The Murmuration of Starlings: Eight Art Movements & Their Technological Commonalities

(Hausmann, Raoul, The Art Critic,1919-1920,Photomontage and collage,12 3/8 x 9 7/8 in, Tate Gallery, London)

Conceptual art, internet art, happenings, video art, digital installations, nano art, bio art and interactive art all have commonalities which include the fact that they are often not considered true art movements and technology is a huge influence in their creation. I have chosen to discuss eight artworks that represent each of these art movements while providing a short interpretation of each.

To conceptual artists the idea behind the work they produce is much more important than the finished artwork. It was this view that brought about the creation of Dadaism, the concept of anything can be art including a urinal. Of course the Dadaist’s originally wanted to create a mockery of art while artists during the 1960’s only wanted to experiment with art that emphasized ideas rather than a physical product. The name of the movement was created by Sol LeWitt who wrote, “The idea itself, even if it is not made visual, is as much of a work of art as any finished product.” In his essay entitled, “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art.”[1] The work of artists like Sol LeWitt allowed photography, music and architectural drawings to become as much a part of the aesthetic as painting and sculpture.

The artist Raoul Hausmann was another artist who broke the barriers of the art world by assisting in the founding of the Dada movement in Berlin. He claims to have invented photomontage which he uses in many of his artworks such as, ‘The Art Critic’,[2] where you can see Haussmann’s cubic influence in the angular and almost geometric way he places his photomontage together. The aboutness of this artwork jumps right of the page at you. The critic, as such, seems to be wearing an outfit that is reminiscent to me of the Nazis, which is a vicious take on someone who is only doing their job, but from this one can clearly see that Haussmann disliked art critics to such a degree he would compare them to Nazi’s.

The art critic is dressed fashionably in a dull suit, his eyes and mouth have been replaced by scribbles and he is surrounded by random bits and pieces. Haussmann included a shoe on his forehead along with what appears to be a playing card below the footwear. To the right of the figure is a women and a silhouette of a man and in the critics hand is a spear. Clearly the critic takes blind stabs at the work of others when he cannot even think for himself. The shoe is a good indication of that, for it displays that he is led by others as if to critic is a game of chance and not of following one’s own opinion. I believe that this artwork is a good interpretation of the Conceptual art movement as the idea behind the actual artwork is by far more important than the photomontage.

Internet art on the other hand, is a form of digital art that is distributed via the internet and is mostly interactive. It is this interaction that attracts viewers and participants and has thus removed the traditional aesthetic experience of galleries and museums and made it available to anyone who can access the internet. An example of Internet art being the website known as, ‘We feel fine”[3], which was created in 2005 by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar and went live in 2006.[4] The website searches the internet every ten minutes, displaying its findings from say, blogs and social networking sites, in an appealing visual representation. These expressions of human emotion are only able to be represented because of the use of data visualization. The aboutness of this artwork is that it records sentences from around the world on how people are feeling, thus creating a database of over several million feelings throughout the entire world. The viewer can even search feelings to find out answers to various questions such as, which country is sad more than happy and how the weather effects certain emotions.

We feel fine is built on an interface that uses a self-organizing particle system. Each particle being one person’s emotion. As one can imagine there are thousands of particles that move around the screen that you can interact with by clicking on it. The colour, shape and size tells a story about the emotion and the person and represents the nature of the feeling. Once clicked the particle reveals either a photo or the full sentence of the feeling.[5] We feel fine is an artwork created by the entire world. It allows us to connect with others and adds a bit of understanding to our everyday lives. The website is a good example of internet art because of this interaction and internet use.

My next art movement’s name was coined by Allan Kaprow. He was passionate about exposing the performative capabilities of art and so in 1959 he presented the art piece entitled, “18 Happenings in 6 Parts,”[6] at the Ruben gallery in New York, and he chose the word, ‘happening’ to suggest, ‘something spontaneous, something that just happens to happen’,[7] and so the term was created. Happenings today can refer to any kind of performance art from the latest trend of Flashmobs to performance type pieces at galleries. They can occur anywhere and rely on the active participation of the audience.

