DECODE: Digital Design Sensations

http://www.vam.ac.uk/microsites/decode/

We decided to have a company outing to Decode @ V&A last Friday and trotted off to West London (yes, we do venture out of East London) to see what we could see.

The blurb states:

“Decode: Digital Design Sensations showcases the latest developments in digital and interactive design, from small, screen-based, graphics to large-scale interactive installations.”

And

“Decode is a collaboration between the V&A and onedotzero, a contemporary arts organisation operating internationally with a remit to promote innovation across all forms of moving image and interactive arts.”

From a visitors perspective the exhibition was interesting enough; quite a lot of interactive art installations which capture, record and insert the audiences contribution (for example a video ‘wall’). And other works which use interesting data sources (such as stock market data) to as the source of algorithmic animations. In some ways though there was nothing we hadn’t seen before in terms of technology and this is where we became a little critical of the exhibition: for all the slickness of the works, it felt to a few of us that something was missing – what was the meaning of things? For instance, a lot of the work in the exhibition played on the fact that people seemingly love to have their 5 minutes of fame and hence fall over themselves to be filmed, pictured, captured in some way and displayed for others to look at. But what is the intended meaning of the art? Is there any actual cultural or personal message hidden in them? It didn’t look to me like there was and as such the exhibition fell short of what art can offer people (excite by all means but also get the audience thinking). I didn’t see any obvious cultural references, or personal messages existential or otherwise. As an example, there was an algorithmic animation which was generated from stock market data according to the blurb. All well and good but no further explanation was given, it looked nice but think of the possibilities involved in this subject of telling a story, making a comment about capitalism / money and the state of the economy and what effect this has on society (obviously poignant now). It’s a shame it didn’t explore these meaningful avenues or if it did that the blurb about the work didn’t even mention it (they often sided on a practical explanation of how it was achieved / built).

As such, some of the exhibition felt a little more like the interactive section within the science museum as opposed to any great art exhibition – great fun and visually stimulating but lacking an underlying meaning (of course the science museum obviously has an educational remit it fulfils). I wonder what people in 100 years will think when they look back at this period of digital art? I suppose they may come to the conclusion that the early 21st century signified the beginning of a new art movement but at the same time, as art goes, was a little naïve; getting carried away with new technology at the expense of what art is actually all about.

I might be looking at this too critically and I guess there is nothing wrong with showing off techniques and new found skills, after all the great artists of the renaissance and beyond have often done just that but I would like to see an industry I am involved in attempting to merge the technology with the fundamental reasons why art is so important to everyone – to get us thinking about things (anything!).

This entry was posted on February 18th, 2010 and is filed under Industry Events and tagged as: art.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.