So once again I am sorry for leaving you readers for so long. I know it has been months since I posted anything worth reading in this blog. But if you stalk me (for any reason, because I don't think I am stalk-worthy), you will realize that lately I have been very active in another social media: Instagram. My very late contact with the Instagram indeed is the trigger for my latest art project, Rose to Technology.
"ROSE
TO
TECHNOLOGY"
An experimental fashion-technology-literature,
camera-tablet-computer artwork collaboration
Lately at the end of the semester, I got a new tablet smartphone to change my old phone. I wasn't really an addict of technological advances, at first, not as much as I am attracted to books and canvases; I was a more traditional person, basically believed that "raw" art is "purer" than the digital ones, put for example, loving painting better than sketching things on the computer. But having the smartphone had taken me to a next level. It amazed me how it expanded the flow of creativity to my daily life. I got a direct access to any artistic source so overwhelmedly fast and huge; everyday, I just need to log on to Instagram (for example) to connect to a wide range of diverse artists, professionals and amateurs, which provide eye candies and aesthetic vitamins to broad up my art intelligence. Tehnology, which I used to despise as narrowing and simplifying the intricacy of pure art, now connects me to the unlimitedness of artistic world and widening my creative vision instead.
At certain point, it came to me that information technology is the future of humanity. My sociology teacher in high school had stated that human civilization will finally succumb into a stage known as "information civilization". Human civilization, since its beginning, is divided into stages: from traditional society, to industrial society, and now, I believe, is the beginning of a new generation: information society. Internet has become an importance in our activities. We are all depended to internet nowadays. Globalization brings openness not only in cultural nor political but also in our daily lives. Connection to the outside world and being updated with social environment's current issues have become a need.
There are surveys that state that more people is checking up their Facebook notification right after they wake up. Observing reality around, as we are becoming more connected, being cut off from internet connection suddenly cut your connection from the "world". We call those people who have no Facebook or Twitter account as "nerds" or "outdated". Everybody has to have a social media account because the fastness of information flows make the daily pace faster too; so we need a faster source of references, which is the intenet. We no longer go to library, but to Google. We don't read encyclopaedia, but Wikipedia. We don't need radio, we have iTunes. We don't see television; there is YouTube already. Instead of galleries, we enjoy artworks in Instagram, Pinterest, Vscocam... And of course, we rarely hear the word "diary" because we have Blogger instead.
There are surveys that state that more people is checking up their Facebook notification right after they wake up. Observing reality around, as we are becoming more connected, being cut off from internet connection suddenly cut your connection from the "world". We call those people who have no Facebook or Twitter account as "nerds" or "outdated". Everybody has to have a social media account because the fastness of information flows make the daily pace faster too; so we need a faster source of references, which is the intenet. We no longer go to library, but to Google. We don't read encyclopaedia, but Wikipedia. We don't need radio, we have iTunes. We don't see television; there is YouTube already. Instead of galleries, we enjoy artworks in Instagram, Pinterest, Vscocam... And of course, we rarely hear the word "diary" because we have Blogger instead.
Why did this happen? You can observe the answer in fashion world which is very sensitive to human society at certain point. Lately the fashion embraces the 90s again, an age which used to be criticized for its less intricate fashion style. From Lady Gaga to Katy Perry, if you put a better attention in their creative style today, is becoming less extravagant, more simplistic, and sleek. The current fashion represent the repetition of 90s spirit, the excitement for technology: 90s are the time where anything connected to technology raise people's excitement and enthusiasm. From warm sweater to simple skirts, fashion in 90s is conquered by dynamic shapes and functionalism. It is because the world in 1990 are moving towards technological evolution which stressed on functionalism of technology.
We need technology to help our lives. Currently, the context is in information functionalism: to get information faster and sooner. Realize that pop culture nowadays is embracing this media needy. More celebrities have Twitter account and use it as a way to promote their events and causes. YouTube just launched its first virtual award which is broadcasted to their website instead of television channels. Madonna created a virtual campaign which encourage her fans to promote their artwork via internet. Whether it's Lady Gaga nor Gwyneth Paltrow is creating a social media to gather artworkers worldwide. Social interaction moves from reality to virtuality.
It doesn't mean that it has no danger within. Through its simplifying methods, it created an instant world which less care to the importance of the process. I have always been concerned about the matter (which have been written in "Nomophobophobia") and grown more after I experienced the technology-needy phenomenon itself. Technology and virtuality was meant to help human in solving reality problems, not erasing the humanity and reality itself. What happened now created a new problem through addiction to instant matters. Here, people take a false advantage over technology and endangering natural reality.
This thought is the base for the Rose to Technology project, although I must say that the understanding came after I took the shot and did the digital processes. This was a collaboration with my bestie-dear Merlynda Ayu. The initial goal was to balance masculine-feminine aesthetics, but then it went further. Analytically, from the title, rose represents the nature in its essence: reality, which every human are born from; it also the past form of "rise". Technology, of course, represents the recent artificial phenomenon of human advancement. Therefore the project is about embracing the technology to improve our environment, balancing the reality and virtuality. In the project's context, it is about using the technology's simplicity to intricate more traditional artworks. It was arranged to envision the first stanza of She Wore A Wreath of Roses, a poetry by Thomas Haynes Bayly, a Victorian poet who lived circa 1797-1839. Many of the shots in this project was taken with tablet smartphone which mixed with camera-taken pictures and processed together in notebook computer. As an irony to the concept of technology, the shoot used handmade flower crowns and flower bracelets from my fashion label BOADICEA. Therefore, it combined the natural and the artificial, masculine and feminine, John Lennon and Yoko Ono... the past and the future, reality and virtuality.
In the end, through this project, I hope to raise awareness of the advantage and danger of technology. Don't let technological advancement dissolve the intricacy of human social interaction. Afterall, we are all humans of emotional soul and dynamic heart, not robots of binary commands and structured machines.
