Digital Art
Digital art is a general term for artistic works & practices that use digital technology as an essential part of the creative/presentation process. Forms such as digital installation art, net art & virtual reality have now become recognised artistic practices. It can transforms areas such as painting, filmmaking, photography, digital design, video, installation art, sculpture, animation, and sound.
Ant Farm ‘Inflatables’
Ant Farm was an avant-garde architecture, graphic arts, and environmental design practice, founded in San Francisco in 1968 by Chip Lord and Doug Michels. Eventually, Lord and Michels were joined by Hudson Marquez and Curtis Schreier. The group was a self-described “art agency that promotes ideas that have no commercial potential, but which we think are important vehicles of cultural introspection.” In addition to their architecture works, the collective was well known for their counter-cultural performances and media events, such as Media Burn. Their installation, Cadillac Ranch, remains an icon of American popular culture. Ant Farm disbanded in 1978 when a fire destroyed their San Francisco studio. Doug Michels went on to design the unbuilt statue The Spirit of Houston.
Douglas Gordon ‘24 Hour Psycho’
Gordon slowed down the Hitchcock classic ‘Psycho’ to 2 frames per second instead of the usual 24. This piece was extremely important in Gordon’s early career as it was a staple for his future works. This was where his early themes of recognition & repetition, time and memory, complicity and duplicity, authorship & authenticity and darkness and light were first established. In his own words he felt that using something that near enough everyone would recognise and slowing it down would make the viewer think more about Hitchcock and his thoughts/ideas than it would of Gordon’s.
LUX founded in 2002 as a charity and not for profit limited company. It is the only organisation of its kind in the UK & represents the country’s only significant collection of artists film & video & the largest distributor of such work in Europe - 4500 works by over 1500 artists from the 1920s onwards. Similar to that of EAI, their particular focus is visual arts based moving image work which includes experimental film, video art, installation art, performance art, personal documentary, essay films and animation.
Lady Gaga Manifesto of Little Monsters
Again this is another piece of video art from Lady Gaga that may be of a distressing nature for some viewers. Here she uses short bursts of video with a narration of a manifesto that she has created. Within the video she uses several masks in different styles in order to manifest her appearance. This backs up her ideology of that fact that she encourages people/fans to embrace themselves & their differences. The narration & colouring of this video add to the effect & the short bursts of visual stimulation add to the dramatic effect.
Lady Gaga - Vomit/Eating Heart Interlude
As a current day performance artist, Lady Gaga uses video within her tour shows whilst she costume changes. These videos are more than likely for a selected taste & some of the images may be of a distressing nature. In this piece, it is almost stop motion as she appears static for only a part of her dress to move. She is then joined in this same position by another female who vomits bright blue liquid onto the dress. This is then followed by flashing close up images of Lady Gaga suggesting that she is eating a heart. All of these images & pieces of video somehow relate into her songs making her a fully fledged performance artist.
EAI founded in 1971 is a non profit arts organisation that is a leading international resource for video & media art. Core program is the distribution and preservation of a collection of over 3,500 new & historical works by artists. EAI work closely with educators, curators, programmers & collectors to facilitate the likes of exhibitions & educational purposes. The collection spans the mid 60s to the present including prominent artists such as Bruce Nauman & Nam June Paik; and newer digital artists such as Takeshi Murata & Seth Price
Andy Warhol eating a hamburger
The act of Warhol eating a hamburger is that of a simple one which has impressive underlying meanings. Being one of the biggest pop artists of this time & being obsessed with consumerism & commercialism this ‘simple’ video speaks more that you would think. Personally I admire & appreciate this video from Warhol as it begs the question of why do we want to know the simplest things of celebrity lives which is very much prominent in today’s society. He was an artist that was personally more famous than his actual work. By doing something that seems everyday to us actually involves the normal everyday person, the consumer, in the art changing the whole value of the piece
Gillian Wearing ‘2 into 1’
I have always found Wearings work extremely interesting in how it is displayed & the meanings/process behind it. In this particular piece she took the cruelty of two boys who were talking about their mother and placed their words into the mothers mouth and vice versa. This is extremely poignant and makes it seem as though the voyeur has been introduced to too much private information and that privacy has been invaded. This is an aspect that is very much big today & that Wearing often picks up on - that media has changed us. But in a way this can be liberating as her subjects have sometimes expressed gratitude for the fact she has facilitated a way for them to express themselves like they’ve never been able to before.
