NMA 2050

New York City – the city that never sleeps, Big Apple, so metropolitan and energizing that can inspire and get you on a creative high, but at the same time it may just as well overwhelm you, bring you down and kill your spirit. In my work, I choose to be inspired by it. New York is a place unlike no other – people coming from all sorts of corners of the country and the world to make their dreams come true. I feel like the immediate environment of the person who creates any type of art has a significant impact and is reflected in the work – even consciously. I hope to celebrate the spirit of this special place, but at the same time poke fun at the little things that people a little annoying or simply just love to hate. I love playing with colors, throw some fun and unexpected textures in even more unexpected places. Keeping the overall feel of the work as positive, sometimes a little silly is important for me. I hope to make people smile with my designs, because I believe that we live in extremely stressful times and unfortunately we take everything, including ourselves so seriously. I feel that there is no need to do that and art might as well may become a stress reliever. Photoshop is a powerful program which in hands of a creative person who is familiar with all the complicated features allows to create exceptional work. I am hoping to learn more and follow the creative path.

The chapter “Digital Technologies as a Tool” introduces a variety of talented artists who made numerous contributions to the art scene through their amazing work. The artist Joseph Nechvatal, responsible for the piece “birth Of the viractual” (2001) particularly captured my attention and encouraged me to find out more background information about the artist and his incredible body of artwork.

Joseph Nechvatal is an artist born in Chicago, who studied fine art and philosophy in schools such as: Columbia University, Southern Illinois University Carbondale and Cornell University and showed his artwork in cities such as: New York City, Paris, Chicago, Los Angeles, Tuin or Munich.

One of his most significant contribution to the art world was helping develop and shape the concept of viractualism in 1999. According to the website ctheory.net, Viractualism, which is also known as viractuality, stands for creating an interface between the biological and virtual world which can be compared to the concept of augmented reality frequently used in the military world. Viractualism is an important element of the art trend where artists started to utilize computer technology when creating art pieces.

In Joseph Nechvatal’s artwork „birth Of the virtual (2001), the artist focuses on technology as a major method to create it. Utilizing this method allows him to create certain impressive effects, which would be extremely hard, if not impossible, to achieve by using traditional methods. The artist uses computer technology in order to create the effects of opacity, in addition to cloning certain elements of the art piece. The effects utilized by the artist make the piece look very modern. In addition, I also like the name of the artwork, because the title indeed symbolizes the actual „birth” of the concept of viractualism. Whether it was accidental or intentional word play, I find it very suitable for the artwork.

Neo Geo / Landfill Club – an exhibition created by Marina Zurkow, who collaborated with Ben Kauffman and Daniel Shiffman, displayed in the library building in the New Media Artspace sections looks pretty impressive. What really struck me about this project was the fact that it is raising awareness about the issue of producing too much waste, which unfortunately is not always recyclable. This piece of work is a prime example that art can be a perfect channel for making people pay attention to an important social or environmental issue and eventually affecting their everyday decisions which could potentially have a significant impact. 

I was unaware of the fact how much research an artist may have to perform in order to create a project such as this one. It is interesting to know that in order to make it possible, Marina Zurkow and her collaborators had to involve a person with a knowledge of a programming  wam anguage and physics, so everything would make sense visually. The drilling down and destroying different layers of soil looks pretty simple, however the amount of work put behind the animation makes me appreciate the artwork even more.

The project aims to connect with the audience on a deeper level than an ordinary artwork. By asking people to bring an object made out of a petrochemical material and fill out detailed information, it shows a direct example from our everyday lives of how popular such items have become. Whether it was a water bottle, a plastic fork or a cup – it made me more aware of how much waste we produce and how ineffective we are in recycling it. After participating in this interactive event, I plan to pay more attention to recycling and buy a reusable water bottle that I will bring with me to Baruch everyday I have classes.

I really enjoyed reading McLuhan’s “The Medium is the Massage” not only because of its content, but as well as the form that the excerpt was written. The author’s bold choices of the layout, fonts, placement and numerous other elements made me feel intrigued and even more interested in the reading.

I find McLuhan’s point that if we want to understand our society we should not necessarily focus on the content itself, but its medium, extremely valid and noteworthy. Our civilization is now very “connected” in a literal sense through the Internet. This technology is an extension of our existence and functioning. Our lives became more interactive and filled with immense amount of information that we are now able to retrieve instantly. This redefined a lot of elements of our lives, such as childhood, expectations for the government or even how we view privacy.  Therefore, the medium is indeed a powerful component when one aims to understand the civilization.

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