functionalities to the field. His style is known for its dystopic vision to media that accompanied with the sense of humour and beauty. His work seems beautiful and objective, but a lot of criticism lies beneath for example in a lot of his work where he replaces the human with the machine. For example in his SYS Cop robots that look like traffic lights and replace the function of a human in that specific job. In Paik's work, there's a seductive element in the media that's why we have to have self concious and be aware of the capabilities of technology. He shows how each communication medium of each time period is affecting the consumer and the public views. Paik created things for the consumer that could have useful funcionality and make life easier. He made the Burn Calories Bike, Online Shopping, Web Catalogs, Magnet TV, Moon TV, and Buddha TV. The Buddha TV was very conteversial in the idea of suggsting how the media plays with our inner selves and makes us think how how it affects our inner selves in this digital world, that even the most sacred religious icon is affected by it. This concept is very similar to Novak's views of "self" and how the different concepts of the digital world makes us discover not only the space surrounding us, but also our inner selves. Also, Paik and Novak are similar in the idea that technology and multimedia will not only expand and advance, but it will also create different useful functions for the public to make their life easier. Paik dicussed media propoganda and the political issues in a humourous and funny approach. Also Novak emphasizes on concepts such as space, speed, and physical architecture. Novak offered a new perception to technology and the digital world similar to what Paik was doing all his life with the idea of liqiud architecture especially in his film "Electronic Super Highway" in the mid 90s. They both created different communities by joining different moving visuals. They both emphasized on the visuals vs text to convey a message they liked to reach their audience with. In conclusin, Paik's work is very ambigous. To me it seems very dadaist with all the humour and sarcasm that is joined with his futuristic style and thinking.

Related links:
http://www.paikstudios.com/
http://www.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/past_exhibitions/paik/paik_top.html
http://www.dashsys.com/products/paik.html
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://epublishingcorp.com/articlesRaichel/20thCentury%26contemp/NJProbotsm.jpg&imgrefurl=http://epublishingcorp.com/articlesRaichel/20thCentury%26contemp/NamJunePaik.htm&h=300&w=215&sz=25&tbnid=B1I5m1QqTqMJ:&tbnh=111&tbnw=79&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dnam%2Bjune%2Bpaik%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D&oi=imagesr&start=3

Marcos Novak's "Liquid Architectures"

Novak’s analyses and expectation about the technological changes in our digital world are very discrete and interesting to imagine happening. He introduces new ways of life with the aid of new digital characteristics that totally differ from what we have today. He describes the characteristics and the individual experience of the technologies that we have today and compare it to what we would be experiencing in the near future in terms of space, speed, and physical architecture. Novak offered a new perception to technology and the digital world. He offered the realization that technology is not only will expand and advance, but it will give new meanings to things that we have today and will redefine the concepts of time, space, and structure. Novak also emphasizes on the idea of "self" and how the different concepts of the digital world makes us discover not only the space surrounding us, but also our inner selves. By that we can know more about ourselves and start to appreciate all the effort that is being done to realize these digital concepts of space and time that will help our life to become easier. The idea of liquid architecture is really complicated and interesting to me, and with time and experience we will get used to it and will understand its functions and perceptions more thoroughly.

Related Links
http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/~marcos/Centrifuge_Site/MainFrameSet.html
http://www.artmuseum.net/w2vr/timeline/Novak.html
http://www.altx.com/interviews/marcos.novak.html

Char Davies, "Changing Space: Virtual Reality as an Arena of Embodied Being"

Char Davies explains thoroughly the concept of what people generally call “Virtual Reality.” He introduces the definition and the difference between virtual reality and the Telepresence. Although the general meaning seems to be the same between the two, they are actually different in their functions and their fields of importance. Virtual reality and Telepresence both involve humans interfering with the machine in a remote cyber space. In Davies piece Osmose, he makes the participants or what he calls the “immersants” to be in a 3D virtual reality and to make decisions and choices to discover their own selves and experience being alive in this cyber environment. After knowing about the Osmose, I look at virtual reality in a different way. Now I realized that Virtual reality is a whole field of artistic experimentation to make the individual discover their inner selves and existence. In Jeffery Shaw’s piece Configuring the Cave, the participant needs not just make choices in his/her mind, but it requires them to physically make decisions and changes in order for them to interact with the cyber environment. Immersants have to move a wooden body to be able to go forward with the experiment and to cause change. So, the concept of the Telepresence and Virtual Reality is present and almost the same in both experimentations, but the way each one performs and functions is different and that what makes multimedia a whole new field that’s open to adaptability and evolution, and makes it stands out depending on the distinct use of it by the operator or user.

Related Links
http://www.immersence.com/
http://collections.ic.gc.ca/waic/chdavi/chdavi_e.htm
http://cat.eciad.bc.ca/r_and_p/char_davies.html