Elements of Oneiric Preservation #1

http://www.vertigoartspace.com/

http://electroniculture.net/casey/portrait/

Questioning the cultural impact of the ability to reproduce and appropriate information, and particularly, creative or intellectual works goes all the way back to Benjamin’s Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and his theory of the aura. Using the idea that the original work of art has an aura that cannot be reproduced, it seems that open source culture shouldn’t be a problem. Nothing can ever be as good as the original.

I think it is appropriate to look back to intention when thinking about the traditional ideas of copyrights. Copyrights are intended to protect individuals and their intellectual property from fraudulent uses (plagiarism). Now, mixing theories, writings, sound clips, reusing images or appropriating visual and audio materials in a way that nods to a larger history or original sources, contextualizes information, and creates a dialogue between past present and future individuals and movements is not the same thing…It seems petty to cry over spilled milk or bad reproductions taken on low quality handheld camcorders of Prince songs. After all, the 13 month old didn’t claim to have written the song, he just wanted to star in a new rendition…and we all know that Prince and Universal sold way more mp3s and cds with that song on it after the youtube clip went viral.

20 Dead Swiss, 1990. Images taken from Swiss Newspaper Obituaries.

The Children of Dijon

The appropriated images serve as a punctum and a stand in for you, me, him and every individual. The use of older photographs is essential. These images connect the viewer to a time period and a place that is specific (1930′s and 40′s in Europe) and that already has a history of fear, of struggle, of loss, of hope and hopelessness. He isn’t always clear about where these photos come from, nor does he need to be. His work, like may photographers, questions the truth of photography (are they dead, is this what the original looked like, are they really from Switzerland, did they die because of the Shaoh or because of life?). His images lead you to a conclusion that may, or may not, be correct or founded. His work stands as a memorial to everyone, and no one.

His way of presenting, or re presenting these images as material for other sources speaks to community and to the idea of open content: His role as the artist isn’t to take an image without a copyright and own it, rather to give it a new life and open a new dialogue about what we remember, what we forget and to reflect on the collective memory and the collective experience.

I guess that’s traveling by synechdoche. It’s a process of sifting through the narrative rubble of a phenomenon that conceptual artist Adrian Piper liked to call the indexical present.So What if I contradict my self-I am large, I contain multitudes. It is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent. Filling space in becomes a dance with emptiness. Enter keyword “truth,” and the search engine brings you conflicted meanings. That’s the prostitute’s revenge: so many people, so little time.

We’ve sampled the sampler. Any sound can be you.

Han Hoogerbrugge was born in 1963 in Rotterdam, Netherlands. He was trained as a painter and cartoonist at the Academy of Visual Arts. With the emergence of the www era in the mid-nineties, Hoogerbrugge began adapting his work to exist in the new frontier. The work that he is most well known for, The Modern Living/Neurotica Series, originally appeared as weekly comic strips. In 1998, he began putting Modern Living’s comics and animated GIFs on his website. He soon became one of the most followed and influential illustrators on the web.

Almost all of Han’s web-work can be characterized by the simple concept, precise, sparse, looping sounds and animations that are “to the point”. This minimalist style developed partially out of necessity—he initially tried to just scan his previously made comics without regard for file compression. He soon learned that not even he was willing to wait the 36 seconds it took to load an image and he began making simpler GIF animations that would load and play quickly without compromising the message in his work.

While the drawing style of his work is often described as “graphic” or “comic”, Hoogerbrugge’s main character does not fit into the same category. The main character of most of his works is himself. Like Hoogerbrugge, his character shows age, changes in hairstyles and physical features. This is due, in part, to the fact that Hoogerbrugge uses rotoscoping, which is a technique in which the animator draws over a videotaped image of an actor.

Hoogerbrugge’s use of himself as the main character isn’t purely pragmatic. As Hoogerbrugge explains:
“The Neurotica series reflects my dreams, expectations, conflicts, experiences, hopes, defeats, fears, demons, questions, laughter, lust…It’s a self portrait. It’s a private thing”.
At the same time, Hoogerbrugge feels strongly that even self-portraits take on their own identity. Hoogerbrugge is interested in this character having mortal traits and a life span of its own, “Some day there will be a moment when this character is no longer around because he’s dead”. The ambiguity of the character is part of the fun for Hoogerbrugge, “I don’t want to know who he is. I don’t want to know who I am, if I knew that, there wouldn’t be a future”. In this sense, the animated Hoogerbrugge becomes less of an isolated self-portrait and more of a snapshot of the “every man” and the modern human condition. Hoogerbrugge doesn’t take his popular alter-web-ego too seriously though-“In the end, it’s just a character”.

As technology improved, Han was able to add more interactivity (sometimes the viewer is asked to play a game to move through a narrative, other times the animations just run) but chose to stick with the same format for his works. Hoogerbrugge says: “I wanted to hold on to the idea that, on the web, the way you watch something is different. I myself don’t have the time to follow a long story on the web. I want to watch something short and move on”.

The sound and music in Hoogerbrugge’s work adds to the nervous, urgent but ultimately futile actions of his characters. The music in Modern Living is all carefully extracted samples but he found those too limiting and generic. He now produces all his own music and sound effects for his work. The sound effects not only add to the irritation of music on an incessant loop but also often mimic the sparse imagery and simplistic actions of the animation.

