Dirty Pixels - Review

Dirty Pixels is an exemplar of a growing interest in computer culture and its artistic manifestations in New Zealand. Focusing on art that is responsive in many mediums to the significant and everyday impact of computer technology, Dirty Pixels takes as its theme the pixel, the primary module from which the visual face of this electronic culture is built and lives through. The computer brings with it new ways of thinking about images and new conventions of visual representation. Interactive icons, malleable pictures and fast paced entertainment, are all by-product expectations assimilated into the visual vocabulary of the generations of the electronic revolution.

Stella Brennan,

Tuesday, 3 July 2001, 10:38 am, 2001-2

The computer, despite its mathematical precision and dependence on organised logic, cannot help being imbued with the gunge and chaos that is synonymous with human existence. The Graphical User Interface (GUI), the facade of the household PC, emulates human interaction with the physical world. The GUI operates in real time, as a mesh of digital objects known as pixels that are infinitely mutable and responsive to our commands. This ingenious invention makes computer processes available to human thought patterns, allowing us to think and work in a way that is most natural to us, cut, paste, scroll, file, and naturally as we do so we make a mess. Stella Brennan's transposition of light to thread, pixel to stitch in Tuesday, 3 July 2001, 10:38 am 2001-2002 demonstrates how the GUI has become another space where human consciousness spreads into the illusory space of the 'desktop' trashing, customising and becoming familiarized with this new form of workplace.

Stella Brennan

Zen for DVD, 2002

Installation view

So familiar, we are becoming, with high resolution screens and the smooth computer graphics of Lord of the Rings and Counterstrike that the distinctly blatant pixel like many other computer technologies has become outdated, and in Dirty Pixels almost kitsch. Reminiscing about low resolution imagery the untitled modular drawings by Martin Thompson 1997-2002 make out the forms of space invader battleships and blockshape Pac-men, which signal to the way in which artists continue to utilize the graphical advancements of computer games. The painstakingly laborious creation of this work, as well as other works in the exhibition like Sara Hughes installation work Software for ADA 2001 that covers two walls of the gallery and Brennan's tapestry, emit a nostalgia for the hand made in this post-industrial era. The exhibition is infused with the sense of comfort in physicality and objectiveness that is seemingly under threat from technological advancements that are pushing into cyberspace and virtual reality. The show grounds technology recognising the dirt and imperfections that accumulate on things as they move through the world.

Sara Hughes

Software for ADA, 2001

New technologies have always been a feeding ground for artists, extending their palette and tools. The work of new media pioneer Nam June Paik, responded not only to the visual properties of the TV set but also the impact this medium had on society. Brennan's video works Zen for DVD 2002 adapts Paik's Zen for Film 1965 for a new digital format. In tune with Baudrillard's theory for our modern media saturated world, the dirt and noise present in Brennan's work is simulated. With pre-programmed, imitation, retro scratches and hissing, Brennan's work not only feeds off new technologies, but cannibalises its own artistic and cultural history, displaying all the symptoms of a post-modern condition.

Martin Thompson

Untitled (detail) 1997-2000

The show also demonstrated, unwillingly, the difficulties involved in displaying electronic art. Digital art relies on machines that are often costly to purchase and need technical support in order to maintain them whilst on exhibition. Display mediums like projectors and computers can crash, malfunction, breakdown or loose power, the result for this show was that a good portion of this exhibition, including works by John Simon Jr. and Michael Gondry, were periodically shut down.

Artists: Stella Brennan, Tim Ryan, Sara Hughes, Joyce Campbell, John Simon Jr, Martin Thompson and Michael Gondry. Dirty Pixels premiered at Artspace in August 2002 accompanied by a catalogue. The show was also exhibited by Adam Art Gallery from April 12-25 2003 and finished showing at the Waikato Museum of Art on 18 January 2004.

Originally published on NZArtMonthly.co.nz in April 2004