Why I Am an Artist
Future Fear an example of scanography
He asked two questions.
Most common art you blog about?
Mostly my own work and Nam June Paik. My focus is on Electronic Sculpture, Interactive Art, NetArt, Fluxus, Bots, Oscilloscope Animation and music, iPhone photography and scanography. I have also written about and made art inspired by Jane Austin and Margaret Atwood. Some future posts might be about Flannery O'Connor, Willa Cather, George MacDonald and Jacques Ellul. I consider literature and poetry as much as the visual arts. You will see literature and my poetry incorporated into my art. (Typically hidden in QR-codes or other codes within the work.)
Efficiency 2 contains video from Nam June Paik's Internet Dweller
Interesting short story about yourself and your artistic passions?
I have been programming and tinkering with computers since my teenage years. I was horrible at drawing and painting. But then I ran across a Nam June Paik work called "Internet Dweller" at a resort.
My first encounter with art by Nam June Paik. The "Internet Dweller"
I incorporated it into one of my sculptures. I studied the work of Paik and found his work interactive, video based but yet physical. He celebrated technology in a playful way but yet also pointed out its flaws. Often we take technology too far. He came up with the term "Electronic Superhighway" as he named one of his sculptures with that title. Do a search for that work.
He also emphasised that anyone could make art or at least interact with it. His work showed me that art does not have to be painting or drawing.
I realized that I could make things like he did. I could use technology to satirize it. I could make something out of technology that had no purpose other than to communicate an abstract idea or just be beautiful.
Computers and programming force us into a binary logic, black and white, right and wrong, 1 and 0. I wanted to find the grey area in technology, the place where humanness can still be found in the middle of the machine.
Making art is also great stress reliever to take my mind off the worries of life and my day job as a programmer.