For instance, Kaprow’s piece, “18 Happenings in 6 parts,” consisted of a space divided into three rooms with clear plastic walls[8]. The viewers played a role in the artwork as they had tickets that directed them to specific seats in each room. They could only enter to take their seats at specific times and once seated they witnessed events such as a girl squeezing oranges, an artist lighting matches and painting and an orchestra of toy instruments. It was very well thought out with a script that might have been stricter than any theatre at the time and yet it was effortless and created an atmosphere of spontaneity more than anything else. This of course was due to the fact that it was a performance that had none of the rules and regulations of theatre work and because of its influence of a seemingly unstructured performance it is a good example of what the happenings art movement is.

Which brings me to the video art movement which relied on TV and Radio as its fundamental means. The uses of which can take many forms, such as, recordings that are broadcasted or viewed in galleries or distributed on tapes and discs. However, the movement is not limited to recordings, it can include sculptural installations that incorporate one or more TV receivers or monitors that display live or recorded images. Nam June Paik was the first to experiment with broadcast pictures and distorted magnets in 1959.[9] What followed was his acquirement of recording equipment which lead to his production of tapes, performances and multi monitor installations one of which being, “Highway.”

Paik might have been seen as one of the most important people in regards to the start of video art but Bill Viola mastered the movement with the advances in video production and his creation of the installation known as, “Stations”.[10] Stations was created in 1994 and is a five-channel colour and sound video. Five projection screens rest on five granite slabs and each projection displays a nude figure suspended in water. The five figures who appear to float like ethereal beings are accompanied by a placid soundtrack of bubbling sounds and underwater murmurs. It gives the impression that one is being transported underwater to watch the five sleeping forms. The figures float upside down and appear to drift out of their frames very slowly. The granite slabs which are polished as to give a reflection allow the artwork the appearance of the figures swimming in pools of black liquid. [11]

To me this piece gives the impression of a circular existence. There is no beginning and no end. It as if the figures are suspended in time, in a constant meditation, pondering the meanings of life, death and rebirth and perhaps in a sense they reflect on birth like a child suspended in animation waiting for its life to begin. It begs one to ask the old age question of what happens once we die and “Stations”, answers by hinting that we might return to our beginning forms suspended in time. Thus, this is a philosophical piece, full of divine questions that allows the viewer the freedom to ponder the meaning of life. It is Violas mix of philosophy, sound and video that makes this art piece a good example of video art.

Digital art is any art that can be made with the help of a computer. Majority of the time this means that hand drawings are scanned and changed via various digital programs and it applies to photographs as well as 3D created images. Boris Vallejo and his model wife, Julie Bell, have been in the digital art industry since 1964.[12]

He is mostly exclusive to fantasy and erotic art but he has done some amazing work on marvel characters too. His wife is usually the model for any womanly figures and his male characters are modelled by himself. One of his most famous artworks is the superhero Storm form The X Men. From this artwork one can immediately see his mastery of oil painting which is what he uses to paint his sketches before digitally altering them. He style is so classic it pays homage to the old masters of France and Italy. There is a combination of strength and sensuality in this piece that makes it above average. The human form holds incredible power and motion which one can definitely see when studying Storm’s ligaments and muscles. [13] For this reason Storm is a perfect example of how one can be an excellent artist while allowing digital media to improve on the original creation.

