Deformities Can Be Beautiful, Too
It would seem that it’s becoming a trend for deformities and unnatural elements to be considered art. To add to the apprarent appeal of growing abnormal limbs in a lab environment like pig wings, it would seem that naturally occurring deformities have also captivated artists.
This past Earth Day, we discussed an artist named Brandon Ballengée.
Ballengée, funded by The Arts Catalyst group in England, is leading a study into the declining numbers and well-being of the United Kingdom’s amphibian species.
Apparently he collects and studies deformed specimens of frogs from all over the world and photographs them. He also takes the viewing public with him on field trips into the natural environment so viewers can experience his studies firsthand.
Here’s an example of one of his photographic works of art:
I must admit, the pictures are quite interesting. I’m just confused as to why artists today are so fascinated with the morbidly deformed aspects of nature. Pig wings, still-living leather coats, and six-legged frogs aren’t exactly God’s masterpieces.
I will say that it’s wonderful that artists are taking an interest in the well-being of the natural world and furthering the studies of modern science. Ballengée is simply shedding some light on the issues; bringing the dire circumstances of nature’s condition to the attention of the people. Hopefully, as a result something will be done to prevent further pollution that causes such deformities–before it’s too late and we lose our amphibians altogether.
I want to revoke my earlier said statements of disgust for the focuses of certain new media artists. If an artist wishes to educate people on important issues and make a difference in our world for the better, who am I to criticize when such intentions are so good? Education and understanding are some of the most important needs of humanity — and art that brings that to us is a truly beautiful thing.
For more information on Ballengée’s work, please visit: http://www.disk-o.com/malamp/index.html
etoy vs. eToys.com
It’s been on more than a few occasions now that the subject of the group, etoy, has come up in class discussion.
If you’re unfamiliar with the group, etoy is a group of digital artists who experiment with the boundaries of art. One of the things they’re best known for is selling shares of “stock” in the etoy.corporation (which can be found here: http://www.etoy.com/).
Based in Switzerland, this group was founded in 1994 when they began their experiments with the selling of their virtual shares.
When a legal battle ensued between eToys.com and etoy, thus began the toywar. eToys.com was sueing etoy for simply having a similar domain name to their own. The toywar performance was constructed on a website which rendered a battlefield with 2000 toy soldiers.
A full explanation and log of the events of the toywar can be found here: http://toywar.etoy.com/
The toywar was the dawning of an e-mail campaign led by Internet activists (specializing in everything from surreal incubations to cultural viruses) who infiltrated the company on every level via the Internet and contested their aggressor. The protest was apparently too much for eToys.com to handle, for they dropped their lawsuit after several weeks.
How can this be considered a form of new media art? Well, this is an example of a group of individuals gathering together across many regions in a virtual environment to stand up against an unjust accusation or wrong-doing and protest to it together, united and unwavering. The protest occurred without most participants even knowing each other — and it succeeded! The participants used their skills to incorporate a new innovational technology to make statement and even get their desired results.
It brings to mind the question of what else can be possible and what results can be reached with the further incorporation of the technology of today into our tasks.
Video Games — New Media Art?
My comments to follow are in regard to a required class reading of the following:
Paul: Chap. 13, Themes in Digital Art–Gaming, pp. 196-203.
Wardrip Fruin: Reading #34: Sherry Turkle, “Video Games and Computer Holding Power,” pp. 499-514.
This particular set of readings was all about video games and their influence on the digital art revolution.
The Paul reading considered games such as Myst, Everquest, Doom, and even The Sims as examples of digital art in the gaming form. Such games were sources of inspiration to artists and served as precursors for the programs used as mediums in today’s digital art.
An artist named Natalie Bookchin addressed the gaming topic with her online project, Metapet (2002). The simulation created in her “game” follows a virtual genetically engineered office worker in an office environment of the future. Her piece humorously touches the issues of corporate productivity being improved by the use of biotechnology and robots of the future to replace the human worker.
