Intro to Digital Media: February 2010

While researching through the web for a digital artist, I came across an artist who caught my attention by combining his interests to create works of art that were both intellectually and artistically stimulating. Simon Kavanagh is a digital media artist who began his art career after receiving his degree in Graphics and Fine Arts, along side with art history, sociology, philosophy, and psychology of education, eventually combining his extra specialties and integrating them into his art. Working under then name/group name “mediarts”, Kavanagh creates art which embraces modern technology, while also fearing it and its “close association with science”, through paintings, sculpture, and installations. He states in his manifesto that Mediart is not to create personal, exclusive art, but to encourage the viewer or recipient to become active, creating a dialogue of thoughts and common creation, cooperation and shared experience, what I enjoy most about the artist.
Encouraging the theme of interaction, the artist pushes viewers to think more thoroughly about what they are seeing, compelling personal opinions and ideas about the images and their meanings. Looking at his most recent work, “Minds Eye”, Kavanagh creates a piece which combines randomly selected adjectives with specific nouns, combined at random together and with images to ensue thought into the mind of the recipient. It explores the instant associations made between images and words through areas of phonetics/words. He feels that the world has become jaded by the media and its overwhelming imagery of the terrible and shocking, removing the surprise that should come with the graphic scenes: “Has this become the new barometer of our senses”, states the artist, “What this piece tries to show, through random text, images, video & news, is the uncertainty of life, and how one image or word or story does not fit all people the same.”
Kavanagh works also include the incorporation of other electronic devices that humans may depend on, including instant messaging. “Colour Box” is an interactive installation which exhibits a shape molding into various colors and forms, depending on the amount of messages sent between individuals. He combines the technology of the program with the basic elements of color, the simplest form of art, and adds to the depth of the art playing on the emotions, expressions, and creative thought presented by specific color.
Overall, I really enjoy the work created by Simon Kanavagh, involving the digital media and the human thought and perception. Often it seems hard to combine ones interests with fluidity, while still compelling intellectual though of the viewers, not just personal intent. I often find myself thinking of ways to combine my interests with the art I create; seeing it successfully done within the digital media opens up more possibilities of success in a form of art that I had originally presented with feelings of frustration and anxiety.