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Artist Research: Jordan Wolfson’s ‘The Crisis’

The Crisis is a 2004 video work by artist Jordan Wolfson.  It consists of Wolfson giving a scattered, deeply personal monologue about his artistic opinions and ambitions; clarity is provided by Wolfson’s physical presence and facial expressions.  Wolfson manipulates the unscripted changes within his surroundings by improvising and adapting his mannerisms to appear as if he is in control, consequently giving his piece a grand, cinematic quality in places.  

I feel as if I could potentially improvise my own responses to my webpage in a similar way to the way Wolfson improvised his actions, or use either the collection of webpages or my narration to provide clarity to the other

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Steps from here on out

Following the development and research processes carried out for my project, I have a clearer idea of where I want to take it next.  In addition to my online database of edited pages, I will also be creating a video work wherein I walk users through my database and explain its significance.  I feel that this is an appropriate step to take in order to provide clarity and explanation for those that won’t necessarily have the experiences required to make sense of the esoteric nature of many of my pages, and is a step I was inspired to take after witnessing the ability of video works by Jordan Wolfson, Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch to pit hard to decipher narratives against each other with moments of clarity. Another benefit is that I can retain a great deal of my website’s tone without sacrificing the clarity of communication that the video format brings

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Artist Research: Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch’s ‘Any Ever’

Any Ever is similar in nature to Trecartin’s other work, Item Falls, which I have examined previously on this blog.  However, I feel that the pacing present in Any Ever is significant enough to warrant its’ own mention.

The same zany, hyperactive, self-absorbed characters spouting sonically audible but logically incomprehensible gibberish are present here, but whereas Item Falls was a constant attack of hyperactivity, Any Ever’s flow is punctuated by more subdued moments that reflect upon the chaos and give secondary insight into what is taking place.  Found footage of US Presidents Obama and Bush Jr that is comical in context is placed alongside a markedly serene and straight faced narration about the ideas driving Trecartin and Fitch’s work from a third party.  This latter aspect is the one that interests me the most, as it presents me with an opportunity to provide clarity and understanding with my own work, and to potentially remove the incorrect assumptions that could pop up of me endorsing some of the more explicit viewpoint presented within my database.

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Artist Research: Oliver Laric

My research of Oliver Laric has focused on his work with CGI and how that relates to the realm of fine art sculpture.  Works such as ‘Lincoln 3D Scans’ appropriate the conventionally respectable imagery of Greek busts and force them into gaudily-rendered CGI versions of themselves, snatching them from the gallery or the museum and holding them hostage on an internet website’s image collection.  This process comes full circle in Laric’s ‘Visions,’ wherein the gaudy 3D renders are printed and brought back to life as vibrant maquettes that merge the elegant form of those old scultpures with the vibrant colour schemes of pop art.

It feels as if Laric is denying the sculptures the chance to be respected, before thrusting them back onto a pedestal, as if to say ‘my bad, this is high art.’ This strikes me as a reflection of the ability of the gallery/museum to automatically endow their contents with significance, and when the contents are removed and placed within a realm that doesn’t exert that sort of authority, their value is deprecated.

Concerning a relation to my developing piece, I’m suddenly compelled to consider how I can force what I am currently making back into the ‘respectable’ fine art realm to force viewers to treat my work as important, despite the very fact that I went into this project with one of my primary aims being to disown the potentially pretentious and arrogant nature of gallery spaces.

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Second Thursday Crit feedback

I presented a screen-capture video of me browsing through my database at last Thursday’s crit. Notable reflections are as follows:

The video format was more effective at displaying the database as a cohesive whole than the assortment of screenshots that I provided at the previous crit.

