{"id":5626,"date":"2019-04-12T13:42:20","date_gmt":"2019-04-12T17:42:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/?p=5626"},"modified":"2019-04-12T13:42:22","modified_gmt":"2019-04-12T17:42:22","slug":"observation-at-the-whitney-museum-of-american-art-programmed-rules-codes-and-choreographies-in-art-1965-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/2019\/04\/12\/observation-at-the-whitney-museum-of-american-art-programmed-rules-codes-and-choreographies-in-art-1965-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Observation at the Whitney Museum of American Art \u2013 Programmed: Rules, Codes and Choreographies in Art, 1965-2018"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
(Photo credits: Christopher Ku, Instgram: cawriskoo)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

On March 29th<\/sup>\n2019, I visited this exhibit and was transfixed by the main installation, which\nis a floor to ceiling panel of television sets. It is important to note that\nwhen I visited the exhibit, the museum was also showcasing its final weekend of\ntheir Andy Warhol exhibit. There was also an organized protest that was taking\nplace at 7pm during the museum\u2019s pay-as-you-wish period. The museum was jam\npacked with ticket buyers, members, and security staff. Although it was a high\ncapacity evening, my access to the museum\u2019s Programmed<\/em> exhibit was\nsmooth and calm. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\ncontent in this exhibit celebrates art through programmable codes (or\ninstructions) and how these codes can be used to manipulate the artists\u2019 medium\n(computerized program or image sequence). All of the pieces in this exhibit\nwere created through various types of computer programs, which were used to\nestablish the structure and color of the piece. They are grouped in one of two\nsections: \u201cRule, Instruction, Algorithm\u201d, which focuses on the rule-based\nconceptual art practices prior to digital art technologies and \u201cSignal,\nSequence, Resolution\u201d, which focuses on the coding and manipulation of the\nmoving image. Walking through the exhibit it was hard for me to differentiate\nbetween these two groups since nearly every piece has some sort of tech-based\nmanipulation applied to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\nexhibit is very open and full of content.  Navigating the exhibit can be\noverwhelming because there was music playing from the main attraction, Nam June\nPaik\u2019s Fin de Siecle II (<\/em>pictured above) and other installations around it.\nAdding to the noise from the installations are the human noises produced by the\nvisitors and employees. I also noticed many people gravitated towards the\nmultimedia content more so than a piece that did not openly appear to have a\ntech component to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo credits: Whitney Museum of American Art <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Tilted Plane <\/em>(pictured above) is a great example of\none installation receiving more \u201cpeople time\u201d than other pieces. I think a big\npart of why this installation attracted more visitors than others is because of\nhow \u201cinstagrammable\u201d it looked. Jim Campbell created this piece in 2011 to\nproject a two-dimensional image into a three-dimensional space. To do this, he\nplaced modified LED lights at specific locations on a circuit board to mimic\npixels in a low-resolution display. The viewer would enter at the spot Whitney\nstaff has sectioned off as the entrance, which allows you to see the initial\nsight of birds taking off and landing. But as the viewer moved along, the image\nbecomes distorted, and random, creating the illusion that you are no longer\nlooking at a specific thing, but something abstract.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being\nimmersed in Tilted Plane<\/em> not only gave me a serious case of dizziness (a\nwarning sign was placed outside the installation about this) but also\nimmediately reminded me of Bates (2003) and her discussion on natural and\nrepresented information. According to Bates, these forms of information allow\nfor organization of knowledge and representation of this knowledge through\nother means. When applied to how the pieces in this exhibit was created, I\ncan\u2019t help but think about the process in which each artist came up with their\ninitial concept (encoded information),\n<\/em>their process of creating such\npieces (embodied information)<\/em>, and the completion or exhibiting of their piece (exosomatic information<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another piece from the exhibit that I found interesting is The Interactions of Coloreds <\/em>by Mendi + Keith Obadike. \u00a0It is important to note that this installation was not as popular as Tilted Plane, <\/em>but exhibited some important themes that should be looked at. This interactive piece invited the viewers to look at the conceptual website created by the artists to see how skin color has effected online commerce and ad-targeting. However, as the gallery attendant for the exhibition explained to me when I had trouble figuring out how to use the installation, the website built by the artists is not updated in real-time and tends to lag. Their website can be accessed here<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their \u201cproduct\u201d is a system that can\nhelp companies judge their customers or employees based on their hexadecimal\ncolor (the HTML equivalent of color). To add an interactive component to their\nwebsite, they include a link that brings their viewers to a Google Doc questionnaire,\nwhich is to be filled out to compile the hex code for the viewer. Compiling\nthis information is no different from Big Data firms collecting information\nfrom their users to better direct ads towards them to sell a product or sway\nthem towards voting for a specific party or person. On the darker side of\nthings, sometimes even limiting our access to important resources is a flaw in\nthe types of systems offered to us in the real world. Costanza-Choke (2018)\nargues about these design injustices, where dominant groups oppress those who\nare often underrepresented because of their lack of access to resources that\nwill help voice their concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\ninstallation reminds me of Sephora\u2019s Color iQ, a \u201cbeauty service\u201d tool that\nscans the surface of your skin to match makeup users to a host of foundations\nappropriate for their skin tone and color.  Each Sephora customer that has\nused this service is then matched up with a 4-digit and letter combination code\nthat is linked to specific shades in the brands they carry. From a consumer\npoint of view, this tool is useful since it gives me a curated look at products\nfrom brands that are guaranteed to work for me. But looking at it from an\ninformation science student\u2019s point of view, I wonder how that information has\nbeen used since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall,\nProgrammed<\/em> is an exciting exhibition looking at alternate\nforms of art through digital manipulation. While pieces that had great\naesthetic appeal harnessed more attention from visitors, other pieces had more\nalluring underlying themes that provoked viewers to look at them more closely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tiffany\nChan, Info 601 – 01<\/p>\n\n\n\n

References:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7           Bates, Marcia J. (2006). \u201cFundamental forms of\ninformation.\u201d Journal of the\nAmerican Society for Information and Technology<\/em> 57(8): 1033\u20131045.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7           Costanza-Chock,\nSasha. (2018). \u201cDesign Justice: Towards an Intersectional Feminist Framework\nfor Design Theory and Practice.\u201d Proceedings\nof the Design Research Society 2018<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On March 29th 2019, I visited this exhibit and was transfixed by the main installation, which is a floor to ceiling panel of television sets. It is important to note that when I visited the exhibit, the museum was also showcasing its final weekend of their Andy Warhol exhibit. There was also an organized protest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":589,"featured_media":5629,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,245,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-field-reports","category-sula","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/04\/Whitney_2-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/589"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5626"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5633,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5626\/revisions\/5633"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}