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Donna Leishman |
Jason Nelson |
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Donna, Dirk Vekemans (in online conversation with Alan Sondheim) speaks of his exploration of digital allegory as a method of creation. He says, "A digital allegory is not a simulation. It is a materialisation within the digital, a stretching of the digital towards the material...Simulations need (virtual) cameras to represent places; allegories are places." Do you feel you are creating digital allegories in your work? Do you feel that the digital and material are connected by your hand drawing?I don't aim to create simulations, nor simulate/represent real events, but rather events through an authored filter—which in my case seeks to give primacy to onscreen emotion and the users' attachment with the characters in the narrative.  This is often punctuated by visual imagery that directly refers to material senses, especially "touch"—specifically the individualized remote onscreen touch that comes with browsing the web. This sense of a material and sensitive tangibility is located in the drawing, movement, composition, and responsive actions of the artwork. The visual aesthetic is a hybrid of detailed line art, handcrafting, and popular imagery. I believe that hand drawing many of my projects creates a personal connection between me and the user and a subtle point of difference-hand drawn lines have a different feel to point perfect vector lines.  |
Interview QuestionsBiographical BackgroundReception | Role of the ReaderInterfaceWork ProcessElectronic Literature CommunityFuture WorkSecretsSpace | StateConnect Digital | MaterialGamesPotentials of the FieldEssaysThe Artists on Each Other's WorkTalan Memmott's Commentary on Each ArtistLaunch the ArtworksDeviantLeishman SitePandemic RoomsNelson IndexBiographical InformationStephanie StricklandMajorie Coverley LuesebrinkDonna LeishmanJason NelsonTalan Memmott |
Jason, you say you are not interested in art which is solely conceptual, overtly political, or a biographic hop-along. You want "the ethereal glancing shimmer that comes from walking into branches or squeezing arms into grocery store freezers." How is digital work especially appropriate for achieving that goal?Digital or net based art certainly isn't immune to the slam our knees to the ground political shove or the one spot on white with ten-page preface conceptual spin. Generative work or those pull in images from Google or text from news feed projects are particularly likely to spit out overly maudlin or obvious content and not truly interesting twirls and re-combinations. The most successful generative works are those that attempt to mimic/capture the organic/biological. www.levitated.net is a good example of this. Unfortunately it is the story behind the art, the personality or background of the artist/writer or the issue the artwork addresses that often determines its popularity or effectiveness. I don't mean to imply that artwork that relies on issues or biography is necessarily dull. But that there must be something more, some other experience, some other narrative. Maybe the difference is the same as between a Made for TV movie about a bad priest and the religious issues addressed by a movie like Pi. And sometimes (I am perhaps more guilty of this than most) the coding, the tech-ability to arouse files from hidden sites and make them shake hands and plow fields, and softly bear fruit, these vitamin skins, covers the content, the allure. The "wow I (they) can do that" overcomes the so-what of the project.  From Evil Hypnotizing Mascots I can see I'm starting to swerve on this question. (A ride at the fair, whose hinges are greased to remove bolts and toss away the cage cars.) Perhaps that is because I'm not sure if I understand and can use properly in academic fights the ideas of conceptual or political. Obviously, everything is conceptual. But I can say in a fiery crackle that digital art has the ability to provide layers of experience, deep clouds over the sea. It gives the artists opportunities to play with the genres of design, or code, or game, or narrative, or image, or poetry...to horse paste them in grade school collage. And it would seem that work that relies too heavily on a one note blast of "this is important because I (and what I say) am/is important" is missing the verbs of our digital language. Yes...that is it...digital work must have verbs, must act, respond, create, build, speak, lash out, love, lick, desire, and be desired. And overly conceptual or political work is far too often a string of nouns and pronouns, strung up by links and the common understanding that bad things are bad and those that experience them are deeper than the rest of us. It must incorporate the narrative, the artwork placard explaining the flood or suicide, into the work itself, so it becomes one of the work's many texts, its many layers. Perhaps that is how digital winds blow best. And strange that I am writing this response at ten on a Saturday in a Ritzy bar/cafe/low cut blouse area called Broad Beach. So conceptual, so political, so showy and loud. |
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