Digital vs physical in art and ideas

Digital art vs physical art, and how to combine the two, has been a subject I have wanted to dabble in for a while.  One of the questions I want my honours project to address is how far a brand and it's identity would have to go to affect people on a deeper level, and I am beginning to explore the possibility of cross-platform work.  I have read a few articles today which got me thinking about what I could do if one of the platforms was physical.  Of course, plenty brands do this, they have their product and then there are the online extras behind it.  However since David is very keen for me to look at ideas outside of the usual branding bubble I think looking at some of these works will pose a few helpful questions to me which could lead to ideas in that area (I'm currently kind of stumped).

Jennifer Steinkampf at ACME

Fig.1  - Moth by Jennifer Steinkampf

Jennifer Steinkampf's Moth is a wholly digital piece, but it the subject it addresses is relevant to include it in this post.  Steinkamp'f exhibition, Moth, features computer generated light projections that look like cloth that has been left to be eaten by moth balls.  It would have been more straightforward to hand real, moth-eaten cloth on the gallery walls, but the point is the link between the digital creation and the idea that a real-life object has been neglected because of our fascination with our online lives.  The element of nature is crucial to the viewer's understanding - Moth is named not just for the method of decay suggested, but for the living, physical creature that would theoretically cause the damage.  The reviewer of Steinkampf's project opens with the example of "witnessing" the birth of a child through Facebook - of course, she was not present when the child was born, but thanks to the new parents' over-sharing on social media she knew all the details, and muses that this somehow retains the validity of it being a "real" experience for her as a watcher of the event.  Moth is in the same vein, but with a suggestion of sadness and loss through the tattered illustration in the digital piece.  Moore writes: "The world is no longer experienced through rapt attention, but rather through multi-tasking surveillance and a cache of preoccupations.  Has the fixation with recording our every exploit replaced our emotional awareness of an actual experience?" (Moore, 2012)  The matter of emotional experience was particularly relevant to my research as that is arguably what is at the core of branding and how it influences a decision.

Fig. 2 - Mannequins from A Comfortable Skin by Kristine Schomaker

Any branding identity work I do would potentially be digitally driven, so work such as Steinkampfs poses a question to me about creating work that creates some kind of digital/analog interaction.  Visually, it is useful to look at work such as Kristine Schomacher's art pieces, which visually address the use of digital art alongside traditional work.  The painting shown is acrylic paint on board with images digitally overlaid, which links to the mannequins which are part of the same project.  The artwork on the mannequins has been digitally printed on, and the mannequins are based on and named after real people.  This, the reviewer writes, "lends them an identifiable humanness - unusual for traditional mass-produced mannequins - and the viewer can imagine potential personality and behavioural traits for each.  These forms also take on another role in Schomacher's network when they become models for digital avatars used in the game Second Life." (Brown, 2014)  Schomacher's work is concerned with bringing the digital to the physical and by doing so explores "notions of online identity and the hybridisation of digital media with the physical world."  Schomacker uses her Second Life avatars to bounce from the physical to the digital and with the mannequins manages to find a space in between.  Most projects these days are either one or the other, and I find myself increasingly interested in trying to come up with an experience that balances the two, perhaps in the context of branding or perhaps it will end up being outwith that.

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References:

Moore, Caitlin, 2012.  Jennifer Steinkampf at ACME [online article] Available at: http://dailyserving.com/2012/02/jennifer-steinkamp-at-acme/
[Accessed 12th October 2014]

Brown, A.W, 2014.  Fan Mail: Kristine Schomaker [online article] Available at:
http://dailyserving.com/2014/08/fan-mail-kristine-schomaker/
[Accessed 12th October 2014]


Images:

Fig.1
Steinkampsf, Jennifer and Roman, Eric.  2012.  "Moth1"/"Moth 2"/"Moth 3"  [online image] Available at:  http://www.kristineschomaker.net/tnuggbvdssd473li9wk22e35ffjrcs
[Accessed 17th October 2014]

Fig. 2
Schomaker, Kristine, 2014.  A Comfortable Skin [online image] Available at:
http://www.kristineschomaker.net/tnuggbvdssd473li9wk22e35ffjrcs
[Accessed 17th October 2014]