6TH
DECEMBER
RAFAËL ROZENDAAL GUGGENHEIM
is it good is it bad at least i tried
RAFAËL ROZENDAAL
2 INTERVIEWS
1 BIOGRAPHY
3 LOCATION
4
TIMELINE
y picked up drawing and painting from a young age. As a young boy Rozendaal’s uncle
y picked up drawing and painting from a young age. As a young boy Rozendaal’s uncle
Paper Toilet
1
1
BIOGRAPHY Net artist Rafaël Rozendaal works primarily with websites, producing animated abstract patterns and interactive images that explore the screen as pictorial space. His brightly colored graphics often shift or pulsate with light, while in other images he explores simple movement and gesture, as in paper toilet .com (2006), in which visitors to the site can unravel a roll of toilet paper in virtual space, or jello time .com (2007), where visitors can poke a quivering mass of jello. Rozendaal broke ground when he began to sell his net artworks; in exchange for the purchase of one of Rozendaal’s domain names, a collector’s name appears in the title bar of the work, and the site remains public and accessible to viewers worldwide. “I hope my pieces become independent entities that are part of people’s lives and can be used or seen in any way,” Rozendaal says.
The World Wide Web has become a space of perfectly organized disorder. Over just a few decades in history, the way to consume content on the net has been defined. At the same time, the way to produce content has been somehow limited. One need merely draw a comparison between the Web and cinema to understand why it took more than one hundred years of experimentation for filmmakers to concretize the specific ways of production and consumption. The net, on the other hand, has developed quickly, and the behavior depending on it has been formalized just very recently. Research engines analyze language, words, and numbers. Time and meaningless gestures are difficult to categorize in a pattern that wants to be as far from subjectivity as possible (to jump then to economy with transparency). The structure is always the same; the formats are getting closer to one another. The distance between the personal, the private, the institutional, or the official is becoming difficult to visualize. Same code and same objective: a social overview and a need for visual recognition in under one second. It’s so fast because there is no night; everything is on and available 24/7. The Network became the Social Network. The latest information takes priority, with the archive there only to be accessed when necessary. The amount of personal information (and data) has been increasing exponentially, while the time to assimilate it remains the same. Only the robots (or algorithms, as robots on the net are just numbers) can digest the mountains of data in order to reach conclusions. Paradoxically we, the users, are not getting results: we are getting emotions.
Abstract Browsing
In Abstract Browsing, Rafaël Rozendaal modifies the way our browser reads code for us. Instead of words, we see colors. The whole idea of information becomes blurred in a flat, multi-colored structure. We can recognize Google or Wikipedia from the colored areas alone, but without text or images the websites become abstract fields, simple structures, and aesthetic constructions. The disappearance of the main information is a really simple trick; it is a matter of translation. The websites are misinterpreted voluntarily, something which no one can stop. Code, the core of the Internet, can be read – with reading comes interpretation and parallel approaches. Functionality, forget about functionality. Rozendaal speaks about the browser as an artistic possibility, as a canvas that can offer something new. The size of a browser can change at any moment. Colors are rendered differently depending on hardware, software, and usage. As Rozendaal states, websites are unique yet inconsistent in appearance. The “result” is always dependent on the individual machine and user interaction. The user is present in the pictorial space when it comes to defining the size by interacting with the cursor. The artificial randomness of code translation and adaptation of the browser to the device goes hand in hand with the amount of multiple decisions the user makes each and every second: the number of browsers on the desktop, the programs running at the same time, the sound and music. The artwork in a browser is presented in a context of brutal usability. As Rozendaal points out, “the Internet presents artists with challenges, opportunities, and best of all, a lack of history.”
Soft Focus
would you create something amazing for us we have no budget
unknown landscape .com
2
INTERVIEW “The art world is a bit like a video game – you get to know people, you get some coins and then you get to go to the next level, and then you get into the slightly bigger room with less furniture. At first you’re in the side room, then you’re in the main room, then you get in the magazine, etc. The rules are very set, you talk to this person, a biennale, then you get a gold star, then you get upgraded and get to speak to better curators – but then also the critics are harsher… So really, it’s just like Super Mario.”
A lot of your work seems to be about endlessness, an endless mountain range or a deep black hole or thepersistenceofsadness.com. But this infinity runs up against the limits of attention, of the time the viewer is willing or has to spend.
DOES ANYTHING LAST FOREVER?