The simulation has indefinitely been taken offline, but here is a link to her project’s site with screenshots and more information:
http://metapet.net/
Cory Archangel took a different approach to the incorporation of video games with digital art. He scavenged old cartridges of the Nintendo game, Super Mario Brothers, and reverse-engineered them to produce his landscape photography in the game’s 8-bit format. To do this, he would melt chips off of a cartridge and replace them with his own self-manufactured ones with data of his photography. The final products were landscape studies rendered in the game’s aesthetics.
Here is another work of art created by Cory Archangel and his modification of Nintendo game cartridges, titled “cloudscroll“:
Among others who also modified the mechanics of video games to create works of art, was Chinese artist, Feng Mengbo. Feng modified the software of Quake III Arena (a.ka. Q3A) to create his own piece aptly named Q4U (or Quake For You; 2002). He inserted a visual representation of himself equipped with a weapon and camcorder into the game and in a sense, made himself part of the game. Populating the game’s environment with hundreds of his “clones,” he created an interactive work of art that addressed concepts of online identity and immersive commercial environments.
Sherry Turkle compared television to video games as something you watch from afar, versus something you can participate in. She attributed certain psychological bonds that players can develop with the use of video games and those included the illusion of achievement, the allure of perfection, and having more control over certain–normally uncontrollable–aspects of your life.
One could say if a psychological attachment to a game can produce such values, would this not be a negative influence on the human psyche and morale? When you really look at it, it can be compared to the vices: sloth (creating an illusion of achievement over a real one, while you sit around doing nothing in the real world), greed & lust (amassing power and money, while you chase the virtual princess), and vanity (encouraging heightened expectations for physical appearance, while making your virtual “you” more attractive than you are in reality).
To further add to such ideas that there is a negativity to the addiction of games, it would seem that many commercial video games have a dependence on violence to entice a gamer to actually buy a game and play it. Feng Mengbo, among many others, mocked this commercial element in his piece, Q4U (Quake For You, 2002).
As for Turkle’s article, which was written in 1984 – she touched the topic of addicted gamers and their attempted escape to simulated worlds, which can still be attributed to the gamers of today. One could say it’s even worse with today’s highly detailed, even more immersive, interactive games which allow you to converse and compete with other gamers across the world.
At this very moment, if a person were to ask me whether I thought video games had a positive or negative influence on new media art, digital artists, the art community, and humanity in general, I would have to say that it’s had a positive influence on artists. Video games’ innovational elements, technologies, programs, softwares, etc. have inspired artists to create their own works and make their own statements. In a sense, gaming has essentially put a weapon in the artist’s hand so the art community can fight back against commercialism and other issues.
As for humanity in general, although many games are violent, addictive, and influenced by certain vices like vanity and greed; one should look further and consider the good things that games have inspired. Like video games, many books, movies, and television shows have featured violence, sex, and other negative elements and encouraged vices like sloth.
However, like those other forms of media, many video games also feature the epic hero fighting some form of evil, triumphing over that evil, and putting the needs of oneself aside for the greater good. Would this not be the encouragement of the virtuous way of life, rather than the pursuit of vices?
The Ethics of SymbioticA
In a recent Digital Art History class, we discussed the biotech art collective, SymbioticA.
SymbioticA is an artistic laboratory based in Australia dedicated to the furthering of research in life sciences. With the aid of such facilities, artists are enabled to participate in innovative biology practices to create their works of art.
In an interview when speaking of a recent project underway, artists coined the term “stupid tissue”, taking “dumb” meat and giving it new shape. The procedure in a nutshell was essentially, isolating cells from dead meat, nourishing and keeping alive those cells in a petry dish, and growing a semi-living mass with them.
Supposedly, this innovative procedure paired with cloning could eventually be used to create victimless leather and such possibilities are currently being explored by the Tissue Culture & Art Project.
Here’s a link to the site we viewed and discussed in class:
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/biotech_art/index.php?page=2
In a similar discussed procedure, it was demonstrated that artists, Oron Catts, Ionat Zurr, and Guy Ben-Arry were able to grow “pig wings” from pig bone marrow stem cells and biodegradable polymers with the use of facilities including SymbioticA.
