Category: Ann Chen

I went through many projects in the link, and Low Level All-Stars surprises me at the moment I see it. The whole page is in the style of old-school video game; the detailed animation at the title makes me feel like someone has just typed out the words. At the bottom, it says “‘Low Level All-Stars’ is presented by Radical Software Group and Beige Records”, the style of “Beige Records” seems like Childs drawing, which makes it more interesting, nostalgic.

“Video game culture has long relied on ‘crackers,’ the fearless geeks who remove a game’s copy protection through brute trade…” the beginning takes me into the setting of a legendary video game story. And al the crackers shown in this page are formatted in rows, like the title indicates, they are the members for the All-Stars show. 

When I click one project, it pops out a new window, where the background color stays coherent. And when I watch the video of the same project, the screen of old video games jump out, the electronic beeps starts. This webpage is like a museum of old video games.

This project inspires me in terms of artistic style, a coherent theme, and the idea of preserving old video games. 

It is very interesting to know the history of Internet Art and how these artists started pouring their energy into making art online. It seems that the artists need to know a lot of knowledge, not only in the art field but also in the programming field to be able to build these internet arts.

For this article, I have many questions to ask. In the article, Greene gave many examples of successful internet art in the 1980s and 1990s. However, I am wondering about how internet art transformed today since the technology is better and the programming languages evolved. And how people’s expectations when viewing internet art changed that could affect how artists are doing the artworks.

I found this article which is very interesting. The exhibit contains the entire history from 1989 to today’s internet art and how they transformed as digital media grew.

Link: https://www.bostonmagazine.com/arts-entertainment/2018/02/02/art-internet-ica-boston/

Also, I have found the original exhibition website and there are some gallery photos.

Link: https://www.icaboston.org/exhibitions/art-age-internet-1989-today

Project: Video Project – DRAMA NYUSH

Documented By: Mingyue Deng

Link: imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~md3606/commlab/week10/video/index.html

For this project, I was responsible for the technology part. After we came up with what we wanted to do, I rented the camera and recording pieces of equipment from the Equipment Room. Then, I filmed the front side and the lobby of the academic building. When I was filming these places, I could not set up the tripod to a stable condition, so I decided to film by hand and made them be a little shaky on purpose since Billie Jean filmed her part on a go-pro, making it feel like a survival game. I took about 6 videos, but we are only using pieces from the videos. Since I was not able to upload all six due to technical difficulties, I chose the three best videos to share with my group members.

Videos:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1R0lJadlcQoeWiwlrUpW5qq_ilV20dkFI

After I finished uploading these videos to the Google Drive folder, we set up a time to film the interview scenes. Before Billie Jean could get out of her classes, Manal and I filmed several scenes in the school featuring some students. Then, we found a study room to do the interviews. I set up the TASCAM recorder and the microphone and attached the camera onto the tripod. We chose to put the tripod on the table to make it stand on the same level as the interviewees. As the interviews went on with Billie Jean asking questions then Manal asking questions, I checked the camera and made sure that the devices are functioning as they should be.

Although I missed the last week of post-production classes and user-testing due to special circumstances, I finished my part of the project before I left. Even though I was not responsible for the post-production, Billie Jean had problems uploading the files, so I asked her to send them to me so I could upload them. However, when I received the files, there is something wrong with the attachment of the video to the index.html page. It starts to download automatically without playing. Since I did not have the time to fix it, I uploaded it like that and I’m not sure if it’s only reacting like that on an Apple computer.

Reading Rachel Greene’s piece on the history of net art made me realize certain things about net art that I may not have otherwise thought of. Firstly, by nature of the art existing on the web, and not in a specific location, anyone can contribute, making the art form all-inclusive. Especially in regards to collaborative internet art projects, the ability to get users from an array of different places makes the end result that much more interesting. Secondly, the art form heavily embraced feminism of the 90s, allowing artists like Olia Lialina an outlet to share stories on a larger scale. When browsing the internet for net art projects to write a blog post about, I came across several of Lialina’s works, including her “My Boyfriend Came Back From the War.” While simplistic, her use of dialogue and images develop the tone of her work rather effectively. Her piece definitely is slightly overwhelming, with the creation of new boxes almost every time a line of dialogue or image is clicked. My assumption is that that is her intention, though I cannot definitively say exactly how that serves her greater purpose. Nevertheless, I believe ‘true’ art should raise debates about ‘true’ meaning, and I think her work (as well as many of the other net art examples I came across) does just that.