Chellie Davis Art: Final Writing Assignment

It’s not about the Technology…

Artists like Monet and Rembrandt pioneered impressionism, characterized by a concern with depicting the visual impression of the moment, especially in terms of the shifting effect of light and color. Now, instead of representing light with color on canvas and paper and it is possible to use light to create an impressionistic piece of art. Leo Villareal is a contemporary digital artist who embraces digital media in a painterly manner, using hues, color, movement and light itself in an impressionistic way that is fascinating.

Villareal was born in Albequerque, New Mexico in 1967. He attended both Yale and New York University and received a BA in sculpture from Yale University in 1990 and a graduate degree from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Interactive Telecommunications Program (1). He began an internship in 1994 at Interval Research Corporation in Palo Alto, California, where he worked on a project incorporating virtual reality technology. That same year he attended the Burning Man Festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. The event encourages self-reliance and radical self-expression, and features large scale interactive art installations. This experience influenced him greatly, and gradually led him to direct his attention towards creating immersive experiences that could be enjoyed on a larger scale. In 1997 he constructed a wooden structure with strobe lights, programmed to flash in sequence and mounted it atop his camper at Burning Man It was visible from miles away as a device for signaling his camper's location in the boundless desert night. His earliest formal pieces grew out of the strobing beacon he contrived while at Burning Man. "Strobe Matrix" (1997) was created using 16 blinding lamps muted by translucent Plexiglas, foreshadows the work that Villareal has made since.

JoAnne Northrop, the curator of the exhibit Animating Light, currently on display at the Nevada Museum of Art believes that Villareal’s work is “digital art that is accessible to the mainstream of contemporary art… (it) can be appreciated by connoisseurs and art world people, but also average...viewers." To Northrop Villareal's work is important because, as she said, "he really does bridge the world of contemporary art and the world of digerati." Essentially she believes his work promotes a vision of digital technology as a transformational element in society. Villareal himself stated that,

"My work is focused on stripping systems down to their essence to better understand the underlying structures and rules that govern how they work… I am interested in lowest common denominators such as pixels or the zeros and ones in binary code. Starting at the beginning, using the simplest forms, I begin to build elements within a framework. My work explores not only on the physical but adds the dimension of time combining both spatial and temporal resolution. My forms move, change, interact and ultimately grow into complex organisms…(I’m) inspired by mathematician John Conway's work with cellular automata and the Game of Life, I seek to create my own sets of rules… Central to my work is the element of chance. The goal is to create a rich environment in which emergent behavior can occur without a preconceived outcome. I am an active participant, serving as editor in the process through careful selection of compelling sequences…These selections are then further refined through combination with other sequences through simple operations such as addition, subtraction and multiplication," he explained. "The sequence's opacity, speed, and scale can all be manipulated through custom software. Ultimately, complex compositions are formed and then displayed in random order and for a random amount of time in the final artwork. I am interested in the idea of generative art and rendering the patterns on the fly, but have not found a way to generate compelling sequences enough of the time."

Villaeral’s stunning manipulations of light and color are internationally renowned. His sculptures combine strobe lights, neon, and most recently, LED bulbs activated by custom-software with lights pulsing in non-repeating sequences dictated by software he writes. 2008 Villareal created Multiverse for the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. His most elaborate piece to date, it is a 200 foot hallway containing 41,000 white LED lights. His pieces are very open ended, his goal is to create a condition for something to happen, to create an immersive quality in his pieces that can transport people, they become vehicles that can take them somewhere based on their own perceptions, identity and memories; “I create the parameters, and let it happen.” For Villareal, even though technology is necessary to create his work, it is not about the technology, it is about the visual manifestation of the code and what the lights can do and how he can make something that’s a compelling work of art. To Northrop, being able to present Villareal's work to the public is a rare chance to impact not just what people see, but also the way they feel. That is what is interesting to people, the immersive quality of his work. It doesn't just capture your visual attention, your entire body reacts to it and you can feel that the works are trying to communicate with you. (10)

Another artist who is not interested in the technology, only what she can do with it is Shirin Neshat, an Iranian visual artist who lives in New York. She is known primarily for her work in film, video and photography. She was born in Iran in 1957 to a wealthy modern family. She was educated in both Western and Persian culture. Her father was a well-respected physician and her mother a homemaker. Her father, “fantasized about the west, romanticized the west, and slowly rejected all of his own values.” Her father’s also accepted a form of western feminism and he encouraged her to “be an individual, to take risks, to learn, to see the world.”(5) Her parents sent her to the University of California at Berkley and where she completed her BA, MA, and MFA. Revolution overtook her homeland in 1979, and she was exiled and couldn’t return until 11 years later. In 1990, she returned to Iran. "It was probably one of the most shocking experiences that I have ever had. The difference between what I had remembered from the Iranian culture and what I was witnessing was enormous.” As a way of coping with the discrepancy between the culture that she experienced and that of the pre-revolution Iran in which she was raised, she began her first mature body of work, the Women of Allah series. (4)

Her work refers to the social, cultural and religious codes of Muslim societies and the complexity of certain oppositions, such as man and woman. Neshat often emphasizes this theme with the technique of showing two or more coordinated films concurrently, creating stark visual contrasts through such motifs as light and dark, black and white, male and female.

In 2009 Neshat won the Silver Lion award for best director at the 66th Venice Film Festival for her first feature film, Women Without Men. It is an adaptation of a controversial novel that has been banned in Iran since the 1990’s. Shirin depicts the life of Iranian women, they are property and can be beaten, broken and killed at the whim of their men. The story follows four young Iranian women in 1953 through, self discovery, activism, and awareness. The message of this film is one of courage, courage for the women and people of Iran to take their lives into their own hands and create their own destiny. Art and Artists like Neshat have had a tremendous influence in shaping the “Green Movement” for civil right of the Iranian People. The Green Scroll of Freedom is a long scroll written upon and manifesting the Iranian people’s yearning for democracy, equality and dignity. (7) It has traveled the streets of Iran to major cities in the world. The Iranian people nonviolently gather donning green tokens and carrying green signs to show their support of the movement. Through speeches, articles, music, or art the members of the movement are continuing their struggle for freedom and democracy in Iran. The young Iranian generation want freedom; access to basic human rights, and democracy. The candidates in Iranian democracy are nominated by the government not elected by the people so the idea of Iranian democracy is not democracy at all. Now there is a degree of the community coming together and wanting to do something, not just talking and Neshat is able to be a part of that through her work. (8)
So what would the author Margot Lovejoy’s book Digital Currents say to classify both of these artists? Lovejoy classifies most new media art as film, video, performance, interactive art, simulation, and game art. Neshat’s work is photography, video, as well as film. Villareal is simulation, simulated light, as well as interactive as in Diamond Sea where the viewer is reflected and influences their perception of the piece. Both artists have roots in older media, Villareal in impressionism, Neshat in photography. Both impressionism and photography were controversial in their own time. Both artists continue to blow away their audiences with the experiences that they put into their artwork. Neshat is able to share a desired experience, a reflection on culture, identity and feminism. Villareal sets up a shimmering moment, a platform for the viewers own personal experience and enhancement. Their work is enabled by technology and as technology improves and adapts, so will their work but unlike technology, the effects of their work will be relevant and personal to viewers long after the technology used to create it because their work is historical, personal, and not about the technology.

Work Cited

Chellie Davis Art

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Final Writing Assignment

No comments:

Post a Comment