Artist Statement for Web Arts Artefact

My web arts artefact is a short video displaying a video I filmed of fireworks being manipulated with post internet style GIFs whilst also adding psychedelic style effects. My inspiration for this piece comes from Emiilie Gervais and her work on ‘The Real Afterlife’.

Gervais a new media artist, whom explores relationships within the arts and internet. 

Gervais’ work is centred around the 90s internet aesthetic labelling her works in a URL form like “backdoortrojangirl.net”. her feminist views project strong messages into her work, as the internet is a place in which feminist artists can freely express themselves.

Viewing her work style, I began my research into Psychedelic art and surrealism due to my perspective of her work and the style I believe she creates, almost like an out of this world/escapism effect. The Psychedelic art era began in the 1960s, with art being heavily influenced by psychedelic drugs such as LSD. The art was popular due it portraying the way the you feel and how things look when on these type of drugs, allowing the art to be relatable to the viewers. I incorporate this style in my artefact through the coloured and inverted effects I created using the Glitche app. I imported my video into the app and used the effects ‘channls’ and ‘invert’ to create a surreal feeling when viewing the work.

The sounds used in the artefact are two different audio clips, one being glitch effects, I wanted to use this because I thought over the mellow instrumental that is being played it creates more of an effect and impact around the glitching happening in the artefact. The other audio used is a mellow drifting beat, which I think creates a dream like experience when watching the video with the music as it is very calming. I used this to add to the psychedelic effect I wanted to display as I felt like it creates an almost hypnosis state.

The mini animated GIFs that change colour and flash throughout the video I imported from Instagram, so I used a form of social media to edit my artefact. The inspiration of the GIF like effects comes from the new forming culture of GIFs and how they have been incorporated into a way of communicating. I also like the 90s aesthetic that they create.

My Artefacts relates to the Web Arts module because it has allowed me to get a real insight into different styles of variations of art and inspired me to create my own interpretation of what I get from internet art.