Visual art worthy of white-walled galleries
does not always require a canvas and paint. There are equally talented artists
using torrented software and updated iOS emojis to make their mark—in fact, the
internet is the now both the stage and metaphoric incubator of some of the most
engaging contemporary art of our time. The exchange between users, artists, and
the powerful institutions that control the internet makes it especially
interesting and seemingly limitless as a medium. David Bowie prophesized as
much back in 1999: "The context and the state of content is going to be so
different to anything we can really envisage at the moment, where the interplay
between the user and the provider will be so in simpatico it's going to crush
our ideas of what mediums are all about," he said in an interview.
We asked five producers of digital
art—including Chino Amobi, who makes the art for his label NON Records, and
POWRPLNT founder Angelina Dreem—to tell us about their work in the context of
the internet and how it can make the real world a better place.
ANGELINA DREEM: I began doing
digital art as my philosophy of de-materialization expanded. I sold a lot of my
things, became very minimal, and invested in traveling around to art events and
music shows that my friends were putting on, like Festival NRMAL in Mexico. I
took a lot of photos at this time and was really into documenting the
underground scene. I also started making music in Ableton and that changed my
life. I could just sit at home, watch a YouTube video, and experiment. I
enjoyed the mobility of digital art and the newness of it. There were very few
rules so you could kind of feel good about anything that you put out because it
wasn’t peak trend yet and no one else was calling that art.
Now that it is being legitimized as art,
starting a place like POWRPLNT is only appropriate because the institutions
aren’t able to bend in their idea of what art is. But by starting an
institution that supports computer-based art, we can lead the way in inspiring
new experimentation and forms. It’s very exciting. Nowhere is safe. People are
going to be haters, the government is going to be a hater, and corporations are
gonna hate. But if your intention is the search for truth, beauty, or even
abjection, you’re going to find people that are into that, too. We will adapt
as the internet of things develops into a more integrated part of our
existence. Which is why POWRPLNT's aim is to be an IRL space for “the internet”
to commune.
One of my main focuses this year is unpacking
the materiality of media—where the minerals and the compounds that make up the
concept of “technology” come from and the distributions of power within that.
Images of servers in Iceland and Antarctica emerge and the concept of data
storage and the lonely web impress us with the idea that the internet is a real
thing, an object. How is the internet an art object that can be manipulated,
hacked, or redesigned so that it’s not a completely wasteful deadzone of
forgotten tweets and iPhone 3s?
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