Goals:

• Start painting- sketch and edited image made during the sumemr break

• Start new workbook

• Research for IPO

• Plan ideas and moodboard

• Visit library- find books

Goals:

• Start painting

• Research and take notes on library sources

The deer is an animal that symbolises to me, fragility and I often have videos of deer come across my social media feeds.

https://www.myartbroker.com/artist-david-hockney/articles/exploring-david-hockney's-joiners

David Hockney is a prolific contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s. In the early 1980s, Hockney explored techniques within photo collage, naming them ‘joiners’. This was formed through his dissatisfaction with the limitations of traditional photography and its confinement to one perspective. His initial inspiration behind this was his observations on how we perceive the world around us- never a single frozen moment, but an amalgamation of views, perspectives and moments. Hockney’s joiners are ‘mosaics of photographs to form a cohesive image’. It transcends the traditional perspectives of both photography and painting, and allows for dynamic methods of representation, encompassing fluidity and multiplicities of seeing.

Despite being made from physically laying out polaroid and film photographs, they have a digital quality to them. This could be due to the slight distorted and warped views of the subject matter, or the angular placement of each perspective.

Execution- This technique involves arranging multiple photographs to create a single composite image. The subject matter usually follows along the lines of a family member, a living room or landscape; something familiar. Yet, we are able to view such a familiar scene with perspectives of “space and time”. Hockney takes multiple photographs from different angles and perspectives and focus on various details of the scene. He embraces the edges and disjointed aspects of the individual cut outs, thus forcing a new perspective of the subject.

Clement Verger- French artist and researcher

• Circumnavigations 2016- 2025

• Endeavour- Impact of Cook’s voyages on landscapes

• Portugal residency

• Question the landscape around us, and the human influence, how this has changed the landscape

• Forest fires, and lack of biodiversity

• Navigation motifs

• Images of trees and landscapes

• Collections- sampling (over 300-400 samples)

• More diversity in Australia, compared to Europe

• Make own frames- burnt frames- working on paper and using materials that are not considered ‘fine art’- from a distance appears classic, but holds detail

• Resolution- The Norfolk Pine- from the Norfolk Island- Ship building and the importance of the Royal Navy

• Oriental Bay- they are planted around the bay

• Used to be rare

• Bought Norfolk pines and labelled purchase date, price etc

• Discovery- finishing the project

• The death of Cook (1779)

• Prints on mulberry paper- used in tapa making

• Frames are iron, heavy af

• Irony- introduced materials new to the Pacific islands- iron

• Killed by an iron dagger- ironic

• Growing gourds- finding seeds from over the world

• Impact of the first Europeans completely changed the biodiversity

• Citrus fruits- planted , a reflection of scurvy and a tool for colonisation, to stay at sea longer

• Seeds spontaneously grew- unique

• Retracing the survey of Cook’s botanist, the final stages

• Soil and volcanic soil- other planets

• Ending on something that could develop into a bigger project

• Currently in Aotearoa looking at native trees

• Questions-

• Scanning plant samples W

• Works are technical and scientific- installations have the plants themselves

• Phases of human intervention- the landscapes, the good/bad

• Black and white images- published pamphlets that were easy to access

• Retracing colonisation and retrace indigenous people and how they were affected by the changing of landscapes- a form of decolonisation

• Complex narratives- cantering self, and reflect on personhood

• Continue with themes from last year

• Critiquing internet and media culture- the everyday horror of our lives being intertwined with the internet and the ordinary

• Collections and the act of collecting?

• materiality and the loss of physical media

• overconsumption and the constant exsposure to media in daily life?

• obscurities, online and through painting

• Impliment ideas surrpounding exhibition- themes of personal experiences, storytelling, personal identity etc

• Combining personal aspects of my life with the digital aspects of my life through painting- continue with a soft paitning technique

Intent

I will be investigating ideas around the entanglement of internet imagery and scenes of daily life, and how we are constantly intertwining ourselves with the mundane horrors of the unknown. It is often too, that both the internet imagery we stumble across, and the mundane aspects of life are casted to the void, never to be revisited again.

When uploading an image online, what does it become? There is an intrinsic oddity about them, they carry a sort of an anomaly presence. Essentially, they become another artefact of proof of our current existence as humans. Same goes for our everyday objects, and the moments we often look over or are forgotten. I intend to eternalise both the fleeting, unknown imagery found online, and capturing moments from my life, whether through memory or quick photographs. This will be done through painting, a soft technique to capture the blurry moments of life, and the imagery from the internet will be embedded either through a collage-like system or overlaid. I am yet to experiment with the idea of layering canvas, or to layer over paint.

To justify the reasoning behind painting these images is to "concrete" their existence outside the internet, and outside my personal experience. Both images and my lived experiences are made from layers of "distortion", they have a history of being in multiple places at once.

Paintings are not any different to both digital images and daily moments in life. During the painting process, we build up layers of paint and ideas, they build the image that is being protrayed, creating a still captured within the likes of paint. Digital images carry movement, and both digital images and painitngs hold that of the likes of an artefact. A painting is moveing in creation, and a digital image is always being created. But even so, the meaning of a painting can be different for everyone, and its meaning for the creator can change too. I intend to create a series of works- three during the first half of the semester, five during the break and ten during the last half of the semster.

Background

Majority of my works from last semester surrounded themes of internet culture, internet consumption and my personal experiences with the internet through the lens of nostalgia. I started off exploring the idea that two images can exist in different states of being at once; one digital and one through the material of paint.

It became more of a personal endeavour towards the end of the semester, and how these digital imags evoked a new feeling of nostalgia.

I am interested in how many of these images, like the objects in our life, are catered to the human, the "end all be all" state of existence. I became fascinated with how this is all many aspects of life have been reduced to this notion, and what their existence means without the imput of human intervention; they rely on us, as much as we rely on them. Essentially, these digital images and objects of daily life act as an abstracted form of human identity.

This semester, I intend to develop this notion, but entangle my personal experiences and relationships with objects in my life and images from the internet, as they amalgamate into my identity. Both internet usage, and personal lived experiences are a trace of human existence, as we begin to rely on technology more frequently. It is resisting the push for AI in many asapects of our internet usage,as we begin to interact more and more with AI. The dead internet theory, one that believes the internet is made of interactions of AI, as creators create content for an anlgorithm, rather than human interaction. The internet too, is now becoming a place that upholds voices of right-wing ideology, and has become a hostile place for any minority.

By painting themes around the internet, I am investigating a love-letter of what once was, "fan art" of the past, and the lasting grasps of enjoyment I have for the internet.

With this, I intend to push forward an investigative approach to how digital images have had an influence in contemporary art spaces, and how other artists are translating digital media into painting. I will be taking digital images from the internet, similar to that of last semester, and placing them out of context from one another, creating a meaning that is indescribable. Taking these images out of context creates another layer of idiocy. Humour and absurdities are aspects of contemporary art I am interested in, and want to continue creating art that can evoke feelings of confusion. I also want to recognise the horror within this, the idea that our lives coexist with our digital self.

Method and Resources

My current method of making revolves around a digital process, and one that retrives memories and observing the mundane aspects of life, such as the condensation on the glass in the shower, or creases in the sheets, or the insignificant frames in a movie scene. I want to combine these aspects of the tangible in my life, to the aspects of digital mundanity, such as Googling my symptoms of pain, or even an advertisement that catches my eye for a brief moment. Combining the unknown with the familiar.

I will capture moments in my life, and place them with the digital, sometimes they could be indesiferable from another.

The digital images will be edited in photoshop in any way, and sometimes be recognisable to the viewer.

With the references made, I will cast a copy of the image using a rough sketch first, then paint through layers of oil painting. With the painting, I intend to mimic a low-resolution style that includes harsh outlines of the subjects. This is to not only to mimic the style created through the editing through photoshop, but also create a personal style in relation to the images, rather than copying them exactly.

I will use oil painting as the medium, and will paint on canvas. How I organise a display to paint the subject is yet to be decided, whether I stick to the style of collage I previously investigated, or to paint one image on one canvas etc…

• Crits Wednesday week 5- just 4th years

• IPO due next week

Observations from painting:

I start the painting off with a sketch that follows along closely with the distorted image. Then I block in the base colour and let it dry before adding the detail. It depends on the painting if I draw the detail back in, or eyeball it with paint.

