Now we're all travellers on the 'electronic superhighway' lets go and see some art about it at the Whitechapel Gallery, shall we? OK. It starts with the Now so we immediately head upstairs to Then, glancing at Now as we go, navigating the crowds eager to consume Now art...
to the first room containing works from which period I can't recall, perhaps that one when computers were newish, whenever that was...(who says the internet's destroying our brains?)...........mainly 'conceptual' work here, featuring texts on tablets, so without being aesthetically attractive, the pieces demand to be read, but because I've spent so much time on the internet I can't be bothered, at first, then I make the effort and read a screen containing slavery-era font style & writing about blackness...................then a little girl scrambles onto the stool in front of another tablet, frantically presses the buttons and realises they won't take her to MyLittlePony.com (or Auto Theft).........I chuckle to myself, she doesn't realise it's art, of course, poor thing..............
..........here's Roy Ascott's La Plissure du Texte (1983).............
..........John Rafman's Monet Economy Class (2013).........this I like a lot.....
.............Kurt Schwitters Bar (2013).......Rafman again..........
..........I didn't know Douglas Coupland dabbled in the visual arts....here's Deep Face (2015)....
..........no idea who this is by.....sorry...........
....................this impressed me, ASCII History of Moving Images (1998) by Vuk Ćosić, featuring such films as Ben Hur and The Third Man, along with Casablanca.....oh, and Deep Throat (!)........I wonder if that little girl happened to be looking when it was featured....still, I'm all for early sex, um, 'education' (no, it's not, I know) but kids shouldn't be taken to art galleries; they should be kept away from all art, that way they might get curious about it instead of blasé and end up just going to craft workshops........I happened to see Linda in action passing back through...it was clearly rude....
.........big installation by Nam June Paik, Internet Dream (1994).....wall of sight....amazing...
.........great Free Jazz soundtrack to viewing upstairs, which turned out to be Stan VanDerBeek's Poemfield (1966, I think)....luckily it's on YouTube.......
...............Ryan Trecartin's A Family Finds Entertainment (2004) was also being shown.......I think he's some kind of genius....what kind, I dunno, but once you adapt to the pace of his cutting there's so much to be admired......
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