I’ve largely been focusing on finalising my Pecha Kucha presentation this week, however talking to Cemre during my 1-2-1 session reminded me I had yet to do a CRJ post that is self-reflective on the choice of typography, the decision of going with a kitsch low-res aesthetic to my work.
Typography, and the Kitsch
“The “hot” cursive fonts and gradiated neon backdrops read the same way: they are – for better or for worse – part of the dustbin of history, not unlike an out-of-date wall calendar. By combining all of these obsolete elements, Price creates a portrait of obsolescence itself. The fact of obsolescence. Memento Mori.”
McHugh, G. (2019; 46)
at Reena Spaulings, 2009
This week one of the books I’ve been reading has been Gene McHugh’s Post Internet, which has acquainted me with the artist Seth Price whose work in McHugh’s observations depicts obsolescence in the chose of chosing a set of 2004 calenders (Figure 1), now out of date in more than one way with the graphic design tropes befitting more of the early 90s futurism trend in front design. McHugh’s analysis and commentary has really resonated with me, in that with e-maGen’s visual vernacular commenting on the modern day aesthetic sub-cultures, I am referencing back to my childhood, and teenage years and the aesthetics related to e-maGen in that they are the precursors to the current aesthetics.
The use of animated text is obsolete yet at the same time fresh and new, as seen by the rise in popularity of accounts such as @animatedtext on twitter (Figure 2), but with time it will return to obsolescence again as the nostalgia fades, and the constant flux of trends and identities that are short lived and only present on the internet today decide that Y2K, kitsch and pastel aesthetics are out of date (again). Interesting this is echoed by McHugh’s 2019 reflective foreword where he mentions that time has made his observations date, dead and a historical example:
“What feels most relevant in these pages, ten or so years since they were written, is anything having to do with the effect of time. Post-internet art and writing about post-internet art is at its best when it evinces a self-consciousness about the precarious relationship of digital culture and time. What was so vital then, often appears dated now. That fact, it’s becoming more and more clear, is the ontological condition of post-internet art. Most of it is an art of the right now and quickly becomes dead, at best a historical example. That sounds disparaging, but I don’t exactly mean it that way. At the time it mattered more than anything.”
McHugh, G. (2019; 3)
Low-res
Recently I have been reading Valentina’s Eternal September essay and felt the following quote really resonated with my motivations of using a low-res aesthetic:
“Non-professional cultural expressions, characterized by a low resolution, sometimes not even supported by editing and retouching, glitched, inappropriate or crude, are felt be more “authentic”.”
Valentina, T. [in] Quaranta D. (2014; 9)
Questioning the authentic through using low-res imagery that has been strongly edited and retouched is a bit of a continuation from the aesthetics I created during An Authentic Lie, however the manifestation of it is very different in e-maGen, with the distortions and low-res aesthetic achieved in combination with using GIFs, which have a limited palette choices and through the use of dragging holographic gift wrap on a scanner and then overlaying it in Photoshop. A practitioner who also uses GIFs to produce a low res aesthetic is May Waver (Figure 3), who utilised this look to further her manipulations of glitchy content aware editing. Valentina’s commentary reminded me of Steyerl’s comments on the poor image, how upon reproduction and redistribution the data of the image becomes more lossly and deteriorates, loosing data and information the more it is saved and uploaded from service to service. She wrote:
“The poor image is a copy in motion. Its quality is bad, its resolution substandard. As it accelerates, it deteriorates. It is a ghost of an image, a preview, a thumbnail, an errant idea, an itinerant image distributed for free, squeezed through slow digital connections, compressed, reproduced, ripped, remixed, as well as copied and pasted into other channels of distribution.”
Steyerl, H. (2009)
Lastly this leads to Quaranta’s observations, that whilst the likes of Steyerl and other theorists in the field consider no image to be authentic and those that are deemed reproductions or ‘poor’ images or even original have likely been tapered with, the average userbase still perceive it to be authentic and don’t question the origins of the image, and this is arguably why deepfakes and other methods of GAN driven images have fooled the average user into believing it’s an authentic individual, location or object. She writes:
“The above distinctions – mediated reproduction, a poor image, an original – are still conceptually valid, mind you, but the rising generation of users and creators are developing a different sort of sensibility toward them. This is an inevitable process, if we consider that the overwhelming majority of our experiences are connected to nothing other than mediated reproductions and poor images. Indeed, mediated experience is perceived as authentic experience”
Quaranta, D. (10)
Exhibition Contexts
Cemre also mentioned that whilst my choice in website worked with the context of my work for my WIPP (as it is ultimately about the internet), how might it work exhibited in other formats? I’ve briefly discussed this in Week 10 about possibly using holographic projections as a vehicle to display my work, however I’ve also looked at using physical sculptural installations through my mask experimentations (which were admittedly more aimed at a workshop angle) and at virtual gallery spaces such as Exhibbit and ArtSteps as alternative exhibition spaces. As I’ve mentioned in the past during the MA working with animated photos, in this case GIFs can pose a limitation on where you can install your work, in that you need electricity and a digital screen, or projection of sorts to produce a physical manifestation, or have a still of the image with a code such as QR (as seen in Week 7’s Book Dummy) which would point the user interacting with the exhibit to the animated edition (this again can be limiting in regards to whether the viewer has access to the internet or has a device on them capable to reading QR.)
