to be fixed

Artist post 2: Mark Napier

One Mark Napier's works, FEED, was featured in the recent reading: Defining New Media Art. He was included in the section of the article about New media art as a movement. In the article it talks about how new media art did not emerge until the end of the twentieth century, and how net art did not emerge from Germany until after 1997. Exhibitions of Mark Napier's art have been in Paris, New York, Berlin, The Princeton Art Museum and many more. He was also commissioned by Soloman R. Guggenhein Museum to create internet art as a permanent collection in their museum. (bio info)

Mark Napier was one of the first people to explore the internet as a place for public art to be shown. As early as 1998 his work was up on the web: Shredder, Riot (1999) and FEED (2001). More recently he is exploring: permenance, skin, mythology and texture. When exploring his website I found a very interesting collection of his work called PAM. It appears that he takes pictures of the famous Pamela Anderson and then through digital art techniques morphs her into this confusing yet interesting piece of art. He adds other images of her breaking her down by body parts, he adds arrows and numbers also.

I believe the statement he is trying to make with this collection is that the sex industry and just the public in general see people not as a whole but rather piece by piece. We analyze and judge people a lot by what they look like or have: big boobs, nice hair, a big butt, long legs, etc. Then if you notice in his

collection he seems to be taking the best part of each picture and morphing it together. A butt from this bikini shot, these legs, boobs from this picture, face from here and so on. He has his own style of art and meaning behind it but the only thing I think he could do better is to make the pictures a little more clearer and not so choppy.

ideas for project 1

re-post of first artist posting

Andreas Muller-Pohle was born in Brunswick, Germany he is an artist and publisher. He has been the editor of European Photography magazine since 1980. He has been a consultant and a visiting professor for many institutions.(biography) Pohle has written books , participated in photo festivals, has been in many exhibitions featureing his photography and digital works and participates in the Danube River Project. His current project is Hong Kong Waters, a multimedia water trilogy.

I researched Andreas Muller-Pohle because I thought his work was interesting due to the fact that he is a photographer much like myself. On his website his photographs are described as a result of “theoretical reflection”. Most of his work is based off of photography. And then he relates them to the digital world. Pohle believes that the camera is a program that is meant to see the outside world as the photographer/viewer sees it. This means that the viewers’ interests are projected onto the photo itself. Pohle’s alternate concept of photography is to follow these steps “(1) take hold of the camera; (2) press upon the releaser; (3) look at the pictures that result; (4) choose one”. The decisions then go from you choosing what to photograph, to choosing an already made photograph. Then you will see that the camera alone can create elegant and abstract images. His collection of images using this technique is called Transformance. Much like digital art in these pictures you may not be able to tell what something is because it is from a different perception.

Through his work I see an alternate universe, when in reality it is everyday landscapes and objects just altered through digital art and other techniques. The perception of the world he creates is compelling and striking. Whether he has altered a mountain landscape into a dream like illusion, or taken photos without ever looking to create a “space-time-continuum” or even decoding the alphanumeric code of faces, he has created meaningful art if its own kind. More specifically in the reading his digitized images were shown. He took a photo and converted the bytes into alphanumberic code in eight panels. Then he also did a series called face codes where he took videos and then took the still images like photos of people and reworked them digitally to show a alphanumeric code and then showed that code on the bottom of the screen. Also, he took the worlds first photograph and through digital encoding created an image.

His work has its own style so, therefore I do not believe he could do anything differently to make it better. But I think he could have expanded on his Constellations and Transformance collections to incorporate more unique things then the side of a building or water.

fixed the fingers