Artist Statement

Network, Browser (2014)

The gif image How to get the Mao experience through Internet… runs on a computer screen through a browser. With its specific characteristics of grainy texture, continuous looping and cinematic sequences, the artwork questions how the digital format might reconfi gure the experience of a public space and the public fi gure of Mao Tse-Tung. Inspired by Matthew Britton’s 2012 piece ‘How to get the Mona Lisa experience through Flickr…’, Soon’s work places images of Mao gathered from the network at the center of every image to produce an animated gif. The work appropriates images from wider platforms, including Google, Flickr and Baidu image searches, which form a collaborative animation with more than 30 known and unknown Internet producers. The work explores representations of Mao through different spatial/temporal/social/political happenings, medium specificities and subjectivities.

• Winnie Soon is an artist-researcher born in Hong Kong. Her works examine network culture and computational processes, which take the form of interactive and network media, installation and digital print. Soon’s work and lectures have been presented at galleries, art events, universities and conferences, including V&A Museum, Pulse Art and Technology Festival, Microwave International Media Arts Festival FutureEverything Art Exhibition, Taipei National University of Arts and Hong Kong Baptist University. She is currently PhD fellow at PIT research center (Dept. of Aesthetics and Communication) in Aarhus University, Information Architect in aprja.net.

Text with images (PDF) p. 42-43