The New Order Art and Technology in the Twenty-first Century is a collection at the MoMA that creates art from the disruption of technology. “The show features works made since the turn of the millennium that push and challenge the boundaries of technology: upending systems, experimenting with materials, and ultimately inventing novel techniques and substances.” (MoMA 2019 p.3)

One piece I found interesting was the 23-minute video insulation which is played on a loop. The film which is called  Eye/Machine I, II, III (2000-2003) was created by German filmmaker Harun Farocki. Farocki explores the question of how military image technologies find their way into civilian life. The images in the film were taken from missiles, real-time photographed/film of droppings and the (computer) simulated images of the Gulf War in 1991. The Gulf War is said to be the starting basis for electronic warfare.

The film is centered on the images of the Gulf War which caused a worldwide sensation in 1991. The shots taken from The loss of the ‘genuine picture’ means that the eye no longer has a role as a historical witness. It has been said that what was brought into play in the Gulf War was not new weaponry but rather a new policy on images. In this way, the basis for electronic warfare was created. All the works presented are double projections. The dual images serve as a comparison between idea and reality, a confrontation between pure war and the impurity of the actual. This confrontation is also a montage and montage is always about similarity and difference. According to Harun Farocki In a double projection, there is succession as well as simultaneity, the relation of an image to the one succeeding it as well as to the one next to it.

My favorite piece of the exhibit was Josh Kline’s Skittles, which was a commercial refrigerator filled with fifteen different smoothie flavors line the shelves of Kline’s lightbox–encased commercial refrigerator. Each bottle lists the unorthodox ingredients contained within, including latex gloves, octopus ink, Ritalin, and Google Glass eyewear. Each drink has names like Big Data, Supplements, Minimum Wage, NIghtlife, Williamsburg.

I found this piece to be a satirical commentary on today’s society, a message to the upper class who can afford these luxury $10-15 drinks that the smoothies are modeled after. Each drink is made up of a mixture of ingredients that are indicative in these places such as Kmounbca, Kale chips, and microbrew being ingredients in the Williamsburg drink. Each formula evokes the economies of goods, services, and technologies that surround us, infecting everything from our diets to our sex lives. Skittles has to be made anew each time it is shown, and it will morph and decay during the course of the exhibition. The ever-shifting solutions suggest the ways in which our bodies have been engineered, chemically altered, and transformed by technologies of consumption.

The Nari Ward Exhibit at the New Museum is a collection of sculptures and art pieces that address inequality, racism, poverty, and rights in America. Ward who a CUNY alum and longtime professor at Hunter College, created these large pieces in this two-floor exhibit that were often composed of found objects that hold dual meanings. From the forgotten trash Ward creates over thirty sculptures, videos, and paintings that span from 1992 to 2018. Through his, work Ward tells the story and shares the pain of the underrepresented and often forgotten. Many of the sculpture pieces in the exhibit also contained a technological aspect usual a sound or light, which brought these pieces to life.

For example, the title of the exhibit; We the People (2011) was displayed in right by the entrance is made up multi-colored shoelaces often used in basketball shoes or sneakers. With the use of shoelaces the words which are the famous introductory words of the US Constitution and signal of democracy, freedom, and rights now also include African Americans and minority population who are often the wears of these type of shoelaces.

One piece I especially like was “Glory” (2004) which was is an oil barrel turned into a tanning bed with fluorescent lights, the inside of the bed contains stars and stripes from the flag. Along with the exhibit is a whistling version of the US National Anthem. The tanning bed holds a dual meaning, (1) it is made of an oil barrel and its and presentation with the flag and the national anthem tie in oil with the essence of America (2) tanning beds which are often used in suburbia, allow for users to create an ideal image and for this image to be replicated to others, in other words the placement of the flag inside the tanning bed, sent the message of manufactured patriotism.

Another piece I liked was called  “Spellbound” (2015) is a piano covered with used keys, and video of footage of floorboard breathing holes that was used by escaped slaves who hid there. The keys represent freedom and release.

When looking for something to write about for the blog, I was nervous that Ward’s exhibit would not be considered experimental, but I think because many of Wards pieces hold dual meanings and use a variety of mediums that can also fall into the experimental category. Overall I really liked the Ward exhibit I am not sure I understood all of the pieces but the ones I did were especially powerful and the ones I didn’t were still interesting. The exhibit is still currently open so hopefully, I can visit us again and maybe go on a guided tour. I also think it’s really cool to see a CUNY alum who is successful in the field of art.

The Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art, 1965-2018 exhibit at The Whitney Museum explores artwork created at the intersection of technology and art. The pieces in this exhibit examine the thin line technology can play in the distribution of “traditional” art. Each piece uses technology to highlight the effect automation and computation can have on a piece of art and the artist straddles a fine line of “traditional” art and technology.  Many of the pieces such as America’s Got No Talent actively critique the increased use of technology and how they affect and shape our society. America’s Got No Talent, a web-based art piece by Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Katherine Moriwaki which used the American flag as it backdrop to display and graph tweets. Each strip in the flag represents a reality TV show with the word “American” in it.  

I found this piece to be the most interesting because as Moriwaki one of the creators says, “those talent shows and contest shows really play into that, this kind of deep-seated dream that––you know, you can be nobody or anybody—in the United States and find fame and fortune. And in fact, this way in which basically, social media has created stars, created celebrities, it was something that we wanted to comment on, so the piece kind of speaks to that and speaks to the echo chamber of social media.” America’s Got No Talent explores the theme of American meritocracy and the rise of fame for the purpose of fame rather than talent.

Another piece of interested would be the main show stopper piece, the centerpiece of the exhibition was Nam June Paik’s Fin de Siecle II, which a huge, newly restored, multi-channel 1989 installation. The piece has not been displayed since its original showing at a 1989 Whitney Museum exhibition which it was created for.

The piece work consists of 207 televisions, all of which are older, cathode-ray tube models from the time of the work’s creation is accompanied by a booming electronic base and a montage of images pulled from tv shows, music videos, and advertisements. Images of David Bowie, a man and woman dancing, piano keys, naked women walking against a fleshy backdrop,  and a number of other images that move too fast for the brain to process. The sculpture serves s commentary on how digital content saturates our lives, and in the age of Youtube, Memes, iPhones, and Influencers, the restoration of this piece is particularly needed.

Fin de Siecle II also helps to decide the exhibit into two, the first displays pieces from artists like Josef Albers, Donald Judd, and other mid-century artists the use algorithms to create paintings, sculpture, print work, and simple projections. The second display pieces that focus on “the use of instructions and algorithms to manipulate” to create digital art pieces using television programs, sets, and signals, or image sequences and like Paik’s piece, Brucker-Cohen and Moriwaki piece many of the works serve as a critique on society.

The Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art, 1965-2018 exhibit at the Whitney’s collection, looks back at predecessors of computational art and shows how the ideas addressed in those earlier works hold up and have evolved in contemporary artistic practices.