chihihi

Shy girl - statement

Previous statement

 For this class and second half of summer quarter I want to engage in a performance and dialog with female archetypes on the internet. I have always found the platform of internet a rather hostile black hole, yelling into the void so to speak. It also has been a place where I have discovered a lot of things that have helped me feel less isolated and have brought much inspiration to my life, a great outlet for my maximalist aesthetics. So, I have seen as someone growing up with the internet being around for the birth of Facebook and beginning my internet career on Myspace, that the internet is a place of duality. I haven’t much in my work engaged in a particularly feminist dialogue in my work as to not be pushed into a realm of all my work being an expression of the female but I guess I have still done so but not as overtly. I have also never explicitly created a character for myself during a performance as frankly I found it a bit to campy. I have created a persona based of a mash of a type of alternative female archetype that has found its place on the internet specifically, the E-girl. A popular and at the same time very much mi lined persona mainly a great target of specifically a lot of sexist vitriol from other online born groups.it is also a female persona that is much outside of my expression so I am interested in placing myself in the uncomfortable position in such a blatant misrepresentation of myself as well as having that character engage with some of the worst aspects of online culture and addressing that place and stereotype of woman in it. I am also interested in differences in male and female performance and tropes of expression and discourse found online mainly YouTube and other video formats. My character’s name will be named, shy girl and to further disguise is from myself I will be altering my own voice for speaking parts mush of the performances will be bringing more Avant-Garde concepts of performance to the mainstream such as john cages water performance with audience participation.  Also, I want to produce short work more consistently which is a mode of work I have not done up to this point so I will be putting out longer video content once a week.  

 Add on:

To update my artist statement and to speak to my progress with subjects related to the creation of my alter though I’m not sure how much I want it to be viewed as persona but more of a way to remove myself. This alter , Shy girl,  has so far no set type of format or type of content other than videos at this point and photos and maybe live capture online as I progress with platforms but that will very much change the nature of the performances as they will move from being captured into film , to being performance again the temporality will change as well as the source of control. which will affect the performances greatly but that will be addressed when the time comes, I think live streaming is a huge new question and place for performance art.  Back from that side tracking so far in terms of subject my videos have in initial conceptions been touching on but not limited to, Para social relationships, hostile male communities such as Inscels, the gaze, make up beauty/ identity, Vtubers and anime subculture, the body, multiples and an exercise in thought on distance and new space relationships found in the online environment. There is much more intertwined with in all of the videos I have done up to this point but these are some of the starting points for my video concept drawings and shot lists which I will be posing. The biggest development of this alter has been my creation of not only a 3D model based on my outfit and make up created for my performance in my own body. But now also a 2D model, so at this point I have created this group of performers which has been an interesting way of layering levels of abstraction of the original persona created. My video “shy graces” was the first time we were all together as I have been working with green screen to place myself into my online gallery/performance space, though it has been a passing thought but definite one that being my irrelevance now that I have these digital avatars. Which leads to something I suspected might happen that being my own disenchantment with my body which in a way lead to the next video “skin study’s” based on the work of ana Mendieta “glass on face” and my own push to recess the nude and the body online. This video for the first time bought in anime references as well which I did so for the obvious reason that these alters made online where very influenced my anime culture and manga illustration. As a western fan and a reclusive member of the subculture I have always seen interesting territory for discussion about the role of women in the anime but also in the community, being as if suffers from much of many “nerd subcultures” suffer from, sexualization, fetish, nerd bro culture and so on. But in particular anime’s relationship to the female body and projection of female presenting people is rife with conceptual fodder that I couldn’t begin to pick at this is quite long but has been developing. But one of the biggest draws is anime has been the first to bring this type of idealized body and form they have created into a living space in the form of projected 3D models like that of the Vocaloid characters which were developed as mascots for products along with new figures like project melody on streaming cites as well her move into adult content as a Only fans personality, Adult subscription cite. There has even been the creation of objects of comfort mimicking a body in the form or body pillows, which I used in one of my “music cover” videos integrating my own limbs with this printed body. And the creation of silicon full dolls not always used for the purpose of being a sex toy but as recreation of characters from particular shows that people use for companionship not that there is not a sexual element at play. A lot of this rings true to what I think is happening online these things are rather inseparable as I have moved into looking into the Vtuber community for my models and “copies” which the collective element being that all the programs that I have seen or used all by default use this anime form and all Vtubers use this anime avatar weather that be the 3D models or the 2D models as I created mine from scratch based on my performance persona and examples of popular Vtuber forms. There is this whole new level to literally not only changing your persona online as most do but actually taking on a new form and based on anime which is about the creation of whole other reality’s and which has an element of as a lot of media, escapism. These works as of this past class have been as I have been speaking about very bodily and quite grotesque as is the history often is of female performance art which I had read of and reminded me of such in Vergine body as language which I will link. This writing hit many points in relation to my work and I think is a far better resistor of a lot of what is a part of my content currently. One of originators for these past few videos not only the most recent two skin studies and shy graces was when I published my 3D model on Vorid studios there was a pop up that askes you about the licensing the avatar and it asks who can use it but what most stuck out to me was it asked if the creator would allow sexual content or violent content which became a big influence on the tone of that video. As well the video “shy Graces” which addressed the fact to be able to inhabit my new bodies I needed to pay more money to be able to do something as simple as move the arms of my 3D model as you would need an add on called leap motion.my thoughts and conceptual development may seem rather scattered at the moments but much thought has go into them and as far as the writing about this work it will develop as the work has over time.  

As for more technical aspects and materials, I have been pushing myself as far as the structure of my production of these videos as I want to make them all in accessible places with tools that anyone can access and I am trying to produce content weekly as on YouTube the speed of videos outputted is key to that structure and algorithm. The sets, outfits I have been using are also something that its easily accessed or recreated by anyone I guess I am focused on using almost modern-day working-class materials. As I should have started with saying at the beginning of this re brief this project at this point has not end game as it were I have the content that I am expressing as I want to use this avatar to engage with an audience that is outside of say a space in an art institution as I was inspired much by the work of fellow art student and internet artist molly soda. These alters and accounts have become my new studio work place for me to work on a continuous performance practice which is something I have not yet undertaken and I feel that will push my practice outside of my own comfort zone and open me to a space of pushing myself and very making mistakes and gaining new understanding to developed my practice.

 Definition: Internet art (also known as net art) is a form of digital artwork distributed via the Internet. This form of art has circumvented the traditional dominance of the gallery and museum system, delivering aesthetic experiences via the Internet. In many cases, the viewer is drawn into some kind of interaction with the work of art. Artists working in this manner are sometimes referred to as net artists.

 Net artist may use specific social or cultural internet traditions to produce their art outside of the technical structure of the internet. Internet art is often—but not always—interactive, participatory, and multimedia-based. Internet art can be used to spread a message, either political or social, using human interactions.

 The term Internet art typically does not refer to art that has been simply digitized and uploaded to be viewable over the Internet, such as in an online gallery.[1] Rather, this genre relies intrinsically on the Internet to exist as a whole, taking advantage of such aspects as an interactive interface and connectivity to multiple social and economic cultures and micro-cultures, not only web-based works.