‘Ill Be Your Mirror Reflects The Blessings And Curse Of Technology In Art
In the 1960s, Canadian theorist Marshall McLuhan proposed the concept of a mass media-driven “global village”.
Grand as the word sounds, McLuhan's lyrics were a cautionary tale about the consequences of associating people with different experiences and ideologies too quickly without context or filter.
McLuhan called it the re-exclusion of humanity and the return of group warfare.
Currently on display at the Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art is Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen, which explores the blessings and curses of technology.
Partner Alison Hirst has brought together nearly 70 works by some fifty artists for the exhibition, from 1969 to the present day. The works are divided into nine thematic categories.
Hearst's idea of the event was that by the summer of 2020, most of the world would be focused on screens: working, learning, socializing and consuming content digitally.
"The pandemic has shaped much of my thinking in relation to the main themes of the exhibition, in particular the general theme of placing the screen as the main reading point of the exhibition and the art that I have included “, explains Hirst. "Like many, most of my interactions with people and art during the pandemic have been through screens, which made me think specifically of art that uses screens as a tool and a subject. "
I Will Be a Mirror opens with a collage of 1,200 images by Penelope Umbrico. Adapted from Flickr, Umbrico's work explains how social media has over-shared and contained "private" moments. It's more the fact that the collage itself is unprecedented social media and selfie fodder.
The first thematic section, Lateral Space, contains the greatest works based on the home screen. In the 1960s and 1970s, artists adopted video, computer, robotic, and telecommunications equipment as tools or visual objects.
Two works by pioneering video artist Nam Joon Paik for Andy Warhol's Computing Project in collaboration with Commodore International.
Many missions are interactive and some missions are actually augmented by the operator. Enter Huntries Janus
Instagram includes filters that transform users into mythical technological beings, suggesting an alternate reality where we transcend the human body, and also comments on the extent to which people censor their true selves for the sake of their persona on social media. Christine Lucas' Flamingo lets viewers step inside an artificial intelligence populated by dense, free-spirited flamingos whose natural habitat is threatened by environmental neglect.
Other artists discuss communication and control and how we have inadvertently imposed technology on ourselves.
The Wickerham and Lomax lovers between House and Moon detail a collaborative exchange between the two artists during the outbreak. The collage was created by each artist projecting a series of three-dimensional objects onto a photograph of a couple, resulting in a tender digital reduction that moves in different relationships in time and space.
One Thousand Little Brothers v8 is a self-published project with over 30,000 images by Hassan Elahi. The artist, who started the project in 2002, was suspected of terrorism because of his travels and his Arabic-speaking name. For 12 years, Elahi documented her life with photos and GPS coordinates and provided information to the FBI.
"My Generation" by Eva and Franco Mats A broken desktop computer lies on the floor with YouTube clips of young players playing World War II flashing on their screens. Players smack their screens, throw their gamepads, scream, and - in an extreme case - rip their clothes off and run across the room.
Arthur Javier's award-winning film , The White Album , and webcam video of Molly Souder singing with Rihanna at the end of the show. Composed of raw and original footage, Jafar is an in-depth exploration of modern whiteness, intercut with CCTV and YouTube clips of Jafar - a black man - closely tied to white imagery. It's compassion, anger, beauty and courage all rolled into one.
Suda's artwork consists of 42 unique YouTube videos of 42 people singing a Rihanna song at the same time. Everyone is introduced with a standard greeting like "hey guys, welcome to my channel" before starting the full song. Once done, they disappear from the screen one by one until only one person remains, reminding us to like, subscribe and follow them on various social media platforms.
Soda's video offers a glimmer of hope that technology has the potential to be a force for positivity, if only for a moment. However, as I will be your mirror, the line between attachment and tribalism is as thin as a veil.
Details
I'll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen on April 30 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Fort Worth, 3200 Darnell Street, Fort Worth. Tuesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, visit themodern.org or call 817-738-9215.
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