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The intersection of art
and technology is not new, yet the context and history of this interchange have
been largely ignored, though it extends back hundreds, even thousands of years.
For most of that time the arts exerted a strong influence on technological and
scientific invention and discovery; it is only recently that the arts have depended
quite so heavily on technology to lead the way.
Right now the Whitney Museum of American Art is showing "BitStreams"
and "Data Dynamics," exhibitions based on the notion that many artists
are using digitization as a new means of conceptualizing and creating art.
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has on view "010101: Art in Technological
Times," an exhibition of 35 artists, architects and designers who examine
the omnipresence of technology in contemporary life.
All around us technology is changing far too fast for general
understanding to keep up; it's way out ahead of culture. Everyone knows that
something big is happening on that front, a lot of people have acquired the
gadgets that mark its progress, but very few people have a clear idea of what
it all means, or what it portends.
"Prints are thought of as a lesser medium, but they are
a great unexplored territory. There's a lot to do with them still," says
Carl Fudge.
Extrapolating from various print sources for, on one hand the
spare tangles of lines in his recent screenprinted canvases, and on the other,
a relational view of elements in space in those that were hand-painted, Fudge
has used the computer to help winnow out and refine his abstractions.
He has produced four monumental, rather stupendous screenprints
on paper, again using the computer, but this time manipulating a more contemporary
source - Japanimation - specifically Sailor Moon Supers, a full-length animation
about little girls who, when they get together, acquire superheroic transformative
powers. "So I thought," says Fudge, "it was a nice thing to
transform them." Scanning a portrait of Sailor Chibi Moon into the computer,
Fudge dissolved every small byte into a colorful decorative motif, then printed
the image out as a large inkjet print. "I didn't leave it as inkjet
because I'm not a fan - it would have been oversimplified. There's such an
easy take when you see an inkjet print, especially when it was made in the
computer to start with."
Instead, he used the printout as a template to draw films
and cut stencils for four different chromatic variations of the altered
portrait. Barely recognizable in the welter of jewellike detail is Chibi's
large face. Joggled into chaos, what is left is an image that alludes to
the digital but is not commensurate with it. These are works that adumbrate
the visual dislocations of our digital age while presenting its splendid
possibilities for creative reordering.
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