Programmed or Not? 1/5

Thoughts on 'Program or Be Programmed' by Douglas Rushkoff

After reading ‘Program or Be Programmed' by Douglas Rushkoff, I become much more informed and aware of the huge impact that technology has upon us. I was born in 1980, the period when we were being dubbed "Digital Natives"[1] and technology was progressing at a rapid speed. However, the education of self awareness and timely balance with technology related tools, was not being reinforced into both the micro and macro aspects in schools. Indeed, technology is constantly changing and progressing, or retreating, depending on how we manage and deal with it in our everyday lives. 

Nowadays, especially in urban environments, I see many children swiping I-pad from an incredibly early ages of two or three. In kindergartens, teachers use I-pad to educate all aspects including literacy, mathematics, music, dance and art, just to name a few. The only times when the kids are not connected with technology is during playtime when they are forced to go outside. It is important to educate youngsters from an early age. So we will hopefully see less "ghosts" wondering in the subways or on the streets. By swiping all day and everyday just to see more bombarded information, news, or worse, play candy crash, does not necessary make us more informative or appreciative of the world. It fragments and distracts us completely from being a whole as human beings. When used inappropriately, people become “ghosts” - It deprives us from being alive, and is a form of mind paralyzing by not living in the moment when we are not “here” all the time.

        People who immerse themselves in the digital world all the time, gradually lose the ability to socialize in real time/ space with real people, thus perform and interact much worse at work, at school and with families. It is important to balance technology with non-technology life, to live in the present as a whole being, and to engage with digital technology wisely. My advocate for everyone is: turn it off and take a long break from it once in a while. 


Reference:
[1] Prensky, Marc (2001), "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants". On the Horizon 9(5):1-6.

1/4-5 On/Off

During my lunch break, I turned my computer and phone off thinking that I would not waste anytime while doing other non-technology based works. Though it only turned off for two hours, it was already a very long time for me as normally, I'd leave it on even when I go to sleep. I first began to meditate for five minutes, but soon I started to feel “distracted” from being “off”, and my mind kept floating back to the devices. I tried to do some everyday errands so I was not wasting time. I switched to a an art-making activity and stared at a blank canvas, brainstorming about what I could paint. Hybrid images came to my mind, from the actual device transforming to abstract lines of network that symbolizes the Internet. My attention quickly swung back to them again, thinking that there was heaps of work to be done while trying to control myself not to touch them. This back and forth of concentrating in real life and thinking about my devices was exhausting. I realized that my devices and the internet had become an inseparable part of my life and I cannot live properly without it. Even by just taking a little break from them made my mind unsettled and anxious.

I stared back at my canvas again. I often find my ideas online, and the idea of embedding integrating my device with the canvas came to my mind. This mobile phone painting could become a painting that generates ideas. I reversed it in order to reflect that it was in the "off" mode, so the ideas would not be generated into the real world, but instead reversed, generating to onto the canvas space that leads to viewers’ imaginations. 

On/Off: Reversed Mobile Painting

1/3 eetiquette

I like to take pictures of the artworks in the museums but a lot of times it is better to shut it off completely to observe with my eyes.

I have friends overseas and all over the world so we schedule appointments online to meet in person!

Cannot live without my computer and the internet but trying to shut it off for a while sometimes has always been my goal.

Quotes: http://eetiquette.com/

1/2 New Museum

The New Museum, founded in downtown New York City in 1977, focuses on the most current, international contemporary art scene that promotes new art forms and new ideas. Its mission is to show only living artists and have a continuous dialogue with the audience while documenting and exhibiting works that are within ten years before the current, which includes a digital archive for documentation of technology-based works, publications and programs. Since the 1980s, the museum begins to put emphasis on artworks other than traditional mediums such as painting and sculptures, and exhibited film, video, television, photography and performance on a regular basis (http://www.newmuseum.org/history). In 2003, the New Museum affiliated with Rizome, a leading online platform for comprehensive new media art. 

A current video show by Greek artist Eva Papamargariti: Facticious Imprints is currently on view until June 19th, 2016  A recent interesting exhibition that I visited there, Anri Sala: Answer Me, features his comprehensive survey that combines music, sound, video, architecture, history and performance. Future exhibition will include Pipilotti Rist: Pixel Forrest, by a Swiss artist famous for her video art and multimedia installations. 

The New Museum

Image: Observer

Upcoming Exhibition: 

PIPILOTTI RIST: PIXEL FOREST

                                                 10/26/16 - 01/08/17

“Worry Will Vanish” (Excerpt) by Pipilotti Rist

1/1 Oehlen

Albert Oehlen (b.1954. Germany)


Albert Oehlen is a German contemporary artist who uses technology as an important part of his studio practice. Oehlen’s paintings are also prints, or we can say, his prints can arguably be termed as paintings. He explores the inherent possibilities of the painting concept and uses a hybrid of primitive, classical and technological tools - fingers, brushes, collage, computer and large billboard printing machine. They are heavily derived from digitally worked and manipulated images, painted, brushed, and spray painted onto collaged imagery, then printed onto a canvas. He plays with the idea of the digital images and render, overlap and transform them into a slow paced painting process that combines with  expressive gestures that look like they are drawn quickly. He usually begins with an abstract collaged or printed ground, then overlay and integrate it with figurative or abstract register, working back and forth between the traditional and the new media and subject.

The wild, flying graffiti lines seem to break all of the rules in painting, yet associate closely to our post-modern, information, urban lives and chaotic minds. In many of his works, the composition is without any constraint yet fixed within some kind of Mondrian-like grid or wall paper patterned background or framework: various printed textures are overlapped and correlated with each other, and can be seen as a more controlled and sober version of Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings.

Image: The New Yorker 

Image: Zabludowicz

My Bio

“When I cut, the fur is like my body. For me, the process of cutting means constantly looking for the intrinsic nature of painting by continuously going reverse – backward in the continuous passage of time.”

      Catherine Lan was born in Taipei, Taiwan in 1980. Currently a doctoral student in Art and Art Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, she obtained MFA, Painting/Printmaking from Yale University (2007-2009), Artist Diploma from National Higher School of Art in Paris (2003-2006), and Bachelors in Oil Painting from Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (1999-03). She is the recipient of 'Queens Council on the Arts Grant for Individual Artists' (2015), and received the Andrea Frank Foundation Sanyu Scholarship Fund from Yale University (2008-2010). Currently based in Queens, New York, Lan explores new possibilities of the idea of painting with themes such as ‘Floral’ and ‘Landscapes’ with dyed cut faux fur to create ink-like painting-reliefs. Her recent video 'Mist of Lights and Shades' (2015) explores the idea of cutting and the word 'cut', which means to play, act or sing for a recording, the waterfall is played in reverse, playing with the idea of the reversal of time. Instead of adding paint, Lan uses a technique she terms "eliminating": she cuts with scissors to produce relief-like "paintings. The process is spontaneous and irreversible, reflecting the fact that "nothing can go back." Her video 'Journey' (2016) experiments with sounds of cutting; 'The Search' (2016) plays with the jump cut editing process. She continues to explore with ideas of elimination, her body, ready-mades, and reversal.

      Catherine Lan is also an art educator, she has been teaching in colleges and public schools New York, Taipei and Beijing since 2010 until present. Her pedagogy includes: Abstract Art, Drawing, Digital Art, Figurative Art, Installation, Mixed-Media Art, Painting/Collage, and Performance Art.