Using the web as a platform has also had a great influence on Hoogerbrugge’s work and studio practice. Because his work was gaining in popularity, he had to be able to work in a way that would allow him to constantly update his website with new work for his loyal fans. Some episodes of his Neurotica Series were inspired by Hoogerbrugge’s own struggle to keep up with the demanding production of the series without falling behind on the commissions that allowed him to continue making work.

Themes that are often present in Hoogerbrugge’s work include the superimposed male ego, the successes and failures of modern life, death, religion, existentialism, satire and ironic humor, and futility. His work is very much about control and the loss of control, contemporary angst, anxiety, isolation, narcissism, and identity. His characters are helpless in the face of their own vices and obsessions. Hoogerbrugge’s characters are constantly in battle with themselves and with their obligations to the world around them.

While the character is distinguishably Hoogerbrugge, he remains likeable, relatable and impossible to ignore. It is through watching these small battles on loop and watching the character in Hoogerbrugges work progress that viewers are able to better adhere to the idea that Hoogerbrugges message is not that life is entirely futile, but that it is the everyday that defines who we are and gives meaning to our otherwise futile lives and disposable identities.

It is Hoogerbrugge’s web art that has brought him the most popularity and attention; however, he is critical of being labeled as a web artist. His web and non web-based work inspire and inform each other. Hoogerbrugge considers web artists to be artists that “use the intrinsic properties of the web as a medium to create art”. Hoogerbrugge insists that he uses his website and specific qualities of the web as part of a larger vocabulary. He considers hoogerbrugge.com to ultimately be a publishing platform and not a medium. For him it is more about having complete creative control, being able to network and be available to a wide audience on a daily basis than about using the web as concept or content.

His most popular work, The Modern Living/Neurotica Series was begun in 1998. Hoogerbrugge did not conclude the series until September 10, 2001. Neurotica consists of 99 episodes (1-10 are lost somewhere in the digital void) and has been used as a platform for many of his other works and drawings. It also helped Hoogerbrugge develop a large following of loyal fans.

Since then, he has published many short flash animations (Flow) (Spin), done music videos for the Pet Shop Boys, Dead Man Ray and the Young Punx, published a series of 27 interactive shorts entitled NAILS, produced a full-length narrative called Hotel for the Submarine Channel, and completed a collaboration with writer Paul Hall, entitled Pro Stress. He is currently working on Pro Stress 2.0 and published a 200 page book and DVD combination in September 2008, titled Modern Living: The Graphic Universe of Han Hoogerbrugge.

Hoogerbrugge insists that he isn’t a comic book fan or a web artist, but he does admit to being inspired and influenced by Matthew Barney, David Lynch, Silvia B., Damien Hirst, David Bowie, and Andy Warhol. His work incorporates the language and sensibilities of film, video games, comics, drawing and narrative. His influence reaches far beyond the web-art audience. Hoogerbrugge’s prints and drawings are part of permanent collections at the Centraal Museum Utrecht in the Netherlands, the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City and in the Design Museum in London.

1. Look professional and speak with confidence (it usually doesn’t matter what you say).
2. Let them come to you, than grace them with your presence (the Yes Men need not invite themselves).
3. Do your research…If you know enough about a subject, you can twist the facts any way you want. (Slander sells)
4. Feed it to them (the audience) with a spoon. A serving spoon.

One thing that I find interesting about the Yes Men in relationship to the history of digital/media art is that they exemplify many of the traits that the future artists and future feeders that Schleiner talked about (post studio, activist/interventionist, collaborative, nomadic). They really take some of these ideas to new levels, in particular the idea that filter feeders are constantly “remapping other websites as its own contents”. The Yes Men do this quite literally by making mock sites that look the same but contain information that reveals a more radical stance (that can be supported through readings/research of original texts). Schleiner goes on to describe the roll of Filter Feeders as such:
“Site maintainers become operational filter feeders, feeding of other filter feeders’ sites and filtering others’ sites. Links are contextualized, interpreted and “filtered” through criticism and comments about them, and also by placement in the topology of a site.”
This also rings true for the Yes Men. Not only do they do it, but they have in many ways started a movement of hactivist art/performance (the Yes Lab is looking for people who want to get involved and help them manage everything).

Some of the Yes Men’s tactics mimic or build upon ideas that were prevalent in early performance art history (happenings/dada/futurist aggressive tactics/mimicry and mockery). One thing that I really like about this work is that it is completely dependent on the internet, but in a way that feels almost as sly as their collection of fictional identities. The internet has allowed them to research thoroughly, to be contacted and to contact back with relative anonymity and to flourish and be discovered without imminent threat of third-party censorship. It is precisely because they are the modern Renaissance men and are so well versed in the digital and political realm that they are able to make what they do more than just a protest or something that we can easily write off as an act of artistic insanity etc.

One of the greatest achievements of the Yes men, in my opinion, is that they are not just commenting on these organizations and performing acts of “identity correction” but they are actually teaching us about the way that we, as people and as people who adhere to the identities of organizations, act and react. They are teaching us about how they feel politics fails to be human, and letting our actions or lack of be the shining example. And while they may be con-men, they are only holding up mirrors and spinning truths out of lies as all great artists do.