Photo Collage

GOD HELP ME



Pictures Used:
Sam
Dan
Dan
Jana
Felicia
Michael

Scanned Images

Jochem Hendricks

A Response to Christiana Paul's article "Digital Art"

While reading this are you paying attention to where your eyes are moving? Are your eyes following these sentences in perfect lines, or do they occasionally flick to another stimulus on the page? While reading this post your eye movements could look a little something like this:



Jochem Hendricks mixed digital technology and art creating these "eye drawings". Using new available technologies, in 1982 German artist Jochem Hendricks created goggles which scanned eye movements. He then took those scans and printed it out, as we see above. The lines in the above picture are recorded eye movements of someone reading a bill (similar to reading a blog post). Hendricks work shows the eye movements from blinking, to writing, and even while looking at nothing. (Hendrix, Jochem Paul, Christiana)

What I found most intriguing was that it made me suddenly very aware of my eye movements. I noticed that the eye doesn’t move how we might expect it to. For example, below is a picture of the eye movements while someone is looking at “nothing”.



Even with “nothing” to look at, the eye is constantly moving.

After viewing these drawings, I sat for a moment and let my eyes wander. We might be focusing on something we don’t even realize. Why do our eyes move to those specific places in the room? What are we focusing on? And more importantly, how are we processing that information? Our eyes, unless we are blind, is one of the biggest mechanisms for gathering information. Where we are looking might say a lot about who we are.

These drawings successfully makes the viewer think beyond the images. The work is original and innovative by using available technologies in a way they haven’t been used before. But is this art? These drawings do not stand alone very well. Without knowing that these are pictures of someone’s eye movements, they may not make much sense and do not really convey some sort of deeper meaning. Though it is art, it gives me more of a the feel of a science experiment. The image’s back story is more interesting than the actual piece of work.

This is an interesting issue in the world if Digital Art. Throughout our reading I noticed a trend with the artists and their work; how they made the piece, or how one interacted with the piece, was often more interesting than the piece itself. The piece of work has become the conclusion of a creative way to use new technologies.

The question is, does that mean that the piece looses its value as art? Is this an artistic piece of merely a science experiment? I would say, both, digital media connects these two very different worlds. For example with Hendrick’s eye drawings there is an obvious connection between science and art; the scientific observation of human eye movements and the use of technology versus the deeper meaning behind those eye movements which is what also makes it art.

MEMES R US

One of the most important things about Digital Culture is some of the "memes" which often appear in artwork. Just like how a group of friends have inside jokes, the internet has a handfull of "jokes" that many frequent internet users are in on. They can be pictures, sayings, stories, videos, and even games. Some common memes (that I often run into) are "So I herd you liek mudkips?", "Struttin' Leo" and "Robot Unicorn Attack". There are over 9000 memes scattered around the internet so you never know when you might run into one.

Why.. Even some my pictures have been influenced by the memes:


-link

Of course, only those of you who have seen this would understand what meme I'm copying off of. :)