Final Hyperessay: Be cautious of technological change – aaajiao

April 26, 2018 / / 0 Comments

‘aaajiao’ is the virtual persona of Chinese new media artist Xu Wenkai(徐文恺). His art is marked by a strong dystopian awareness, literati spirits and sophistication. In my view, aaajiao is a special artist who comes from the background of Computer Science. Compare with common engineers,  he doesn’t care about the machine performance and employ the ability to create the technological products to solve problems. By contrast, he is not optimistic about the power of technology and focuses on discovering the dark side of it, he employs his technical skills to create implied artworks to engage audiences to consider the value of technology from his perspective.

Personally speaking, from his artworks, I realize the thinking of “ Be cautious of technological change“.  And in the following essay,  I will explian how aaajiao communicate this idea to audiences through his artworks.

Typeface

‘Typeface’ https://github.com/aaajiao/typeface

‘Typeface’ is aaajiao’s artwork that aims to explore the value of Chinese characters which are recreated by the digital mean. In this project, aaajiao codes algorithm to teach the machine to learn how to write 9 Chinese characters. During the process of machine training, through mutilating a large number of characters into the pixel level, the neural network finally learns the writing skill in its own way. However, aaajiao claims that the machine’s study of creating words leads to the loss of the meaning of characters, and he states his purpose is not to teach the computer to write characters but to create a sense of ‘meaningless’.

In my view, in order to understand this ‘meaningless’, audiences should have the context of the historical knowledge about the birth of Chinese characters. It is generally believed that Chinese characters are one of the oldest words over the world in term of history, it has been thousands of years since the development of Oracle bone script to today’s Chinese characters. Basically, most of Chines characters could be seen as a long-time evolution from the abstract graphics drawings.

evolution of Chinese character(fish) in different dynasties

Some people hold overly romantic attitude toward the out of computers, they start to believe that computers are creating a wisdom. As a sensible artist and engineer who creates this piece, aaajiao reminds people of that the recreated words are only an image or a digital image processing from computers perspective. There are thousands of humanistic history of creating Chinese characters while the computer only takes several seconds to recreate it, as a human, we cannot treat these characters without our previous experience, and the history, is the essential soul of words, and without history, words are losing their meaning.

The artwork of ‘Typeface’ reminders me of Google’s artificial intelligence(AI) of AlphaGo who beats the best human Go player and ranks the first in the world. The rapid development of AI provides endless possibilities for human, and we start to imagine what value that AI can bring to us. Different from most people, aaajiao doesn’t hold an absolutely optimistic attitude toward it, as a sensitive artist,  he cares about the humanistic value of the technological products and critically thinks about the result caused by the technological revolution. And ‘Typeface’ was his typical artwork reflecting the negative value brought by AI.

Moreover, I would like to link the piece of  ‘Typeface’ to Mark Amerika’s work, GRAMMATRON. From my understanding, GRAMMATRON was an artwork that employs the subject of ‘texts’ and the new type of technology at that time(Internet or Hypermedia). Instead of book production, it provides a public domain networked-narrative environment where the stories are narrated. Through experiments the technique of hypertexts, GRAMMATRON was questioning how a narrative would be composed, published and distributed in the age of digital dissemination and predicting the coming change that internet will bring to our life. Compare with GRAMMATRON, ‘Typeface’ is doing something similar that experiment the current advanced technology(AI) as well as create a new way of handwriting, the difference is that ‘Typeface’ does not aim to challenge the traditional handwriting but to attempt to emphasize the humanistic importance of traditional handwriting.

Blog weighting(2013) & A Dead Innovative Company(2016)

Blog Weighting http://eventstructure.com/blogArchaeological-0

“Blog weighting” is aaajiao’s artwork that implies the underrated power of data in the digital era. aaajiao found a writer who has been writing his blog for ten years. He collected all of the blog’s data and saved it onto an SD card.  And then he put the SD card on the scale and jewelry on another scale to compare their value by traditional measuring standard.

A Dead Innovative Company, http://eventstructure.com/A-Dead-Innovative-Company

The piece of “A Dead Innovative Company” emphasizes that data is the core fortune of an innovative company in this current digital era. In this piece, audiences could insert a flash disk into the USB port, and get two files which means they can easily destroy an innovative company by stealing the soul(data) from it.

