November 16, 2007, 9:46 pm

The last week or so has been enlightening in terms of my artwork and practice... or maybe, more appropriately, the stuff between them. I've bee working with Quartz Composer, having it parse RSS feeds and react to the incoming data in terms of colours, shapes, and text (see image above). I haven't been able to place where exactly the art is within this work; is it in the processing of the data, in the patch I've assembled in Quartz Composer, in the resulting image, in the concept of linking this information to decontextualized meaning?

In an attempt to work through this, I posed the following question to Grad Seminar:

What does it mean for my artwork to be about the process (that is, processing of data, rules in collecting source material, the act of recording, editing, etc.) than about the final object/output?

The responses I got were helpful, especially Adam who suggested that rather than a final output, I think of the end of the processing as a consequence. As well, it was suggested that the art in this work resides in the realm of performance and the consequence is documentation, or that the art takes place in whatever it is I am effecting by my processes. The semantics of all of these ideas aside, I found some inspiration (and comfort) in beginning to think about my art being within my process, my decisions, my programming and my code.

While I'm still wondering how to frame this thinking in terms of my video work, which remains entirely unresolved, I think there is potential to think of consequences and effects in any of my work.

A critique with Lisa Anne Auerbach a couple weeks ago was very helpful, if not momentarily deflating. She works with text and print, two things I love, and mixes this with politics and sweaters.

Discussing my ideas resulted in a lingering question of content and how best to create ideas that can move with content. It began to make me think of my work on magazines in high school and t-shirts in my undergrad... these are mediums that mean something, as long as I can give them meaning. My ideas surrounding the digital may sound more empty than they are because I am currently uninterested in creating an object for a gallery space. I am intrigued by the use and hoarding of data and what it means to do something to either disperse or hoard data myself. I think there is art in what I do with that data, though I need to negotiate what the consequence might mean for the viewer.

By justin | 0 COMMENTS | POSTED IN: text

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