Public Art?

Posted on September 14, 2009 by digitalartist1969

I started working on my internet altar for whoever wants to participate. So I put up a prototype so that friends, family, neighbors etc. would understand what I was doing and so hopefully would want to add their own object to the altar. So far – no one has turned down my request to donate an object for the altar. That’s good. But now, somewhat belatedly, I realize that the progress of this project will be visible to anybody who wants to check on it. The process of creating this art, not only a finished product, will be visible as it goes along. Thus a viewer will get to see stuff that works and probably a lot of stuff that doesn’t work or looks goofy. Usually when I’m working on a project I get to rework the mistakes before it goes public so I’m thinking that this will be a new experience. A screen shot of the altar site is below and you can find it at http://rowdy.mscd.edu/~shazaleu/

Project 1 – Some Ideas

Posted on August 29, 2009 by digitalartist1969

I’m thinking about what to do for the first project – it seems to be that the home computer has become a kind of contemporary version of the home altar. It’s the place to go for answers to seemingly unanswerable questions, a source of entertainment and even a source of ecstasy (depending on your own preferences). I don’t think this is very far away from what believers felt when they viewed the artful altarpieces from the 13th century onward. So maybe a contemporary version substitutes Bill Gates and Steve Jobes for Jesus and/or the Devil. What kind of substitution for the Virgin Mary? Maybe you could click on the Bill Gates face and get a video of him rallying the troops at Microsoft or maybe there could be a way for the viewer to leave some kind of electronic offering. I’m looking at images of old altars for inspiration. The first one is Giotto’sMadonna Enthroned from 1310 and below that is a panel from the St. Francis altarpiece, circa 1235.