Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art, 1965–2018
Sept 28, 2018–Apr 14, 2019
Signal, Sequence, Resolution:
Realities Encoded
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These artists use programming to adopt a critical stance by underscoring or exposing social, cultural, or political codes. Keith and Mendi Obadike’s project The Interaction of Coloreds, for example, uses a statement by Josef Albers on rules and color as a starting point for exploring how longstanding systems of racial categorization might translate into the digital sphere, specifically how skin color factors into online commerce. Marc Lafia and Fang-Yu Lin’s work reflects on the rules followed by authorities and their resistance while Paul Pfeiffer’s video sculpture addresses cultural and racial identity in sports and Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Katherine Moriwaki’s interactive data visualization explores how Twitter receives and shapes reality television.
Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Katherine Moriwaki, America's Got No Talent, 2012
Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Katherine Moriwaki, America’s Got No Talent, 2012 and 2018. Java app. Commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art for its artport website AP.2012.1
America’s Got No Talent is a data visualization that chronicles Twitter feeds related to reality-television shows such as American Idol, America’s Got Talent, and America’s Best Dance Crew over the course of a few years. Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Katherine Moriwaki’s project highlights how the shows gain notoriety through social media: it displays when tweets were sent and how much bias was gathered for each program based on retweets from the fans and followers of the shows. Using a horizontal bar graph in the shape of an American flag as an interface for navigation, the project creates a meter for measuring how the success of television shows is linked to their social media exposure. America’s Got No Talent reveals how networked communication affects both TV programming and popular opinion. The artists connect the internet and the culture of TV.
Learn more about America’s Got No Talent, and download a version here.
Artists
- Josef Albers
- Cory Arcangel
- Tauba Auerbach
- Jonah Brucker-Cohen
- Jim Campbell
- Ian Cheng
- Lucinda Childs
- Charles Csuri
- Agnes Denes
- Alex Dodge
- Charles Gaines
- Philip Glass
- Frederick Hammersley
- Channa Horwitz
- Donald Judd
- Joseph Kosuth
- Shigeko Kubota
- Marc Lafia
- Barbara Lattanzi
- Lynn Hershman Leeson
- Sol LeWitt
- Fang-yu Lin
- Manfred Mohr
- Katherine Moriwaki
- Mendi + Keith Obadike
- Nam June Paik
- William Bradford Paley
- Paul Pfeiffer
- Casey Reas
- Earl Reiback
- Rafaël Rozendaal
- Lillian Schwartz
- James L. Seawright
- John F. Simon Jr.
- Steina
- Mika Tajima
- Tamiko Thiel
- Cheyney Thompson
- Joan Truckenbrod
- Siebren Versteeg
- Lawrence Weiner