However, it was also noted that the video format prevented viewers from exploring the pages independently at their own pace. Some felt that the video format emphasised the authority of my perspective and intentions over the subjective personal interpretations of individual viewers

I perceived these as potentially very important points that I need to consider in depth whilst progressing with my project.  One of the ways in which I was going to potentially open up my project to as many viewers as possible was via the inclusion of video work on a site such as YouTube, so if I am going to do this I need to make sure that I either adapt my video work to increase the viewer’s ability to indulge in their own perceptions of my work, or alter the presentation of my work within the video content so that it serves the purpose of the video better.

Attention was brought to the constant negativity being communicated by my pages, as well as the vulgar and explicit language used within those pages.

I was advised to be cautious with regard to exclusively representing aggressive/vulgar attitudes on the internet, especially as a database is supposed to be far-reaching and extensive by nature.  I was also advised to add more content to the database to make it feel more reputable

While I think that it’s important to communicate the dark corners of the internet, I do agree that in order for the database to feel credible and authoritative, I need to balance those out with less shocking pages. Consequently - surprise surprise - I will be making sure to create family friendly content to achieve this aim.

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Tuesday meeting feedback

My personal relation to the database and how I feel about it was discussed in Tuesday’s meeting.  Though I originally took the stance that I didn’t necessarily have anything profound or personal to say with my database, I was helped to realise that my desire to create a ‘database’ to educate people about forgotten corners of the internet is in itself rather meaningful, and that I can therefore focus on that purpose to embed significance within my work.  Consequently, I will investigate the educational potential of art further

I was also encouraged to research artists that deal with spontaneity (not just artists relating to the internet) due to the inherently spontaneous nature in which each of my pages is created.

Giving thought to how I curate my work and make it more accessible and visible to viewers was also a point that was emphasised.  My database in its’ current state is extremely hard to find and out of the way, and I was advised to find a means of reaching out to viewers more directly.  At the moment, I am toying with the idea of creating memetic content that could be spread throughout sites such as YouTube, Reddit, 4chan and Instagram in order to grab people’s attention and provide some degree of visibility which draws in new viewers without me having to bring them over personally.

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Alternative/Supplimentary ways of potentially working

One way in which I could approach my current investigation differently is to edit the way in which the viewer navigates the pages present within the database, as well as changing the content within these pages to suit this altered layout.  This is inspired by text-based RPG’s and choose your own adventure books, wherein the player/reader is initially presented with a linear narrative but can deviate from that at certain points during the story

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Thursday’s Feedback

The observations people made of my work during Thursday’s crit were that:

It was clear that each page was created in a quick, spontaneous fashion

Some of the pages brought to mind shoddily-constructed conspiracy theory websites

Likened to ‘being lost in an internet black hole’ - one viewer said the websites reminded her of amateur history homework websites

Regarding my intentions to convey a scrappy, esoteric internet-related aesthetic, I feel that the points above show that I have been largely successful concerning this part of developing my project. It was my intention that my content would eschew consistency and professional design standards in favour of haphazard designs that nonetheless gave greater insight into the minds of the protagonists that created each page.

Some struggled to pinpoint where me and my personal perspective stood amongst the multiple pages on hand

Viewers said that they didn’t draw conclusions about the motives of the content as it was written a long time ago, also feeling distanced from the content for the same reasons

I’m not necessarily that concerned with making sure that my presence and my own personal views are being communicated clearly within my work; though I certainly feel there’s something profound in the way that I’m choosing to resurrect lost corners of the internet and breathe new life into them, I think it’s more appropriate to let each character/website speak for themselves.  Characters and pages are born and developed the way they are due to a desire to educate viewers on the dark corners of the internet in a humourous, spontaneous fashion, and statements made within each page don’t necessarily hold any significance for me. The content is shocking because I have a dark sense of humour and have grown accustomed to making edgy jokes with little thought behind them.

However, whether I want viewers to feel a connection to my content is another matter.  Viewers who don’t really venture outside of the biggest websites will undoubtedly find it hard to relate to sites that break away from that norm; this is something that has little to do with my content. That being said, I can still adapt my content in a way that makes it easier for viewers to understand: this could be me creating a help page, or making content for YouTube/Instagram/etc. that forwards viewers to my database.

