Alan Bigelow is a web artist whose Flash works, utilizing image, text, audio, and other components, convey messages about our society. He is said to be a poet and digital fiction writer.
One of his works, “Because You Asked” (http://www.webyarns.com/BecauseYouAsked.html), is an interactive self-portrait of the artist. When the viewer first views the piece they see a light blue backdrop where a face should be, and icons at the bottom of the screen, such as a golf ball and a pill. When the viewer clicks on these icons, sentences start to appear that fill in the backdrop with a color picture of Bigelow’s face. These sentences depend upon the icon selected. For example, when the pill icon is selected, the viewer gets the response of “Sex is my favorite drug.” Then, each sentence does not only continue to duplicate itself all over Bigelow’s face visually, but is also played on an audio loop. The more icons selected, the more sentences are spoken and written over one another. Finally, once the self-portrait is complete, the viewer’s curser turns into an eraser, wiping away Bigelow’s face and leaving only the words “Because you asked.”
First, this piece speaks to what a self-portrait consists of in current times with not just an image, but audio, text, and an interactive element as well. A self-portrait is no longer two-dimensional. It is also no longer up to the artist alone to create their work. Other people must interact and take part in the process… despite the fact that it is a “self-portrait”. Then, at the end, by turning the curser into an eraser to leave nothing but “because you asked”, Bigelow seems to say this portrait was not just made for the viewer, but only because the viewer was interested. On another note, he also emphasizes how easily he, and everything that he is made up of, can be erased.
In another one of his works entitled “What They Said” (http://www.webyarns.com/WhatTheySaid.html), the viewer is presented with what looks like an old television or radio with an adjustable dial at the bottom. Moving the dial along to different stations, several static-filled messages appear. Two of these messages are, “we must register our identities to keep them safe” and “freedom of speech is not free”. Without question these are comments on the problems and perplexities of the world we live in today. It leaves the viewer thinking, “well, isn’t that ironic.”
In terms of a critique, the audio portions of Alan Bigelow’s works are very harsh. In “Because You Asked” the voice was overly computerized and monotone. I understand that this is supposed to further convey that we are in the digital age, but I felt it a bit overdone. Also, in “What They Said” I felt that the static was not needed for the stations that conveyed messages, but instead should have only been used between stations. It made me not want to wait around to watch/hear the end of each message. Conversely, I felt that the text portions of Bigelow’s works were the strongest. They were outspoken (“sex is my favorite drug”) and conveyed powerful messages (“freedom of speech is not free”).
More of Alan Bigelow’s work can be found at: http://www.webyarns.com/
Information for this post was collected from:
http://rhizome.org/artbase/artwork/47096/
http://rhizome.org/profiles/alanbigelow/
… as well as those mentioned in text.
Image taken from:
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