From my perspective, “Blog weighting” and “A Dead Innovative Company” are also interesting and thoughtful works.  The comparison between the SD card(data) and the jewelry is really humorous and ironical, without doubt, the result is obvious that the card is much lighter than the jewelry, but does it mean data is less value than jewelry? I think the answer is no.

aaajiao describes that the purpose for him to create these two artworks is to engage audiences to reconsider the value of data in this digital era.  Data’s spreading has become fast and easy, I tend to say that we are living in a society which has become fed on the open data spaces arising from the proliferation of the internet. And the subject of data in these two works reminders me of Bush’s “As We May Think”:

“Science has provided the swiftest communication between individuals; it has provided a record of ideas and has enabled man to manipulate and to make extracts from that record so that knowledge evolves and endures throughout the life of a race rather than that of an individual.

There is a growing mountain of research. But there is increased evidence that we are being bogged down today as specialization extends. The investigator is staggered by the findings and conclusions of thousands of other workers—conclusions which he cannot find time to grasp, much less to remember, as they appear. Yet specialization becomes increasingly necessary for progress, and the effort to bridge between disciplines is correspondingly superficial.”

Bush describes that the record of ideas(data) helps knowledge to be inherited and evolved across the entire human race instead of individual, and human was bogged down at that time as specialization extends(or the difficulty of saving and extending knowledge from my understanding). What is ironical, nowadays people are used to be benefited from the internet or the hypermedia which is evolved from Bush’s idea of Memex, however,  the ease of spreading knowledge(data) leads to people’s neglect the value of data. I think that “Blog weighting” is attempting to recall our attention to the value or the power of data.

“The applications of science have built man a well-supplied house, and are teaching him to live healthily therein. They have enabled him to throw masses of people against one another with cruel weapons. They may yet allow him truly to encompass the great record and to grow in the wisdom of race experience. He may perish in conflict before he learns to wield that record for his true good. Yet, in the application of science to the needs and desires of man, it would seem to be a singularly unfortunate stage at which to terminate the process, or to lose hope as to the outcome.”

This is the last paragraph of “As we may think” where predicts the Bush’s concerned about the science application in future. In the piece of “Dead Innovative Company”, the audience’s interaction with the artwork could imply the violent behavior that human use the science application in a wrong way, to be more specific, the interaction of inserting a flash disk(cruel weapon) is trying to kill the company(perish in conflict).  It also warns us that we are living in the age of information, we are benefited from data, but also threatened by data such as the privacy issues.

Conclusion

In conclusion,  aaajiao’s works are throwing the idea of “Be cautious of technological change” to the public. In this hyperessay, I research three of his artworks to communicate his idea. Nowadays most people are holding overly optimistic attitude toward the technology, and or even overly obsessed with the technological explosion. However, like what Walter Benjamin describes the ‘mechanical reproduction era’ and the loss of aura of artworks, copied artworks are losing aura during the process of mechanical reproduction, and the recreated Chinese characters in ‘Typeface’ are also losing its aura and its essential meaning during the computer recreation. In “Blog weighting” and “A Dead Innovative Company”, aaajiao attempts to emphasize the power of data, and to hint that the positive and negative ways for people to employ the technology.  As an observant artist, aaajiao is reminding us to be cautious of technological change not only from the positive perspective but also the cautious one.

 

 

Reference

  • Vannevar Bush, As We May Think, 1945

Bibliography

  • Randall Packer and Ken Jordan, Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality, 2001

 

Key Work Selection: aaajiao

April 10, 2018 / / 0 Comments

The Screen Generation

The Screen Generation http://eventstructure.com/The-Screen-Generation

The six pieces that make up The Screen Generation are Soft, Repeatedly, Hard, Pure, Static, and Noise, which all exist and begin as digital applications developed by the artist. The screen might then be understood as a somewhat arbitrary container and frame for the visible and audible components of these applications. But by suggesting that the results of these applications exist less in the various images and sounds produced by them and more in the reception of these components by the audience, it can be said that the screens play an important role in the work of the pieces, and – taking this further – that these works are then human-oriented.