Some viewers felt genuinely scared by the pages

Others said it was obvious that the content wasn’t genuine 

A few people got caught up with half a sentence wherein the writer expressed his frustration at not being able to bring a gun into school, not mentioning the greater context it resided within, which illustrated that the writer was delusional to think he had a right to bring his gun to school

The internet has traditionally been an edgy, transgressive space hosting content that could easily offend many; I think that it is extremely important to take that into account when developing a project that aims to act as a database of the internet’s lost corners. Personally, I feel it would make little sense for an internet database consist solely of family friendly content! Again though, it comes down to the subtleties of how I communicate, and how I feel about being misinterpreted by my viewers.  Though I felt frustrated at viewers for honing in on the mention of the gun (mentioned above) without speaking about the rest of my article, maybe I can do more to improve the clarity of my communication, although maybe people will still hone in on offensive details without internalising context regardless.

Concerning people perceiving my content as in-genuine, I haven’t decided how I feel. I want there to be an uncanny aspect to reading my pages, as if a man was eaten from the inside out and his skin worn by whatever creature devoured him. How obvious I want it to be that something is ‘wrong,’ I don’t know. I would definitely like a considerable degree of ambiguity regarding this.

US-centric in nature

English is my first language, and a lot of the sites I’ve been editing and/or taking inspiration from have been American, so this was inevitable to some degree. However, the internet exists outside America, so I will definitely adapt content from non-English language websites in order to give a more global feel to my database.

Would like to see the database in other formats (digital or physical)

IMHO the database wouldn’t ‘work properly’ if it was converted into standalone prints or a physical publication (two examples of physical media off the top of my head) - my characters make a bad impression as they feel that they can get away with anything on the internet - they wouldn’t dare say anything featured within the database on TV or in a book, for example.  However, I am interested in creating YouTube content that subverts video data, that is related to the database and sends people there.

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Notable research point 3: Viper

Viper's work raises some really interesting questions about artist’s involvement with the creation of their work, and whether or not it can accurately be attributed to them. Initially creating a string of surreal Southern Hip-Hop album in the late 2000′s, from around 2014 onwards Viper became much more prolific, releasing over 600 albums between 2014 and 2015.

However, these albums very rarely consisted of new songs, instead largely being made up of pre-existing songs that were either chopped and screwed or left as they were. Viper relied on fans to create the album covers for these releases; given that his fanbase predominantly consists of internet-dwelling edgelords, albums were given titles such as ‘Kill Urself My Man,’ ‘Why the Fuck is Tibet Still Ain’t Free?’ and ‘I’m Better Than U.’ This sense of humour is also present in the initially fan-run but now official RapperViperVEVO YouTube account, wherein fan-made edits depict Viper taking responsibility for the Tiananmen Square massacre, Jeffrey Epstein’s murder, and the Coronavirus (as well as the subsequent hoarding of toilet paper that followed) can be found.  These edits are constructed from selfies and footage of Viper rapping behind a greenscreen that he has given to fans in order to make content for him.

Given what little involvement Viper has with the creative process outlined above, this reasis an intriguing question concerning the ownership of an artist’s content, and the relationship between visionary and manufacturer.  Is this Viper content? Are the fans who do Viper’s work for him the rightful owners of these videos?

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Notable research point 2: Ryan Trecartin’s Item Falls

Item Falls is a video work documenting the lives of several chick farmers.  Taking the high energy narcissism often present within the content produced by social media influencers to its’ logical conclusion, the characters in Item Falls assault the viewer with a barrage of self-centred ramblings whose meanings aren’t entirely all that clear, though the pride and self-importance they feel is crystal clear.  Perhaps this is more fitting though - real influencers often have little to say or do other than portray their luxurious but insignificant lives with grand importance, so it makes sense that Trecartin would remove any sense of coherent communication entirely to add clarity to the insanity he wished to portray.  What is most uncanny is that Item Falls was released in 2013, several years before influencer narcissism reached its worst point, yet resembles our current reality with disturbing accuracy. 