This “art” could bring up a very heated debate. Is a procedure like this ethical? Some could argue that these creations are horrific monstrosities that God would never intend to exist in nature. If they’re not already living, but merely “semi-living”, could they eventually reach that status? Are we not, essentially playing God, so to speak, in performing these procedures?
I understand the innovative possibilities of such research, but was the creation of such a work of art necessary? Is this not an abomination of nature? If not now, perhaps their further work could reach that status.
In my opinion, there are some boundaries that should never be crossed in the sake of creating art, and I find this to be one of them. I don’t know, perhaps it’s only touching that boundary, but you can’t deny that such thoughts of the horrific possibilities haven’t crossed your mind in viewing the results of such research.
Second Life – Revisited
So this past Thursday was my Digital Art History class’s in-game Second Life class session.
First we visited LSU CCT’s digital simulation of our campus. We were briefed a little on the functions and points of interests of the sim, and I must say I was very impressed. The sim had the clock tower, the quad, various school buildings, and the outdoor amphitheatre — all perfectly replicated. Apparently the whole sim had been constructed in merely a few months! I was surprised to hear that an entire part of the department had been rigorously working on a parallel virtual replica of our campus in SL and that most people are completely unaware of its existance due to the restrictions of the sim.
After breaking to explore the LSU CCT sim for a few minutes, we set off for SL-renowned artist, Elros Tuominen’s personal gallery. Elros creates dynamic, moving, immersive sculptures that are displayed in many prestigious areas scattered around Second Life. His works have an awe-inspiring effect when you enter a sculpture and view it from within in a first-person perspective.
For more information on “elros Tuominen” here is a video of a virtual interview filmed directly in a Second Life environment:
After a few minutes of discussion there, to our surprise, elros Tuominen himself popped in to answer our questions and participate in our class discussion. It was quite a treat. I was actually disappointed to be leaving early from the area, because I was more interested in what he had to say about his work, more than anything else we viewed that afternoon.
A screenshot (serving as a sort of proof, for you non-believers) of our conversation can be found here:
http://dahlsu.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/picture-62.png
(Keep an eye out for me, “Damien Axel”, hovering in the background.)
After we had to cut our meeting with Elros short, we promptly teleported to our second exhibit on our itinerary, an area called BioSphere2. The artist here, created digital kinetic sculptures that the viewer could interact with and manipulate. The notecard that could be received from the area stated that the artist was both influenced by his knowledge in biology as well as various other SL kinetic sculptors — including Elros Tuominen, himself. After exploring this sim and interacting with the various “sculptures”, we teleported to our last destination.
The group of artists that hosted this sim, the 0100101110101101 group (which we had once discussed in class), produced artwork that was very different from the kinetic sculptures of the first two artists. The artists would reenact installments of famous performance art within the simulated environment of Second Life, including Marina Abramovic’s Imponderabilia, Vito Acconci’s Seedbed, and Chris Burden’s Shoot. The really interesting thing I found about this was that just a few weeks previously, the university had been visited by Vito Acconci and we had discussed Seedbed among his various other works with him.
Here is a link to the video of the 0100101110101101 group’s SL reenactment of Vito Acconci’s Seedbed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRXOmLC_mD0
After browsing the screenshot gallery of these performances within the sim, we moved about to explore some of the island’s interactive art. After a classmate got stuck within a large Campbell’s Tomato Soup can that would spam something along the lines of “You love pop art; pop art hates you.” in open chat channel, Professor Ryan decided it was time to wrap-up the avatar class.
In our final discussion, we debated whether the creation of art in a simulated world was really relevant to the world and if it really made a difference. What was the point of it all? We decided that the same debate could be made for the artworks created in the real world. Artists make artwork to make a statement, to invoke a certain reaction upon the viewer. If at least one person was reached and the message had an impact, could that work of art not be considered a success? I’d like to think I, myself, as an artist would be pleased to have reached someone and passed along a message or invoked feeling upon my artworks’ audience. The artists within Second Life, I believe, have the same goal — only, they reach out to a different audience: the Second Life community.