• the more digitally distorted the digital image is, the colours become more pixilated and compressed- there is a digital ‘slush’ or ‘muddiness’ to the image. This results in some areas of the physical painting being muddy. Some areas are more defined with colour

• Add another drawing in the corner of the painting?- the idea of mixing two images, changing their meaning

• What could this image be in juxtaposition for the deer?

• Let paint dry before adding new layers

Plan:

• three paintings at the same time- have three paintings going at once

• Spine- digitally altered spine/ digitally altered cells

• Horror themes in contemporary painting- not explicitly gore or scary, conceptually thinking about the horrors and comforts of the mundane- how the internet has changed the meaning of the mundane? This is a topic to consider in my works

Los Carpinteros use negative space to their advantage as it positions the subject matter in the midst of nothingness. Similar to how I have been approaching my collages, this is a key component in how my work is presented. https://www.skny.com/artists/los-carpinteros

Rhizome.org- internet art archive

https://rhizome.org/

https://oxoxxxooo.com/  (jodi.org)

The term “net.art” is less a coinage than an accident, the result of a software glitch that occurred in December 1995, when Slovenian artist Vuk Cosic opened an anonymous email only to find it had been mangled in transmission. Amid a morass of alphanumeric gibberish, Cosic could make out just one legible term-”net.art”- which he began using to talk about online art and communications. The term was quickly enlisted to describe a variety of everyday activities. Net.art stood for communications and graphics, emails, texts and images, referring to and merging into one another; it was artist, enthusiast and technoculture critics trading ideas, sustaining one another's interests.

Net.art developed in a context crisis in Eastern Europe in the beginning of the 1990a after the end of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The artist involved in net.art experiments are associated with the idea of a “social responsibility” that would answer the idea of democracy as a modern capitalist myth. The internet, often promoted as the democratic tool par excellence, but largely participating in the rules of vested interest, is targeted by the net.artists who claimed that a “space where you can buy is space where you can steal, but also where you can distribute”. Net.artists focus on finding new ways of sharing public spaces.

By questioning structures such as navigation window and challenging their functionality, net.artists have shown that what is considered to be natural by most internet users is actually highly constructed, even controlled, by corporations. Company browsers like Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer display user-friendly structures to provide the user with a familiar environment; net.artists try to break that familiarity.

Artists Olia Lialina, in My Boyfriend Came Back From The War, or the duo Jodi, with their series of pop-up interventions and browser crashing applets, have engaged the materiality of navigation in their work. Their experiments have given birth to what could be called browser art.

In 1994, the Internet was still comparatively uncluttered. Populated largely by homepages flaunting hobbies and personal histories, advertising technology companies, or promoting online communities of all stripes, the Net was far removed from the asceticism of white-cube galleries or the high ironies of neo-Conceptualism. Indeed, the exhausted, commercially exploited art culture that had soared in the ’80s and crashed in the early ’90s was in recovery when the Internet began to take off. Very few people associated with art-world institutions were logged on at that time.

In 1994 and 1995, small cadres of leftist intellectuals, tech whizzes, subversives, and artists had begun congregating at online nodes like The Thing, Echo, Nettime, and The Well. Mailing lists and the BBS (bulletin board system) were more than structures for distribution and promotion: They were simultaneously content and community. Like Andy Warhol’s Factory, the people as well as the methods of production and distribution were all part of the project’s meaning.

The term “net.art” is also used as a synonym for net art or internet art and covers a much wider range of artistic practices. In this sense, net.art means art that uses the internet as a medium and that cannot be experienced in any other way. Typically, net.art has the internet and the specific socio-culture that it spawned as its subject matter but is not required.

Net.artists have build digital art communities through an active practice of web hosting and web art curating. Net.artists have defined themselves through an international and networked mode of communication, an interplay of exchanges, collaborative and cooperative work. They have large presence on several mailing lists, such as Rhizome. Net.artists such as Jodi.org developed a particular form of email art,, or spam mail art, through text reprocessing and ASCII art. Spam art was described as seemingly nonsensical texts generated by simple scripts, online forms or typed by hand.

Vuk Cosic

Vuk Cosic is a Slovenian contemporary artist associated with the net.art movement. He became deeply interested in ASCII code during a long period of research on low-tech aesthetics, the economy, ecology and archaeology of the media, on the intersections between text and computer code, on the use of spaces in information, its fluid nature and infinite converiability.

ASCII characters (American Standard Code for Information Interchange), is used to form images or videos in Cosic’s art practice. He created his own software to convert the pixels from still and moving images into ASCII, and he also experimented with audio and camera movement being transcribed through ASCII. Short sentences or paragraphs relevant to his work are often briefly summarised through few fragments of text in ASCII form.

Some of his most notable works include scenes from classic films converted into ASCII format. Cosic’s ASCII History of Moving Images in 1998 portrayed a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s film Psycho (1960). Another depicts as secen from a pornographic movie called **Deep Throat, remade as Deep ASCII. Cosic had made a series of short animated sequences from various films and TV series going from Star Trek to King Kong, while in addition, constructing photographs of classical art.

Jodi is a collective of two artists, Joan Heemskerk Netherlands), and Dirk Paesmans (Belgium), created in 1994. They were some of the first artists to create Web art and later started to create software art and artistic computer game modification. Their most well-known art piece is their website wwwwwwwww.jodi.org, which is a landscape of intricate designs made in basic HTML.

Jodi (art collective)

In 1999 they began the practice of modifying old video games such as Wolfenstein 3D to create art mods like SOD. Their efforts were celebrated in the 1999 Webby Awards, where they took top prize in the category “net art”. Further video game modifications soon followed for Quake, Jet Set Willy, and the latest Max Payne 2 (2006), to create a new set of art games. Jodi’s approach to game modification is comparable in many ways to deconstructivism in architecture because they would disassemble the game to its basic parts, and reassemble it in ways that do not make intuitive sense. In one of their more well-known modifications of Quake places, the player inside a closed cube with swirling black-and-white patterns on each side. The pattern is the result of a glitch in the game engine discovered by the artists, presumably, through trial and error; it is generated live as the Quake engine tries, and fails, to visualize the interior of a cube with black-and-white checkered wallpaper.

Since 2002, Jodi have been in theri “screen grab” period, making video works by recording a computer monitor;s output while working, playing video games, or coding. The “screen grab” period began with the four-screen video installation My%Desktop (2002), which premiered at the Plugin Media Lab in Basel. The piece appeared to depict large, malfunctioning Mac OS 9 monitors that displayed cascading windows, error messages, and files endlessly replacing themselves. To make this video, Jodi pointed-and-clicked and dragged-and-dropped frantically to give an appearance of uncontrolled chaos.

https://www.electrohype.org/rom/jodi/backtobasic.html

This essay explains ideas around digital art and the relationship between computers and humans in relation to Jodi’s works

Iann’s works help me question the materials I use in my works, and how can I push these materials in future projects. As a painter, I often find it difficult to deviate from the standard canvas and board, so I am interested in experimenting with my painting techniques amongst other materials. I am interested in creating sculptural works in the next semester that correlate to my current works, and works I’ve made in the past.

I also see similarities within how both our works explore ideas of distortion and mutation, but in different ways. I explore this through a digital and internet based lens, while Iann An approaches ideas of mutation through creating works that are alive, and meant to change over time. The meaning of the images I choose eventually change over time, and digital imagery mutates as it is shared and passed around.

Time is also a significant factor in this, and with time, our work changes, either quite literally, or conceptually.