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Notable reserach point 1: Jon Rafman

Jon Rafman’s I Have Ten Thousand Compound Eyes and Each is Named Suffering is a piece that I feel intersects with my investigation to a significant degree.  What Rafman has essentially done is taken various fragments from esoteric (often explicit) internet cultures, rearranging and re-contextualising them within a contemporary gallery space.  I think the new context is particularly interesting; snippets of data that would be regarded as passe and insignificant when viewed in their original contexts are likely to be viewed as meaningful and profound (most likely ‘woke’ as well, due to the progressive disposition of many within the art world) due to the general assumption that anything within a gallery space will have some deep, profound meaning.

I feel that the route I am taking with my work subverts this notion. By shunning a physical gallery showing, it’s implied that my work isn’t necessarily all that important or meaningful, and therefore its’ status as respectable art questioned; the appropriation of vulgar elements from underground internet spaces makes viewers more likely to be turned off and disinthused.

image source: https://www.stedelijk.nl/en/exhibitions/jonrafman

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Media Testing: 3D Modelling

Briefly tried my hand at 3D modelling the other day to broaden the scope of my project - turns out it’s much easier than I thought. From left to right: deformed strawberry wanker, nondescript greek bust type beat, Igor Bogdanoff and Boomer Mario. Meet my friends.

Given that a great deal of old internet aesthetics intersect with old CGI, I would definitely be eager to incorporate 3D modelling into my work somehow

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Development [2]

As I was finding the process of initial idea generation and broad testing tedious and demotivating, I decided to work in reverse, honing in on and fleshing out an idea that I was passionate about to a point of vague ‘completion’ (though this is still a test draft, I by no means consider this a final outcome).

The idea that I have been working on is the archive of old/esoteric web pages that I have mentioned previously.  In-universe, the archive brings together these disparate fragments that are supposedly internet artifacts of some sort, compiling them in a fashion that makes it easier to access for those that don’t have the knowledge required to find these pages on their own.

Pages are constructed either by gutting pre-existing pages and filling them with my own text, or by creating my own pages with HTML/CSS that are filled with other forms of internet data.  Interviews, confessional ramblings and poems (image 1) have been constructed from these pre-existing pages; almost all of the edited pages are deranged and unnerving to a significant degree, as a means of preserving the feelings of uneasiness and discomfort someone inexperienced with browsing the dark corners of the internet may experience. 

An example of a page constructed from scratch but then filled with pre-existing data is the Gerald’s Love Letters page (images 2 and 3), where the potentially innocent, yet still creepy nature of Gerald’s biography clashes harshly with the vulgar ‘letters’ of his that are re-contextualised comments made towards women on the internet.

Though I am definitely proud of what I have done so far, I feel that I could do much to broaden the scope of my piece and make it more pervasive, more nuanced. I worked with re-contextualising video footage and music/audio in the past, and could certainly incorporate that within the webpages that I am constructing.  I am also interested to see how far I can take the narrative that links these pages together, having contemplated the idea of weaving a tale wherein I am a historian of sorts who is trying to preserve a lost history of deranged internet cultures.

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FMP development photos, looking at the concept of taking web data from the internet and rearranging it to suit my purposes. The top photo is an edited pre-existing webpage, the bottom photo is a crude webpage I designed myself from scratch

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Initial Development

Exploring themes of data collection and dealing with memories and information from the past, for the initial route of development for my FMP, I have decided to create an archival ‘website’ of sorts which acts as a portal to various blog posts which are supposed to have been connected from the old internet of years past.  The ‘websites’ I am displaying as my piece are reconstructions of pre-existing pages: one is a reconstruction of the McLibel website, turning it into the blog of an exceptionally neurotic 15 year old emo girl; another turns a Taiwanese expat support page into the online diary entry of a mentally deranged incel.

