| Digital art is an exciting and young genre. It presents new opportunities but also new challenges. Compared to the perceived authenticity of more traditional mediums like painting and sculpture, images made using an entirely digital process prompt a distance between the creator and viewer and sometimes lack personality. The digital medium has a soul of its own. My latest project, “SAVE AS,” is a series of digitally created images that celebrates this exciting domain. It is a critical yet entertaining visceral response to the cultural and consumer extremes of the Internet zeitgeist. |  |
Adam Harvey
Digital art is an exciting and young genre. It presents new opportunities but also new challenges. Compared to the perceived authenticity of more traditional mediums like painting and sculpture, images made using an entirely digital process prompt a distance between the creator and viewer and sometimes lack personality. The digital medium has a soul of its own. My latest project, “SAVE AS,” is a series of digitally created images that celebrates this exciting domain. It is a critical yet entertaining visceral response to the cultural and consumer extremes of the Internet zeitgeist.
The “SAVE AS” project started in 2003 at Penn State University. Spam email was having a huge impact on the University’s policies as well as Internet users everywhere. It created pent up anger and there was no escape. I started to think about how I could respond to the burgeoning daily obstacle, and spent an increasing amount of time over next few years on the architecture of my reply.
For people like myself who use the Internet on a daily basis and have to deal with the problem, the unsolicited emails had a subconscious affect. Besides frustration and the occasional laugh, it provided a new, raw and sexually charged lexicon dripping with energy. From CEO’s to high school students, anyone with an email account could relate. I wanted to use this language and exploit its success. To do this I created a customized computer application.
Perversely twisting e-commerce, “SAVE AS” digitally maps promise-laden spam emails into their quintessential erotic forms. Each work in “SAVE AS” is made from thousands upon thousands of layers of spam e-mail texts, automatically pulled from a database archive that spans the gamut of smut, prescription drugs, sexual enhancers and get-rich-quick schemes. One of my favorite works, Sensational Revolutions in Medicine, contains over 38,000 spam emails. Viewed closely the work appears as a mash of individual subject lines but from a distance appears as a gestalt representation of its erotic content.
“SAVE AS” changed drastically as it progressed. Initially I maximized the quantity and density of spam email and hawked it with a candy colored scheme. At the time I had just moved to Brooklyn and began work as web designer and photographer. I fattened myself on gallery shows, advertising, museums and any media available including pornography, specifically online. But as quantity trumped quality, ambivalence set in and my idolatry had worn thin.
I began to understand the psychology of imagery and ditched the approach of artist as genius, sufferer or rebel, and I embraced a more efficacious and personal approach to creating new work.
My pursuit began by marrying two primary fields of interest, futurism and expressionism. Gradually a style developed that complimented the “SAVE AS” concept. Central to this concept was the artistic re-exploitation of seedy entrepreneurship, a cynical take on the proudly American. Friends and family offered invaluable criticism, sometimes pushing me in opposite directions. In subsequent years, 2004-2006, I began browsing sites to build a significant collection of graphic material for use in “SAVE AS.” Each genre of porn proved challenging it its own way; some rendered better than expected while others failed to perform.
My criterion for success was and remains proletariat; if I weren’t willing to display it in my home I wouldn’t expect anyone else to.
