‘The Art Happens Here: Net Art’s Archival Poetics’ is an Exhibition at the New Museum that features 16 artworks focusing on the history of online artistic practice. The forms of each works vary from web to 3D printed scupltures and graphics.
One of the displayed works that I found very interesting was Lungs (2005) by Yoha (Graham Harwood and Matsuko Yokokoji). This piece is a sound installation that used the Nazi Databases of 4,500 enslaved prisoners of war during WWII to create an application that calculates each prisoner’s lung capacity and generates the different breathing sound for the different people that were enslaved. In addition, a computer placed in the middle of the two speakers also displayed the information about the person that the software was generating the sound from. In my opinion, I think that this is a very powerful piece that reflects the violence that has happened through a very simple presentation. It is a piece that combined coding as a material with the understanding of science and data from history, which are all subjects that many people wouldn’t consider right away about seeing them in an art museum. Furthermore, I think that, sometimes, the reactions towards an art piece that is digital are more technically-concerned and less emotional than that of a piece of painting. However, when I was looking and listening to Lungs, I realized that the other people seemed to have a more emotional reaction to the piece as well, after reading about what the breathing sounds were.
Other works that stood out to me were some of the interactive pieces that I saw many people enjoyed interacting with them. One of the interactive pieces was Marten (2015) by Morehshin Allahyari, which is a 3D printed plastic in a shape of a relic. The piece is a part of a series call ‘Material Speculation: ISIS’ and had a USB cord attched to it so that people can download the file for themselves to pront a copy. What was intersting is that this 3D printed relic is a replica of the real thing that was destroyed by ISIS in 2015 in the act of cultural devastation. By creating this piece and allowing anyone to download it themself , to me, felt like an act of saving, and preserving, a part of the culture that was under attack so it doesn’t disappear.