Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Monday, August 17, 2009
works updated
draft #2, please comment/email me.
GOING FOR ADS
In this group of work I have used only internet advertisements to create pieces concerned with how internet users navigate, perceive, and conceive of the medium of the web site and the internet as a whole. The title of the series is a reference to the phrase “going for adds” used by music distributors in reference to the date the new album of the artist they are promoting can be first played on the radio. In seeking out internet advertisements I am doing the opposite of what internet users have trained themselves to do since the inception of internet advertising which is to ignore such ads. As fast as advertisers devise new ways of making “impressions” on users, users adapt to these tactics and become immune to them just as quickly. The term “banner blindness” has been used to describe the phenomenon of users instinctively ignoring the advertisements that frame the content of web pages, thus eliminating the use value of these areas to both advertisers and users alike. In the same way that going to see the Great Pacific Garbage Patch seems to be the only way to believe in and understand it, I have sought out internet ads, in a sense the visual refuse of the internet, and appropriated, reconfigured, recycled, and collaged them so as to finally acknowledge their existence, examine how internet users orient themselves online through sight, and perhaps create beautiful images out of compositional elements that are otherwise intuitively ignored by the eyes of internet users.
Average Impression
This is a collage of 66 nearly-transparent vertical-format banner ads (approximately 160 x 600 pixels) that, when layered on top of each other, create something of an average of composition and color for this size banner ad. I see it as something like the ocular impression made from years of seeing-without-consciously-registering innumerable instances of ads of this shape. Light emanates out of the computer screen through ads like this from the edge of web pages into the edges of the users’ retinas but is rarely if ever the focus of its vision. Here it is both brought in an out of focus – an abstract form representing something of a template for all ads of its kind. While the true intensity of a star in the night sky is often clearest when seen through one’s periphery, this piece instead confronts the eyes with a record of what they have simultaneously seen and not seen on almost every web page they have ever explored.
Depth of Field: Ad Pool 118
This piece combines 118 internet ads of all different shapes and sizes. Ultimately, no one ad is completely visible or legible, and the viewer has the choice of either attempting to make out individual ads or allowing the composition to visually wash over them as a whole. I see this as a revisiting of the moment of the decision made by the internet user’s mind, manifested through its use of eyesight, each time it is confronted with a new advertising strategy. It can be simultaneously appear a depthless two-dimensional surface of ads and a deep pool of colors and imagery which combine to create a greater combined image (or illusion).
Deductive Structure: Army Chasm
This piece was inspired by Frank Stella’s early paintings made with concentric black brushstrokes of uniform-width in which each painting’s content was dictated by the shape of its stretcher bars, its edges. Here, a banner ad for the Army Reserve is copied ad infinitum, creating an image of concentric borders which frame and re-frame an ever-receding, dissolving void where online “content” would normally reside. In their innate search for e-“substance,” our searching eyes are instead confronted with and enclosed by a two-dimensional chasm of imagery they are trained to literally marginalize if not completely eliminate.
Newer Realism
These pieces were inspired by the Nouveau Realistes, a group of artists in Paris in the early ‘60s, some of whom (namely Jacques Villeglé and Raymond Hains) made collages using scraps of street advertisements. My “collages” layer “scraps” of banner ads over each other to create abstract final products, a digital revisiting of the technique of the Nouveau Realistes who strove to create a heightened realism in their works through the recycling of society’s detritus. The juxtaposition of my digital works with those of Villeglé and Hains draws attention to the question of depth in the plane of the browser window and asks the viewer to reconsider his or her conception of the materiality of the internet.
Topography
This piece was inspired by Maya Lin’s topological cut-outs of atlases. In my piece, banner ads are cut up and arranged so as to confound the viewer’s sense of depth on an internet page. The piece can simultaneously be seen as two holes through a pile of banner ads receding into the screen, two towers of banner ad pieces rising out of the screen, or simply a series of perfectly fitted rings cut from different ads.
GOING FOR ADS
In this group of work I have used only internet advertisements to create pieces concerned with how internet users navigate, perceive, and conceive of the medium of the web site and the internet as a whole. The title of the series is a reference to the phrase “going for adds” used by music distributors in reference to the date the new album of the artist they are promoting can be first played on the radio. In seeking out internet advertisements I am doing the opposite of what internet users have trained themselves to do since the inception of internet advertising which is to ignore such ads. As fast as advertisers devise new ways of making “impressions” on users, users adapt to these tactics and become immune to them just as quickly. The term “banner blindness” has been used to describe the phenomenon of users instinctively ignoring the advertisements that frame the content of web pages, thus eliminating the use value of these areas to both advertisers and users alike. In the same way that going to see the Great Pacific Garbage Patch seems to be the only way to believe in and understand it, I have sought out internet ads, in a sense the visual refuse of the internet, and appropriated, reconfigured, recycled, and collaged them so as to finally acknowledge their existence, examine how internet users orient themselves online through sight, and perhaps create beautiful images out of compositional elements that are otherwise intuitively ignored by the eyes of internet users.
