In the opening paragraph, Huhtamo states that “the overwhelming presence of screens in contemporary life was not accompanied by any systematic knowledge about their identities”. This sentiment, I feel, is quite true of people in our current society as most people, myself included, do not really see the significance behind screens as a media identity. Rather, we merely see screens as a medium which we use to view other forms of media (videos, games, text, etc.) and nothing more.

Huhtamo explores the historical and cultural significance behind screens by identifying 4 existing media practices (Touch, Mobile, Peep and Screen), and relating them back to screen practice. Today, the lines between these 4 practices are extremely blurred and arguably non-existed due to advanced technologies which provide us with screens and devices that satiate multiple senses and cross between the 4 media practices. However, as Huhtamo states, the 4 practices are not hard constructs that define and divide media practices but rather “give shape to traditions that have authentic historical currency”. Hence, I decided to look back into my childhood during the time before smart devices and widespread internet connections, and look into how the 4 practices are relevant in categorising devices that I used to own and play with, as well as other devices which we use today.

Touch

One of the earliest screen-based toys which I owned was the Tamagotchi. I feel that children’s toys are a very good example of early touch media, as many of them would want to include a tactile/interactive element to appeal to children. The Tamagotchi is a very simple example of a toy which has a touch-based element (the buttons) which plays a huge role in being able to interact with the device and make full use of its functionalities.

Nowadays with most phones and tablet being touch-screen with maybe only 1 central button, using buttons to control a device is a thing of the past and I imagine that for people born in this day and age, they might not even be able to fathom that in the past most devices including mobile phones were controlled through button keypads! Which brings me to my next point!

Mobile

Huhtamo uses the term”mobile practices” to refer to screens/devices which we must move around in order to view, and those which we use while being mobile and moving around, rather than referring to merely mobile phone based devices. For the former kind of screens, I wasn’t able to think of anything like it from my childhood, however it did remind me of what we see a lot of these days with large-scale installation artworks (such as in iLight & Night to Light).

As for the second kind of device, the mobile phones of my childhood, I feel, truly exemplify what it means to be a mobile device. Nowadays while it is true that our smartphones are portable devices that we can carry around with us, it is a device that we would use at any time (not just while we are out and about but also when we’re just chilling at home) because it has everything we need in it. The mobile phones of the past were truly a device that you would use to make calls and send texts only while you were out. Because there was no internet connection and mobile plans were expensive, people generally preferred to make calls from their home landline instead.

As I got older, mobile phones started to have more and more functionalities such as games, music and cameras. The mobile phone pictured in the photo above was one of my favourites, I remember that my mum had it when I was a kid and it was heavily marketed and advertised as being the first mobile phone with a colour screen or something like that! My favourite part about it was that it had a game where you could choose a virtual pet and take care of it. I would always beg my mum to let me have her phone while we were in the car so I could play that game and I remember always being frustrated that my virtual pet would run away because I couldn’t take care of it while my mum was away at work HAHA

Peep

To be honest, Peep Media kind of confused me at first because I felt like I wasn’t able to relate it to any devices that I had encountered in my life. After watching the above video by Professor Huhtamo, I came to the conclusion that the devices under “peep media” are generally quite 0utdated and not really things that we would encounter in recent decades.

However, going home over the weekend, I noticed one thing in my home which is sort of like a “reverse” peep device, which is a digital camera peephole viewer which many houses have these days. Instead of the traditional peephole where the person inside has to look into the hole in order to see who is standing outside, the person inside now views the outside of the door via a camera which is embedded into the peephole in the door. I was actually having an interesting conversation about this with my brother, where he mentioned that this is one of the items which we have input technology into where it doesn’t really need it since it works pretty much the same way as a traditional peephole (allowing the person inside to see outside). Which is something that I agree with and I feel we need to think about these days, with “smart homes” and the popularity of IoT devices. How many of these devices actually need to be “smart”, and does adding technology to everything necessarily make it better?

Screen

In the reading, Huhtamo does not allude much to screen practice. From my understanding, by screen practice he is referring to screens in general in its most basic form and how it relates to history and society. As I mentioned in the beginning of this review, it is undeniable that screens do have a lot of historical significance and they do have a role to play in society, not just the content that is displayed on them.

One example of how screens can be a part of everyday life can be seen right within our own NTU campus, namely the Media Art Nexus. While some people might think it is just a large screen showing random videos, it is something which transforms the entire corridor into an arts viewing space. Rather than being just a passageway for people to walk through, the entire mood and atmosphere in the corridor has changed because of the screen and when entering the corridor it is like entering a whole different room altogether. Because the aim of the Media Art Nexus is not commercial gain but rather to give a platform for students/artists to display their works, it is one of the few public screens I have seen which aims to display art and not just advertisements or marketing materials.

Because of its location, there are definitely many people who walk past MAN on a daily basis but they might not realise how much more interesting and meaningful screens like MAN make their daily lives.