• An overlap of contemporary art and horror films which engages with the discourse of complex and conceptual art practices

• How horror aspects can infiltrate the gallery space and how to create a space that carries that energy

• Expands what the art experience can be- collaboration with film makers and composers

• Based on The Brood by David Cronenberg- used as a metaphorical concept for the show

• The metaphor is based on the idea of putting forward young/ new artists into the world

• Counters a ‘traditional’ emerging artist show by utilising darker themes

• NZ has a tradition of the gothic, dark Aotearoa- explores a new generation of NZ gothic artists

Theo MacDonald, Cujo 2

• rabies and a personal story based on own experiences

• About the intricate cries of bureaucracies- trapped in the horror of capitalism

• Artist made fake blood and dog suit

• Mother-child dynamic within the film

• Filmed on super-8- family film quality

• No direct themes to horror

Grace Crothall, DREAMS

• drawings from old photographs

• From the church, having ‘cult-like’ aspects of the church

• Has an ambivalent relationship to the church and Catholicism

• In horror and pop culture- religious trauma

• The aesthetics of modern belief institutions

• Intervention with the sculptural aspect of the room

• Still dream-like and nostalgic

Iann An, Bed Marrow

• sculptural works- similar to the substance

• The works grow and change over time and fester

• A metaphor for our own bodies

• Tumours

• Body horror and prosthetics

• Objects of play- the basketball hoop and the stuffed toy creatures- the heart motifs found sparingly around each sculpture

• A mutated baby nursery

• Hatchlings

Nathan Taare, Olfactory Ghost

• scent and different notes- audio, scent focused work which is interesting as I haven’t experienced anything like this before

• Plastic and latex

• Mushroom, damp earthy notes- to me smells like decomposition

• Smells like a grandmother’s home

Cassie Freeth, Manticore

• Manticore and Frankenstein

• Performance work, she becomes manticore

• Performance installation sculpture

• The relationship between artist and creator

• How to have an enduring piece of work

• Transgender narrative, deconstructing the body, the multiplicities of the queer body

• Challenges horror

Harry Culy,

• Gothic utopia

• A zombie apocalypse

• Not confined by a frame

• Materiality of the photographs and as objects- they warp and shift over time

• The relationship with other artists- a narrative?

• The real and the unreal

Brad Logan Heappey

• depiction of a graffiti work from 200 AD made from 3D printed miniature objects

• Reference points and found objects

• Whiplash of the internet, a modern horror- this here has informed the current direction of my work and how I want to push this narrative of the internet being an extension of the human body, and the ‘whiplash’ of experiences altering our perceptions of reality- mixing the body, the real and the internet

• How we make art in dread- how I make art in response to pain, and how this can manifest in something positive- the anxieties of the modern horror, and the anxieties that surround the body- constantly having to think about the body in relation to others and pain

• Horror and art- they both question our existence- how might my life be different without the dread of physical pain? Painting is a way to push this pain and anxiety into an object

Tia and Ming Ranginui, Minimum Wage

• Old western town in Aotearoa that was built by an American billionaire

• Musical western horror film in location in Whanganui

• Strong narrative drive

• Colonial gothic

• Trust based relationships in curatorial aspects of show

• Everything has been made for the show

• Heaps of sound, smell and visual collaboration

The Brood has inspired me a lot in terms of my own art, and it has given me a better understanding of incorporating more ‘horror-like’ themes within my work- don’t be afraid to take a darker approach to my work

Tidal Bodies is Gina Kiel’s first solo exhibition. It is at twentysix in Newtown, from the 22nd of February to the 15th of March. Kiel’s work often incorporates elements of the body, through the form of murals. Upon entering the space at Twentysix, a large mural wraps around the walls. It is fluid in nature, mimicking the smaller works on display. Situated upon three plinths are smaller sculptural works, at first appearing as stacks of stones. On closer inspection, small, silver faces are welded onto the stones. To the right is a grid of smaller sketches. They overlay the mural. On the largest wall in the gallery space, five larger paintings are displayed, each framed. Compared to the smaller works, these are fully rendered, and exhibit use of colour. Each painting displays careful attention to detail, and have illusionary effect. 

After reading the wall text and information sheets, this body of work is about cynical change and transformation. She is exploring the ongoing motion of life, and how experiences shape and reshape us.

The sketches on the left of the gallery are fully fleshed out in the rendered paintings.

Gina Kiel’s work exhibited are the constant motions of change and life, with the mural embodying a more intuitive approach to her practice. This mural helps seek guidance outside the standard display methods for an exhibition, and to me, was an impressive addition to the works and to Kiel’s previous mural works seen around Te whanganui-a-Tara. Her works focus on her personal experiences of motherhood, and the flow of s of nature; becoming whole again.

His technique includes applying paint to a surface, either board or canvas, and blending the paint so it becomes a soft layer. The images almost have a digital nature, I think this is attributed to the blurry effect Harry is able to achive.

Harry is painting in response to his personal experiences, and dedicates his works to his little brother. Are these paintings pictoral elements that relate to his life? Does the artist have a significant connection to the images in relation to his brother? It could be a way for Harry to explore his grief, and uses painting to process complex emotions.

I am making assumptions here, but in a way this is similar to how I am treating painting, as a way to process the pain in my body, and use painting to explore the complex feelings I have towards the pain that exists within my body.

Daffodil pt.3, 2024. Oil on board

Skull3, 2024. Oil on board

Deer, 2024. Oil on board

Rose, 2024. Oil on board

Goals:

• Complete painting

• Start new painting

• Create new reference images

• Research

• Overlaid with a titanium white after sketching the initial sketch. This sketch is based on a digitally distorted image I collaged previously.

• I should have waited for the burnt sienna underpainting to dry longer before going over with the white, as the pigment mixed together and wanted more of a glow- will wait longer next time!

• This test was conducted to see whether the next painting should have an underpainting before going in with detail

• I don't think the underpainting with the burnt sienna will be necessary

It was helpful to have perspectives outside of my own, and outside of the known context of the work. It inspired me to push my works further in terms of tools, and what I work with. I do want to be more intentional with how I apply my ideas into physical objects, and I struggle to find ways to do so.

Moving forward, I want to experiment with the 3D aspects of painting, and include materials such as moulding paste and plaster.

For the next works, I want to focus on altering my use of canvas, and paint a background for the digital imagery to stand against. Some aspects of the painting will be intentionally raised my the moulding paste. And these will be specific. I also hope to present the last works in a dark space as this is how my work best presents itself.

This digital imagery will be of some spine related, as this is a personal issue I struggle with. Having scoliosis, I have always been fascinated with the spine, and how mine works differently, and how it affects many aspects in my life. When I was younger, I would be searching up the symptoms, how to eliminate the pain etc, so I have a very personal connection to the spine both through the physical (my body, literally), and the digital (through constant awareness, and research, imagery).

The background imagery will be from my personal everyday, unnoticed experiences that often become obsolete. They are moments that I can take for granted, yet I become fixated on a singular aspect of that moment. For this next painting, this moment will be the condensation on the glass on my shower, and how the window illuminates this foggy, dreary start to my day. Each bead of condensation will be elevated my the moulding paste. The digital imagery will be overlaid, and elevated my the moulding paste as well.

To combine both the spine imagery and the condensation of the shower, is intentional, as this moment, in the morning, I am most aware of my pain my spine causes.

The shower elevates the pain in a way, and I can begin my day.

This wasn’t the sole reason as to why my IPO has shifted, but it makes the themes of my work expand from the digital to the more personal, as our lives become more intertwined.

Having only one week to really hone in on my ideas before formative is daunting, but I am hopeful to make at least two more paintings before critique. These paintings will be more resolved, either one more than the other.

Key Words: gooey, warping

• Pixelated deer and the drip on the wall are contrasting, like the pixels are leaking into something more fluid

• Texture- the texture on the deer painting is jarring, works better in the underdeveloped spine painting

• The texture is more balanced in the spine painting

• Texture makes it feel more like a realm, a place that is not real

• They are opposite but in a cohesive way

• What ties them in are creatures in a negative space

• Composition of the deer- blown up, like a blown up image in a Google slide presentation

• The image(s) become something else

• Spine painting has a deep sea vibe

• The paintings look as if they have different processes- they start off similar but I think adding the texture paste creates a whole new process I am unfamiliar with, which means experimenting more with techniques

• At this point of the critique, the identification of the spine was brought up

• Although less digital, the flatness of the background still gives the illusion of a digital realm

• MRI scan

• Cut out forms, janky cut outs

• Floating from the original state

• Play with MRI and more digital/medical imagery

• Create liminal paintings

• Layering with canvas, push my ideas more with the surfaces I paint on and how I present my work

Above is a series of works I painted in high school, around the age 18. I was working on ideas around consciousness and the horrors of being perceived. These paintings, and the process of these works are how I want to approach my next series of works.