Average Impression
This is a collage of 66 nearly-transparent vertical-format banner ads (approximately 160 x 600 pixels) that, when layered on top of each other, create something of an average of composition and color for this size banner ad. I see it as something like the ocular impression made from years of seeing-without-consciously-registering innumerable instances of ads of this shape. Light emanates out of the computer screen through ads like this from the edge of web pages into the edges of the users’ retinas but is rarely if ever the focus of its vision. Here it is both brought in an out of focus – an abstract form representing something of a template for all ads of its kind. While the true intensity of a star in the night sky is often clearest when seen through one’s periphery, this piece instead confronts the eyes with a record of what they have simultaneously seen and not seen on almost every web page they have ever explored.
Depth of Field: Ad Pool 118
This piece combines 118 internet ads of all different shapes and sizes. Ultimately, no one ad is completely visible or legible, and the viewer has the choice of either attempting to make out individual ads or allowing the composition to visually wash over them as a whole. I see this as a revisiting of the moment of the decision made by the internet user’s mind, manifested through its use of eyesight, each time it is confronted with a new advertising strategy. It can be simultaneously appear a depthless two-dimensional surface of ads and a deep pool of colors and imagery which combine to create a greater combined image (or illusion).
Deductive Structure: Army Chasm
This piece was inspired by Frank Stella’s early paintings made with concentric black brushstrokes of uniform-width in which each painting’s content was dictated by the shape of its stretcher bars, its edges. Here, a banner ad for the Army Reserve is copied ad infinitum, creating an image of concentric borders which frame and re-frame an ever-receding, dissolving void where online “content” would normally reside. In their innate search for e-“substance,” our searching eyes are instead confronted with and enclosed by a two-dimensional chasm of imagery they are trained to literally marginalize if not completely eliminate.
Newer Realism
These pieces were inspired by the Nouveau Realistes, a group of artists in Paris in the early ‘60s, some of whom (namely Jacques Villeglé and Raymond Hains) made collages using scraps of street advertisements. My “collages” layer “scraps” of banner ads over each other to create abstract final products, a digital revisiting of the technique of the Nouveau Realistes who strove to create a heightened realism in their works through the recycling of society’s detritus. The juxtaposition of my digital works with those of Villeglé and Hains draws attention to the question of depth in the plane of the browser window and asks the viewer to reconsider his or her conception of the materiality of the internet.
Topography
This piece was inspired by Maya Lin’s topological cut-outs of atlases. In my piece, banner ads are cut up and arranged so as to confound the viewer’s sense of depth on an internet page. The piece can simultaneously be seen as two holes through a pile of banner ads receding into the screen, two towers of banner ad pieces rising out of the screen, or simply a series of perfectly fitted rings cut from different ads.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
I emailed this to Nick yesterday re: his initial descriptions of his work.
"In seeking out internet advertisements I am doing the opposite of what internet users have trained themselves to do since the inception of internet advertising which is to ignore such ads. As fast as advertisers devise new ways of making “impressions” on users, users adapt to these tactics and become immune to them just as quickly."
- relates to: topology, the eyes constructing a surface of vision (which could be viewed as a kind of material---the surface painted over and presented to the mind by the roving, editing, slap-dash eye)
- so maybe---is the kind of surface you've composed what we're actually "seeing"?
- and in general, if this is what we see, or if these pieces speak to what we might be not-seeing, are we seeing anything at all? the choice you've made to inundate our eye with streaks of color---formless, information-less---reminds me not only of the hectic overload of ads, and the sometimes-necessity of self-editing them (for sanity's sake) but of the anxiety this implies, i.e., am i getting anything at all? what information am i missing if i can unwittingly edit my informational intake, even as i spend a long time "reading" a page?
"analyze their aesthetics," going out to the garbage patch to see it
- i don't think you're analyzing the aesthetics of the ads, or holding them up to the light, or "going out to see them" a la the patch---that project would be like a shitty andy warhol diptych thing, don't you think? i think what you're analyzing here is sight and sight as orienting us in and creating our understanding of online space. the object here seems to be sight itself, not what is seen (although you talk about vision through re-formulating what we see/don't see).
i think this could relate to some writing i'm doing about the internet as a text, and text (and as an extension, banner ads) as space
"and perhaps create beautiful images out of compositional elements that are otherwise intuitively ignored by the eyes of internet users."
- i think you're creating beautiful images that SHOW blindness in a really cool, seemingly-contradictory way. like, what we see is an illustration of intuitive ignorance/blindess.
"In seeking out internet advertisements I am doing the opposite of what internet users have trained themselves to do since the inception of internet advertising which is to ignore such ads. As fast as advertisers devise new ways of making “impressions” on users, users adapt to these tactics and become immune to them just as quickly."
- relates to: topology, the eyes constructing a surface of vision (which could be viewed as a kind of material---the surface painted over and presented to the mind by the roving, editing, slap-dash eye)
- so maybe---is the kind of surface you've composed what we're actually "seeing"?
- and in general, if this is what we see, or if these pieces speak to what we might be not-seeing, are we seeing anything at all? the choice you've made to inundate our eye with streaks of color---formless, information-less---reminds me not only of the hectic overload of ads, and the sometimes-necessity of self-editing them (for sanity's sake) but of the anxiety this implies, i.e., am i getting anything at all? what information am i missing if i can unwittingly edit my informational intake, even as i spend a long time "reading" a page?
