Ungravitational

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By Olga Panades Massanet

http://olga.imiant.org.uk/

There is a fine line between mounting a campaign based on legitimate political dissent and demonstrating a heretofore unknown level of paranoia-induced madness. If Olga Panades Massanet has not crossed that line, she is certainly dancing on it...naked...while howling at the full moon.

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Beginning with authentic concerns regarding the societal effects of the surveillance state, Massanet's work veers into the realm of utter absurdity when she posts signs warning of vomiting cameras and spreads goo on the sidewalks beneath their watchful lenses.

"Cameras vomit for excess of data. Excess of data produces slime, malformations, transmutation of matter. Beyond a threshold there is a qualitative jump. Video files turn cellular, creatures begin to form and cameras start to puke. The fear they generate is transmuted. Cameras are poisoned," she explains. Ummm, no.

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Additional photographs, of a series of fish lanced through with colorful pencils and "invading" toy parachuetters hanging about the city, acheive little more in the way of making any coherent point regarding the intrusive nature of an ever watchful authoritarian state. With her fake vomit, dead fish and toy parachuetters, Massanet trivializes an extraordinarily consequential argument. Constant surveillance creates a poisonous atmosphere of tension and fear -- an atmosphere government agents feed upon to further the ever-expanding power of the body politic. However, the seemingly psychotic ramblings of individuals who position themselves on the fringes of societal norms only serve to facilitate the ease with which officials manage to marganilize dissent.

The Internet Speaks -- or so they say

The Internet Speaks

by Richard Wright

The Internet Speaks is described as "a database of randomly selected images exploring the nature of the web without text." The project allows viewers to flip through a series of  hundreds (thousands?) of randomly chosen images from the Internet, which appear in original size on a black background without comment or context.  

Without context does the Internet speak at all? The Internet Speaks creates a conundrum. 

Without language, what does this technology say about its users? As humans we are trained to seek context and attempt to create a cohesive narrative for every image or s

eries of images we see. As one peruses the series of disjointed images everything imagineable seems to appear, from family photographs to cartoons to warning labels to advertise

ments to still shots from films, it is natural to attempt to create context. 

Oh sure, I recognize that it's Monte Python, right? I know that film. But who are these runners? What is their story? How does their story change when the next picture is a  still shot of an apparently drunken middle-aged man balancing on a set of chairs and promising "inventive gelatin shots for creative imbibers?" When was that put out? This is worse than looking at a stranger's vacation photos. Oh look, now I am looking at a stranger's vacation photos. That water is beautiful. Where is that? Try as you might, it is impossible to flip through the images without at least attempting to find some deeper meaning. The Internet may be attempting to speak but what is it saying? 

Random images, much like the technology from which they are drawn, become meaningless without contextual and societal clues. Wright's work draws the viewer into an attempt to find deeper meaning, not only within the images themselves, but in the greater disjointed Internet world. Millions of people create new web content everyday: some of it crucially important, some of it fabulously silly. In no time at all we have become nearly totally dependent on the electronic world to help us do our jobs, communicate with friends, learn about the world, and make decisions small and large. Wright reminds us that without the context of a human narrative, the technology we are left with is hollow and without any meaning. The Internet may speak, but can humans truly interpret what it is saying?

The Princess Series by roxanne wolanczyk

The Princess Series is a group of animated autobiographical shorts produced by artist roxanne wolanczyk. The work centers on the life of a modern day princess, trying to find happiness by escaping an oppressive corporate structure. 

Wolanczyk's graphic-style drawings are clean and inviting, and the individual frame style of delivery is equivalent to an almost under-stylized graphic novel, with the exception that pages are turned for the viewer and the text is delivered via narration. The story is both relatable and engaging. It presents a seemingly honest personal account of the struggle between the external forces of capitalism and an internal desire to pursue a more complete and creative life. However after viewing a few pieces, the observer may start to view the plots as excessively self-serving and self-indulgent on the part of the artist.

AVT 280 Project #1

This first series deals with the political and academic atmosphere on the campus of George Mason during the current economic crisis.

Sometimes it seems this is how the administration views the students:

This is how the students often view George Mason:

Is this the role of students on campus, to be an economic driving force behind a budget over-loaded with vanity construction?

The second series concerns the roles of individuals within the family structure. Family dynamics can create a situation in which one or two individuals dominate the entire dynamic, leaving others feeling voiceless and robbed of their own identity. 

Arteroids by Jim Andrews

"The battle of poetry against itself and the forces of dullness."
http://vispo.com/arteroids/arteroids.htm


Jim Andrews "Arteroids" is packaged as a video game in which the player shoots a series of falling, swirling words, letters and place fillers.The player is put in a position of trying to piece together a narrative out of the words as the fall, while struggling to translate a series of sounds, from guttural grunts to high pitched whines, which seem to almost mean something but never quite amount to anything. At times, the game is frustrating. Control of this alternate reality is tenuous at best. The player drives his/her weaponry around the board using arrows on the keyboard, but the arrows do not respond as one might expect; up does not mean up, down does not mean down. But in some ways, that frustration drives the game even further. You can hardly help wanting to find the endgame, the point to all this madness.

Andrews himself said, in an essay on the matter, "arteroids is about cracking language open." Literally and figuratively, it breaks the essential elements of communication down to their most basic substance and demonstrates both the inherent meaninglessness of symbols without context and the natural desire of the human mind derive meaning from all forms of communication. Are the symbols really meaningless or if one looks hard enough can it just be pieced together?

Ultimately, the disjointed poetry always loses its battle against the forces of dullness. But for me the game raises an interesting issue about art and all forms of communication in the computer age. As we become increasingly dependent on the Internet to supply our means of connection, we seem to become less connected to the tangible world. Is it possible that we could go to far? That eventually traditional forms of art, of communication, will become not only obsolete, but meaningless?