Goals:

• Paint

• Start new painting ideas

• Research and writing

• Have a clear understanding of my IPO

Goals:

• Complete a work to present in critique week 5

• IPO

In relation to my work, Borresman’s works leave the subject matter deeply detailed with highlights of the subject matter. The subject matter is amplified by the use of negative space in the background.

https://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/michael-borremans

Many of his works tend to depict either himself, or his cat, Hiro. Most of his works are about Hiro, and finds inspiration from stories and funny moments in everyday life and memes online.

• “I like how those memes are numerous but Alamos odd, so I make memes out of my own cat”

• “I try to make art that makes people chuckle. The light humour from memes are what I am trying to let the viewers find in my work”.

He is also interested in the irony of those images (memes), as they only show up in digital worlds, and it is possible to bring them into physical spaces. In a similar way, I am interested in bringing the digital into the physical, and finding relationships between how they are represented in each space. Painting is a labour of love.

He explores the overwhelming and unpredicatable aspects of the internet, and most of that comes through visual aspects, the images and memes. He states he is on a mission to blur the lines between 'virtual' and 'real'.

“As he collected memes fervently for his work, these once-enjoyable references began to induce visual fatigue rather than pleasure. Immersed in the rapid creation and consumption of digital images, Ppuri sensed a transformation within himself, as if the internal mechanism measuring the essence of images had malfunctioned”.

“Hypeart Visits: Ppuri’s Artistry in the Age of Internet Memes.” S, 5 Oct. 2023,

https://hypebeast.com/2023/10/hypeart-visits-ahn-tae-won-ppuri

Painting Observations:

• Sketched the spine vertebrae that I intend to paint, and sorted the surface and support I will paint on

• Wooden panels x 4, 400mm x 500mm

• One smaller panel of the tattoo that is seperate to the series but still in the same vain

• The colours will contrast, as the spine vertebrae will be white/yellow/green against a deep blue background and the tattoo painting will have a light background with the colour of the tattoo ink against it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_backbone

• It also refers to the internet backbone, the principle data route that connects the global internet. It is interesting to me that this large part of the internet, and what connects everything together is named after a human trait. It makes sense though, as the spine does uplift life. The spine is integral to the body, as is the internet backbone.

• When my spine is in pain, with each vertebrae inflicting pain, the internet becomes an extension of me. I find myself within realms online.

Today I gathered more materials for my painting series These bones glow in the dark. I have switched from the use of canvas to panel, as the wood allows the subject to become more of an object, rather than a painting. I have applied gesso to the board and sketched out the outline for my first painting of this series. The wooden panel is 400mm x 500mm.

I intend to use a colour palette that consists of a deep blue, and a soft light yellow/white that has a glow. There will be a slight green tint to it too.

I sketched the outline of the shape of the bone using pencil.

Artist and writer currently based in Canada and is studying curatorship and art criticism.

Kosmala’s paintings are depictions of scenes, mostly containing animals. What drew me to their work is the use of colour, and the harsh outlines that surround the subjects.

https://cmagazine.com/contributors/owen-kosmala

Images sourced from website

Ash Godley is an interdisciplinary artist based in Guelph, Ontario. Godley is primarily an oil painter using a unique command of light and shadow to depict the familiar from unfamiliar perspectives. There is a sense of colour that depicts dramatic lighting and distortions placed onto canvas, painting scenes that can be captured through photography, yet Godley paints them.

Many images from their paintings are scenes from their life, such as late night walks home from work, where the harsh street lights would obscure pathways and houses, giving rise to anxiety. These moments are mundane and repetitive, yet Godley has placed an important viewpoint of these moments through their paintings.

https://ashgodley.com/

Images sourced from instagram

Oil on canvas

33’’ x 42’’

Oil on panel

4’’ x 4’’

Oil and acrylic on canvas

40’’ x 80’’

Oil on panel

8’’ x 8’’ each

Oil on canvas

Oil on canvas

24’’ x 30’’

Oil on canvas

24’’ x 30’’

Oil on canvas

24’’ x 30’’

Oil on canvas

24’’ x 30’’

10’’ x 8’’

Unstretched

24’’ x 40’’

20’’ x 20’’

20’’ x 36’’

36’’ x 48’’

Artist statement on current practice:

My current series my bones glow in the dark is an ongoing 

investigation into the fears and comforts of everyday life, 

entangled with both the physical and digital. It is too often 

that the online spaces we stumble across, and the 

monotonous aspects of life are casted to the void, never to be 

retrieved again. 

By painting imagery from the fleeting moments of the internet,

I seek to rescue them from obscurity. From imagery of spine 

vertebrae to cute images of cats, the digital has challenged the 

meaning of mundane. 

Pain rests in my bones, so the digital becomes an extension of 

my physical. It can often be kind, or terribly vicious, shaping the 

the way I see and experience the world. 

Traces of my being will be present in the digital, but for how long in the physical? 

This series of works currently explores this contemporary experience, one that absorbs an algorithm. 

Gathering imagery found online, I distort them to obscure their features, creating a new sensation when approached. 

I use painting to solidify their existence; it is a physical reminder of their disturbing presence. 

• create collages with canvas and plastic sheets?- an idea to explore with material more, drape plastic materials over?

• Layering with canvas and multiple paintings at once

• Dark space?

• Next painting- distorted spine wrapping around canvas with layered images- these images would be random, found imagery

Painting Observations:

• Blending titanium white around the edges within the deer

• Outlining with burnt siennas and blue- adds to create a glow from within

• Adding the spots on the deer and blending

• The painting itself was pretty simple, using a bright set of colours that included red, yellow and a mixed green.

Digital preservation

Digital footprint

Online identity- your identity belongs on the internet beyond death, how long will it continue to be remembered, how will it be stored?

An extension to cultural relationships with death is the internet, and how this has shifted relationships with death. Many people who die as of recent have created, or interacted with digital content, leaving their online footprint to remain after death. our identities have become entangled with the internet, so what does this mean after death? Does our life extend on through the internet?

Klein works with both oil paint and egg tempura, applying layers of translucent paint to bring a sense of light and glow to the paintings. She uses simple compositions to express vulnerability, and to build up feelings of powerlessness. Her painting techniques explore visible and invisible boundaries, vulnerable and physical. To gather inspiration, Klein browses Google images, develops photos from old cameras left in thrift stores, and observational walks.

I notice that when I am walking, I find and look out for objects, marks or intersting aspects in the landscape. But i never often take photos of these, as I like to recall and remember them, so if I walk past the same spot again, I am delighted by the same object again.

I think if I were to paint these objects, I would capture them in photograph, but for now, I let them be.

https://www.raeklein.com/paintings

• sketched the layout of the painting onto the canvas. I intend to have another image included in this work, unsure of this yet

• Applied a thin wash of blue to the entirety of the canvas. This is to reduce the white of the canvas to be seen through the final product

• The approach to this work will be similar to the previous spine paintings

• Have an area of the spine appear more bright and detailed

Derek Cowie in this exhibtion is confronting his own uncomfortable colonial heritage and those dominant western principles of individualism through a suite of cartoonish portraits. His works delve into obscure art and cultural resources, often depicting familiar forms and itilitarian objects. They are symbolic carriers of meaning, many of which have appeared in his previous works. This exhibtion does not inherently cater towards themes within my own, but I was interested in the techniques used by the artist. He applies plaster over canvas, shattering the plaster to reveal bright colours. This texture was informative to ideas in future works, as I want to return to using plaster within my paintings- it inspired be on a technical level. The extreme texture was additional to the paintnigs, and enhanced his messages further.

https://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/toba-khedoori

Goals:

• Start painting for summative hand in

• Artist precedents

• artist precedents

But because of the internet, this type of imagery is now accessible, seeing imagery that disturbs is now a very real, embedded part of the online experience.