Different from aaajiao’s previous works, the six new pieces all cast light on the self-display of technology – technology using itself to represent itself. The “self-display” in the works found here is not such a one-way operation – from machine, outwards, without regard to the presence or absence of a receiver. Here this operation exists as interactions with the human senses and understanding. Ultimately the works exist not in themselves, but in these interactions with a human that takes in the sensory information provided by the work and makes something of it. This “something” is not just an expanded understanding of the work, it is that expanded understanding.

 

Blog weighting 

Blog Weighting http://eventstructure.com/blogArchaeological-0

Weigh the data involved in RobotWisdom.com. The choice of the site is not only because his author Jorn Barger created the word weblog, but also because he is a programmer, artist and expert at the same time. His blog is more personal oriented, its contents cover a wider field and on the run even today.
Weighting is to try to explore how to measure standard of data represents under the most traditional metrology system. Making it an opening words, we study the permanence of data

Typeface

Typeface https://github.com/aaajiao/typeface

Typeface is an art experiment, aims to explore the ancient text, in the digital means by repeating the process of deconstruction and reconstruction of the loss of meaning, we collected a lot of time carved stone rubbings convolutional to train a deep convolutional generative adversarial network (DCGAN), in the process of training, the structure of the text were mutilated to the pixel level, through the study of a large number of samples, the neural network to master the method of writing, able to create new words. But this study – the process of creating, the meaning of the text is completely lost, to recreate the text into a meaningless imitation.

Artist Selection: aaajiao

April 9, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Artist Selection

aaajiao is the virtual persona of Chinese new media artist Xu Wenkai(徐文恺). His art is marked by a strong dystopian awareness, literati spirits and sophistication. Many of his works speak to new thinkings, controversies and phenomenon around the Internet, with specific projects focusing on the processing of data, the blogosphere and China’s Great Fire Wall. aaajiao’s recent projects extend his practice to various disciplines (architecture, topography, and design) to capture the pulse of the young generation consuming cyber technology and living in social media.

aaajiao

aaajiao http://eventstructure.com/aaajiao

aaajiao’s work has been featured in numerous exhibitions around the world, upcoming and recent shows include “Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today”, The Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Boston (2018); “unREAL”, Haus der elektronischen Künste, Basel (2017); “Shanghai Project Part II”, Shanghai (2017); “Temporal Turn: Art and Speculation in Contemporary Asia”, Spencer Museum of Art, Kansas (2016); “Take Me (I’m Yours)” (curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Jens Hoffmann and Kelly Taxter), Jewish Museum, New York (2016); “Overpop”, Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2016); “Hack Space” (curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Amira Gad), K11 Art Foundation Pop-up Space, Hong Kong and chi K11 art museum, Shanghai (2016); “Globale: Global Control and Censorship”, ZKM | Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe (2015); “Thingworld International Triennial of New Media Art”, The National Art Museum of China, Beijing (2014); and Transmediale, Berlin (2010). His solo exhibition includes: “Remnants of an Electronic Past”, Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, Manchester (2016); OCAT Contemporary Art Terminal Xi’an, Xi’an (2016), among others.

He was awarded the Art Sanya Awards in 2014 Jury Prize and was nominated for the first edition of OCAT-Pierre Huber Art Prize in 2014.

A video of aaajiao’s exhibition, ALIAS: AAAJIAO(2015)

Above content was extracted from:

aaajiao’s official website: http://eventstructure.com/ 

aaajiao’s Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaajiao

The Art of the Networked Practice Online Symposium

Review of The Art of the Networked Practice Online Symposium

April 3, 2018 / / 1 Comment

I attended the first day and the third day of The Art of the Networked Practice Online Symposium, which includes the Keynote by Maria Chatzichristodoulou and the Internet Performance by Annie Abrahams and collaborators(Day 1), as well as the Internet Performance by Jon Cates and collaborators(Day 3). This Hyperessay will critique and discuss the certain contents in the symposiums I attended.

