Last week, the class got split into pairs to begin working on our second art project, with this assignment focusing on the internet. For the next few days, my partner Izzy and I explored the subject separately, working off of the examples provided (see week 7 of the course syllabus) as a springboard toward any more interesting/personal takes on the prompt.
At this point, Izzy and I are tossing around 2 main ideas for the project:
1: The vibe of any children than I have sometime down the line will be able to look at my middle school Facebook posts.
This feels next-level to looking through my mom’s elementary school writing assignments that are tucked away in her parents’ house. Or maybe it’s kind of the opposite of that; all the umph that Izzy and I see in this piece comes from us being within the same generational context as our project’s medium. I wonder if, a generation down the line, looking through the older generation’s social media will feel down a comparable path as looking through the written and drawn mementoes that my grandparents held onto. This is an idea that is tricky to get an interestingly nuanced perspective on, since it isn’t deeper than personal-experience-driven speculation.
One aspect of this project that does definitely feel weighty is just how much of our relations with others are casually recorded, stored, and re-visitable. My mom’s parent’s hung onto her art-class projects, but there was no way for them to store away her casual conversations with socially-struggling pre-teens. There is so much around the preserved sharing of social media that we (artists, engineers, users) dig into, and it feels a little bit more intriguing to look into the preservation of our non-public messages.
2: The vibe of those Walmart crates full of assorted $5 DVDs but endless because that’s the internet.
As this concept has settled in my mind for a few days, it feels non-interesting-leaning. The concept is just that the internet is virtually endless, or that its overflow covers up the areas of global knowledge that are confusingly, wrongfully sparse. Writing that sentence, the second clause does feel worth digging into, but I am still weary of its umph.
The project could take shape as a 2-foot-tall box rising from the floor that is filled with “search results.” Digging through the box, you would never get to the bottom, since the crate itself is embedded a few extra feet into the floor. There could be one representing “ponies” that is filled with My Little Unicorn plushes, Western horseback riding tips, BoJack Horseman fanfics, etc. Then another for another search term and so on. One research-opportunity aspect of this piece could be finding the under-flowing details of Google’s web, search terms that bring up a dozen of results rather than ten thousand, and displaying those in their meekness. This could ask some interesting questions, like “why isn’t Google guiding me through this search term?” and “is it bad that this search term is left out of Google’s internet?”
Me-thoughts
At this point in the process, there are a few introspective thoughts in my head:
- I have a poorly-defined yet definitive line in my head between internet-focused art that works and internet-focused art that is tired
This is bad, I need to work on unpacking that. At least defining what it is would help me know what to do about it, rather than just bubbling around judgmentally dismissing thoughtful work.
- I have not yet developed the skills to be a good creative/conceptual project partner
Part of me feels like I don’t even know what those skills are. Another part of me feels like I have a grasp (skills include assertiveness and trust in unfamiliar mindset/approaches) but is not willing to “give up” the pieces of my personality that have gotten in the way thus far.
- Is there a conceptual – to – material spectrum for art?
Reflecting back on project 1, I’m feeling like it went well because of how deeply I leaned into my presentation of it rather than the its actual material form. Is making art about making a way to talk about the concept? Or validating the conceptual aspect by making it tangible (the thing of it gets respect where just the naked thought would get dismissed)? Or making something for the viewer to feel wonder that “this thing can be done”?