“Drawing_in_the_Media_Stream_Belfast” by Tony Allard, Kristine Diekman

Title:

Drawing_in_the_Media_Stream_Belfast

Artist(s) and People Involved:

Medium:

Live Stream Internet, projected, with drawing easel and mixed media

Artist Statement:

The relentless 24/7 global media stream has radically transformed our viewing experiences of images and has thrown in doubt our concept of what an image is. With this installation we challenge the wisdom of this shift in techno culture away from object-based images produced on paper towards real time images produced and viewed on a computer monitor. We question the increasing dominance of machine-made images and the corresponding decrease in human-made images and the role they play in the formation of cultural and personal memories. Furthermore, this installation negotiates the collision between traditional forms of perceptual drawing and visual memory making with what Paul Virilio has identified as techno culture’s headlong plunge into ‘visionics’, machine-based vision and image production.

The drawings for the installation will be made on two portable painter’s easels, which have been outfitted with laptop computers, locative media, and the capability to communicate with each other over the Internet. The ‘local’ easel will be installed in the Golden Thread Gallery and will transmit as well as receive commands, images, and information from the ‘remote’ easel in the field. Drawings will be done on the ‘remote’ easel at two locations during the month of August: Location 1) our studio in the United States; and Location 2) various WiFi hotspots on the streets of Belfast. In the gallery a composite image of the desktops on the laptops of the ‘local’ and ‘remote’ easels will be projected on top of actual drawings done on daily newspapers.