In the proposal for my project, I wrote that I wanted to explore “modes of meaningful participation in overlooked virtual and physical spaces.” For a while, I’ve been grasping for a hybrid creative practice that draws from drastically different spheres of personal experience and fine art. As an artist, I feel equally attracted to Georges Perec’s enthusiasm and curiosity for the quiet and ordinary parts of our lives, as well as for Hito Steryl’s immersion in the extraordinary that circulates through a global virtual network and enables new means of radical creativity and connection between billions of people. In an era that feels increasingly defined by a sensory outpour of the extraordinary, I want to create research that can offer its viewers a middle way. I want to demonstrate that it’s possible to live slowly and purposefully without renouncing all that is digital, and to reconcile painting traditions with the worlds of digital art and game-spaces.
Georges Perec in his 1973 essay, The Infra-Ordinary, was interested in subverting his attentions and investigating the “common things” that make up our lives. I think his practice of mindful observation deserves revisiting and recontextualization in a new era where common things are increasingly electronic. Just like Perec, I am interested in what is under my wallpaper, but I am also interested in the game assets I don’t get to see. Just as every chair and utensil I own was designed by another creative human being, so too, is every rock and tree in the games I play with my friends when we’re far from one another. I think playful exploration of all spheres of our lives is a valuable practice worth investigating and sharing with others.
In the 2023 Fall semester I took a class on Net Art, and while I had worked briefly before with html and paint software, I discovered pretty quickly that I had been completely blind to the scope and depth of virtual art and its histories. I was particularly delighted to discover artists working in game-spaces, such as Angela Washko and Second Front, and their recontextualization of performance art into virtual spaces absolutely gave me an epiphany. Video games as a storytelling genre are exceptional in its capacity for player deviance and creativity. Playing a game as intended can present a plethora of immersive story experiences, but disregarding its rules can very quickly expose a game for what it is- often a computer program simulation. Doing so can offer countless new player experiences and new conversations within the game’s context. For Angela Washko or Second Front, these new conversations can facilitate new art.
This world of meta-conversations and artworks derived from other artworks is not dissimilar from the happenings of the physical fine arts world. Contemporary conceptual artworks are more often than not attempts at disrupting the status quo, at breaking the rules and exposing societal frameworks and constructs for what they are. Bearing this in mind, I want to re-energize painting traditions by exploring its capacity for conversation within game-spaces and digital art. My hope is that I can synthesize two genres of art that are so often exclusive from one another, and produce new meanings and conversations in the process.
HSF House Blogs 