Destruction of Traditional Artwork

Our group printed out black-and-white parts of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and put it up together to form a 53 by 77 cm image of Mona Lisa, which is the actual size of the original painting. The iconic Mona Lisa is a representation of all traditional form of art, and may even be the icon of Art itself. The replication of Mona Lisa is a form of destruction of its originality, where the artwork is stripped of its colours, texture, and reality. By piecing up many pieces of the Mona Lisa, we also glitched it up slightly as it now is a combination of 8 pieces of paper rather than a whole canvas.

Our artwork is a performance where we would burn this piece of “artwork” as a symbol of rebellion. It represents the destruction of the rules tied to art that have been established for many years. To burn the icon is to say that art does not have to have an image tied to it too. Art should be formless, everywhere, and most importantly, it should be free. It should be like the air surrounding us.

The performance art itself is also a destruction of the meaning of art being just a static piece of painting, as art in modern day is broadened with introduction of things like performance art and concept art. Therefore it breaks the idea that a painting should represent art itself.

By destroying the artwork, one does not only reject traditional art rules and forms, but also liberates the art from its frames, releasing itself from its own rigidity. As it turns into smoke and ashes, it leaves in its new and better form — freed, formless, and eternal, rather than being trapped in the painting.

The final outcome has a unique texture — it appears solid, but it is soft. The burnt ink also created a sepia tone to the new Mona Lisa.

The Video

For our DIWO assignment, my team: Reuben, Joel, and I have decided to create a whole new instagram account (@reubryjo) as a form of collaborative art platform. The account details are then given out to mostly our friends. The rule for using this account is simple: log in and take a photo of something in the colour you like. With this rule, we intend to collect as many photos as possible contributed by our audience through this account, and compile them into a spectrum of colours.

Our audience will be given complete freedom to the account, as they get to take as many photos as they wish. Our audience becomes the artist, and their photos are not just part of the artwork, but are also by itself, the artwork. The outcome of the artwork will be dependent on the audience’s posts, but we will also be curating it. This makes us, the creators, uncertain of what is going to happen.

As mentioned by Marc Garrett in his article on DIWO:

“the process (of DIWO) is as important as the outcome, forming relationally aware peer enactments. It is a living art, exploiting contemporary forms of digital and physical networks as a mode of open praxis.”

Embracing the process of DIWO where our audiences continue to add on to the artwork to add complexity to it, our artwork becomes alive.

We have arranged the photos into a colour spectrum, which is visible from afar; but from up close, we get to see the contents of the photos posted by the audience. The audience’s posts have affected the outcome, and the outcome shows the intentions from both the audience and the creator. The resulting artwork shows the relationship between the creator and audience, its body and its soul. This, I believe, is the very reflection of DIWO.

As much as there are similarities between our artwork and the Humanclock.com by Craig D. Giffen, where everyone can contribute a photo to create an entirely new outcome of an artwork (in this case, a photo of numbers that tells the time to create a database of times), our work is more representative of the audience where the artwork expresses more of what our audiences want to show.

Screenshot taken from https://www.humanclock.com/

The openness and freedom of our rules allowed our audience to do what they want with their posts, rather than making sure that there is a content to it. That is what sets our work different from the Humanclock.com project.

Tag: art

Micro-Project 5: The Art of Destruction

Destruction of Traditional Artwork

Experimentation & Interaction – DIWO and Micro Project II