Draft of a written statement about my current work (too wordy for main page).
About the art. Moody’s work is hand-drawn in older paint programs using a mouse or stylus and abused at the printer stage, as in run through multiple times, then cut up and collaged into taped-together patchworks. This method of working goes against the grain of, or "problematizes," the computer (as the '80s theorists used to say) by introducing techniques of painstaking individualized production to an instrument designed for quick, cheap mass production. Instead of succumbing to commercial pressure for state-of-the-art upgrades, the artist moves entropically backward to older, "downgraded" programs. Recurring subjects are the hopeful, jouissant motifs of early Modernism (synthetic cubism, expressionism)--another willful regression that could be mistaken for simple conservatism--combined with the graphic cliches from the early years of computing, such as networks of bulbous molecules and spheroids. Ultimately the subject is not "the machine" but human resistance and choice in the face of the myriad controlled and managed environments of technocracy.
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Draft of a written statement about my current work (too wordy for main page).
About the art. Moody’s work is hand-drawn in older paint programs using a mouse or stylus and abused at the printer stage, as in run through multiple times, then cut up and collaged into taped-together patchworks. This method of working goes against the grain of, or "problematizes," the computer (as the '80s theorists used to say) by introducing techniques of painstaking individualized production to an instrument designed for quick, cheap mass production. Instead of succumbing to commercial pressure for state-of-the-art upgrades, the artist moves entropically backward to older, "downgraded" programs. Recurring subjects are the hopeful, jouissant motifs of early Modernism (synthetic cubism, expressionism)--another willful regression that could be mistaken for simple conservatism--combined with the graphic cliches from the early years of computing, such as networks of bulbous molecules and spheroids. Ultimately the subject is not "the machine" but human resistance and choice in the face of the myriad controlled and managed environments of technocracy.
- tom moody 12-15-2004 2:10 am