Artist: Mel Alexenberg

After reviewing several artists, which displayed works of movement to the future, expansion, and innovation, Mel Alexenberg becomes a refreshing perspective on the new and evolving art world. An artist, educator, writer, and blogger, Alexenberg focuses his work on interfacing between art, science, technology, and culture. He explores interrelationships between “digital age art and Jewish consciousness, space-time systems, electronic technologies, participatory art and community values, high tech and high touch experiences, and responsive art in cyberspace and real space.” Aiming to bridge gaps, the artist works with the idea of community, attempting to bring together individuals into the whole existence by creating group participation activities, culturally relevant art, and even spiritually interactive and aware art. Reviewing through his work, I found it most refreshing to review the work of the artist which attempted to combine religious tones with the digital art age.
Alexenberg has been able to create, with the help of computer programmer Yisroel Cohen, a dialogic artwork, or Torah Spectorograph, which allows people to see the patterns of the Torah as “related to their own lives”. In this program, the artist has created correlations between color/color patterns and the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. By paring these colors with letter, Alexenberg has been able to “write” out passages of the Torah via stain glass, paint, etc. for others to view and enjoy. His website explains the associations between the colors and letters, placing the first letter of the alphabet, a letter known for being the “all inclusive one” as a single pixel of white light. The second, he adds, is two pixels of red light and is followed by the third letter’s three pixels of orange. Skipping through the letters to help identify the pattern, the eighth letter, het, is represented by eight violet pixels. This spectrum of color is then repeated, while increasing its ban of pixel length with each letter, until the final letter, tav, is seen represented by 22 pixels of violet. An example of his work is a Hoopa , or wedding canopy, he created in the courtyard of a Miami synagogue, writing out Psalm 146 “from generation to generation” in bands of stained glass. Light then passes through the panes of glass and onto those standing underneath, in this case the couple to be wed, symbolizing the transitioning of life from one generation to the next. The work has also been created by painting wooden blocks with the “words” of the creation story from Genesis, which lies in the desert in the Negev Mountains.
This artist is known for wanting to create connections between individuals. The work that he has produced both creates a connection between the present generation, the past, and the future by applying well-known Torah verses to “projecting” surfaces. Not only is this connection made between the individuals of this plane, but also of the human and heavenly connection. It is made obvious by Alexenberg that the materials with which he works are based around religious connections or beliefs. This piece and the idea behind it represents the connections and similarities seen throughout generations, represented by the words it attempts to depict and reinforced by the repetition of the common spectrum and its pixel length, always keeping a consistent base color while just expanding in its length, meaning, and time.
This piece is very successful in creating connections between the Jewish community and the word of the Torah. By creating visual representations of the Torah, individuals are able to find the patterns in the old scriptures that make up the beliefs onto which they cling. I have yet to see visual representations in such abstract ways of “western” religions. Looking at the traditional work of Islamic communities, it is forbidden to have visual representations of holy individuals or of the human figure what so ever. Seeing an interpretation of the Torah in the most simplistic of artistic tools removes the specified religion and allows for personal experience and interpretation. If I were to improve on one thing about this project of the artist, I would have to see if the artist could create works and patterns to represent Arabic for the Qur’an and the letters of the New Testament in order to identify patterns for other religions, seeing if there are any patterns within the three texts. There has always been major conflict between these three religions. To represent these texts side by side, without labels and without identification for the individual to cling to, Alexenberg may be able to create a piece that not only allows the individual to experience the spiritual, but forces them to relate to and experience the spiritual connections between the religions.

Artist: Gratuitous Art Films

The film titled “Primitive Earth Part 1: Volcanoes” is a piece created by the group Gratuitous Art Films and is a combined visual and audio experience. This group consists of two individuals, filmmaker Jeff Burns and artist Cat Gilbert, and is set out to do nothing in particular but to be the evil twin of Andy Warhol, “mocking him every step of the way”, or at least that is how their website tells it. After researching the group Gratuitous Art Films, this is about the most I could find on them. Their website consists of film works and images with an artist statement that describes the journey of art and its emotions separate from the artist and viewers, speaking as if it is from its own perspective. This, however difficult to write about, says much about the artists and their journey to create audio/visual films that inspire and provoke its viewers.

PRIMITIVE EARTH PART 1: VOLCANOES from Gratuitous Art Films on Vimeo.

