I viewed the pictures online, taking into accounts the points made on the blog…

Than saw actual show…

Seeing online images is like eating steak with a balloon on your tongue. Sure, your eating it, but…

It’s simply different. I heard a teacher call it Illuminated Media once, and I like the term, as a more technical one. It’s simply bright, screen, still or moving images. It’s only if we assume that it’s going to be the same or similar to a book or print or physical place that we start getting ourselves into holes.

Personally, when I make an image for print, I make it for print. When I make an image for screen, I make it for screen. I admit, for the most part, I make my images for screen these days. I don’t care as much about the print, I know that the majority of people, from my grandmother to a curator is probably going to be seeing it on the screen. Actually, I’m probably going to look at it most on the screen, for the average picture I take. Even if it’s on film, the first step after getting the film returned is scanning it.

I don’t see it as a misrepresentation. How could it be? It’s never been presented in any other form. Would I then call a print of the same image, created after the digital version, a misrepresentation? I’m not sure, but I don’t think so. It’s simply a different representation.

If you make two prints of the same image on two different types of paper, one glossy and one matte, is one a misrepresentation? No, but one probably works better for your personal feelings about the representation of the image in general. I think it’s the same for any method of presenting it. There are certain images I like better as giant prints in a gallery, certain images I like better as tiny prints in a handmade book, and plenty of images I like to present digitally, quick and dirty or nicely organized. As long as it’s being taken into consideration, I don’t have a problem with it.

That being said, I feel that viewing the exhibition in-person remains a wholly different experience versus viewing the exhibition on the 24″ monitor I am currently using to experience it with. I want to walk through and move my body. I want to press my eyes close to the pieces and view the detail, the brush strokes, the pixels, the finish, and countless other interactions. The computer does not allow me to do this.

Perhaps most importantly, what the New York Times has done allows the Whitney Biennial to reach a much broader audience than ever imagined; art for the masses and not only for the museum goer or gallery hopper.

For this I applaud what they have set out to do and successfully accomplished.

It is this virtual ideal experience that I have come to detest, even more so when blogging. The screen, the monitor, does sometimes show the tonality of a photograph better than a physical experience but it can also misrepresent the physicality of an artwork that is otherwise corporeally incredible. In fact I question how well electronic submissions and projector critiques represent, for the lack of a better word, the “spirit” of an actual photograph/artwork.

However, look at what this technology has done. It has allowed my words to reach your eyes and create an interesting if not important discourse.

It’s really exciting, the thought of being able to bring an installation to people anywhere in the world, I know it loses something, but if people can get atmosphere out of videogames maybe they can bring the same willingness to disbelieve their actual physical position to exploring art.

Gallery MMO?