Exhibitions curated by stratosphere http://rhizome.org/artbase/exhibitions/view/1425/

Control Alt Delete (2011)

Curated by stratosphere

Humanity has come a long way in its endeavors to gain information and access to a plethora of knowledge through books, television, radio, and more. But with the age of the computer, the ability to attain any kind of information, whether it be a video, music, text document, or more, has become easier and easier. With this access of free information, ranging from literally anything and everything you can think of, comes a lot of control over this information that was not previously possible. Control in the sense that more can be done with this information thanks to the abilities that computers enable us with. Before hand, when the world was without the technological means to control it’s information and media, things took longer and there was a limit to what is possible when accessing these media sources. But with technology ever advancing, we are finding new ways to control our media and information sources for the bettering of our self power. To put it all in a more simple way, we are able to do so much more with computers than previously. While this is a given, I specifically refer to the human race when I say that the computer becomes an extension of our power, granting us sometimes godlike abilities when dealing with certain things. It is this ability to control things at an exponential rate that links these art pieces together. Looking at the first one, titled Untitledocument, we see minimize, maximize, and exit buttons at the top of the piece. This shows how we are able to manipulate our documents to our will. We see things in these pieces such as a mouse, and even the button pad of a digital camera. Both of these objects give immense control to the user of the computer, or camera. With the mouse, we are able to do anything and everything possible on the computer. It is the extension of the hand that allows us to point and click away like gods, able to bring up pages and throw away documents and create and destroy all in a matter of clicks and key presses. Power. A dynamic theme that is represented by these pieces. Looking at the trash can, again, we see the ability to simply destroy rather than create. By looking at ‘Button’, we are given a different type of power than what has been seen in the other four images. With ‘Button’, we are given the power of choice. A power that is indeed associated with that which factors into human existance. It is with choice that we are able to say whether or not we shall create, we shall minimize, or we shall destroy. So all in all, computers give us the ability to ascertain a certain power, but all the power a computer gives us is meaningless without the human power of choice.