Similar to that of viewing imagery of war, or genocide and famine. This circulates around the internet, and ultimately has led to a desensitisation of gore and violence. This is another large topic that is something to consider, but possibly skews away from my current research.

I did seek out this particular image, but it stuck out to me how it was on the surface level of the Google image search. I was drawn to its intensity, and its boldness. I couldn't look away despite it disturbing me. My pain is something I feel, it impacts my movements and overall wellbeing. This pain is felt physically, and I do source out imagery that is similar in hopes to find any relief, or to relate to others online. This is my personal experience on how I handle the internet and imagery I choose to seek.

• Fill up the wall with a variety of paintings done this semester

• For exposure- do the same but with more paintings and new paintings

Ideas:

• Smaller paintings that ultimately play out to a larger one- more interesting to look at

• Two-three large paintings with smaller imagery

• Play with plaster and the texture that brings. Paint onto that.

• Lay with different colours in background and sanding the background

• Use a varnish- wax, cold wax medium, could be interesting to play with texture more and more!!!!

His works often draw links to parts of western contemporary life which captures the presence of absence in a time wher econnection feels absent.

"Robbie Motion’s latest exhibition delves into the murky world of images and image-making. How, amid the perpetual flood of imagery we are presented with – across multiple platforms and purposes – does one create meaning? And as a painter, how does the artist reconcile their place within the production of images?

Not how I remember it, That’s it, you’re perceived, and Can you see yourself in this reflect the way images often become substitutes not only for memory but also increasingly act as stand-ins for lived experience; whereby the actual event or person or experience becomes secondary to the creation and dissemination of an image".

"The intention of the show is to explore the relationship between people and pictures; exploring the function of images in present time while also considering how these functions and meaning will ultimately change as time moves forward. Painting feels especially appropriate for executing this idea as it has been used throughout history as a source to gain deeper insight into the mood and values of the past. The works within the exhibition seek to be conscious of this tradition and ultimately ask the question, 'what will the images of our time say to future audiences? What will they assume of us’'? - Robbie Motion

This is a similar question I seek to explore, and I am interested in these ideas of the future, to ask questions about how our current age will be percieved through the images and art we create and produce.

https://www.pagegalleries.co.nz/exhibitions/204-robbie-motion-not-how-i-remember-it/overview/

I intend to look into this more through painting and sculptural elements, and play more with the surfaces I paint on, applying texture and form.

Although this project is completed, its foundations will continue into next semester and beyond.

And due to the constant exsposure to these paintings, they inherently became mundane. They no longer sparked a sense of strangeness. I want to be able to continue being curious about the everyday, and find the uncanny amongst it.

Goals:

• finish final painting for this semester

• Update workbook

Her exhibition in Christchurch City Gallery ‘Atlas of Anti-Taxonomies (2019-2022), is an ‘Installation de-categorising the world to reveal the wild disorder of nature’. Alicia used found and constructed images of phenomena, beings and objects, questioning ideas of nature and the differences in our world. 

Images Alicia has used range from interior of the earth to genome sequences to close up of ants eyes- suggests other ways of seeing, connecting and describing the world. 

Atlas of Anti-Taxonomies references art historian Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas, a collection of images mapping ‘art history without a text’. It also references a cluttered computer desktop or google image search. 

This installation combines images of various scales and contexts, carefully orchestrated configurations, drawn together by Alicia. 

In relation to my own work, Alicia is using found imagery and creating connections between each image, creating some sort of map. My own series of works create a map in a sense, there are connections that bring each image together- the algorithm, the internet itself. I am also making collages, this installation acts as a collage. 

Trying to plan artwork is a dire feat that I am still working my way around, but that being said, countless ideas continue to foster amongst the anxieties and experiences of everyday life. Alicia Frankovich’s Atlas of Anti-Taxonomies (2022) was recommended to me in my infant years of art school, this work impacting my own. Frankovich is a mega genius, she is someone who I aspire to be. And her practice and research are infinitely something I will continue to look into. Atlas of Anti-Taxonomies is an arrangement of lit-up panels, suspended in the air. Each panel displays a plethora of ‘phenomena’, such as rocks, fungi, plants, bones, viruses and microbes. Simon Gennard writes upon Frankovich’s work, stating, “each panel might be considered an attempt to wrest phenomena from existing systems of categorisation, stylistic affinity, periodisation and disciplinary containment, in order to invite a frenetic, plural reading of what makes up the world” (Gennard, 2023). Frankovich’s approach of organisation in her artwork is embodied; it is partial, “intended not to offer an alternative dogma, but to gesture towards one of many possible routes for thinking about distinctions, between life, non-life, actors and those acted upon” (Gennard, 2023). Frankovich states herself: 

“I have conceived of the Atlas as a shared space between species, taxonomies and identities in which one image might pollinate with another and thereby feed and sustain a whole community as though it were a forest”. 

• Souvenirs to digital images of significance, images that have great nostalgic presence regarding the longing to relive childhood experiences. 

• Stewart mentions the body; an integral part of perception, “As experience is increasingly mediated and abstracted, the lived relation of the body to the phenomenological world is replaced with a nostalgic myth of contact and presence”

• Through experience, there is an entanglement of relationships that exist, an empty longing to resemble the experience through materiality. 

• “We might say that this capacity of objects to serve as traces of authentic experience is, in fact, exemplified by the souvenir”

The souvenir is an object of experience; its existence is predominantly that of the relation to the body. We desire these experiences whose “materiality has escaped us”

Digital fluidity, the constant change and rapid restructuring of digital artefacts can still act as a souvenir; they trigger memories, obtain nostalgic prevalence and foster identities. The internet is like one gigantic scrapbook obtaining an infinite amount of shared experiences. 

Childhood and current occurrences growing up online often carry similar notions surrounding the desire to obtain the physicalities of an experience that have causation properties towards memory.  

Images online that have significance to an experience might act as a souvenir, one that carries a digital and cultural impact. 

As we interact with, and continue to look at the internet, we start to realise there is a collection of non-material objects that have intrinsically entangled themselves in the physical. Dismantling the boundaries between us and screen is necessary to implement such ideas. 

The experience of the internet is abstracted to a collection of images that have no inherent meaning, yet they have an embedded system of networked environments with constant transformative and recontextualising properties. 

If we were to take digital images found online, and treat them as souvenirs, they become a trace of the internet, an incomplete and constantly changing object that serves an authentic experience. How can such images carry material properties? They lack the physicalities, they cannot be held or displayed. Yet there is still a connection to the body, one that lives through experience. There is a lack of material objects to be taken into account for the childhood experience of growing up online. These images act as souvenirs that indirectly cause a bodily experience of nostalgia from the ultimate digital archive of the internet. 

There is a hidden network of entangled connections shared between intricate screens and beyond. It's almost like a whole other world of its own, one that is vastly different, and vastly sparse in comparison to the experiences of real life. Yet, it is increasingly becoming more and more human, as humans become more and more digital. 

In many cases, the internet relies on obscurity to make it that much more enticing, hooking people into the pool of infinite media, of images whose entire existence is a combination of pixels that subsequently resemble something that can be observed.  

As previously discussed, images online can act as souvenirs, they can hold memories that allow an extension into tangible spaces, transforming from one contextualization to another. They are constantly, and indefinitely incomplete.

The internet resembles the current state of human actuality; it’s the quintessential reflection of our current time. It exists as an alive artefact, one that changes with the rapid advancements of technology, and intertwined with cultural, political, and in this case, experience. 

The idea of becoming, in the state of constantly becoming other, transitions and flux- that is what this constant growing archive resembles, a multiplicity of becoming, and with that, combining with humans, and the experiences that come along with internet access. This will create a rhizomatic system, one that lacks hierarchy between technology and humans. We are one in the same with the internet. Our identities have been recontextualised and reconfigured into a new form, thus creating a continuous system of new entities. 

Ultimately, this viewpoint of the internet resembles one of posthuman intent, one that combines ideas of entanglement, thus creating a state of current existence. 

