Event 2: Christina Yglesias

My second event was at Christina Yglesias’s art show u still up?, which featured conversations with strangers. Christina wanted to experiment whether people would want to talk to strangers.  She had put up an advertisement asking for a nonromantic pen-pal on Craigslist and over a period of months, texted strangers herself (Christina). Her art show showcased four of her conversations by printed text and video.

Printed Text Messages

Christina's Art Show Flyer

Christina’s video installations were live action of her conversations with the strangers, where she casted actors and actresses to play the role of herself and the people she had been texting. She never met the people, but the actors and actresses personalities and features are based on the information they have given her through text messages and her imagination.

A video of the conversation between Christina and a stranger

The point of Christina’s project was to experiment with the idea of intimacy and relationship, specifically, the question of “how close would someone get to a complete stranger?” Interestingly, some conversations got a bit personal while others stayed at a surface level.

Contrary to Douglas Davis’ The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction, where Davis states digital reproduction lacks authenticity, Christina’s digital representation of her text messages enhanced understanding of the concept (Davis). Guests could see and get a better sense of what kind of person the stranger is. They can also feel more emotion from the videos than just reading; if a person were to only read the text messages and not watch the videos, all the emotions from each conversation are left only to the imagination. However, since Christina was able to make the video, she incorporated the emotions into the video as she had originally imagined. In addition, we can see the facial expressions of the actors and actresses when answering a question. Although the facial expression of the stranger might not be exactly the same, but the actress casted as Christina in each video could represent Christina’s feelings.

Christina’s experimentation is very creative, based on Bohm’s On Creativity. Bohm states “certain kinds of things can be achieved by technique and formulae, but originality and creativity are not among these. The act of seeing this deeply…is also the act in which originality and creativity can be born” (Bohm). Her method of representing relationship through the use of technology portrays how relationship has developed in the more recent times from in-person interaction to online interaction. There are many ways to communicate with people nowadays, such as through texting or emails. The artist used texting because it is the main form of communication (Christina). Douglas Davis mentioned the lack of aura in digital reproduction; however, texting is a great form of communication that expresses the artists’ ideas and emotions through the use of different punctuation and emojis.  

Me (left), Christina (center)

We learn a lot from Christina’s video installations and text messages, forms of digitalization. Jeremy Norman discussed the evolution of printing press to digital media. The evolution has increased quantity of information production and the speed of the distribution (Norman). By using digital media, the concept of relationship between strangers is portrayed very clearly by showcasing the interactions of four different people. The art show was very interesting and I would recommend it to other people. It is a great way to learn about intimacy and how it may be easier to connect with someone through the use of technology. There is no face-to-face interaction and thus, as strangers, there is not as much judgment because the person on the other side is left to one’s imagination and in retrospect, these people never meet in person. As Professor Vesna said, printing press revolutionized the way people can see and describe the world they live in (Uconlineprogram). Technology has evolved so much that our knowledge can be shared instantly; in this art show, the participants learn about each other through texting.

References

Bohm, David. "On Creativity." JSTOR. The MIT Press, Apr. 1968. Web. 11 May 2017.

" Christina Yglesias Interview." Personal interview. 02 May 2017.

Davis, Douglas. "The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction (An Evolving Thesis: 1991-1995)." JSTOR. The MIT Press, 1995. Web. 12 May 2017.

Norman, Jeremy. "From Gutenberg’s Movable Type to the Digital Book, and Other Studies in the History of Media." Relating the Rapidly Changing Present to the Distant Past as Far as Book History Is Concerned. Jeremy Norman & Co., Inc., n.d. Web. 12 May 2017.

Uconlineprogram. "Robotics Pt1." YouTube. YouTube, 15 Apr. 2012. Web. 12 May 2017.