Mike P Thesis Outline V1

I. Introduction

1. Background

Much of my work, both in the past and my work in progress, has dealt with the ways human form are represented and rendered into data. My interest in art history has drawn me towards creating works that reference that history of image making using contemporary tools.

2. Thesis Statement

We are in a moment in the evolution of technology and image making where things are shifting; in terms capabilities and the way the world is represented (scanning, motion capturing and 3d rendering). We live in the age of the computer simulated image, images that simultaneously take samples from the world, synthesises from the world, imagines the world, hallucinates the world.

This not only takes the form of the blockbuster film, the adverting image, but the product visualisation, the mechanical stress test, the architectural rendering, the virtual fly-through, weather prediction, an economic model. These are tools for building the present and constructing the future. They are also there to fix in place and preserve a past; ( the archaeological scan, the drone flyover, the street view map, the crime scene reconstruction ) (Steyrl)

[where is the question]

II. Body

First Topic

The digital body, the digitised body, motion capture and representation. The animations I am creating take as their source information that comes from the material world, streams of data directly related to the human body. While the data comes from the physical world, in the resulting animations the figures inhabit a virtual space, a space where the laws of physics are variable, where in fact all forms are variable.

1. In a medium where anything can be changed, how does this change our relationship with the human body.

2. In "Post Cinematic Affect” Steven Shaviro provides an analysis of Grace’s Jones music video for Corporate Cannibal, where the author differentiates between ‘metamorphosis' and ‘modulation’. The image and representation of Grace Jones as the central figure in the music video is one of constant change modulation, her form is variable. Shaviro states: “modulation requires an underlying fixity, in the form of a carrier wave or signal that is made to undergo a series of controlled and coded variations” (Shaviro, 2010).

Examples throughout art history where the body is recorded, modified and distorted.

1.How do artist in the past engage with the body, and what do distortions of the body in their work say about their relationship with the body.

2.How do these influences play into the work that I am creating.

Second Topic

The digital to the physical

In my practice drawing machines are used to bring digital data back into the physical world. In this section I will explore the relationship between my practice and the history of drawing machines used by artists.

What is the role of drawing machines in the history of art and in media art?

1.Explore the lineage from kinetic art to conceptual art. Looking at the mechanical constructions of Tinguely to the instruction based drawings of Sol Lewitt.

2.The plotter was used by artists right from the beginning of computer art / digital art / media art, with artists such as Manfred Mohr and Vera Molnar. Explore the relationship between code and works on paper. Ways of bringing digital art into the museum onto the gallery wall.

How do contemporary artists use these machines, how does it relate to the past, what are the performative aspects of using these machines, what do they say about authenticity.

1. Artists where the machine is central to the work, installation-based or performative where machine is made visible, with artist such as Patrick Tresse and Sougwen Chung.

2. Artists who use software to mimic traditional techniques such as Glen Brown, David Hockney’s iPad Paintings

Third Topic

The role of simulations in the work, types of simulations, simulations as a conceptual framework.

1. The tension between recorded data and simulated data.

2. Simulation as imagination, simulation of possibilities vs simulations bound by physical laws (netownian physics)

III. Conclusion

1. Summarize the main points of your paper and Restate your thesis in fresh words.

2.Make a stong/memorable final statement