The piece I focused on while viewing the site, “Primitive Earth Part I: Volcanoes” shows clips of island beauty and slowly overlaps other visuals, transitioning from one in the dominant foreground to the other. It starts with a book, on which is written “Aloha”, the traditional Hawaiian greeting and goodbye. This sets the scene for from where these videos are taken. All of the images have altered colors in some form or another and, on occasion, become unrecognizable, whether because of coloring, shape, or placement over the paired images. The island’s landscape transitions into erupting volcanoes to forests to animals, and even showing the occasional man made object, such as the car. This visuals contrast the destruction of the volcanoes and the beauty in its surroundings, showing homes and forests burning paired with animals and beach views, as well as flowing lava and volcanic sprays with full spectrum rainbows. As the footage continues, we see the explosion of the volcano, displayed in bright pinks, blues, purples, and gold. The audio that is played over top of the images is that of jungle sounds, ambient noises, and strings of electronic notes. We watch the smoke rise, the ash fall, the wild life set on fire, and then finally, we end with the closing of the book with which we started, reading “Aloha”, yet backwards.
“Primitive Earth Part I: Volcanoes” is a commentary on the beauty that originates and is ended by the Volcanoes’ force, utilizing the perfect example of the setting of Hawaii. As the piece begins, with its impressionist like blending of the image, making it almost unrecognizable, abstract video, we are transitioned from the beauty of the island-scape and taken into the power of the volcano’s eruption. Throughout the whole video we hear the same audio, the sound of wildlife, ambient noises, and the abstract note changes. This consistent audio helps to create a smooth change in the video from the beauty to the disaster, decreasing the intensity of the visual of destruction and creating a tangible visual of the transitions of nature. This ease of change is also aided by the coloring of the clips. By altering the image, reducing the intensity of the overall picture and focusing our attention to certain elements by the use of bright outlining/highlighting, reduction of the image content, and darkening of specific areas, the artist presents the viewer with an abstract of disaster. The pleasing colors combined with the fireworks display of nature unify the more frenetic images with that of the original beach views. This keeps the mind in the same frequency, allowing for thought of what the images may be and what the implications are by creating such a change. The artists are asking the viewer to think about how things have come to be and where things are going, highlighting the necessity and inevitability of destruction in order to lead to creation.
I find this work appealing in both its artistic qualities and its intellectual qualities, causing the mind of the viewer to not only focus on the interesting visual created but also putting thought in the mind of the cycle of nature, life, and destruction. The brightening and blurring of the colors reinforces the beauty of the scenery, while emphasizing and adding this same beauty to the disastrous eruptions portrayed. The audio of the animal life keeps the persistent thought of the existence of the living in this tropical wild land, and the life that once lived where the destruction was occurring. To improve upon the film, smoother transitions between the book image and the island images could be made, possibly guiding us into the contents of the page and becoming the blurred colors of the video. The array of colors, combined with interesting and ambient audio, push the video into a beautiful, yet forceful display of what this Earth is capable of, asking the viewer to consider not only what is, but what came before it and what is yet to come.

Artist: Sara Ludy.

Sara Ludy is a multimedia artist and musician based out of Los Angeles. Graduating from the Art Institute of Chicago with a focus in video and sound art, she has continued on to co-found an organization called Tremblexy, an experimental audio/visual collaborative that creates “immersive sensory experiences through the use of sound collage, electronic manipulation, repetition, projections, and improvisation”. Ludy creates both single and multichannel video installation, sound, electronic instrument construction, digital collage, drawing, and painting. Her goal, as an artist, is to attempt to transcend the traditional audio and visual experiences through experimentation with medium and structure to create unique worlds of experience, allowing her opportunities to perform or present in places spanning from high end retail locations to museums and established galleries. Reviewing her work, I came across an array of audio/video projects for which I felt mixed emotions, some catching my attention as new with a great perspective, and others I found strange and/or dull.


