Mihika Bansal – Looking Outwards – 01

The particular piece of digital art that I recently became interested in is from the Whitney Museum and it’s called Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art, 1965–2018. This piece specifically works to connect different forms of digital art that have been produced over the past 50 or so years. All the pieces that are included in this piece focus on code as their set of instructions, that they use to create a driving force of the art itself. The project also uses code to manipulate the actual output that the user sees. 

A video screen capture of the video display in the exhibit
https://gagosian.com/media/images/gallery/news/2018/vZhaKQ9pK2zT_570x570.jpg

This exhibit is particularly interesting because it gives us an opportunity to look at how things have grown and changed in the digital art scene over the past 50 years. It also is a way to look at the artifacts that have been left behind in the digital space, something that we didn’t have to consider before. The exhibit touches upon the drastic change in the manner that information is now disseminated to mass amounts of people in addition to the way technology has changed the spaces that we live in, with many of our spaces now centered around an integral piece of technology in our room, like couches in a living room around a TV screen. 

The full exhibit space
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The actual exhibit has work of many artists and has 4 total curators of this work. All these artists worked to create custom code, that worked to display what was needed in that instant for that viewer of the project.

Link: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/programmed

Raymond Pai-Looking Outwards-01

Based on: A Guide to Nuclear Detonation at Tribeca Film Festival By Emerson Rosenthal

A 3D model of the space of ‘the bomb’ experience

‘the bomb’ is an experiential technology art film/performance created by USA (United Visual Artists). Along with a band called ‘The Acid’, the experience aims to allow people to primitively experience the immense power, “epicness, awe, perhaps alarm” of nuclear weapons. This is achieved through large film played on the LED screens surrounding the audience in different directions as well as the performance of the band.  The film itself is directed by Smriti Keshari and Kevin Ford. The collective began the project a year before it was presented when they were first contacted by Keshari to attempt the project. The bomb does not require any ‘first word art’ as there have been immersive film experiences achieved before. Keshari and Ford were inspired by ‘Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety’. The book warns of the immense power nuclear weapons hold over humanity and the danger of being complicit with their mishandling. Currently, many younger people that have never lived during the nuclear war are unable to comprehend the immensity of nuclear weapons on an empathetic level. The bomb points at the potential of technology to create an experience that goes beyond a documentary about nuclear weapons, but also surrounds their bodies and shakes the ‘epic-ness’ of the potential of nuclear weaponry into their comprehension.

Experience the video: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/thebombfilm