~Self/System Exhibition Essay: Scot Cotterell
site was conceived as a multi-function online exhibition space, with the aim to increase and add to CAST Gallery's exhibition program and complement the realm of the actual gallery space. Its intention is to support emerging and established practitioners working in .net based art and other electronic forms. Marvellous works, with limited physical manifestations, exist dotted throughout the Internet and are constantly being produced by artists exploring new modes of interaction and action and it is these works that site aims to promote. site is also a space for curatorial experiments, conversations and experiments. The intention is to invite guest curators, both established and emerging, to broaden the scope of the exhibition program.
The works in site's current exhibition Self/System take on critical approaches to the relationship of self to media and the systems that contain and control it. Invariably, because of the works' method of production and presentation these concerns are hard to escape, but what is interesting is that the interfaces differ - our encounter with it as viewers and as users.
Andy Deck and Andrej Tisma's Playout promises to combine the thrill of Internet gambling and pornography with the seriousness of war. A minimal, low-resolution grid greets us on the screen and as we click on various sections, juxtapositions of exploitative imagery occur and unfold selling us products for an imagined highly violent future or present. The irony is deep but avoids hilarity, the dark streak maintains its strength as advertising slogans give insight into our consumption of imagery and flesh; the pornographic content of propaganda and the violent content of pornography.
Andrew Bucksbarg's Consumertopia takes as its starting point a similar level of media-overload, but presents the work as an highly interactive surface upon which all our mouse movements generate non-linear combinations of words, images and events. A generative composition of sorts, we make an awkward music of bleeps, slowed vocals and simultaneously meaningful and meaningless junctures of language. The single-screen interface, through which we never progress, acts as an attention-span monitor testing our ability to deal with non-narrative structures. While similarly dystopian, Consumertopia veils this initially through its slick interface, 'cut-out' effect imagery and playful interface.
Mez's work XOR presents a cinematic, scrolling visual experience; there is no user 'input', but rather, an overly 'designed' looking space showcasing fleshy conglomerations of abstract bodily imagery merging in genetic formations that scroll left to right in a slow loop. Mez's trademark code language 'mezangelle' is interspersed throughout the imagery and offers snippets of potentially autobiographical text formed from a disconcerting mixture of 'real' language, code, textual anomalies and abbreviations. The imagery takes on the softened, soul-less edges of the most over-designed corporate identities merged with a kaleidoscope effect image of a singular eyed creature, Cyclopian, anal and fractured, yet, balanced.
Presenting an array of dynamic approaches to the operation of net-based work and through an honest, fearless approach to the construction and validity of new media artworks, Mez, Andrew Bucksbarg, Andy Deck & Andrej Tisma hack and reflect a ubiquitous dynamic global network, and present these for our consideration.