Maria Chatzichristodoulou, Symposium Keynote

Maria Chatzichristodoulou, Symposium Keynote

Keynote of Live Art and Telematics: The Promise of Internationalism by Maria Chatzichristodoulou

Chatzichristodoulou introduces several artworks created by the well-respected pioneers in the history of telematics, as well as questions the outcomes of these live art experiments linking to visions of Marshall McLuhan’s concept of the ‘global village’.

keywords & definitions of the keynote by Maria Chatzichristodoulou

There are two impressive pieces of works for me which are At home in Gaza and London by Station House Opera in 2016 and The Pixelated Revolution by Rabih Mroué in 2012. From my understanding, the role of telematics in At home in Gaza and London is to challenge restrictions placed upon the free circulation of people and ideas. Specifically, the piece creates a mutual performance space for participants in the two locations of Gaza and London separated by great political, economic and physical divides. As Gaza is currently suffering from the situation of inaccessible outside world, the aim of this piece is to employ contemporary mobile technologies to build the connection to one of the most inaccessible places on earth lives with an international audience. It means, through telematics, artists break the physical barrier and create freedom in the third space.

In addition, the Pixelated Revolution articulates and disputes Syria’s geopolitical chaos through the ‘killed images’ produced by the bipod camera which an extension of the victim’ visual feeling. The “killed images” was really shocked through providing an immersive visual feeling with the first person perspective. However, Mroué states that there is a layer of abstraction between the abundance of visual information and the narrative it forges which further trouble the knowledge one can extract from the chaos of media and the chaos depicted in the images themselves. In my view, the short film produced by the victim, to some extent, disclose the uncovering chaos in Syria, however, the technical problem which should be the quality of camera blurs the process of revealing the truth (Who is the sniper?).

Online En-semble – Entanglement Training: Directed and performed by Annie Abrahams (FR) with Antye Greie (FI), Helen Varley Jamieson (DE), Soyung Lee (KR), Hương Ngô (US), Daniel Pinheiro (PT), Igor Stromajer (DE), and NTU students

Online En-semble – Entanglement Training: Directed and performed by Annie Abrahams (FR) with Antye Greie (FI), Helen Varley Jamieson (DE), Soyung Lee (KR), Hương Ngô (US), Daniel Pinheiro (PT), Igor Stromajer (DE), and NTU students

In the work of online En-semble – Entanglement Training(2018), artists investigate the way to work together with the certain protocol in the third space which is a connected world that machines and humans have to communicate accepting partial overviews, glitches, time-lags, disrupting audience participation and ensuing disorientation.

I noticed a detail in the introduction of this performance on the website of this symposium, which describes that NTU students are one part of the performers. I tend to believe this could describe the interactive and happening which are the ones of the most important characters of modern art. And in this case, I personally think the audience’s responses such as their texts in the chatting windows would influence the performance in some ways even if Annie Abrahams said that they were too busy to pay attention to there. Moreover, when the conversation was beginning after the performance with the terrible network environment (which I still considered as a part of the performance), people’s behaviors began to be slightly unnatural, audiences and performers with different expressions, like nervous, confused, lost, uncomfortable and etc. We were all shared with the third space with each other, but essentially, we were still not in same time (latency) neither the same location, I began to observe what we did as well as to consider what we should do to connect well with human and also machine in the partial third world with glitches.

TCP 3-Way Handshake Diagram

Meanwhile, the question asked by Professor Randall Packer about the protocol of performance reminded me about the Transmission Control Protocol(TCP) which is is one of the main protocols of the Internet protocol suite, and its connection establishment process:  “Three-Way Handshake” which make each side verify that it can send packets to the other side . Generally, it could be thought as a most effective way to build a reliable, ordered, and error-checked connection, and when the meeting was influenced by the unstable network environment, I was thinking that could we use the thinking of “Three-Way Handshake” if we are suffering from a terrible one on one webcam conservation.

igaies – intimate glitches across internet errors  by internationally renowned Chicago glitch artist Jon Cates (US) and collaborators: Roberto Sifuentes (US), Arcángel Constantini (MX), Shawné Michaelain Holloway (US), 愛真 Janet Lin (US) & Paula Pinho Martins Nacif (UK) (XXXtraPrincess), and Aram Han Sifuentes (US)

igaies – intimate glitches across internet errors  by internationally renowned Chicago glitch artist Jon Cates (US) and collaborators: Roberto Sifuentes (US), Arcángel Constantini (MX), Shawné Michaelain Holloway (US), 愛真 Janet Lin (US) & Paula Pinho Martins Nacif (UK) (XXXtraPrincess), and Aram Han Sifuentes (US)

In the work of igaies (intimate glitches across internet errors), Jon Cates and collaborators developed a series of multifarious and differentiated performance works that express the combination of small miraculous mistakes and moments of beautiful brokenness which fuse together as a single improvisatory, real-time sensory overload of noise, blood, hashtags, fetishism, sexuality, memes, and #cutestuff.

