Inspiration of the Week - Graham Grafx

Graham Grafx (Graham Smith) is an artist who mostly works in forms of digital media. The project of his that I am most interested in in terms of my latest project is "Digital Painting: Social Network".

In this he went around all of the friends he had on facebook and took their pulse and also a souvenir.

He used the information from their pulse to create this digital form of painting where each of his friends is represented by a 'lightening bug' which blinks at the same rate of their pulse.

In my work I want to investigate people on social media and ho they try to be noticed.

I like this piece as it is a new way to investigate portraiture and is also interesting in the fact the the source of this is digital and social media, where the most prominent and obvious form of portraiture and representation is the "selfie".

What I also like about this project is that normally people are represented by a digital image of themselves, whereas here we get to see all of the artists friends represented by something real and tangible. 

NB - all photographs here have been taken from the artists site:

http://grahamgrafx.com/
http://grahamgrafx.com/digitalpainting.php

I do not own any of the pictures on this post.


Until next time
byyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Róisín -x

Inspiration of the Week - Richard Prince

Richard Prince is a photographer and painter whose "New Portraits" exhibition I am going to be talking about.

All of these so called 'new portraits' have been taken from instagram and include some of the tags, likes and comments that appear below the photo.

These portraits offer an interesting insight into the person in the portrait themselves and also those liking and commenting on the photo.

What I like most about this installation is the way these portraits are displayed as usually these images would be seen on a small screen and normally only exist digitally. These photographs seem to be huge and take over their surrounding environment.

In my work I want to look at how people try to be noticed in general and online and I also wanted to explore the idea of the 'selfie'. I think that this works explores how people appear online and how this digital format is becoming one of the most popular forms of media and portraiture, and straying away from the more traditional methods.

NB - all photographs here have been taken from the artist's site:

http://www.richardprince.com/
http://www.richardprince.com/exhibitions/new-portraits_1/

I do not own any of the pictures on this post.


Until next time
byyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Róisín -x