[ISEA2008] Artist Talk: Nicolas Thély – Zita2010’s melancholy and the “low resolution” artists

Artist Statement

Zita010 is 18 years old this year. Like all teenagers born during the 80’s, Zita blooms on the network through standardized formats (blogs, msn) and shows a detachement to physical supports. Yet she is sensitive to the loss of datas, even to the vanishing of her blog. Before going on Myspace, Zita2010 writes in her last note published on her Skyblog : « They remind me a lot skyblog 120 articles, yet i think i will never erase it, skyblog would like to do it on behalf of me, yet i would be keen on printing all of them, just to get some souvenirs. » What will remain in some years of all these exchanges on the network, of these datas widely spread on these servers, rather consulted or not, sometimes duplicated to infinty yet soon forgotten, abandoned ? Fanette Muxart, Clôde Coulpier, Camille Laurelli, David Lefebvre et Fabrice Croux are young contemporary artists who need the network in their productions, they express the fragitlity of things , the relative importance of datas produced in the digital culture. Conscious that Mp3, jpeg, Mpeg and Gif formats have definitely built our sensorial environment, these artists have realized some « weak forms », registered some videos on Youtube, made various apperances on Myspace with several pen names. But their also respond to the very mobile images and to the volatility of datas, re-playing all day long their wanderings on the web, using long time methods (drawing, painting, modelling) and where know-hows are uncrypted.

  • Nicolas Thély (1973) is a professor in Art, Aesthetics and Digital Humanities at l’université Rennes 2, France