Staging Technology – Composing with and within Digital Everyday Life

Abstract

How are our lives intertwined with web or communication technologies today? A question that seems to matter for all of us. And a question addressed by artists as well. In case of Jennifer Walshe it becomes not only an impulse for concerns, but also for art works. Her artistic approaches for example integrating her everyday media habits into the creative process as well as into her music. As a composer, performer, vocalist, and artist Walshe is questioning the interaction of sound, images or body gestures, the hidden value of social media and the social effect of media technologies. As an observer and a receiver of everyday habits and medial phenomena, she draws on an application, a community or a viral hype, and develops pieces from that. Therefore, she takes tweets, images, pictures, memes, texts, discussions etc., to process them, and to reveal the hidden algorithms of the social subsystems. While using objects of our augmented reality, she reflects behavioural patterns of our everyday life.

Walshe’s particular interest in communication technologies like Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, or YouTube opens up a view on the impact the digitalized world has on our everyday personality and perception. My contribution discusses some of her pieces against the background of a functional differentiation of her art from everyday life, a differentiation of technological or communicational effects on the social in her work. Thus, my approach focusses on the artistic strategies and the aesthetic structures that Walshe puts into practice. How does she access certain phenomena? How is this reflected in the aesthetic structure of the work? And, how can the audience itself interact with? Finally, the notion of staging technology reveals an art that critically reflects phenomena of our digitalized and intertwined everyday life.

Percorso di valutazione

Peer reviewed. Certificazione della qualità