After searching through her work, there was one piece that I found most interesting and another that I did not appreciate as much. The first is titled “Colored Morphed Clouds” and is a combination of a visual of moving clouds and an audio of electronic like sounds, both of which change in intensity, varying in color of the visual and tone and volume of the sounds. The image, only showing slight movements, goes through an array of stages of color, changing from one solid color to multiple hues and intensities. As these colors shift, the audio divides itself into different layers, one a background, base tone, another which fluxuates with the flickering of the colors, and then occasionally additional others which emphasize certain sections of color shifts by creating shifts in the music. The volume and intensity of the sound can, at times be overwhelming, hitting pitches that create harsh feelings to the body, shaking the skin. These quick shifts in both elements make the work very abstract, removing most identifying visuals and audios, yet occasionally surprising the listener with familiar background noises of everyday activities or ringing phones and reducing the intensity of the color change, allowing for recognition of the skyline. By creating the abstract elements, the artist allows the viewer to experience an overload of the senses, stimulating audio and visual instability at a fast rate and causing the mind to question what it sees, with both pleasing hues and shaking imagery, while the audio of the clip creates distraction and irratic thought and concentration within the viewer. Inserting the familiar allows one to focus and identify just before being taken back into the confusion of the work. Overall, I enjoyed this video “Colored Morphed Clouds” for its stimulating, varying hues and intense overwhelming music.
The second work is titled “Snokel” and is of an unidentifiable figure, most likely constructed by the artist, that is made to twist about as the color and audio changes in the piece. It seems to have eyes and a trunk, causing one to see the figure of an elephant, but it is too abstract to be able to identify it as one specific thing. The audio is more melodic than the first, moving up and down the scale and in series’ of notes more pleasing to the body. I did not like this work as much as the first because of images that were chosen to display this “creature”. Toward the end there are a series of close shots into the “eye” structure of the figure, preceded by a sort of thrashing about of the subject. Although this is not a formal critique, this piece made me more uncomfortable and uninterested in the work of Ludy.

Hans Verhaegen and Jean Delouvroy's "Deus Digitalis"

While searching through rhizome.org, I came across the art piece “Deus Digitalis”, an audio visual installation created by visual artist Hans Verhaegen and composer Jean Delouvroy, which spans the second floor of the Orpheus Institute concert hall.

Hans Verhaegen is a visual artist who studied both graphic arts and art history and since 1994 has been invited by several groups for both group and solo exhibitions. Regardless of the medium in which he is working, whether creating a painting, collage, installation, or drawing, his work seems to contain the connected element of the human figure. Coming together with Jean Delouvroy for the first time, the musician also explores different styles of music, including jazz, contemporary, electronic sounds, and the recycled use of his own acoustic material. Delouvroy composed music for the piece “Deus Digitalis” to create an installation, which stimulates two senses of the body.

The pattern in the visual is similar to that of a quilt, with detailed squares of moving bodies (25 each), using different colors, separated by bars of black. The colors are the default colors found in almost any graphics program and do well to simulate the “typical” gothic colors of the glass windows The animation is made using Flash and is inspired by another work of Verhaegen’s that was inspired by his approaching trip to see the new stain glass windows of the Cathedral in Koln titled “Gotiek”. That animation is a proposal of Hans’ for the Basilica of the Sacred Heart’s window, using a flat screen rather than windowpanes. The music is a 23-minute “looped soundscape” set to a very low frequency range. Finding little video or clips of the sound used, one site described it as sounding as if it were “a group of giants singing in slow-motion with an endless breath like they are frozen in time”. There is also a layer of crackling in the sound that appears and disappears, queuing the visuals to change.

By creating repetition in the shapes and using similar basic colors, the artist connects the quilt like squares to form the work as a whole. The use of the human form promotes a feeling of the collective whole and, when the music is added, a sense of the collective whole’s connection and/or sensitivity to the vibrations and awareness presented by music. The concept of the low hum of the music reminds me of religious and spiritual traditions of the chants of the Tibetan monks, something used to connect the individual to the collective energy and to focus the mind away from the self and towards an understanding of the community. The hum of the “giants” combined with the ever-moving human forms suggests the subliminal energy of the human connections that occur every day without ever being discussed. It is like the Taos Hum, a rumored low humming sound said to only be heard by young males who live in or come to the Taos region of New Mexico—realizing such a sound is as if to be presented with the idea that, although we are all moving separately, divided by space and time (black bars and movement qued by sound), the collective thought and energy of humankind may be heard or felt if one listens.

I find this artwork to be very successful, connecting the individual, community, and modern experiences of the digital with the commonality and shared connections of the human race. By using the digital media, specifically the older technology of Flash, I feel the artist connects not just the collective whole through visual and space but also through time, inferring the motions of the modern world, developing in technology and predictable patterns of the work world while also pin-pointing the starts of the digital arts beginnings.