tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8466314672723988836.post951288540369082918..comments2023-09-30T00:43:13.890-07:00Comments on The Current Season: Arcangel Leaves Much to be Desiredmoderatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07653277482083573538noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8466314672723988836.post-31782054943207627242014-11-20T19:46:16.812-08:002014-11-20T19:46:16.812-08:00I liked hearing your take on Arcangel and not that...I liked hearing your take on Arcangel and not that I know you too well (at all), but from what i've gathered in class, you are a graphic design major and you are familiar with Arcangel's previous work. So it's interesting that you believe the exhibit "leaves much to be desired". I, personally, like the show and continue to be a fan of Arcangel's. Maybe because i'm just slightly older than him and he went to my alma mater, Oberlin College, but I get him. I get that his aesthetics is trying to preserve the pre-internet era of integrating technology with art. Its his investigation of being an architect, a programmer, a tinkerer, a cultural preserver, a historian of 80's and 90's era computer/video game and pre-internet technology. It's fitting then that you see "no apparent direct tie between the technology he used and the subject matter" and I almost believe that's what he intended. Its his layers of piecing together what quickly becomes outdated metaphors in Lakes that brings out the tension. His is an 80's/90's nostalgia aesthetics which still influences much of today's internet society. The red carpet to me was really the basement or tacky modern carpeting indicative of that era. His artistry was built on being that teenager living in the basement and playing video games while friends came over. Something you might not relate to because back then, the computer or video games (definitely not cable or internet) ran through the TV screen. Thus Arcangel's cables laying on the ground haphazardly. And to then take internet photos that aren't even that iconic or symbolic or important but to put them onto flat screen TV's (an aesthetic of today's culture) and turn them vertical and to have a slightly hypnotic rippling effect on a portion of the image shows how even Arcangel's genius choice of computer programming and hacking doesn't stand the rapidly evolving image consumption that the internet gives us. In other words, as beautiful as those "portraits" on TV's look in a gallery setting and no matter the subject on each one, there's not enough fuel from the past to regenerate the meaning behind the photos. One wants to replace them with the swipe, not take the time to look at a picture that has been manipulated by a complex architecture of programming - so the appreciation is lost. And that's what makes an Arcangel an Arcangel. Is that he is always degrading the image (moving, graphic, digital, computer, etc.) and taking out pieces and data from it in order to recontextualize it and definitely not necessarily to contemporize it. It's to fold it back into itself and to almost slow it down or bring it back to its roots.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15841413387429154327noreply@blogger.com