May 02, 2005
Imprimatur
Out of the Ink Jet and Into the Streets
Imprimatur, by Andy Deck, is a free, easy-to-use tool for producing posters. Users create or contribute to poster layouts via their web browser, print them, and place them strategically in the city. They then photograph the posters in situ and upload them to the website.
Creativity becomes a shared process, as unpredictable as the people who are passing through. The artist, rather than providing images, provides a system intended to activate the viewer's thought and expressiveness. Against the backdrop of a mass media culture that promotes conformity and passivity, Imprimatur encourages 'viewers' to choose themes and produce their own messages. It propels on-line expression out of the ink jet and into the streets.
"Imprimatur" is a 2005 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. It was made possible with funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
BIOGRAPHY
Andy Deck is an American media artist specializing in Internet art. His work addresses the politics and aesthetics of collaboration, interactivity, software, and independent media. Deck's aesthetic program seeks a cultural break from the modernization of passive consumerism. Using the site Artcontext.net, he combines code, text, and image, demonstrating new patterns of participation and control that distinguish online presence and representation from previous artistic practices.
Deck is a co-founder of the environmentalist arts organization "Transnational Temps" which was awarded a prize in the VIDA 4.0 Art and Artificial Life Competition (Spain). His site, Artcontext, was a finalist for the 2003 Webby Award in NetArt. A retrospective of his online work was presented at Furtherfield (U.K.) in 2004; and, as part of the Athens-based arts collective, "Personal Cinema," he developed "The Making of Balkan Wars: The Game," a precursor to the game which won a 2005 award at the Electronic Media Art Festival. Deck teaches in the MFA Computer Art department at the School of Visual Arts, New York City.
Posted by jo at May 2, 2005 09:27 AM