Another means of bringing a physical animation to life in a low res way would be to use the moire technique, where you however I feel this method is probably better suited to simple graphics, with an extremely limited colour palette, as seen in Cybertwee’s dark web handbook (2016), which depicts an animated coin, as the transparent acetate is moved along the seemingly abstract lined print.
The decision on how I display e-maGen can ultimately change the context and impact of the work, previously I have mentioned that my practice would work well with using an empty shop unit, adding an additional layer to my overarching theme of the rise of the internet (and unfortunately something becoming all to easy to find where I live, in the past year alone we have had 2 large department stores, and 2 well known high street fashion chains shut shop leaving behind empty units), however it is unlikely such places would have any electricity, so I would either need to use generators (like was done for 100 Heroines) for lighting and screen displays or go for a more lo-fi approach of QR, using the shop windows of the unit itself.
Avital Meshi
Avital Meshi’s series Visually Similar depicts a sequence of portraits which are visually similar to the artists own face, which is never shown, yet have been found using Google Images visually similar search facility before being accumulated and layered together. Avital writes that “Visual similarity is a concept which becomes crucial in the age of machine-learning.” (Meshi, A. 2015-2017) amd that this observation is the driving force behind their practice. The outcome is visually disturbing and uncanny, a frankenstein’s monster of mixed parts, but what I found most interesting was Meshi’s choice of display (Figure 5) a small low-fi handmade flipbook that allows the viewer to explore multiple portraits and variations by flipping the eyes, and mouths visible. This is an interesting tactic, and something to think about when it comes to the constant flux of identity, and could be something else I could do with e-maGen, mini books that show the transition from mannequin to human and the inbetween, as well as showing the animation of the text and object.
References
Figures
Figure 1 Pierce, S. (2004) Graphics, 2004 at Reena Spaulings, 2009. [Online] Available from: https://sethpriceimages.com/tagged/calendar%20paintings [Accessed 13/08/2020]
Figure 2 @animatedtext (2020) That’s imposter syndrome luv. [Online] Available from: https://twitter.com/i/status/1293474806839599105 [Accessed 13/08/2020]
Figure 3 Waver, M. (2014) Content Aware. [Online] Available from: http://bodyanxiety.com/gallery/may-waver/ [Accessed 13/08/2020]
Figure 4 Elizabeth, G. [in] Cybertwee (2016) Cybertwee dark web handbook moire animation [Online] Available from: http://cybertwee.net/cybertwee-dark-web-handbook/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7c4JTWehy8 [Accessed 12/08/2020]
Figure 5 Meshi, A. (2015-2017) Visually Similar -Book Display. [Online] Available from: http://www.avitalmeshi.com/visually-similar-2015.html and https://vimeo.com/191708722 [Accessed 12/08/2020]
Bibliography
JON-A-TRON (2014) Instructables: 2D Moire (Slit) Animation. [Online] Available from: https://www.instructables.com/id/2D-Moire-Slit-Animation/ [Accessed 12/08/2020]
McHugh, G. (2019) Post Internet. Notes on the Internet and Art 12.29.09 > 09.05.10: Friday, January 22nd, 2010. pg 3 & pg 46. (2nd edition). Brescia; Link Editions.
Meshi, A. (2015-2017) Visually Similar. [Online] Available from: http://www.avitalmeshi.com/visually-similar-2015.html [Accessed 12/08/2020]
Murray, J. (July 2020) Week 7: Book Dummy. [Online] Available from: https://jasmphotography.wordpress.com/2020/07/15/week-7-book-dummy/ [Accessed 11/08/2020]
Murray, J. (July 2020) Week 8: Workshop Guidance. [Online] Available from: https://jasmphotography.wordpress.com/2020/07/22/week-8-workshop-guidance/ [Accessed 11/08/2020]
Murray, J. (July 2020) Week 9: Production 1. [Online] Available from: https://jasmphotography.wordpress.com/2020/07/28/week-9-production-1/ [Accessed 11/08/2020]
Murray, J. (July-August 2020) Exhibbit Virtual Exhibition Test. [Online] Available from: https://vimeo.com/444061682 [Accessed 11/08/2020]
Murray, J. (August 2020) Week 10: Production 2. [Online] Available from: https://jasmphotography.wordpress.com/2020/08/03/week-10-production-2/ [Accessed 11/08/2020]
Quaranta, D. (2011) Collect the WWWorld: The Artist as Archivist in the Internet Age. pg 10. Brescia; Link Editions.
Steyerl, H. (2009) E-flux journal: “In Defense of the Poor Image” [Online] Available from: http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/94 [Accessed 12/08/2020]
Valentina, T. [in] Quaranta D. (2014) Eternal September. The Rise of Amateur Culture. pg9. Brescia; Link Editions.
Jasmine Murray Photography 