Field Trip!

In an earlier post about my trip to Cory Arcangel's opening at Team Gallery, I begged for a closer look at everything. Admittingly, I probably wouldn't have made a second special trip down to the gallery on my own, but today my wish was granted in class. We took a field trip to Team to have Cory himself explain his works and inspirations.

And, boy did it make all the difference. At the opening, when I had such a superficial experience with everything, I left thinking that it seemed like he just took some old films and screwed around with them. Which is absolutely true, BUT, there is purpose involved. The piece that I was especially frustrated with the first time around was the one featuring the Beatles' performance. Now it's the piece I find most interesting. Initially, it seemed like Cory just distorted the footage. Now I understand that it is an ongoing work of art that actually deteriorates in quality every time it plays. Cory wrote a computer code that instructs the footage to compress a little more every time it repeats. So, the digital footage is deteriorating over time. Sound familiar? I wish I knew more about the whole compression aspect in order understand this project more. I was reading some of Cory's press releases at the front desk. In one interview, he accurately stated that most people don't understand the computer technology end of digital art, so even if one accomplishes something very nifty on the technology end of things, most of the general audience won't be able to appreciate it.

Additionally, I like how Cory described the Bruce Springsteen Born to Run Glockenspiel Addendum as being different from his other projects. Instead of screwing up existing material, he added something to existing material. It reminded me of the NYT article Cyberface: New Technology That Captures the Soul, which discusses the possibility of adding addendums to films or co-opting past material for new use using the recently developed Image Metrics technology:

"If we want John Wayne to act alongside Angelina Jolie, we can do that. We can directly mimic the performance of a human being on a model. We can create new scenes for old films, or old scenes for new films. We can have one human being drive another human character."

There's a saying that goes something like everything's been said before. Well, if everything's been done before in traditional art forms, digital technologies provide the ability to go back and re-express it in a novel form.

Chelsea Gallery Hopping

On the subway ride to Chelsea Monday I had a chance to read one of the five or so articles that were handed out in class prior to departure. The article was "iHappenings: Slicing Art Out of Life," the New York Times review of Lucas Samaras' show at Pace-Wildenstein Gallery (pictured: Lucas Samaras self portrait). His became the show I was looking forward to the most and ultimately was my favorite by far.

From the article I learned that his exhibition would include many short films, each about five minutes long, composed in iMovie. As you may know and may or may not remember, I'm intent on sharpening my prowess on all things Mac lately, so the article immediately spoke to me. I love the idea that with enough skills I can create something just between me and my computer and whatever content necessary.

Samaras took exactly this realization and went all over the place with it. Topics range from slicing turkey to ariel time-lapse to the artist himself juicing breakfast. Samaras takes his footage and usually uses iMovie to add some little touch. For example, he runs footage of partiers raining toilet paper rolls down on a parade backward, making the toilet paper rolls look like white snakes slithering back up to the balcony. The highlight of the show features Samaras stripping down naked and assuming different poses in a chair. The added "bump filter" creates a 3-D bulge in the middle of the image, distoring it just enough to allow the 72 year old man's ballet to be a joy to watch. From the New York Times:

"His forearms bulge like Popeye's; his chest swells as he lounges like an odalisque; his belly balloons, as if in pregnancy. Toward the end he regarbs himself and hunches over, head in hands as if aping Rodin's 'Thinker' pose."

At times, recent generations fall under the spell that media art needs to be ever more complex and flashy to be valuable. Maybe it takes a man who is 72 to contribute something so sublimely simple. Although, I must say that I'm not sure anyone younger would get an exhibition out of it!