Our perception of time is very primitive. I expect some major discoveries very soon. The earth was once thought of as a flat surface with the universe rotating around it. It turned out we were seeing things in a limited way. The ideas of past, present and future must be false because they are very problematic. There is no now, by definition, we are to slow to witness it. Everything we observe has already happened. I believe that once we realize that time is not an absolute force, our lives will change drastically. All our concepts will be wiped out and rebuilt from the ground up. Imagine manipulating time as you desire. We will have to rethink our purpose in life. The consequences will be so severe it is impossible for me to really tell you what life will be like. Without time§ limits there is no scarcity and no one will ever be busy. The idea of work, necessity, all gone. Boredom would be the new frontier. Imagine having no obligations, and having millions of years in front of you. I avoid making images that have a beginning or an end. I like the idea that time is frozen but everything stays in motion. Images behaving like waterfalls, always moving but never towards a destination.
Into Time 15.06.06
WHAT TOOLS DO YOU USE TO MAKE YOUR WORK? WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE TOOL?
I’ve been drawing all my life, first with pencil, later with ink. I never really liked to paint, although I love paintings. I liked photographing a bit, but photography doesn’t really connect with my perception. At some point the computer came along and I played around with drawing programs, getting to know the mouse… I did not start seeing the computer as an artistic tool until I discovered vector softwares. Vectors are mathematical shapes, not made of pixels, but of points and curves. Once I got into it, it felt like being weightless. Copy, move, drag, change color, warp, adjust, scale, duplicate, moving perfect shapes in an infinite space. There is nothing like it. I always enjoyed mathematics, and vector software makes you feel like you’re in a mathematical world. There is nothing on earth that is mathematically perfect, and even if perfect objects existed, our eyes are too imperfect to see them. But spending time using vectors makes you feel like you’re maneuvering in this ideal conceptual world where square are really square and circles are really round. A world without noise or distraction.
Abstract Browsing
Ooze Move .com
Your work requires action from the viewer, in addition to the act of viewing, and I’m curious whether you think the internet — and your web-based work — creates a sense of the surety of consequence, that we click and something happens right away, and it’s the only thing that can happen.
IS INTERACTIVITY A DEMAND?
Somewhere in the 1400’s in France, a church was built. The stained glass windows were colored with a new pigment that was bluer than anything anyone had ever seen. The church was finished and the visitors looked up and saw this incredible light. They were convinced they were looking at heaven. Not a picture of heaven, they were convinced they saw heaven itself. One of the strangest things in our time is the use of the word “virtual”. For centuries we have known drawing, painting, writing, cinema, all of them are very virtual. Money is virtual. Phone calls are virtual. But now that the screen is interactive, people call it virtual.
explaining art is like explaining jokes
LOCATION THEN The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation was founded in 1937, and its first New York–based venue for the display of art, the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, opened in 1939. With its exhibitions of Solomon Guggenheim’s somewhat eccentric art collection, the unusual gallery—designed by William Muschenheim at the behest of Hilla Rebay, the foundation’s curator and the museum’s director—provided many visitors with their first encounter with great works by Vasily Kandinsky, as well as works by his followers, including Rudolf Bauer, Alice Mason, Otto Nebel, and Rolph Scarlett. The need for a permanent building to house Guggenheim’s art collection became evident in the early 1940s, and in 1943 renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright gained the commission to design a museum in New York City. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opened on October 21, 1959.
NOW Today the Guggenheim Foundation includes the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, designed by Frank Gehry. Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, also a Gehry design, is slated to open in the Cultural District of Saadiyat Island. After an international architectural competition, Moreau Kusunoki Architectes’ design was selected for the proposed Guggenheim Helsinki. Through collaborative efforts, the foundation has extended its reach to projects and exhibitions globally, most recently with the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative and through the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative, a multiyear collaboration with UBS in support of art, artists, and curatorial talent from South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East and North Africa. The Guggenheim Foundation remains committed to collecting, preserving and interpreting modern and contemporary art while forging international collaborations that explore ideas across cultures through dynamic curatorial and educational initiatives.
Almost Calm
Rozendaal also founded BYOB (Bring Your Own Beamer),[1] an open source exhibition concept. The idea is that anyone can create an exhibition of media art without any budget; the manual of BYOB reads: "Find a space, Invite many artists, Ask them to bring their projector". With this concept Rozendaal wanted to bring the internet to a real life physical space and allow viewers to "‘walk through the internet". Since its beginning in 2010, more than 150 BYOB events[2] were organized around the world.
WHAT’S IMPORTANT TO YOU? To feel loved and appreciated.