Without knowing anything from which to form a baseline opinion on Siebren Versteeg, his lecture gave me some interesting insight to his artistic processes and the “why and how” about some of his specific works. In his rather lengthy introduction, Versteeg discussed his relationship with his father, and cited his father’s art-making as a major influence in his life. After observing and/or working with his father on such works as Calder’s Chicago and Louise Bourgeois’s I do, I undo, I re-do, Siebren desired to make an artwork that was more human-scaled, ephemoral, and temporal. His interest grew in studio art, music and video art while living in Chicago, and with the onset of the digital media age, Versteeg taught himself the workings of digital video and then computer programming. To Siebren, video still felt incredibly manipulative and his interest moved from digital video to the architecture by which electronic information was delivered and began to program non-linear pieces.
As explained during the lecture, many of his works are real-time progressions—meaning that the program runs, as he called it, “dangerous, dangerous code” to make a picture and make a succession of images—running at random. Several of his works he discussed and was finally able to show, despite technical difficulties, were works of this nature and included Inauguration, 100 explosions, and Rocket. A few of his works that really piqued my interest were CC, New York Windows, and Tryptic.
CC, although it was not shown in real-time, captured the artist’s quirky sense of humor and pleasant demeanor. The work broadcasts short loops of newscasters, overlaying closed captions pulled in real-time from online internet diaries. The humor of it overtook me, and I had the feeling I would find myself having sat in front of the work for hours doing nothing but giggling.
New York Windows reminded me of my beloved iPhone, and left me so utterly impressed that I called several of my fellow “iPhon-ers” following the lecture to share with them how brilliant Siebren Versteeg is. New York Windows captures, as the artist put it, “the beautiful and non-hierarchical chaos of the streets of New York City.” This 50-inch plasma screen operates as an interactive work, enabling the viewers to touch the plasma screen’s surface and move the images on the screen—much like an iPhone. The screen allows the viewer to view only a screen-sized section of a 40’x40’ collage of continuously regenerating images, pulled in real-time from the internet.
Tryptic functions similarly to New York Windows in the sense that it pulls images from the internet in real-time onto three LCD screens hung vertically on a wall. These three LCD screens, however, are attached to a program that continuously searches flickr.com for the term “tryptic,” pulling the images onto the screen, and cycling through them—one image per screen at a time. This piece, like CC, captured the artist’s playful and humorous side.
When an audience member asked, “What’s next?” Siebren replied with, “Ummmmm, uhhhhhh, mmmmmm…. Things. I’m trying to develop ‘this’ stuff more. Maybe looking at art and painting and mimicking it with code…I’d like to make my code make a painting.” After hearing him speak and explain several of his notable works, I certainly cannot wait to see what he comes up with next, and I have no doubt that I will be following his blossoming career for years to come!
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