The Art of Technology

Tweetdeck by Sonny Assu

I was able to attend the BC Art Teachers' Conference in Vancouver last week. It was a wonderful opportunity to continue developing my PLN and to explore the relationship between art and technology- two of my goals for this inquiry project. All four key note speakers were very good and several touched on issues of technology in relationship to art.

 Sonny Assu is a contemporary artist who explores the relationship between the art of his aboriginal heritage and the culture of western society. "He infuses his work with wry humour to open the dialogue towards the use of consumerism, branding and technology as totemic representation. Within this, his work deals with the loss of language, loss of cultural resources and the effects of colonization on the indigenous people of North America" (Assu 2010).  idrum: Consumtion is pictured below.

 

Evan Lee spoke of his alternative photography practice which explored first the use of non-traditional cameras to capture images such as a scanner. And also, his experimentation with alternative means of printing images; particularly, found images from the Web. Forest Fire 5, pictured below, from his Forest Fires Series used a found archived photograph which he printed through an ink jet printer on reversed Kodak paper and "painted" to create the final product. His goal being to create a unique image in a world were digital photography and the internet allow images to be easily reproduced or appropriated.

I also had the opportunity to attend some great workshops, including one on Blogging in the Classroom by Anne Pye, a Media Arts Teacher from Nechako Valley, BC. She showed examples of her own class portal blogs and how she uses blogging with her senior Photography students to have them document their work. She offered many helpful suggestions and inspired me to learn how to add drop-down tabs onto my blog pages. It involves writing html code apparently, but gave the blog a very web page feel.

Question: Do you know of any other artists who explore the relationship between art and technology?