I was really attracted by the part of Roberto Sifuentes’ #exsanguination. His body was be mourned and cleaned by ritualistically putting on leeches on.

“Responding to hyper-mediatized, colliding images, and sensory overload of global despair to create #exsanguination, a performance where the bleeding body stands in for the displaced, invisible, and forgotten, becoming a site for activism, penance, and reinvention.”

– Roberto Sifuentes and collaborators

Roberto Sifuentes, #exsanguination

I think that the leeches and Roberto Sifuentes represent abstractly the relationship between human and this hyper-mediatized era. As the rapid development of technology, too many information are infesting around ourselves. Personally thinking,  in this generation, about 80% of our conscious time is spent on facing screens, the position of the virtual space and real space has been upside down right now. Human might be tired of screen and overload of digital information, and need the process of exsanguination to mourn and clean the body with leeches. Moreover, there was also an interesting idea that came up to my mind at the end of the symposium, for the online symposium itself, compare the local audiences and remote audiences, the local audiences sharing the same real space with performers were physically closer to them than the remote ones sharing the third space with performers, however, the remote audiences had more opportunities to be active such as they can discuss and ask questions in the chat room but not to disturb the performance. It could probably represent a way of the upside down between the real space and the virtual space.

 

The Big Kiss, Annie Abrahams, 2008

March 20, 2018 / / 1 Comment

Annie Abrahams, featured artist

Annie Abrahams (born 1954) is a Dutch performance artist specializing in video installations and internet-based performances, often deriving from collective writings and collective interaction.

The Big Kiss(2018) was a Live Internet Broadcast Performance by Annie Abraham. The two performers attempt to kiss through the network in this work. Despite physical separation, there is a sense of intimacy and even sexuality in the telematic embrace.

 

“we alone together,” or “we form meaningful and deeply human connections through networked interaction and performance”

Through the webcam technology, the Big Kiss allows the participants kiss with the physical separation which explores the idea of the “telematic embrace,” a concept discussed by theorist Roy Ascott in terms of qualities of engagement in networked space. In this case, Annie Abrahams attempted to experiment human intimate behaviors in the digital world or so-called the third space. However, could we consider the Big Kiss as a real kiss, or a further meaningful human intimacy created by the network?

“Machine mediated kissing in a performance = drawing with your tongue = taking pleasure, while constructing an image = a way to be superaware of the other = never totally abandoning yourself = ???????? = not at all like real kissing, it is better! This might be a female point of view.”
– Annie Abrahams

Annie Abrahams tends to believe that this would never be a real kiss but better than it. In my opinion, I believe there are always some differences which can not be ignored between a real kiss and the Big Kiss, at least we don’t usually open our eyes when kissing. In the work of the Big Kiss, we don’t have a sense of touching, the feeling of kiss was the result of the images of the third space. People focus on both the image of themselves and others in the third space, and keep adjusting their mouth position and motion to let their images to interact with others images. However, audiences can still relate it to kiss due to their previous experience and awaken intimate feelings by it.

Susan Kozel talked about similar findings in her article Spacemaking: experiences of a virtual body. “It was a variation or extension rather than a technological replica.” which is the way she describes the Big Kiss.

I believe that the thinking of a variation or extension of kiss is really convincing, and it reminders me of other intimacy that we might do in our daily life, like we used to send the message, using the emoji of kiss, or even the text of Mua~ imitating the sound of kiss, as well as the motion of fly kiss, to awaken others intimate feelings. These kind of behaviors are like variations or extensions of kiss with different media, and the Big Kiss is the one relying on webcam.

kiss in online chat

fly kiss

Research Critique: Telematic Dreaming (1992)

March 13, 2018 / / 1 Comment

“Telematic Dreaming is an installation that exists within the ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) digital telephone network. Two separate interfaces are located in separate locations, these interfaces in themselves are dynamic installations that function as customized video-conferencing systems. A double bed is located within both locations, one in a blacked out space and the other in an illuminated space. The bed in the light location has a camera situated directly above it, sending a live video image of the bed, and a person (“A”) lying on it, to a video projector located above the other bed in the blacked out location. The live video image is projected down on to the bed with another person (“B”) on it. A second camera, next to the video projector, sends a live video image of the projection of person “A” with person “B” back to a series of monitors that surround the bed and person “A” in the illuminated location. The telepresent image functions like a mirror that reflects one person within another person reflection.”

