Semester Project One

Art Studio: The Artist’s Perspective: Multimedia Assignment Form for ARTS-235			Date: 2/1/2010 Name: Michael Widener Major: MMDD Specialization: Computing Year: Senior
Type of assignment √ Semester project [ ] Blog entry / Reading response [ ] Technical evaluation [ ] Exhibition			Title of the assignment: Semester Project One “Download This”
A brief description of the assignment requirement. Students are required to create multimedia projects and present for class critique and discussion.
Content of the assignment. Jin Jiangbo - God, Go Ahead with Chatting. Installation Art. In his piece, God, Go Ahead with Chatting, Multimedia Installation artist, Jin Jiangbo, displays laptops hanging from a ceiling, funneling into a person’s head. The person is sitting with their head down on the table and eyes shut. The uses the laptops as God’s tool to download chatting software into the person’s head. Literally, this is the virtual trying to enter the physical. Conceptually, this is a higher power reading down to upgrade the person’s ‘computer.’ Downloading software is often how computers are updated and upgraded. My piece extends his work by reversing the literal meaning and the conceptual one. In my piece, I attempt to literally download soft ware into the computer after waiting too long for regular software to download. I literally attempt to place the physical into the virtual, a reverse of the other way around as represented by Jiangbo’s work. Conceptually, I am trying to add ice cream to a computer, which definitely not an upgrade but a downgrade. As ice cream would in no way help a computer operate more productively nor serve a technology purpose in this context. What’s important is that virtual and physical realities can never converge. We can simulate real things with higher fidelity. But that doesn’t make it real. There is no substitute. Further, there is no way to cram something real into a virtual world. The boundary cannot be crossed even though we attempt to as a matter of objective in some areas of pursuit.
	Biography of the author.	Michael Widener was born and raised in Berkeley, California. He is a thoughtful, quality-focused web programmer with accomplishments in computer problem solving and Internet business start-ups. He produces mix CDs which can be previewed on his Internet radio station or website.