Overall, I’d say it was the most fun class meeting I’d experienced all semester. There was more stimulating discussion and a more relaxed atmosphere. I suppose it was the anonymity of the whole thing… 
(For more information on the 0100101110101101 group and to view more videos of their performance art reenactments, please visit: http://www.0100101110101101.org/)
The Cyborg — Science Fiction or Reality?
My comments to follow are in regard to a required class reading of the following:
On Stelarc: CTheory articles by Stelarc and Julie Clarke at: http://www.ctheory.net/home.aspx
This particular set of readings was all about the marriage of organic and technological, the fusion of creature and machine, the cyborg.
The selection from the Paul text, presented some very interesting in-depth explorations of the theme of “cyborg”. Of the artists covered in the reading, Stelarc is the one who really stands out. His works are extremely extensive toward the modification of the human body with prosthetic extensions. His Exoskeleton (1999) performance was one to really stir up the mixed emotions from the viewer. The coupled horrific spider-like legs below the platform on which he stood, paired with the intriguing arm extensions (all controlled by Internet activity) were very disturbing and inspiring at the same time. This really was the primal makings of a cyborg in the science-fiction-turned-reality sense!
Here’s a link to an image of Stelarc’s Exoskeleton (1999): http://www.sztuka-fabryka.be/amaze/stelarc-01.jpg
I’ll be perfectly frank about Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto”. I understood very little of this reading. She seemed to be caught up in the use of extremely long words to try and show her extensive vocabulary and baffle the reader into believing that she had great knowledge of the topic. I do understand that she was pairing feminist themes with the cyborg’s uni-sexual (or even non-sexual) capabilities. She seemed to be glorifying the fact that in a dystopian future, a cyborg-ruled community will be unbiased in regards to sexual influence over society’s many working elements. She talks about with the increase of time, the boundaries between animal and man, man and machine, and physical and non-physical have become thinner, blurred, and constantly breached. She foreshadows that essentially the boundaries of such things will eventually lead to the fused reality of the cyborg and the social dynamic of such a society to go along with it.
The third reading further explored the studies of Stelarc. One of his more current projects investigated the possibilities of a prosthetic head rather than his earlier prosthetic bodies. Granted, it was only a virtual prosthetic head, not a concrete one – it showed that without a consciousness behind the face, there could still be all the functions, however it lacked the inner pathos of imagination, creativity, and emotion.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Stelarc’s work, I’ve provided a link to a video presention on some of his artistic endeavors regarding the “posthuman”, the existence beyond that of a normal human, something that greatly resembles the science fiction cyborg:
These readings make me wonder, how far off are we from an actual society where cyborgs (like the ones formerly dreamed up in science fiction) are a part of every day life… It’s quite disturbing, to say the least…
Are we bringing about a golden utopian age of enlightenment or a dark dystopian age of the apocalypse? 
The Yes Men Say “No” to The WTO
For those of you who don’t know, The World Trade Organization (or WTO) is an international organization that was created with the intended purpose of liberizing international trade. They were created to allow companies from developed nations to open extensions of their corporations in underdeveloped nations in hope of bringing jobs and affluence to the underpriveleged communities of those nations. Instead of regulating the practices going on in these underdeveloped nations by these big-wig corporations, the WTO is allowing these corporations to exploit these impoverished communities and there has been no improvement to that nation’s economy as a result.
The Yes Men are a group of culture jamming artists/activists who have made it their goal to expose the outrageous hypocracy of the WTO and to bring to light the wrong-doings that have been done to these poor exploited people living in underdeveloped nations.
They’ll do things like pose as spokespeople for The World Trade Organization, McDonald’s, Dow Chemical, and the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development to do such things.
