Digital Art Paper

            Digital Art is seen on many different levels of mediums in this modern era. Everything from the internet, movies and music videos, photos created using programs can all be considered art at some point. When looking for artists to look up and critique, I didn’t understand what a lot of them were trying to accomplish by their various pieces. I did however pick 2 that I can understand pretty clearly.

Jonah Brucker-Cohen

            The first piece was a major thing I’ve always wanted invented and would be able to buy. It is a little box called the Wifi Liberator that was created by Jonah Brucker-Cohen. It’s a little box you hook up to your laptop and install the software to run the program it comes with. It’s easy to use but what it does is the incredible part that baffled me.

When you’re visiting somewhere and are either sitting at the airport or your hotel you typically have to pay to use the wifi that is offered. When the box is hooked up and you run the program it comes with, the Wifi Liberator will connect you to the pay per use and let you access the internet for free. It sneaks around the block that usually comes up asking you to pay or insert a code, and the internet is yours to use.

My second piece that I selected was more on the artistic side of things than functional like the Wifi Liberator. It’s a music video to different Linkin Park songs that uses a audio reactive visual program to generate images. Basically whenever it detects audio it creates images on your screen in the shape of whatever program was being used to run it. It was created by Morgan Barnard along with others that were similar to this one. It’s titled Linkin Park Concert Visuals. The reasons I picked this one specifically were because for one I like Linkin Park’s older music, but also because the style of the visuals all changed with each song that they played. Each gave its own feeling to songs even though they were all the same basic concept in the video. Linkin Park Concert Visuals

The main difference between these obviously is that one is a physical piece and the other is a digital work of art. There are also more subtle aspects that I saw in these pieces. The Wifi Liberator seeks to show corporations that they shouldn’t try to squeeze every penny they can out of people. It gives the message that the internet should be free and not charged just for the airport’s “convenience” of providing it for people. The piece Linkin Park Concert Visuals is a true “art” piece that does nothing but stimulates the mind into wondering what the story behind it is.

The Wifi Liberator is something out of my dreams, and probably many other people’s. So many people stay in hotels, motels, or get stuck in the airport for hours on end. These days most don’t even bring a book with them to make sure they don’t stay bored, so the internet is the next best thing. With data being charged for so much on phone companies however, wifi is the next best thing. It’s a miniscule price to have wifi at an airport or hotel, and yet they still want to charge for using it. They make up any expenses with the charges for the rooms and food, but they again want to make as much money as possible, taking advantage of their customers.

The Linkin Park video doesn’t make as big of a statement as the Wifi Liberator, but it impacted me just as much. Whenever you go to concerts you see that behind the band is usually a video board of some sort. If it’s not behind them it’s next to the stage or under the drummer. This video reminded me of those videos, and how they help feed into the concert experience.

Videos like this are more common these days where it’s just images and not necessarily having to do anything with the actual concert or the album. Some bands do however incorporate these video boards fantastically into their show. Some put lyrics up while others have some sort of video playing that goes with whichever song they’re playing at the time.

I was unable to contact either of these artists. They both however created these art pieces solely by themselves. They conceived the ideas, put in all the work, and now are getting all the credit for their work. It makes me wonder though where the ideas behind these pieces came from. More specifically I’m curious about whether or not the Linkin Park video was every used commercially at any of their actual concerts. Also regarding the Wifi Liberator, I wonder if it’s for sale anywhere so you can actually use it to get free wifi.

In the Linkin Park video, it pulls songs from multiple albums that they’re put out over the years. Each one with the audio imagery gains almost another face so to speak because there’s now an image to something that was just solely audio. When I specifically listen to music, I sometimes prefer listening to it with my eyes shut. This not only brings me comfort, but I like letting the music try and tell me what its story is. Whether that comes from the lyrics, tone, or just the combination of notes that compose it, every song has a story.

Giving the songs an actual face puts a whole new perspective on it. Even though it’s just simple artistic shapes it adds to the story behind it. It shows what the artist saw when he heard these songs, added them into his program, and tweaked it until he liked what matched the image in his head. Basic programs like windows media player and sometimes itunes do a similar thing where they have pictures play to music that reacts to audio. The audio reactors sense the highs, mids, and lows in a song and turn that into an artistic image for people to see and react to. They can be any number of shapes, colors, or crazy things to show the songs’ face.

The Wifi Liberator has a bit of the opposite reaction since it’s a physical object. It has a face that doesn’t change no matter how much you play music to it. It does have a second face however; the software that lets you sneak in and use the internet. While that may not change, it does throw a light upon how things can appear like one thing but be another. It actually looks like either an external hard drive or a secondary power source.

If the Wifi Liberator was actually used effectively and changed how places give internet, this artist will have accomplished his goal of creating this piece. His vision of free internet everywhere is something that many people including myself want to be an actual thing. Both of these projects are ones that would be pure joy to work on. One of these projects would be because of its great artistic value and music to go along with it, and the other is for the revolutionary ideals behind it. I respect both of these artists, and I’m kind of sad neither of them got back to me about their works.