Exploring Digital Contemporary Artists
Emilie Gervais
^ Uncanny. Strange. Unrealistic, but resembling of a human. Doll-like, incredibly confusing.
Digital artist Emilie Gervais experiments with digital manipulation of imagery and 3D models. She dabbles in animation and model editing.
Her work is strictly digital, and often combines bright colours and patterns to create surreal landscapes / dimensions.
I find them intriguing to look at - some of them involve recognisable shapes in and amongst the madness, making the pieces surreal and sometimes uncanny.
The patterns and shapes are often organic, and the strange shapes flare out like flower petals.
The inclusion of recognisable shapes make her work all the more strange and uncanny. It is hard to figure out what is going on. Nonsensical.
The colours are often bright / neon / contrasting.
It reminds me vaguely of my previous work, below.
There is no focal point in Gervais's work, the viewer's eye is dragged across the whole page by flowing patterns and shapes.
I also see a resemblance to my more recent work, below.
The vivid colours and patterns resemble Gervais's general colour scheme. Vivid, neon, and boundless, overflowing without any direction.
The difference between Gervais's work and my own is that mine incorporates reality, as well as fictional models. Gervais does not generally incorporate reality, relying on 3D models and artificially created patterns. It is Gervais's use of models that makes her work so uncanny.
I wonder if using 3D models in my own work would make it more effective, and more uncanny.
Gervais explores the idea that internet art is not art at all, which I find very interesting.
In Animal New York, Gervais writes, “A post-Internet object doesn’t trigger space. Post-Internet artists do not consider art. Post-Internet artists do not consider objects. Post-Internet artists are not really artists. It’s about something else, something larger than life.”
http://www.complex.com/style/2014/09/visual-artists-creating-amazing-work-in-the-digital-realm/emilie-gervais
I'm not sure I agree with this statement. I think that Post-Internet art is a form of art, although it is untraditional, and may not be viewed as a form 'fine' art due to the lack of physicality. I think it IS a form of contemporary art, especially because contemporary art is all about pushing the boundaries of concepts that have not been explored before. "Internet art" and "digital art" are part of the new age of technology and exploration of new artistic avenues.
Jack Addis
http://www.complex.com/style/2014/09/visual-artists-creating-amazing-work-in-the-digital-realm/jack-addis
"Look at Jack Addis’ work, and you’ll be transported into a psychedelic dreamscape where sophisticated 3D forms blend seamlessly with rainbow glitch. While firmly anchored in the digital realm, Addis’ work still feels painterly, as color and form are just as important to his renderings as the subject matter he has chosen lately—weird humanoid figures wearing colorful, pulsing, and iridescent garments. Through animated GIFs and videos, Addis’ characters come to life in ways that are eerily familiar and yet wholly alien. As he writes on his website, his work “reflects how the virtual worlds we create, inhabit, and participate in affect our real life identities and relationships.”
I'm not sure I could sum up Addis's work better in my own words, his synopsis sums up his work perfectly well.
"Psychedelic dreamscape" "firmly anchored in the digital realm, Addis' work still feels painterly"
I think that my work relates heavily to Addis's work in this way.
Although Jack Addis's work is incredibly digital, it still holds a softness that makes his subjects recognisable, and soft, like an oil painting - similarly to how my photographs are distorted heavily by digital layering, but they still hold the soft edges of the original photographs (soft organic shapes of faces and facial features, contrasting to the digital distortion) which makes them look like paintings.
My work
Jack Addis's work
The difference between my work and Addis's work is that his distortion is very SHARP, using sharp geometric shapes, whereas my distortion is soft and uses flowing, organic shapes.
His work is very strictly digital, whereas mine is heavily tied into nature.
The similarities lie in Addis's use of vivid colour, human faces, and the way that he conceals the identity of his subjects. His work is strictly digital, just like mine.
Like Emilie Gervais, Jack Addis is partial to an occasional model manipulation. This piece is especially uncanny.
It is very obvious that this isn't REAL, but he resembles a real human. It is uncanny like a doll.
I enjoy his vivid use of colour. It is bright, bold, and unforgiving. He uses rainbow spectrums, in a mature and bold way, similarly to how I have used rainbow spectrums in my work. Albeit, accidentally.
I think that using a wide spectrum of colours is very effective.
My work below:
Jack Addis's work generally conceals the whole face of his subject, whereas mine allows some of the features to shine through.
I enjoy letting features become visible, to remind the viewer that the subject is still human underneath.
Inspired by Addis, I decided to experiment with the pixelisation of my images.
It seemed too much, so I experimented with using the pixelisation JUST on the faces.
I like how it removes the identity COMPLETELY, and affirms that this piece is DIGITAL.
It is like a glitch, or an error.
The sharp geometric shapes contrast strongly against the organic shapes of the flowers.
If you hadn't seen the images before, I think it would have been difficult to determine that these images were portraits of humans at all.
Yung Jake
Yung Jake's portrait works are brazenly digital. They adopt a current, digital element of mainstream media - the emoji keyboard - and create portraits specifically out of it. It is the total opposite of my work, because it is VERY unapologetically digital and mainstream.
Although, I am interested in the use of bright colours and distortion that comes with his work.
I was hooked by the piece above, because of the colours and patterns that appear to be organic, natural and flowing. Plus, it includes a real photograph of a real face, like I use in my own work. I would like to see him create more work, like this, although I could not find any. He seems to have migrated into the more digital, mainstream style, and stuck to it.
I find that the "emoji" pieces relate specifically to the work of Jack Addis, because of the way that he uses digital elements to conceal a face. In this case, Yung Jake is using digital elements to CREATE a face, which is quite the opposite.
I personally find these portraits to be too commercial, TOO digital, and too easily readable. I enjoy the enigma of the previous pieces I have explored, which forces the viewer to look deeply into what is happening and who the person is.
These subjects are immediately recognisable celebrities, which removes from the enigma.
Important Notes:
By exploring digital contemporary artists, I discovered that many digital artists experiment with 3D models. I think that this is an interesting exploration point, especially because it can be very uncanny to see something so realistic made digitally.
I would like to explore the use of 3D digital models in digital art.
They remind me of dolls, but in a digital format so that they are even more ghostly, and intangible.
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