PART 1: Technological Strategies
Friday, October 1, 2010 - 19:00
We all engage with informational systems. Whether a defined social group, a historical canon, or ideas contained only in our own head, we are all in the business of parsing through data streams. It can be overwhelming, especially with the amount of information coming at us these days. We have to be careful about what information we approach and what we avoid, else risk total submersion in cognitive dissonance (or maybe just another day idled away, constantly refreshing Gmails and Facebooks.)
Art materializes the strategies we use to make sense of the world. It gives us distance, that we might evaluate what we see, learn from it, learn what we like and don’t like, learn the strategies others have employed in creating what we do like.
In this way, artists reveal to us ways of approaching life. They help us understand ourselves, refine our values and improve our existence. Maybe.
At Le POP Up Shop we find artists who utilize technology as a central tool in deploying these strategies.
Jason Harvey & Michael Farsky present images from their newfound grown-up jobs: working with the premiere’s office of New Brunswick to produce a shoddy Internet ad campaign, just in time for election season. We don’t really know what’s going on, or how they got these jobs, but they did it! And their integrality to New Brunswickian provincial politics is as undeniable as it is fascinating.
Jon Rafman's video piece, "Woods of Arcady," depicts an equally opposite engagement: Vangelis-like synths guide us through a 3D-rendered world of classic antiquity. British robot voices read Yeats with
imagined longing while solipsism can’t help but set in. Social interactions, politics and “normal” daily life are denied entry here in favour of an ideal interchange between dead dreams and future hopes.
Harm Van Den Dorpel’s “Ethereal Self” and “Ethereal Others” function respectively as art object and critique of the Internet as institution. Visitors to etherealself.com are invited to gaze at their reflection in a seemingly banal, seemingly private, webcam-powered Flash gemstone. These video streams then flow into the gallery, depicting a mostly unwitting (and often shirtless) community of Internet art enthusiasts.
Bridget Moser combines magic technology (fetishes and reagents) with late-capitalist consumer grade technology (video cameras, monitors) to uncover the transcendent nature of a simple pile of logs. Illusion or reality, we can’t be certain. But some days I have a hard time believing, even, in the existence of other minds. So there.
Papa Gorille employs the anonymity of a mere pseudonymous Facebook account to critique Montreal’s music scene. We don’t really know who this guy really is and, strangely, don’t really care. But by creating fake events which see the likes of Dead Wife and the Silly Kissers in opening slots for Justin Bieber, he asks us to reflect on what our local music communities are really all about.
Jason Harvey & Michael Farsky present images from their newfound grown-up jobs: working with the premiere’s office of New Brunswick to produce a shoddy Internet ad campaign, just in time for election season. We don’t really know what’s going on, or how they got these jobs, but they did it! And their integrality to New Brunswickian provincial politics is as undeniable as it is fascinating.
Jon Rafman's video piece, "Woods of Arcady," depicts an equally opposite engagement: Vangelis-like synths guide us through a 3D-rendered world of classic antiquity. British robot voices read Yeats with
imagined longing while solipsism can’t help but set in. Social interactions, politics and “normal” daily life are denied entry here in favour of an ideal interchange between dead dreams and future hopes.
Harm Van Den Dorpel’s “Ethereal Self” and “Ethereal Others” function respectively as art object and critique of the Internet as institution. Visitors to etherealself.com are invited to gaze at their reflection in a seemingly banal, seemingly private, webcam-powered Flash gemstone. These video streams then flow into the gallery, depicting a mostly unwitting (and often shirtless) community of Internet art enthusiasts.
Bridget Moser combines magic technology (fetishes and reagents) with late-capitalist consumer grade technology (video cameras, monitors) to uncover the transcendent nature of a simple pile of logs. Illusion or reality, we can’t be certain. But some days I have a hard time believing, even, in the existence of other minds. So there.
Papa Gorille employs the anonymity of a mere pseudonymous Facebook account to critique Montreal’s music scene. We don’t really know who this guy really is and, strangely, don’t really care. But by creating fake events which see the likes of Dead Wife and the Silly Kissers in opening slots for Justin Bieber, he asks us to reflect on what our local music communities are really all about.
Vernissage Performance Organized by Stacy Lundeen
Promoters:
Scion and The Cheaper Show
