Bill Viola is a very creative artist that uses the elements as a way of expressing his art. Much of what he uses is water, or to be more specific, he has people in different poses or doing certain things that are combined with them either underwater or with it raining water down on top of them. In other cases it can also involve fire, in the photo above the figure is actually walking through the fire. He does a very good job of setting a very powerful tone with these images, whether it be with a hot or cold element.
Scott Blake is pretty unique in that he uses single images of bar codes, sizes them and gives them a color or shade and organizes those in a way to make a much larger image. Much of these can take up to 6 months to make just because of the tedious work involved. This is still a very next generation way of thinking for him, and it shows just how artists can use technology to create a new type of art that will inspire others.
Much of Joan Jonas' video and other artwork seems like something that you would see if you had a very bad nightmare about humans with animal heads. Either that or if had a very bad acid trip and started seeing mirrors with peoples' distorted faces, a person with a horse head, a woman with a skull mask and other such pictures that would otherwise freak you out. The above image actually reminds me of The Shining by Stephen King, when it talks about the man in the dog suit who is giving oral sex to the other guy, much like the above image, it seemed like a nightmare from how Stephen King wrote that scene and from a lot of Joan Jonas' stuff it just seems like she's gone crazy and has a fetish for people dressed up as animals.
I liked Erwins artwork a lot due to the that the he was being unique with LED lights. I don't know if he did this sober or tried it out sober and then not sober but it takes a lot of ingenuity and imagination to make such beautiful pieces of artwork with lights and a room. I tried to imagine something like this at an event where they had music accompanying this and sober or not I know it would blow my mind. Needless to say, I have a strong desire to check out his work myself just because of the simple fact that its pretty awesome. His use of tunnels and geometric figures is not only precise and mathematical, but also high-tech and beautiful.
This is a piece from Gary Hill, a video artist. Here you can see each person slightly moving in real time, and thats all they really do. They don't talk, however the idea for this piece isn't for them to talk, its for them to convey a presence, almost like something a small crowd would do. Since you don't know these people, they're there to fill up space, much like a normal crowd would, however the only difference is that they don't talk. I thought this was a very smart way of giving the viewer a sense of not being alone even when they were actually alone. Even walking around the room had to have been different since it doesn't seem like the figures are moving in the exact same way everytime even though that might be exactly what they're doing.
This is a piece from Nam June Paik, who uses televisions in all his artwork. Sometimes he makes an American flag, or throws a bunch of tvs in the middle of a garden. In this case he replaced the majority of what should be a cello with televisions. The only thing thats really left that even resembles an instrument would be the strings and the stick the lady uses to play the piece.
Even the woman, a musician who is playing a very old and ancient instrument (in this case updated), has on glasses that we might be able to assume that are 3 dimensional from the look on her face and from the things that are attached to the glasses. This artist does a good job of revealing the idea that technology is taking over everything, even things that seemed like they could not be updated.
Bryn Oh is an oil painter living in Toronto, Canada but also does virtual art based in Second Life.
Although Second Life never really appealed to me simply because of the fact that I'm a gaming gamer who needs goals and objectives and things to shoot and people to kill and all that jazz, Bryn Oh actually has some very interesting and unique stuff posted up on Second Life that made me respect the game a little bit more.
Much of what I thought of Second Life involved mostly you and your avatar running around in a brightly lit place talking to people. And every now and then you find people who put up statues they made virtually and stuff. However with Bryn Oh it seems much more different, much more separate and isolated from the rest of Second Life. For the most part in the videos or "machinimas" I've seen Bryn Oh just stands there with the avatar and lets the camera just go into the map and explore. Much of Bryn Oh's stuff is very mysterious yet almost peaceful. From some of Bryn Oh's artwork, the environment is dark, with stars or fireflies all over the place. Most of it conveys that twilight time of night, when its very late or very early yet its actually bright out because of the stars or the moon.
A talented Second Life artist, Bryn Oh wrote a book called The Rabbicorn story which incorporates much of Bryn Oh's artwork into the story that was written, which is "The melancholy story of a robots search for love and belonging". Bryn Oh's blog is simple in her explanation: "I am a professional oil painter who has come into second life to create new media art ideas that don't work as well in the oil painting medium." In her videos she also likes to add poetry related to the piece, in one she talks about the life of a mayfly.