To conclude, before this reading, I myself did not see how screens are a significant tool in society, and how they are the result of many historical media practices which we might not even recognise as screens as we know them. Screens are more than just a platform for viewing, but rather they have the power to shape how the media is viewed and regulate the audience’s interaction with the media. With current popular technologies like projection mapping, almost anything can be turned into a screen and it will be exciting to see how this plays out in the future, to find out and to experiment for myself as an artist on how the idea of a screen can be further developed and changed as technology advances,

Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko & Abstract Expressionism

Barnett Newman, Queen of the Night I, 1961, Oil on canvas

Mark Rothko, No. 5, 1964, Oil, acrylic and mixed media on canvas

I decided to research on Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko and Abstract Expressionism, after seeing the artworks above near the entrance of the exhibition. To me, Newman and Rothko are artists whom I consider synonymous to minimalism, hence I thought it was fitting that theirs was the first few works to be seen in the exhibition. I always assumed that artworks by artists like Newman or Mark Rothko were considered minimalist due to the simple compositions and lack of fine detail, but upon researching I found out that they actually fall under the category of abstract expressionism. For this review, I decided to do research to find out how abstract expressionism differs from minimalism, and how they are alike or influenced by each other.

Willem de Kooning, Untitled XXV

Abstract expressionism is a form of abstract art which was developed in the 1940s-50s, mainly in New York City. There are many prominent names associated with abstract expressionism that we will find familiar, such as Jackson Pollock and the aforementioned Rothko and Newman. Abstract expressionism stems from the surrealist movement with its aim being to create artworks that were abstract yet also conveying a great deal of expression and emotion. With this description, I find it fitting that one’s mind would conjure images of Pollock’s canvases of chaos or de Kooning’s vibrant, haphazard brush strokes. These are artists whose works convey strong emotion, not only through the painting itself but also through the artists’ process of painting the canvas. Looking at a Pollock piece it is easy to imagine the artist putting in dynamic and emotive movements into these brush strokes, literally painting his emotions into the canvas.

Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1968

Hence, it seems baffling to me that the works of artists like Newman and Rothko could even fall under this same category. Unlike the previous works mentioned, the works of Newman and Rothko consist of clean, straight lines and a minimal number of colours, hence it is hard see the similarities. So it seems like even under the umbrella of abstract expressionism, This is because abstract expressionism as a movement does not merely encompass one type of art. Under it, it encompasses two broad groupings:

1. Action Painters

This group consists of artists like Pollock and de Kooning, whose painting process consisted of gestural brush strokes, and dripping or splashing paint rather than carefully applying it onto the canvas. The artists painted in a state of spontaneity and improvisation, such as Pollock who was famous for placing his canvases on the ground and dripping paint on it from a can or stick.

2. Colour Field Painters

Consisting of artists like Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, colour field painters’ works are characterised by simple compositions with large areas of colour. The artists were deeply interested in religion and myth and created simple compositions with large areas of colour intended to produce a contemplative or meditational response in the viewer.

Despite these blatant differences, I believe that at their core, both groups of painters had similar visions and intentions in their artistic practice. In Newman’s essay “The Sublime is Now” he suggested that art should be stripped down to only the essentials but that it still deal with “absolute emotion”. Colour field painters took this idea to a new level by concentrating fully on colour as their medium rather than the physical brush stroke itself. Both groups of painters do not attempt to represent physical reality, instead using shapes, colours, forms and gestural marks to achieve its effect (abstract) and seeks to articulate the inner feelings of the artist rather than the object of the art (expressionism).

Which then begs the question: what are these works by Rothko and Newman doing in a Minimalism exhibit? Upon doing the above research, I was quite sceptical about this because I do think there is a tendency for people to label something as “minimalist” merely because it looks simple and lacks embellishment. While colour field paintings are undoubtedly simple in their composition, that does not define them as minimalist art pieces. Minimalism means more than just simplicity. As artist Frank Stella states, “What you see is what you see”, meaning that minimalist art is about representing the art for what it is and not being an imitation of something else. Minimalism is not about black and white, empty rooms or straight lines. It is about representing art in its truest, raw form and nothing else.

In fact, minimalist art came about in the 1960s (at the peak of abstract expressionism), as a form of rejection of the ideas behind abstract expressionism, seeing it as superfluous due to the artworks’ reflection of the artists’ emotions. In this sense, I suppose, we could say that minimalist art is in fact influenced by abstract expressionism as its emergence was in response to the rising popularity of the latter. I doubt minimalist artists from the 1960s would have been very happy to see abstract expressionist works in a minimalism exhibition today, though the wall label at the National Gallery states that none of the prominent early minimalist artists accepted the label so perhaps they wouldn’t care.

To sum off, I am in no way implying that the minimalism exhibition was a flop! In fact I was delighted to see such an exhibit in Singapore that was so widely publicised because I do feel that artworks like what we have seen in the exhibition are something that Singaporeans sorely need to be exposed to. The artworks I have critiqued merely make up a small fraction of the exhibition and there are many impressive works in there that are worth making the trip down to see. I just think that as artist, curators and art viewers, we do have a need to do extensive research into artworks that we are looking at, in order to present or view them in a way that respects the artist and does the artwork justice as to what the artist intended.

References:

William Johnson, Comparing and Contrasting Expressionism, Abstract, and Pop Art

Tate Museum: Abstract Expressionism, Colour Field Painting, Minimalism

The Art Story Foundation: Color Field Painting

Minimalissimo Magazine, Introduction to Minimal Art