Digital Arts.

This week’s topic was digital arts. Our guest speaker was John Park. I was pretty interested in what he had to say about the topic, as I can’t say I know that much about digital arts. However, I was a little disappointed with his presentation. I did enjoy listening to him talk, but I was expecting him to talk more about digital arts. I did particularly enjoy listening to him talk about how facebook and electronics rule our lives. We talked about that again in class and it made me think about how much facebook really does take control of people. There are many people who strive to get as many friends as possible. There many people on my friends’ list that have over five hundred friends. This is silly. I highly doubt they talk to or even know all of these people. I have a little over two hundred friends and I only use facebook to talk to the people I see every week. I do understand that some people use facebook to keep in contact with people, but most people use it to disconnect themselves from the world around them. It’s frustrating that this happens to so many people. Even I fall victim to it. I often find myself staring blankly at the facebook homepage, aimlessly scrolling up and down, hoping something out of the ordinary happens. There are so many other, more interesting things that I could be doing with my time.

Now that I’m done ranting about facebook, I’ll go back to talking about important blog topics. I was particularly impressed by the dance crew dancing along with the digital images. It was kind of chilling. At first it was hard to tell if the dancer was following the image or if the dancer was creating the image. This ties into something Paul Pfeiffer said. He said, “Is the image making us or do we make images?” This is an interesting idea. This is a hard question to approach. It might even be a collaboration of the artist and the piece. Obviously the artist comes up with ideas for this work, but as the piece is being created, it will be reworked and remodeled to fit its specifications. The artist and the piece work with each other.

Pfeiffer also talked about his definition for what terror is, which I found interesting. In the interview “Scenes of Horror,” he says, “I think of terror as really a disturbance in one’s sense of the normal or disturbance in one’s sense of groundedness—who I am and who other people are and what the world is and maybe what the boundary between these things are.” I thought this was a fantastic definition. There have been many times where I have been scared by a shadow or a misplaced item in the dark. There have been several times where I have been driving in the dark and stop at a stop sign. Across from me there would be buildings with big windows that my headlights would reflect in. I always have this moment of “whoa… where did they come from?” And then I realize it’s just my reflection. This also relates to Janet Cardiff’s walks. I can’t say for sure, but imagine that her walks incite this same kind of terror, like a sort of frightened anticipation or suspense, even though it is just a normal scene. I looked at her “The Carnie” installation and it had kind of the same effect. It started with something normal and as it went on, the music became creepier and made this normal scene somewhat frightening.

The last thing we looked at was David Byrne’s “Playing the Building.” I thought this piece was very unique. Just looking at it, it’s easy to tell it’s something out of the ordinary. I know I would feel like a kid who had control over some new toy or something if I were to play this piece. I would be sitting in this building that could completely consume me and I could control every sound it makes. That would be pretty awesome. Even though Byrne is the creator, he gives complete control to the participant, which gives them a sense of power.

Watch out! It’s a trap! (I thought this was relevant.)