In the vast, and deeply horrifying future, this current state of our lives will be characterised by the internet, and what images we have “embedded” (embedded used lightly, as these images are constantly changing) into this of human existence. Thus, humans are entangled through these artefacts, there is a shared connection, crowdsource curation, that has enforced this wonderfully absurd reflection on cultural evolution. I became fond of the idea of painting as a way for me to entangle my feelings of nostalgia and experiences into the physical, a way to recontextualise the lack of physical souvenirs. 

Stewart, Susan. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Durham and London. Duke University Press. 1993. 

• I was not using the right supplies for this painting, and should have been using a solvent that made the paint dry slower (linseed oil). I will attempt this wooden panel again in the future, once I understand this project in more depth

I first saw Brad’s work at The Dowse, and was drawn to the ideas that surround his work.

He conjures up creatures of our current contemporary age, conceived through doom scrolling and our contemporary existence. We live in a world where an algorithm is serving us ideas, information and… almost anything at this point. This shapes the way humans now see the world, and not only engage with each other, but how we now interact with the internet. This has shifted over time, and due to theories like The Dead Internet theory, we are now making for an algorithm. We serve it. This ties heavily into ideas of our current contemporary age when it comes to consumption; how do we know what is human and what is not?

Door Drawing (I need a tragic future to invest in), 2024. Found door, UV resin, archival varnish, steel and paint.

Flower Study (double), 2020. Micro Crystalline wax on board

Door Drawing (worm paranoia), 2024. Found door, UV resin, archival varnish, steel and paint

These works are humorous, but have an underlying tension of serious implications of capitalism.

My work, in a way, reflects these ideas, as I aim to create paintings that are used to slow down, and contemplate my own feelings. It is often hard to find the time to create, especially within the confines of strict capitalist preasures. But as my work does tiptoe around these ideas, it is not the main focus of my work, but capitalism ultimatley does have an affect in many parts of life. My work reacts to our current era, so indeed, capitalism does relate to my work.

Christine is reacting, and reflecting from personal experience and our current contemporary age. She has painted these memes in order to signify their absurdity within our culture.

I am unsure why the artist paints these specific characters, but those who know can instantly relate to the works ( I personally do not know who these characters are, but they are reminiscent of old game graphics from the early 2000s).

The surface of the airbrush painting seems to be the closest one I could find… It is smooth, the smoothest, blurry, the blurriest, yet has the highest definition on its surface all at the same time”.

“the DNA/virus of this generation’s culture: the meme.”

Neo-geo-new art movement that utilizes geometric abstractions while criticizing the consumerism of the modern day.

By studying the current culture of the creative landscape, Hang noticed a search for higher definition. It’s a technical achievement evident in many digital art forms such as games, renders etc. Hang seeks this through physical paintings.

Hang looks to comedy to inspire him. https://www.gao-hang.com/

Gao Hang's paintings have been significant in the development of my work over the past few years, and I always find myself reaching back to reference his art. His works portray a simple and nostalgic era in internet and digital culture. Although his works are quite humorous, I enjoy the idea that Hang is portraying these oddly familiar images, and creating a world full of these characters. To me, his works are a represntation for a longing of the past, and reflect the current issue of a society-wide nostalgia crisis. We are all longing for these simpler times when it comes to the media we consumed as a child, but how does this effect the current everyday? Nostalgia is something I avoid now, and have noticed it has become a means of capitalist consumption. Focusing on the strangeness of the new combined with the mundane is something I look forward to.

Reidmüller’s process is complex, as he generates collages of his compositions, then through a slow painting process, he essentially “reshapes and reproduces” what has already been made by the artificial intelligence. This form of duplication results an interesting way of reversing the familiar use of turning the unique into digital. Riedmüller reduces the possible infinite copies of a piece, into one singular artwork.

Riedmüller’s style and themes are both very interesting, commentating on the digital aesthetic, and the replicability of artistic skill. And with his other works, they all have a similar aesthetic in mimicking the digital art scene but through traditional mediums of painting. 

Simialr to Gao Hang, Reidmueller's works are ones I often go back to, especially when I am feeling lost in my art. It reminds me of where I started in this journey in developing my art, to where I am now.

https://www.instagram.com/paul_riedmueller/  

These hybrid beingsinhabit uncanny landscapes, and themselves, are often strange. Davies draws from personal experinces growing up on remote countrysides, as this fostered into her works becoming strange and alive.

The works are powerful in portraying this mythological world, and I am interested in her use of colour, and her ability to transform familiar figures into strange new beings.

https://elliedaviesartist.my.canva.site/#home

I visited Generation X: 50 Artworks from the Chartwell Collection exhibition at Te Papa on the 17/09/24. It was a group show featuring contemporary artworks made by Gen X artists. This exhibition is presented by City Gallery Wellington.

• Raised in an analog world, yet the first early adopters of the internet.

• Chartwell Collection is Aotearoa’s most significant contemporary art collection, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year (Gen X itself)

• This exhibition includes a diverse range of national and international artists, with artworks made during the 90s and early 2000s. It includes painting, sculpture, installation, sound and video.

• They address concerns ranging from globalisation, capitalism, and the culture wars of identity politics, third-wave feminisms, and the commodification of art schools.

• This exhibition encapsulates a time period that I am unfamiliar with (as I wasn’t born until 2002), yet I resonate with the themes involved. As I continue to work with contemporary internet related ideas in my artworks, this exhibition features pieces made around the conception of fast-growing online spaces. The artists have responded and reacted to this ever evolving political landscape, and the themes of this era. In a similar way, I am responding to the current state of the internet, a large aspect of many lives, and through the lens of a Gen Z.

With Harri's works, I am drawn to how he approaches painting these found images and objects. They have a scientific and almost anotomical view to them.

I especially enjoy the dark backgrounds against the luminous object in Fbmp, cat fallen over (2025). The depth of shadow amplifies an ominous viewpoint, turning this very unassuming object into an uncanny image.

• This book was published in 2005, so many ideas around aesthetics are 20 years old. I think now that our everyday is so entangled with the internet, it has become a familiar place, one that we cannot physically enter, but its a space where connection and engagement happens. Although, it is interesting to note that around 2005, the internet was a place that you could easily enter and exit. Specific tasks and media would be online, while physical and analog means of communication and intreractions were still prevelent.

• The third place was still a common means to meet up with friends and familiars. The internet was a new and exciting tool.

• Now the internet has almost replaced the idea of third places, especially with COVID-19, many of our interactions became virtual. This creates an aesthetic of our current time, it is heavily reliant on the digital realms. Both human life and popular culture happen online.

Notes:

• Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation, 1981- philosophical basis of the matrix, discusses the nature of reality in a increasingly commodified and media-drenched world.

• Discusses how images create a new reality

• Maps and reality- the landscape and the map, how the map changes with the landscape, becoming indistinguishable with the empire. Maps can essentially, become a new reality. The map can become greater than the landscape- do we imagine the world, or image in the map

• A copy with no origin

• Technology is a map of our empire- products, communities, trends, social circles, out-crowds, video depictions, in-crowds etc etc

• The internet presents everything better than they exist

• The internet is no longer a mere network we can access and exit from physical entry points

• Fake news- the ‘map’ fabricating information and news.

• Change happens in our realities due to consequences of technology and the fabrication of information, the widespread and diluted elements of the internet becoming the basis of our lives

• Social media influences, their entire existence is on a screen- most of their audience will never meet them in person. The digital personality becomes real, and alter how we see reality

• AI imagery and reality

• Virtual reality devices and the ‘physical’ spaces within them- causes harm on the planet, causes destruction to earth

• The line between technology and reality continues to blur, the digital landscape is consuming our lives

• “We live in a world which is not true enough to be real, but too tangible to be digital”

• It is either real, or unreal- instead, there is a third version of space- the hyper-real.

• This is our meta verse- we did not ask for this meta verse, it has been sold to us. It has been sold as something we need, to embrace our superficial desires.

• Over consumption, makes us move forward towards the meta verse, the more we engage, the more it demands from us.

• Time considered outside of the increasingly digitised landscape, is something increasingly breaking our grasp.