The two leading members of The Yes Men are known by a number of aliases, most recently, and in film, as Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno. Their experiences were documented in the film The Yes Men, distributed by United Artists, the film documentary info wars, and the book The Yes Men: The True Story of the End of the World Trade Organization.
Here’s part of the documentary film The Yes Men presented in two parts:
(There’s supposedly more to come… Until then, rent the video!)
We watched the full film in class last Thursday. I found it both funny and sad at the same time. This organization really is exploiting people and I find it wonderful that there’s someone out there trying to bring this crime to humanity to light. How does this relate to new media art? Well, their imitation WTO website and their corresponding impersonations and presentations are meant to send a message to their viewers. Their works incorporate the technologies of the Internet and other computer-based media.
These guys are using new media art to its fullest and actually reaching people to get results. They still haven’t reached enough (or maybe the right people) because the WTO has yet to disband or re-evaluate its activities. How do you think new media art could be incorporated further to reap even more drastic results from the WTO, the government, the media, the public, etc.?
For more information on The Yes Men and to learn more about their endeavors, visit: http://www.theyesmen.org/
Telecommunication Art
My comments to follow are in regard to a required class reading of the following:
Ed Shanken, “Tele-Agency: Telematics, Telerobotics, and the Art of Meaning” at http://neme.org/main/620/tele-agency or look for title in http://artexetra.com/
This past set of readings was all about telecommunication art. I find the fact that artists have found ways to marry the Internet with an installation in a gallery so viewers can experience art from afar very interesting.
What really piqued my interest was Ken Goldberg’s Telegarden (1995-present). The fact that this installation can be manipulated from thousands of miles away is mind-boggling. People who visit the project’s website help the tiny ecosystem survive just by moving an industrial robot arm to water it and plant new seeds. It’s amazing that this ecosystem is thriving on Internet activity alone.
Nina Sobell and Emily Hartzell’s VirtuAlice (1995) is amazing. People don’t even need to visit the gallery with their invention. This wireless mobile wheelchair-like vehicle is mounted with a telerobotic camera and controlled by visitors to the gallery’s website on the Internet. They drive around the gallery with complete freedom to examine the entire space! This is pretty awesome stuff!
I started looking for examples to post here about telerobotics such as the works I have listed above. You’d be astounded by how many videos and pictures there are out there. This is apparently a widely experimented with concept. Here’s a short video someone posted when they were testing the connectivity of their robotic system to its corresponding Internet controls:
Telecommunication art is bringing down the obstructions that prevent the interaction of far-off artists (and art appreciators) that normally would never have met. Just think of all the possibilities such technology can be used for. It’s truly an innovative concept!
The Allure of Second Life
So the other day in class, we discussed MMUVEs (Massively Multiuser Virtual Environments) and MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) and in particular an Internet-based virtual environment called, Second Life.
If you’re unfamiliar to Second Life, prepare to be awed. I know I was. Apparently it’s like The Sims Online, but even more complex, custumizable, and even profitable.
This parallel, virtual world has it’s own rules, social system, economy, even laws of physics. You can create a completely customizable avatar, buy and sell virtual land, meet your virtual soul-mate, –and even fly!
Here’s a slightly comical news story on Second Life that aired on BBC:
Basically, if you can dream it, it’s possible in this Internet-based cyber-world…
I made my own Second Life resident named, Damien Axel. He looks nothing like me in the real world, but it certainly is an interesting concept to have a completely different-looking alter-ego.
Here’s some screenshots:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v257/MateriaBladeVII/Random%20Images/DamienAxel001.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v257/MateriaBladeVII/Random%20Images/DamienAxel002.jpg
I’m still figuring out all the mechanics of the program but the possibilities definitely seem endless and I can see how people can get lost in the moment, becoming totally consumed by its alluring potential…
The concept of a virtual parallel world brings about an interesting debate. If crimes are committed in a simulated imaginary environment such as this, should the person responsible in the real world be held accountable? If so, would the consequences for such an action in the virtual world be as severe as it would to someone who committed it in the real world? Hmmm…
(Comment, please!)