Nano art is one the latest art movements to come into existence and one, along with Bio art which I find incredibly interesting. This art discipline includes art, science and technology to create mind blowing works that would make our ancestors think we had evolved into gods. And perhaps with technology and Nano engineering that is what artists like Cris Orfescu are hoping to be by manipulating cells into the form of pictures. Nano art features nano landscapes which are the natural structures of molecular and atomic scales.[14]

Nano sculptures on the other hand are matter that has been manipulated with chemical and physical processes to create a new form. Cris Orfescu wanted to promote nano art as a worldwide reflection of the technological movement and so he founded it. He believed that nano art could effectively interest the public while introducing them to new technologies at the same time. He wanted to show the public how nano engineering could impact our lives.[15] One of his artworks known as, “The Hole” was created in 1994 and can now be bought as a picture or 19x13 inch print. Like Pop Art this technique can be sold at large to the public. It is a photograph of vitreous reticulated carbon foam ligaments and micropore[16] which to my mind looks quite similar to a colonoscopy scan with an added invert filter, however it is not and it is clearly very interesting which makes it a good example to use when discussing nano art.

Like nano art, Bio art is an art movement that uses science in order to create pieces. It is a movement which uses biotechnology such as genetic engineering, tissue culture and cloning to manipulate live tissues, bacteria and living organisms. One would assume that work like this would be limited to a laboratory when in actual fact it can be done in galleries as well as artists’ studios too. Eduardo Kac coined the phrase in 1997 when he created the work entitled, “time capsule”, although the actual movement originated at the end of the 20^th century through Joe Davis.  Most often Bio Art is intended to be shocking or humorous and while the authors of the artworks can be seen as artists they are most often classified as scientists because of the skill set required for such a work[17]. 

In 2000 Eduardo Kac commissioned the creation of a transgenic GFP bunny as part of a piece called GFP Bunny. The bunny was called Alba and she had been genetically engineered to appear fluorescent. She was the beginning and influence of a piece called, “The Eight Day”, which one can already assume by the name, is a take on God’s creation of the world in seven days. In this regard Kac is referring to himself as god and on the 8^th day he created fluorescent animals and changed a living organism biochemistry or makeup. The Eight day investigates his creation of fluorescent creatures that have been created in the isolation of laboratories. His point is that when one puts them together they can be seen as the nucleus of a new and emerging synthetic bioluminescent system. The piece that was presented at a gallery in Arizona brought together all the living transgenic life forms and a biological robot in an environment enclosed under a clear 4 foot diameter Plexiglas dome.[18]

It allowed the viewer to study how these creatures would naturally coexist with one another if they were freed into the world. It was a self-contained artificial ecological system. The creatures were all cloned using the GFP gene which made them appear green to the naked eye[19]. The creatures included mice, plants, amoebae and fish which of course gained the attention of people who believe it be unethical especially to animal rights activists. Despite this the eight day and Alba are fantastic creations that display how we as humans have evolved and because of this and the use of bioengineering it is an excellent example of bio art.

My final art movement is called Interactive art where these installations allow the viewer to interact with the actual art work, whether it is just by walking in, on or around the piece or if they actually become a part of what makes it interactive art. This is a large development in the art world as previously viewers of art could not and still cannot touch, photograph or get too close to important artworks while interactive art encourages the viewer to interact and to become a part of the artistic process. Frequent features include computers and motion, heat sensors. A leading figure in such a movement is Jeffery Shaw and his work entitled, “The legible city”[20].

The piece in question consists of an immovable bicycle, a touch pad and a large screen in front of the bike. The purpose is for the viewer to seat themselves on the bike and ‘move’ through the streets projected in front of them.  However, the streets are anything but ordinary. Unlike realistic streets that are often lined with trees these are lined with letters so that the cyclist can choose their own narrative and learn the history of the city by reading the sides of the street as they venture through it. A small screen attached to the handle bars allows the viewer to plot their position which included three versions: Manhattan, Amsterdam and Karlsruhe[21]. Considering that this artwork is believed to be one of the first of its kind as well as interactive art it is a good representation of the movement.

Therefore, I have interpreted each movement by using an example of an artwork to clarify how they differ and how they are similar in the fact that they needed technology to begin and grow.