• The Matrix- Neo, the main character is able to access the Matrix

• The society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord

• Debord discusses media and authenticity “The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people mediated by images” (Debord).

• The spectacle is both the rhetoric which produces media, and the media which produces rhetoric

• There are four stages which take something from being real to being simulacrum, according to Baudrillard

1. Picture of tree, the first stage. An object, the picture, that represents something, which is the tree

2. Photoshop and colour correction, the image is enhanced, the second stage

3. Download a better image of a tree and associate it with oneself- it is depicting something real, but is now being presented dishonestly

4. Full simulacra is creating an AI image and claiming it to be ones own, and claiming it to be real

5. The problem is the hyper-real becoming the real, despite technology and the marvels it has created for humans

Notes:

• The origin of the term spam used for the internet- comes from the Monty Python Episode “Spam”. The episode is a parody on the canned meat Spam, the sketch is pretty much has nothing to do with media or technology

• But this foreshadows the term spam used in internet vernacular

• Spam often refers to unwanted, repetitive and irrelevant communication or content.

• In the 1980s, in early chatrooms and forums, users would repeatedly type in Spam to rid of unwanted users on these domains

• Spam would also be used in a similar vain on file and message-sharing networks

• Spam, the canned meat, is an unhealthy, highly processed food product. Since the 1980s, the internet and media has exponentially changed.

• 1989, the World Wide Web was created

• Communication, creativity and the overall connectedness of the world became a fast-paced phenomenon

• Individuals, for the first time, could interact with anyone from the other side of the world from their home

• Purchasing physical and digital media online was now accessible

• Currently, in 2024, it is estimated that 70% of the global population own a phone

• Over 1 billion websites

• The internet has fully consumed us, and the conditions of the internet are crucial to the human experience

• Spam, and Spam like media have challenged the human interactions online, such as Spam Emails, or Spam media which exploits the algorithms of multiple platforms. Most of this comes in the form of automotive media, or excessive posting.

• The continuous thriving ecosystem of Spam-like media is detrimental to the current architecture and future of the internet

• Creators and consumers online want quicker, and easier to process content available , which often doesn’t challenge us. And ignore the consequences of this

• Dead internet theory. This suggests that most interactions online are mostly bot generated

• The thriving and flourishing of the internet started to die during 2016

• Fake content and traffic is impossible to avoid

• Death of the follower and the future of creativity on the web- a presentation by Jack Conte, the founder of Patreon

• About the algorithmic feeds, and algorithmic ranking systems on all content-based platforms and follower-based platforms

• Internet content is distributed through computer algorithms that rank content using metrics of engagement, rather than catering towards the user.

• As a result, this has caused content creators and followers to be “pulled apart”

• “The follower” is not some handy feature of a social network. The follower is foundational architecture for human creativity and organisation

• With the follower being almost out of the picture, creators need to create for an algorithm in order to substance their career. They are essentially forced to stray away from their fan base and audience

• The internet has become a habit. Pop realtors have no control, or even any clue as t how this algorithm’s metrics are based, thus creating to the void, not specifically for an audience anymore

• Output of creativity has shifted from “what will by audience appreciate?” To “how will this favour the algorithmic?” This subconsciously changes the creative out put of creators and artists.

• The internet used to feel like exploration

• Spam is being excessively created in order to appease the algorithms, and have become increasingly excessive in the midst of generative AI

• Humans are becoming less involved, as AI creates and manages areas of the internet, and increasingly so. And as AI continues to develop, Spam-like media is only likely to get worse. Ou digital digest will continue to become unhealthier and unhealthier as this continues.

Undermine the authority of the dominant system- that dominant system is currently is to engage with consumerist-based, fast paced content online- using up to date technology and everything is crisp and perfect. Make art that resists, criticises and questions what we consume and how we consume media. This can also relate to the ideas of ethics and aesthetic, and alterity. 

Ethical Aesthetics and Alterity:

Literary Theory- A Very Short Introduction by Jonathan Culler 

Chapter 9- Ethics and Aesthetics 

“We have ahead a stake in defining ourselves as different from machines, but just as we are animals, are we not also machines“ ?  

Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto” of 1985 first articulated what was to become the notion of the post-human: “We are all chimeras, theorised and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short we are cyborgs”. 

“Once we question the idea of a self or mind that controls its bodies and its tools and grasp that the skills that enables us to function are embodied, both in our own bodies and in those extensions of our bodies in the environment, from simple tools to the most elaborate computer systems, we can see that, living in the world, we are part of system,s if ‘disturbed cognition’, some of it embodied in our minds, some in the smart environments that we and our machines have created”. 

“What we call human, for instance, would be a selection of features from mechanic systems and processes”.

“The world of new digital media, hypertext, and computer games also poses new aesthetic questions: is the move from a print-based to an electronic-based culture one that will have repercussions for the concept of literature and hence for literary theory? (In this case, will it have repercussions on physical forms of art making such as painting and sculpture?) The notion of the literary text as a finished verbal artefact may change, as electronic form makes texts into potentially mutable instances. Katherine Hayles notes that while literature has always functioned as a technology designed to change the cognition of the reader, tin new electronic systems feedback loops enable different levels of interaction between text and reader to continuously inform and mutually determine one another, transforming texts as readers perform them. 

I plan to create smaller works, as I think these convey my ideas easier. I find larger works to be intimidating for both myself and the viewer. These paintings will include sculptural elements, and I wish to return to using plaster, similar to the sculptures I made in early 2024.

It is hard to tell how my next project will continue in the future, and what experiences between now and then will shift my current ideas. My ideas are constantly changing, and being critical of these ideas, and being conscious about them is important for me in order to grasp these experiences and in my art.

I am too, interested in ideas around what in the past, has lead to the current, and why events and experiences take place in order for things to shape how they are now. How come I am the way I am? Much of the mundane ultimatley shape me the most, as significant experiences in life create memories. The mundane have very little memeory associated with them.

I also now understand the importance of introducing myself with the basics of my positionality to someone who is new to my practice, as it helps to assert my voice into the stream of creativity.

I understood my positionality going into this course, but I was able to express this notion I already had of myself through a creative lens. We often get caught up in our own states of being, as our lives become busier. Understanding positionality has expanded my views on my work, how my work operates in the context it is in, and how it is a representation of my experiences. This has helped shift the meaning of my works, basing my creative practice on an experience, and personal notion.

Page Galleries

If the stars make dragons fantastical, taniwha make them real - Reuben Paterson, March 2025

Reuben Paterson’s (born 1973 Auckland Tamaki Makaurau, Ngato Rangitihi, Nga Tuhoe, Tuhourangi) latest body of work is centralised around the ideas of constellations, circumnavigation and contemplating celestial bodies.

Upon entering the space, Page Gallery, there is an immediate sparkle that embraces you. With the layout of Page, I often start from the left hand side, and wrap around the space in one loop. But with this exhibition, I kept going back and forth between certain paintings. I was fascinated by the technique Paterson has used, and the hidden textures that appeared once viewed closer.

Paterson has used a combination of glitter, a staple in his works, acrylic paint and both Cook Island black pearls and Japanese freshwater pearls. The pearls create a deeper sense of depth amongst the flat, glittery painting, acting almost like alien UFOs. Upon further reading, the pearls represent each star amongst the constellations that connect the south and the north. They have been precisely positioned and scaled. The use of the pearls refernce Pacific creation narratives around these jewels as the result of tears shed from the stars above.

There was a play with scale also, with many large paintings that exhibited depictions of dragons or up-close moon craters, and others which were small in scale depicting shooting stars.

I entered this space with some knowledge of Paterson’s previous works, but was pleasantly surprised by how much these works inspired not only my own practice, but with ideas around display and exhibition. While being a solo exhibition, I found it useful to identify how the works had been displayed in this difficult space. I often find that Page gallery is a difficult space to experiment with exhibition layout, as the room is heavily divided by the staircase in the middle. Yet this is possibly never a concern for these exhibitions, as this gallery is a dealer gallery. The conventions of presenting work are often the same time and time again. I visit Page Galleries every two weeks or so, and have yet to be inspired by the display methods used. But Paterson's exhibtion stood out to me as an exhibtion that, while still following display conventions, the paintings themselves extend beyond the gallery walls.

