Electronic Superhighway 2016-1966
Whitechapel Gallery
In this exhibition in the Whitechapel, it's a review of the relationship between art and the internet of the last five decades. It is divided into two floors. The ground floor are so called "art pieces" or installations are not that impressive. One room has interesting CG video of early stages, I believe it is done by a black gay man, every scene is the emphasis of his penis, so I wasn't very interested and moved along. Only two I think it is worth noteworthy, one is a kinetic art piece using emotions sign, and the shadow will show a smiling face as it turns to the right position. And the other one, is a 2m high light box with three colours. One has to stand and stare at the desired colour, and it will change the original colour to the colour you are staring at. The title is "Better improved painting by the viewer". Quite fun although you do have to stand longer than expected, and the progress is slow.
The exhibition continues to the third floor. When one enter, the eye on the wall projection will open up as you enter, and follows you as you move. That was quite fun and paranoid at the same time. Kind of 1984 Orwell experience. Most of others are old computers from the 80s and 90s which I am quite nostaglic about, because I've used them.. Fortran, wow, that was when I was a teenager years. I wasn't too impressed with Nam June Paik's multi-video installation. I guess it wasn't as impressive now as it was in the 90s. A lot of nostaglic 80s song, laurie anderson clip. It looks so strange now. I do remember drawing illustrations by typing on the computer, then it comes out on a monochrome single digit and font output. I remember the trend lasts shortly though. At the end of the exhibition, there was a group called E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and Technology). The group is set up in 1966 with Theatre and Engineeering . The collaboration was in the seminal 9 evenings, and the performance still resonate today as the forerunners of an evolving relationship between the feilds of art and technology. How interesting, and you think art and technology is only a thing that exists now? How ignorant of me. Need to research a bit more of the group. And then the last exhibit, was the tutor john reed in tutorial Max/MSP. I think they have several pieces that he works with teenage students to compose a piece using electronic music.
All in all, I thought this would be a very good show, running a retrospective from 1966-present. However, the gallery did not really do that. And I remember how pixelated everything uses to be, it somehow feels so foreign now. I would say it is mildly interesting exhibition to see.
