Gender is something that affects everyone. While some are able to ignore the roles gender plays in the media to control many aspects of our life, artists have an especially challenging task of ignoring the gender and sex stereotypes that have been subliminally embedded in our society since birth. The artists i have chosen to review show an example of tactical media aimed at fighting and expressing gender stereotypes. The social commentary behind the two pieces discussed in my research are very similar in thought and process but give the reader very different aesthetic qualities. The meanings of the two works, although one is slightly less dark and deliberate than the other, both give the audience that chooses to view the work some sense of the artists particular stance on the genderized part of society in which it is portraying.
During the early 90’s, there was a growing awareness of gender issues and identities. Since those precious starting years, Artists like Jeremy Rotsztain and Juliet Davis use their work as a sort of tactical media to expose, expand, and contradict the typical ideals about gender roles in society. Their work proves that gender, although constructed in mainstream society as controlled, is merely a construct that can be interpreted differently by everyone because of outside elements.
Jeremy Rotsztain is a Portland, Oregon-based digital artist who, says he practices “taking cues from the practice of painting, works with movies, images, and sound as a kind of malleable and expressive material”. He often uses popular culture to pull soundbytes, pixeled images, and video clips to create a work that is a rearranged interpretation of contemporary media and the cultural experiences that people experience during them.
“I write custom software. It gives me the chance to collect and create my art in very unconventional way,” says Rotsztain “using my own software allows me to make something i can see in my mind come to reality.”
Rotsztain’s piece Pitter Patter Splatter is a Digital Painting using the sounds and implied pictures of action movie gun fights, layered over time to form a very masculine abstract expressionist piece that, according to Rotsztain, mimics the style of Jackson Pollock. The piece is approximately four minutes long and starts out with the sound of screaming and gunfire. As digital paint is splashed across the screen, more soundbytes are shown to correspond. One quickly notices the colors being used relate to the sounds, but in a much more subdued manner. when gunshots are sounded, orange and yellow are splattered across the screen. light blue and green seem to indicate screaming. Car sounds are shown in shades of greens and brown. These colors, although not typically viewed as feminine, are soft and smooth, which in a way contradicts the sounds they are associated with.
“As action occurs in the original film, abstract forms move across a high-definition screen like paint flung onto a canvas, creating an animated composition.” says Rotsztain in his artist statement about the piece, “Action Painting is an example of an aesthetic digital image-making process where the material used in the production of the image provides additional layers of meaning.”
The artist describes his work as consisting of “three distinct single-channel works that explore the visual language of a different action film.” Pitter Patter Splatter uses smoke and fire from pistols, handguns and automatic weapons. Rosztain says that in addition to the software he created to plug the media into to create his work, he gives credit to the Internet top 10 lists for explosions, movie fights, car chases, war violence, and gun fights. All of these top ten lists came from male oriented websites, and were described as “masculine” and “for men”, which further enhances the assertion that this style of art, although not necessarily intended to be gender specific, can be easily percieved to be just that.
Unlike Jeremy Rotzstain’s subtle style of expression, Artist Juliet Davis takes on a different method to create her pieces, which not only express gender ideas, but openly shun and mock their control over society.
Juliet Davis is an artist, writer, researcher, and professor at the University of Tampa, seeking to advance theory and practice in visual culture, particularly areas where new media and gender studies intersect. Serving as Chairperson of Media Arts and Associate Dean at the International Academy of Design, Davis developed new academic programs and curricula (such as the the BFA in Digital Art & Technology and the Animation program).
“As an artist and scholar, I am interested in looking at how technologies raise ontological questions and become part of our constructions of identity.” says Davis, who describes most of her pieces as digital media that draws from the art and style of online games.
Juliet uses her art to examine gender identity, focusing on a broad understanding of women and their relation to their body and to those around them. By using the internet as what she describes as “an artistic survey medium” she creates work that reflects a broad culture of women. Her work has a tendency to feel very powerful, raw, and ultimately feminine. Unlike Rozstain who relies on sound to create meaning for his image, Juliet seems to focus alot more on the ability to see and interact, especially in her piece Alterations.
“Alterations is a wedding planner gone awry!” says Davis. Her description is a mild way to describe the hot pink interactive shopping style game. When you click on the link you are directed to an interface that shows a devilishly smiling bride and reminds the user (which is obviously intended to be female) that it is her day and she is in control. The user is then given the option of four minigames: Choose Your Engagement Ring, Make a Better Baby, Virginity Management, and Spin for Your Spouse. Each piece integrates a subtle yet strong social commentary on beauty, intelligence, love, monetary value of symbolic wedding objects, sexual self worth, and the cost of success as a woman. Unlike Rotzstains art, Davis’ work reflects a strong revulsion she has for the gender ideals she is portraying.
In Tactical Media, author Rita Raley discusses intellectual freedom and creativity as the basis for media that is described as “visually rebellious”. Works like Pitter Patter Splatter and Alter-ations are great examples of tactical media in the way that they both engage and distract the user, while providing an opportunity for an intelligent mental discussion of the material before them. Alter-ations provokes critical thinking about the worlds view on a womans role in society, especially regarding her role as a wife and lover. Many artists focus on this but Davis seems to create a format that seems so similar to a game that it is often easy to become absorbed in the material before realizing the ultimate motive of the piece. Pitter Patter Splatter is a less forceful social commentary that comes across as more entertainment, which is what makes it such a strong example of tactical media. It draws the viewer in through the subtle remembrance of the sounds that control the motion painting, and holds them there because of the original style.
The reading Participative Systems talks about the problem that any sort of digital response media can have with user programming. The participation aspect only applies to Davis’s piece Alterations, while Rotzstain’s piece Pitter Patter Splatter can only represent the portion of the essay which refers to reactions being an important part of participative art. The authorship rights, despite what the reading states, are very clear in the Alterations piece that although the viewer is interacting with the work on multiple levels in an gaming style interface, that Davis herself gets sole authorship for the piece. This is easily justified by the fact that although the user is choosing a path for the art to go in the end, the result is predermined and controlled by Juliet Davis, who made it possible for the combination of choices to give the same mockingly unattainable end result for each portion.
The two pieces that are analyzed in this work not only make the viewer entertained, but also slightly uncomfortable. Pitter Patter Splatter and Alter-ations portray gender in a very non-typical way. Instead of using colors that make the viewer comfortable with the work, the artists use colors that contradict their unique messages. The materials used in the works are innovative and styled to each authors individual tastes and effectively reflect their gender without necessarily embracing it. The most important part of the two pieces discussed above are the ability to create a strong basis for further discussion whether internal or within a group of viewers. The gender ideals that are expressed and criticized by each artist helps the viewer to understand ways to either embrace the gender they are portraying, or to criticize the views society has upon that gender, which ultimately gives the viewer an interactive sense of power and ownership to their own reactions to the piece.
