An interesting article from MIT Technology Review on how technology is influencing art, and vise-versa, in China. The artists touch on themes of consumerism, censorship and identity.
If Taobao has given rise to a new consumerist creed, artists like Mak are articulating a speculative iconography to match.
Mak uses Marxist theory to analyze the depersonalized, ubiquitous nature of relationships between buyers and sellers on Taobao, which has its own slang lexicon. She says, “Class and the relations of production are hidden behind the rhetoric of the internet.”
In this installation, aaajiao hints at what might be the physical length of China’s “Great Firewall”—a sophisticated infrastructure for blocking websites and search terms—by printing out the URLs it restricts. The monotonous, serial repetition echoes the manual labor required to constantly monitor and block sensitive material, the never- ending work of the government’s internet watchdogs.
Every Tuesday is Art Tuesday here at Adafruit! Today we celebrate artists and makers from around the world who are designing innovative and creative works using technology, science, electronics and more. You can start your own career as an artist today with Adafruit’s conductive paints, art-related electronics kits, LEDs, wearables, 3D printers and more! Make your most imaginative designs come to life with our helpful tutorials from the Adafruit Learning System. And don’t forget to check in every Art Tuesday for more artistic inspiration here on the Adafruit Blog!