"analyze their aesthetics," going out to the garbage patch to see it
- i don't think you're analyzing the aesthetics of the ads, or holding them up to the light, or "going out to see them" a la the patch---that project would be like a shitty andy warhol diptych thing, don't you think? i think what you're analyzing here is sight and sight as orienting us in and creating our understanding of online space. the object here seems to be sight itself, not what is seen (although you talk about vision through re-formulating what we see/don't see).
i think this could relate to some writing i'm doing about the internet as a text, and text (and as an extension, banner ads) as space
"and perhaps create beautiful images out of compositional elements that are otherwise intuitively ignored by the eyes of internet users."
- i think you're creating beautiful images that SHOW blindness in a really cool, seemingly-contradictory way. like, what we see is an illustration of intuitive ignorance/blindess.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
two responses
gyre-ads+balanced+118
a stationary pool of gasoline and oils floating above melted and coagulated printouts of web text. in this i mean there is the deception of the organic, when we gaze at the rainbow refleted out of the gasoline pool, sickening runoff and refuse. the same deception is found in the deep orange and red, toxic sunrise and sunsets, measurements of pollution levels and fucking great desktop pictures.
rather than a collage effect, that is, a strictly two-dimensional ransom-note style cut and paste, you've made a painting, of course. the colors bleed into one another, oil or acrylic or whatever kind of cyber-paint that never really dries, retaining its wet glossiness.
i stare long enough and i see a face, some type of mouse-shaped skull, anthropormophic and pissed off. a hint at three dimensions. a ghost. the kind of image from a newspaper you find in the park or the forest, that's been sitting out there in the dirt and rain for days, all the print colors slowly smushing into each other.
i see clouds too, i think. vanilla and toxic. good call with the number 118.
army+chasm.
this is great. can you make it really really big? because the image expands beyond my screen all i can do is put two fingers on the mouse pad and swirl it around a bunch. if i go side to side it feels like i am turning my head to look different sides of the hallway. beginning to go in swirls makes a spiral, and going in swirls very very fast makes triangles. see? okay now i am nauseous.
a stationary pool of gasoline and oils floating above melted and coagulated printouts of web text. in this i mean there is the deception of the organic, when we gaze at the rainbow refleted out of the gasoline pool, sickening runoff and refuse. the same deception is found in the deep orange and red, toxic sunrise and sunsets, measurements of pollution levels and fucking great desktop pictures.
rather than a collage effect, that is, a strictly two-dimensional ransom-note style cut and paste, you've made a painting, of course. the colors bleed into one another, oil or acrylic or whatever kind of cyber-paint that never really dries, retaining its wet glossiness.
i stare long enough and i see a face, some type of mouse-shaped skull, anthropormophic and pissed off. a hint at three dimensions. a ghost. the kind of image from a newspaper you find in the park or the forest, that's been sitting out there in the dirt and rain for days, all the print colors slowly smushing into each other.
i see clouds too, i think. vanilla and toxic. good call with the number 118.
army+chasm.
this is great. can you make it really really big? because the image expands beyond my screen all i can do is put two fingers on the mouse pad and swirl it around a bunch. if i go side to side it feels like i am turning my head to look different sides of the hallway. beginning to go in swirls makes a spiral, and going in swirls very very fast makes triangles. see? okay now i am nauseous.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Monday, August 10, 2009
Friday, August 7, 2009
visual foragers
An interesting metaphor I've come across in the "website usability" community is that of internet users as animals foraging for food and sites having varying levels of "information scent" drawing users their way. To try to tie it into the garbage discussion I'm reminded of the Flower Island film Adrian posted, in which third-world pigs and people - in that order - forage for sustenance among the refuse of first-world society. To combine this with the garbage patch metaphor of the internet, one could consider internet users as the foragers from the film, each adrift in his/her/its own raft among the gyre of information spiraling through the internet void/ocean, passing through/over the invisible mass, trying to sniff out their own desired fare.
The way we forage is what I've been been thinking about lately, and this site Alert Box has been my main source of non-theoretical, practical research from inside the industry, especially their "eye tracking" technology. I recently used their findings to create this piece (below) that uses the F-shape pattern, especially pronounced in Google search analysis, to relate to the Pacific Garbage Patch and the idea of things being incomprehensible when not visualize-able. It's simple but I like it, though I'm guessing it would be much less effective/interesting without explanation of both sources.
(click to enlarge)
I feel like this also ties in with Lizzie's thinking about the materiality of vision.
The way we forage is what I've been been thinking about lately, and this site Alert Box has been my main source of non-theoretical, practical research from inside the industry, especially their "eye tracking" technology. I recently used their findings to create this piece (below) that uses the F-shape pattern, especially pronounced in Google search analysis, to relate to the Pacific Garbage Patch and the idea of things being incomprehensible when not visualize-able. It's simple but I like it, though I'm guessing it would be much less effective/interesting without explanation of both sources.
(click to enlarge)
I feel like this also ties in with Lizzie's thinking about the materiality of vision.
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