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Sun, 14 Oct 2007
The Art of Digital Show 2007 Brief Review
I took a lot of photos of this show and I have included some of my favorite works below. There were several pieces I liked that did not photo well. There were about a 100 works selected from a pool of roughly 2800 entries of digital art and video art. I tended to be drawn to the more systemic pieces but that is probably since I have been working on systemic sky, a systemic video art piece for the past 2 months. The complete review with several more artists and commentary is here: http://www.donrelyea.com/art_of_digital_2007_review.html, I have included some highlights below in this blog.
The video art pieces were well presented on 8inch LCD screens downstairs. Our favorite piece by far of the video works was "The Late Mr. Cubicle" by Franz Keller.
Keller's work centers around Mr. Manley Cubicle and his descent into madness. It is a shame the my camera was unable to pick up the music from this work as it was most excellent. Keller created and performed most of the music on this work in Reason with a little help from a guitarist friend Henry Barnes of Amps for Christ. His work pays homage to the music and videos of the 80's and touches the subjects of information overload and corporate dehumanization (a subject I am intimately familiar with). My wife and I had the great pleasure of meeting Mr. Keller who was smartly dressed and well spoken. Keller lives in LA and is an active VJ.
My personal favorite 2d print piece of the show is a systemic piece by Nathan Selikoff titled "Tiled Faces". I remember seeing his series "Strange Attractors" online a while back and it is really nice to see this new work of his in person. You really have to get close to this one to appreciate it. So I took some close ups so you can see them below.
I liked "Faces" by Ofek Wertman, this striking piece of video art subtly challenges the viewer to question their senses of perception. My wife really liked Jane Gottlieb's "Lawnbowler Series: Life". She writes that this piece is about expressing her need to take chances and experience life. Jane's work won and honorable mention.
Kazuhiko Kobayashi's work "Scan Gate 1" was one of my favorites, I saw this work at Siggraph 2007 along with several other works in this series of his. Nice big prints. "Scan Gate 1" won 3rd place in show.
Kevin Dooley's video "Affirmative" won first place and a $1000 dollar prize, congrats! Dooley releases CDs on Waveform Records under the moniker "zerO One".
Another of my favorites of the show was "100 Faces" or "100 drawings" by Daniel Durning. Durning is a New York based artist, educator and new media designer. He writes that "100 drawings" reveals his artistic process and ritualistic practice of drawing the pure geometry depicted in the icon of the radiant rectangle, a minimalist motif he has been cultivating for years. Durning also produces and hosts Art and technology , an internet radio program on MOMA's WPS1.
Hye and I both really liked "Waiting for a Telephone to Call Me" by Joohyun Pyune. Pyune has a background in textile design. Her work is about encompassing human emotions like agony, rancor and grief. She tries to capture solitude, pain and marginality and presents them as conditions of our existence. As gloomy as she sounds a visit to her web page will reveal that she is actually an existentialist and she is smiling in the photo on her site =) "Waiting for a Telephone to Call Me" was another of the works that you had to get up close to appreciate the ways the light and the artists process played tricks on your eyes.
Pyune used a heat transfer process to get the image printed onto a mesh like fabric stretched over another printed image on paper set back an inch or so. Where the images overlap there is a multiply like effect that makes the image appear darker where you can see through the fabric to the image beneath. Since I am a process freak, I spent some time explaining this process to interested parties at the reception who could not get enough of this piece. I would not be a bit surprised if this piece sold on opening night.
I really liked this music visualization by Thomas R. Williams. Williams writes, it takes place inside an imaginary biological system, and travels through its inner organization with synchronicity, suggesting the inner workings of the mind. Using various generative methods it fuses 2d and 3d in unexpected ways, expanding on the possibilities of dancing architecture. Williams is a long time VJ and creator of music videos. Hye and I also loved the works by Michel Tcherevkoff. He has been exhibiting photographic work since I was just a year old. His current series "Shoe Fleurs" is fantastic. He had four pieces in the show and all of them were really nice. The following photos don't do justice to these works, they really are quite impressive.
The complete review with several more photos, artists and commentary is here. |
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