This collection os Paterson’s work have been transported from his new home in New York across Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa to Aotearoa. This information was found upon after reading the information sheet. This is significant, as Paterson was not physically present to install these works. I wonder if he gave the curators some notes, or if it was based on the gallery's ideas.

• This is by far my favourite stage in this painting, I have taken inspiration from a couple of my artist precedents (Rubetta Neal and Yas Bachurina)

• As I was painting during the study break, I found that I was ofte ngetting in my own head about my work, and while I am proud at this stage in my project, I was also working in isolation. This meant I wasn't recieving feedback from peers, or surrounded by them as often. I took the moments with them for granted, as it helped push me in my making, and encouraged me to seek outside feedback.

The image for this tattoo was found somewhere online (I have no idea where), and I wanted it on my body.

I have another tattoo that is a drawing of two rabbits. I have painted rabbits in the past, and so these tattoos have a lot of connection to my creative processes in a way.

Jhana Millers Gallery

I visited this space in order to meet up with a friend who is an intern at Jhana Millers. She showed me around the exhibition and gave me a few insights on the paintings and photographs. I was familiar with the works of Harry Culy, both imposing liminal and humorous themes within his photographs.

The photographs of Harry’s are large scale, being pinned to the wall and draped to take any shape it pleases. Amongst the large photos are smaller scaled paintings on plaster and aluminium.

The paintings and photographs have been placed in between each other, with plenty of room for each work to breathe.

This exhibition draws on the quite mysteries of everyday life, offering a dreamlike meditation on place, ritual, and transformation. With the pictorial depictions of our suburban surroundings and the materials we have come accustomed to around these environments, both artist have exhibited their works to showcase the everyday.

The name of the exhibition, ‘Wishbone’, takes from the delicate anatomical artefact, or the object of superstition. It is accompanying such works to question what lingers just beneath the surface of the familiar.

With Harry’s work being exhibited in The Brood at the time of Wishbone, the photographs have been displayed in a similar manner, if not even the exact same. It is interesting in to see the photographs hung in the same way, but in different contexts. The themes of his works still stand the same, but this gallery space and context of the exhibtion change how I approach the works.

His silver gelatin prints render traces of human life within liminal domestic and suburban landscapes across Aotearoa.

Harry take pictures that are recognisable and eerie, he has made the mundane seem strange.

Harry’s work alone are haunting, despite their familiarities.

Two smaller framed works are exhibited on top of each other. This is in contrast, starkly different to how his larger prints have been displayed. Harry is offering us different perspectives, as the large prints engulf us, we become apart of the image. While the smaller ones offer a voyeristic experience, looking from the outside in.

Tyne Gordon’s paintings on plaster and aluminium are gestural and conceptual. They are fast, fleeting impressions marked urgently into the material. There are many layers to the scratches, evoking atmospheres of lived experiences and emotional terrain. Tyne’s paintings bring a sense of something that once was, a longing to return. The works speak to urban environments, and how humans leave their marks in the world. It helps question psychological states in combination of such; these gestures are scratchy and rapid.

It is seemingly so, that these works could relate to experiences, both the real and the uncanny.

Both Harry and Tyne’s works reveal unexpected connections and shared tension, exploring everyday intricacies.

This exhibition informed me of the many ways to present work in a standard gallery space, and the use of scale had me intrigued. Neither artist is overshadowed by the other, despite the differences in size (physically), and having the view of the urban landscape through the large window is almost apart of the works themselves. It

Greene, Rachel. Internet Art. Thames & Hudson, 2004. search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=cat09011a&AN=mul.oai.edge.massey.folio.ebsco.com.fs00001086.c1e0bf74.19dd.5a8e.a580.3fe6fd89e3d0&site=eds-live&scope=site. 

Betti Marenko: Deleuze and Design: Digital Materiality, Morphogenesis and the intelligence of the Technodigital object (2015).

What is an event?

“Events are produced in a chaos, in a chaotic multiplicity, but only under the condition that a sort of screen intervenes” (Deleuze, 76). 

With multiplicities (Many), the chaos ensures to become singular with the intensities of forces. Thus, “in a sense, technodigital objects are blurry entities, conflating hardware and software” (Marenko, 122). 

Marenko, a trans-disciplinary theorist, academic and educator integrates the ideas of Deleuzian theories with ones of technodigital objectiles, and questions the boundaries of digital materiality with objects. 

She investigates the assemblages, entities of open-ended ‘technodigital objects’, a new assortment of multiple material intelligences, while not excluding human, but rather combining the ideas of human and digital. 

Throughout this chapter, Marenko explores the key concepts around Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s collaborative works. Such ideas are “deployed to unpack the argument of the materiality of the technodigital object: the transition from object to objectile; a morphogenetic account of matter; and the implications of a radical material vitalism”

As the objects mutate, the process of creative thinking and making must also be rethought, as, “Deleuze and Guattari’s thought that matter is to be apprehended via intuitive and inquisitive forms of knowledge”. The object, through the technodigital space has become “open-ended”,  incomplete. With this, we are forced to “question the dichotomy between the tangible and intangible”. The forces, densities and intensities are essential in this way of thinking. This self organising, spontaneously shifting matter of non-organic intensities has a philosophical relation to the ideas of Baruch Spinoza- one substance, of which everything exists, manifesting actively through the world. 

There are actions that are continuously being produced and reproduced, in accordance to the non-hierarchical dynamic between substances. To view this context within Deleuze and Guattari’s perspective, we have to critique the Anthropocene- the current geological epoch, one that centres humans above all. This places a hierarchy above other material substances. Deleuze and Guattari’s materialism “postulates that all things are formed through differentiation and individuation of the same substance, and that matter vibrates with the potential of its creative evolution and innovation”. There are a myriad of multiples, a multiplicity of interactions causing reactions; - a “silent dance of forces”. 

“Infinite permutations are seen through a relational world-view where the human and the non-human, the sub-personal and the molecular ceaselessly combine and recombine through a myriad of rhizomes, assemblages and machines”. 

We can ultimately take this into account for the idea that many creative forces on the internet are inherently reproductions of reproductions, and will continue to do so indefinitely. But due to Anthropocentric central thinking, there is a lack of appreciation to these forces that ultimately bind us to these creative entities, thus creating a hierarchy that absorbs the ideas of the rhizomatic system Deleuze and Guattari argue towards. 

Deleuze and Guattari’s radical materialism can articulate the relationship we have with the living internet artefact. It does this by providing an “experimental, intuitive, material understanding of our interaction with, and experience of , digital objects, and by suggesting an ecology of the human and the non-human based on the crisscrossing and entanglement of silicon and carbon, and all their possible, wondrous becomings (Marenko, 131). Marenko, in this chapter, has argued, and offers a new way of understanding how objects come into being. This perspective allows us to understand “current technodigital objects”, and poses the idea of evolutionary, and mutually coexisting material intelligences. 

Technodigital objects, or the digital artefact are never inanimate. Humans simultaneously experience the same learnings as the non-human, the non-human ultimately being one with the human.

Marenko, Betti. Deleuze and Design: Digital Materiality, Morphogenesis and the intelligence of the Technodigital object. Edinburgh. Edinburgh University Press. 2015.

• I also started applying a layer of untramarine blue over the black

I left this space above the spine for the leaf to be painted into.

• Viktor Mayer-Schonberger expressively puts “Humans yearn to remember, although they mostly forget”(2009, p. 92).

• Performing memory thus presupposes agency.

This book wasn’t the most helpful in relation to what I am doing, although it lead me to a more helpful book by Tama Leaver, Artificial Culture: identity, technology and bodies.

• articulate a memory through artworks

The icons on our phones apps, such as the rotary phone and the letter on Gmail are all notions of the past, and are the physical, analog renditions of the digital versions, which have no relationship to the original representation. Its interesting to think associations to many mundane objects from the past have now become embedded in the mundane online. Texting, emails and phone calls are all mundane tasks we almost have to participate in, in order to stay connected with others. Yet these devices are so distant from us, creating another layer of strangeness to our modern era.