The way in which these disparate fragments are woven together into this one cohesive (albeit inconsistent) whole is a response to the seemingly more personalised and customisable nature of the old internet that I have mentioned prior.  The way in which I am manipulating data as I see fit is a response to the way in which personal confessions and anecdotes which we assume we control are willingly shared within the online realm, yet no longer belong to us, but to whoever is capable of manipulating data.

Going forward, I can see myself moving beyond manipulating text and pictures when it comes to disfiguring and distorting these websites.  Music and video work are mediums I can see myself utilizing, whether this be original content or manipulation of samples

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During my time on Foundation, I have already worked with mediums and concepts that are related to the ideas that I intend to explore with my FMP.  The piece that I produced for the WIP show involved taking snippets of television adverts from 90′s China, re-contextualising them within the context of a sculptural piece wherein viewers were given the opportunity to see and interact with incredibly niche footage  that they were unlikely to come across unless they had a pre-existing interested in adverts from 90′s China and went out of their way to search for similar footage.

Since my WIP show, my practice has become more insular, focusing predominantly on the collection of obscure and esoteric data and reconstructing it to fit a more artistically profound context.  I have made two short films whilst exploring this concept: the first involved re-constructing fragments of rather cinematic adverts from 80′s South Korean TV to create a theatrical-style short about a UFO landing, removing all the footage that gave away the footage’s origin as adverts.  The second piece is more directly linked to my ideas for my FMP, playing with footage in a similar manner but this time adding text in a manner similar to old YouTube lyric videos to create a fake conspiracy theory video that implicates Ronald McDonald and Marselo, mascot of Chilean lottery company Kino5, as creations of the Pendle witches that are bringing maleficium back to Pendle

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I also have a pre-existing interest in various forms of internet-centric underground and experimental music that are influencing my research. There is a burgeoning movement within underground hip-hop circles that has been titled ‘Crushed Trap,’ wherein artists make Yung Lean/SpaceGhostPurrp-style cloud rap/trap that is heavily bitcrushed in order to pay homage to the low bitrates of audio hosted on the internet 10-15 years ago.  A good deal of the content produced by crushed trap artists are DJ mixes of pre-existing songs by artists such as Bladee, Lil Ugly Mane and Sybyr; examples include tomoe_✧theundy1ng’s Rare RCB hexD.mp3 mix (probably the most well known crushed trap release) and 999 Heartake Sabileye’s Crushed Trap @110: I Fall Into Sleep Everywhere I Go.  However, there are also artists such as 4jay, and the Reptilian Club Boyz collective, that produce their own original songs within the crushed trap style.

In addition to crushed trap, I am heavily influenced by general experimental hip-hop/cloud rap/memphis rap artists such as SpaceGhostPurrp, Three 6 Mafia and Lil Ugly Mane, who, despite not necessarily basing their work around the internet directly, all possess a hypnagogic sound that implies a relation to it. Lil Ugly Mane in particular, in addition to being my personal favourite artist, is especially relevant here; his Third Side of Tape compilation release is a 2 hour, 10 minute long collection of songs from a variety of genres, from boom bap and southern hip-hop to house, punk rock, dark ambient and even black metal.  The way in which all these various disconnected, musically unrelated songs are forced together into one cohesive whole reminds me of the data collection process carried out by large organisations such as Facebook and Google; unconnected, random snippets harvested by a mechanical force to be rearranged into one cohesive whole.

The musical genre vaporwave, in which aesthetics and audible phenomena from the past are re-contextualised and placed within a dreamlike context, is also a movement that is influencing the production of my FMP.  However, while vapourware usually appropriates culture from the 80′s and early 90′s, I will be appropriating culture from the late 2000′s.  Noise artists such as Mo*Te, Merzbow and Aube, whilst not necessarily setting out to make internet-themed work, all produce music that is incredibly hazy and overwhelming, bringing to mind the endless scope of the internet.