Iconographilia is intended to be a personal reflection of my art education, and I will be expanding upon project explanations here, as my art as of recently has evolved from traditional media into video art, performative acts, and installed environments.
Here you'll find my art endeavors, art ramblings, links to other artists or organizations, etc.
Iconographilia.
What does that mean?
It is the affliction/addiction of studying contemporary icons. At least that's what I want it to mean. It explains what I am interested in as a visual artist. I take hyper notice of many forms of media, but I especially love to analyze text and iconography. The icons of the 21st century are increasingly being defined not in terms of reality, but hyperreality, as they are being born of the great Nothing (and yet everything) that is the internet. They icons are propagating within that realm, where they sit and fester and multiply via the amount of eyes that see them (memes), until they ultimately jettison out and into what we call "reality". Icons for happiness, sadness, laughter, confusion, anger, frustration, fatigue, goofiness, surprise, fear, etc. are all universal human emotions.
What once took the great writers and philosophers hundreds of pages at a time to convey timeless human emotions, now takes one or two seconds to convey through a keyborad or handheld device, and takes the receiver just as quickly to decipher it's meaning.
:) = happy
:\ = confused; hmmm?
;) = wink and a smile
:o = shocked
And so on.
The effective transference of specific, universal emotion from one person to the next - or, from one online social networker to the next online social networker - in a matter of a few seconds both in communicating and receiving emotions, is fascinating to me. I was born in 1979 and grew up using DOS. I was using computers long before public use of the internet was launched in the mid 1990's. I saw everything change very, very quickly.
I am interested in where this huge social change is leading art. New media, web art, installation art, and interactivity in creative expression all suddenly seem to have forced a seat at the dinner table of 'fine art.' But even now, that is not enough. Soon this New Media creature's offspring will be old enough to demand, each one of them, their own seat at the table, for they will have grown strong enough, competitive enough and capable enough of providing what everyone wanted in the first place - great conversation, and wouldn't you know it, inspiration. You just didn't know how big the party was going to get by inviting New Media to the table.
News flash, New Media's got lots of babies, and they're all hungry. Just wait until they can talk. ;)
