Reading 4

This article mainly focused on various forms of performance and video art. It talked about how technology can be incorporated into art in various ways as well. The article began by touching on the fact that technology ties into the human body, which relates to our class of drawing life figures. An example of this would be photography or video art. Some photography pieces that were included in the article were an Ektachrome piece by Ken Gonzalez-Day. This piece depicted a torso of a man, but had interesting elements included like pieces of black pixels throughout the picture- to incorporate the element of technology. Another piece was a video art project titled “Pickelporno” by artist Pipilotti Rist. The article touched on how current media is preoccupied with focusing on insufficiency instead of fluidity. I agree with this statement, because I think that in the media we often hear of groups going against each other, instead of celebrating others’ differences. However, I think that media art is important because it does include topics of fluidity. The article also mentioned that video art is an important part of recreating the cyborg, because it has greatly influenced “contemporary visual culture….but also as the privileged post-1980s disseminator of film (through the emergence of the VCR). I agree with this statement, because I think that a lot of video art is displayed on vintage TVs, with a nostalgic film-feel to it. An example of this would be an artist named Douglas Gordon’s piece of a muted video projection in slow motion of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho film on a screen that isn’t mounted to the wall as most modern TV’s are.