– Paul Sermon

Interactive and Immersive

In telematic dreaming, I tend to believe that the communication and interaction between two participants who are in different locations rely on the virtual space that built by the collective media. Specifically, one participant tried to constantly adjust his postures to interact with another person in the virtual space, the participant’s motion would be responded in the virtual space, and they would obtain the feeling and experience from the combination between virtual and real space. The virtual space’s response recalls the experience that audiences really got in the real world before, when the immersive experience from virtual space and feedback begins to engage the audiences, the established spatial order gradually dissolves in the artwork.

” And just as the Hopi seek to exploit the full measure of their expressive means by joining image, music, chant, and dance into a holistic unity, so we too now seek a synthesis of digital modes – image, sound, text, and cybernetic structure – by which to recontextualize our own world, that numinous whole of all our separate realities.

The emerging new order of art is that of interactivity, of “dispersed authorship”, the canon is one of contingency and uncertainty. Telematic art encompasses a wide array of media: hypermedia, videotex, telefacsimile, interactive video, computer animation and simulation, teleconferencing, text exchange, image transfer, sound synthesis, telemetry and remote sensing, virtual space, cybernetic structures, and intelligent architecture. These are simply broad categories of technologies and methodologies that are constantly evolving – bifurcating, joining, hybridizing – at an accelerated rate.”

– Roy Ascott, “Is There Love in the Telematic Embrace,” 1991, Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality

From my understanding, the experience of interactive and immersive provided by telematic dreaming is the secret for us to recontextualize our own world, that numinous whole of all our separate realities.

Time and space can be considered as the basic elements that construct this world, as well as the elements for human to perceive the world. However, due to the digital media, our original order of space and time could become more disorderly which provide an unprecedented experience for human. The feature of interactivity and immersion allow audiences access interfaces that connect virtual space-time and real space-time, thus the theme of virtual and real became difficult to identify. In my view, the telematic exploration for artists to connect real space-time and virtual space-time aims to offer more freedom and more active to the way of human living.

Social Issue and Value System

The social issue of an emerging technology will always be a significant issue. 

” A virtual space creates social situations without traditional rules of etiquette. The absence of the threat of physical harm makes people braver. Virtual space diminishes our fears of interaction. Still, a person is offended when the virtual-space hand “touches” body parts that wouldn’t be touched normally “in the flesh.” In virtual space, we learn the extent to which we “own” our image. It relates to the beliefs of some cultures; if you take a photograph of people, they believe you capture or “steal” part of their essence or soul. This is a violation of one’s image. Anyone can experience this in virtual space when seeing their image violated by a person or object that occupies the same image space.”

– Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, “Welcome to Electronic Café International,” 1992, Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality

Telematics provides a virtual space that diminishes audience fear of interaction. However, their images in virtual space are representing themselves, and the audiences might be offended and hurt in the virtual space without rules of etiquette.

On the one hand, telematic allows human communicate no matter the distance and even the time. On the other hand, it also gives the chance for people to commit crimes and hurt others in some ways. Therefore, it is true that most time human benefit from the development of technology, but the dark side of it should be paid attention to and be managed to be avoided. It also recalled me about a question in class several weeks ago, why engineers and artists worked together, I think I have got my answer, which is engineers usually care the performance of technology than its social meaning, while it would become a responsibility for artists to guide regular people to think the positive value of these technology products and build a better world.

 

Alex Webb and his street photography

February 28, 2018 / / 0 Comments
“I only know how to approach a place by walking. For what does a street photographer do but walk and watch and wait and talk, and then watch and wait some more, trying to remain confident that the unexpected, the unknown, or the secret heart of the known awaits just around the corner. ”
—Alex Webb
What impressed me so much in this week was Alex Webb‘s street photography.  There are serval reasons that make these photos impressive and identifiable.
  • Highly Layered, depth, foreground/mid-ground/background
  • Leads you through the layers, into the whole scene
  • Frame full, organized chaos of multiple elements/subjects
  • Colors that come out of tension between light and dark
  • Using color to capture atmosphere and emotion of a place

Here are a few of his works. And you can view more on the website of his portfolio.

