What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? A 21st Century Class Project

The assignment:

For Thurs., Sept. 30: Prepare a five-minute oral presentation on an artist working solely (or almost solely) on the web. (You can augment the presentation with web materials, which you'll be able to project in class.) Describe the artist's work -- in your language, not relying on visual examples. Contextualize the artist and position him or her historically. What is the artist's critical reputation? Why is the artist noteworthy, original or otherwise important?

My Project:

The Dumpster

Some background:

What the heck is this?

The artist (s):

Who are these dudes?

Golan Levin's work combines equal measures of the whimsical, the provocative, and the sublime in a wide variety of online, installation and performance media. He teaches courses in audiovisual systems and information visualization at Carnegie Mellon University, and is represented by bitforms gallery NYC.

Kamal Nigam has expertise in data mining and machine learning with an emphasis on analyzing text and internet data. Formerly Director of Applied Research at Intelliseek, he has just started a position at the new Google engineering office in Pittsburgh.

Jonathan Feinberg takes pride in executing the invisible-yet-essential. He works in the Collaborative User Experience group at IBM Watson Research Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As a drummer he has worked with such bands as They Might Be Giants, Lisa Loeb, and Church of Betty.

What does Lev Manovich have to say about The Dumpster?

Read it here!

What's so unique about break-ups??? Zillions of artists have drawn inspiration from broken hearts. Such as:

This guy

And this guy

And this guy

Let's tackle the questions posed by our professor:

• How would I explain this work?
• How is it inextricable from new technology?
• What's the revenue stream?
• What central idea ought to emerge in a review?
• What traditions does this draw on...or not?

Let's take a look!

The Dumpster, 2006

So, what becomes of the broken hearted?

21st Century art.