Spectacle: Projects made with the intention of impressing the viewer with its surface level ideas/aesthetics, but disregards the technological context of today that leads to the ability to create such projects
Speculation: Projects made with full acknowledgement of the digital process/theory, often critiquing it in a self aware fashion, but disregards the actual practise of creating digital artworks
I decided to highlight Mark Leckey's GreenScreenRefridgeratorAction as to me it is pure spectulation. The work explores the systems inherent in a refrigerator through all the types of style that Alan Warbuton. I highlight also because it was introduced to me in Critical Theory, and I found the disjunction between what I had learnt about the work there in context of Duchamp against the modern technology context of Warburton's video a raw example of the Speculation he talks about.
In my eyes it is very much digital drag, given its simplified commercial like animations and rudimentary use of green-screen. It is much more about visibility, considering both its context as a performance and as a highlighting of the inner mechanisms of this everyday technology system. It weighs more on the surplus side as well, given its over-dissection as a highlighting of what is taken for granted proving worthwhile conceptually rather than wasteful of the technology (which it arguably counteracts). It is most certainly more on the art side, given its strong aesthetic and form inspiration from the artistic technologic context that Warburton describes. I feel that it lies between function and dysfunction, its content highlighting the functionality of things while also dysfunctionally using simplified and overused technology.