Alex Webb View from a barbershop near Taksim Square. Istanbul, Turkey. 2001. © Alex Webb | Magnum Photos

Alex Webb | The Suffering of Light Baseball fans. Sancti Spiritus, Cuba. 1993. © Alex Webb | Magnum Photos

Alex Webb | The Suffering of Light Mexicans arrested while trying to cross the border to United States. San Ysidro, California, USA. 1979. © Alex Webb | Magnum Photos

Alex Webb | The Suffering of Light Barrio Chino, Havana, Cuba. 2007. © Alex Webb | Magnum Photos

Alex Webb |  SPAIN. Barcelona. 1992.

Alex Webb | The Suffering of Light Street scene. Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico. 1996. © Alex Webb | Magnum Photos

Research Critique: Cadillac Ranch (1974)

February 27, 2018 / / 1 Comment

Introduction

Cadillac Ranch is a public art installation and sculpture in Amarillo, Texas, U.S. It was created in 1974 by Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez and Doug Michels, who were a part of the art group Ant Farm, and it consists of what were (when originally installed during 1974) either older running used or junk Cadillac automobiles, representing a number of evolutions of the car line (most notably the birth and death of the defining feature of early Cadillacs; the tail fin) from 1949 to 1963.

Cadillac Ranch https://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/17s2-ap9044-sem-1/syllabus/the-media-collective/

Why Cadillac?

“The work is both a celebration of the evolution of the tailfin, which adorned Cadillacs from 1948 to 1964, and a critique of Detroit’s practice of planned obsolescence. “Its Stonehenge quality precisely suggests the work of a cult willing to go to absurd lengths in worship of an object of totally strange character,” as Sorkin observes. Cadillac Ranch has been celebrated in song by Bruce Springsteen and appropriated with or without permission by dozens of companies advertising cars (Volvo, Chrysler, Lincoln), insurance (GE), computers (Compaq, Tandon), or hip eating establishments (Hard Rock Cafe, Denver’s Cadillac Ranch).”

– Constance Lewallen, Still Subversive After all These Years

That subject matter was not a coincidence. The Ants’ project grew from a foundational enthusiasm: cars, a national icon of America.  With Cadillac Ranch, Ant Farm realized its vision of the American car as an icon symbol of desire, materialism, futurism. There are so many explanations about the meaning of the Cadillac Ranch from public view. And what Lord said in the interview is that it was a social evolution diagram.

“It was the era in which the car became the instrument and the emblem of the American project for the reorganization of planetary space, the endlessness of freeways and suburbanism”.

– (2004): Ant Farm (1968-1978), Michael Sorkin, Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll, Cars, Dolphins, and Architecture, Berkeley: UC Press

From my understanding, what the Cadillac represents is the American obsession of cars, Lord said, at that time, Cadillac made sense of the level and success of one person. However, actually, cars are just basically a kind of consumer products in fact.

Revisit with the perspective of time

Lord also mentioned revisiting the art with the perspective of time in the interview. What I think about it is that, in today, we can easily search a wide range of articles about the American culture online and then try to appreciate the piece of art with the perspective of history, but what if we are in that era, can we get moved and inspired by this piece of art? I believe that artists are the ones working for the cutting-edge culture, and they are leading regular people to think further by their works, so it is important for us to revisit the artwork to get more sense of the concepts what artists tried to tell us.

Car Painting https://www.mommyupgrade.com/6-tips-for-visiting-cadillac-ranch/

In addition, apart from an icon symbol of desire, materialism, futurism, and the car culture of America, some people believe that it is also a symbol of free speaking, people painting the cars and leave our marks on the cars at the Cadillac Ranch, and the cars are periodically repainted. And I think this is also a new way to understand the Cadillac Ranch with the perspective of time.

Lastly, I would like to share an exuberant, playful rocker with rockabilly influences. And the title of it comes from Cadillac Ranch.