How does the exposure of an iPad app alter the artistic process and the relationship between artists and their audiences?
Bay Area-based Nara Denning, one of the featured artists in the new ShinyArt iPad app exhibition Monsters and Memories, sees the potential of technology to engage artists and their work with broad international communities, while conversely enabling a more intimate and personal conversation with individual viewers.
“I think with most other things, our days of cultural isolation are over (as long as the web remains the way it is). Video art can also find a richer life with the invention of new platforms and exposure to an international community. I see things becoming more personal between the audience and whoever’s got the soapbox. This is a bypass of the old guard, leading to some wonderful possibilities, leading us into (funny enough) a more organic relationship between the creator and the observer, where both are mutually influenced.”
But once your work is exposed to the “world” through something like an app, you do lose control over the way in which it is experienced. Does that alter your process at all or make you think twice about certain subject matter?
“I make work that is symbolic and open ended. I enjoy the interpretations of it by others. Sometimes their interpretations are much more provocative then what I had originally intended (though I will never let on). Curators often see an element within my work which addresses a theme they themselves are exploring, I find my work in a lot of mixed shows and this is very satisfying, giving the work itself new life and new reference. The idea of everyone being their own curator is a very exciting development.”
See Nara Denning’s contribution to Monsters and Memories on the ShinyArt app
See more of her work here
it's a shiny, shiny world 