So much going on in the New York City art scene. The Armory Show and Pulse New York are in full swing. The Whitney Biennial, in its seventy-fifth edition, opened last week. That popular Tim Burton exhibit at MOMA continues, now recontextualized as relief from that Wonderland mess (I’ve heard) — his better days now on view.

But I will write about none of that, as I have seen none of that (but please go, report back). Instead, I will write about the only thing a pre-thesis-show senior in Tisch’s Department of Photography & Imaging can write about: his thesis show. With two weeks until my opening, it has consumed me completely. My time, mostly. And my body’s caffeine limit. But also my passionate interest. Forgive the self-promotion, but it was hard enough trying to find time to write this post. Giving my brain something else to chew on would be suicidal.

© 2009 by Danlly Domingo

TK

Entitled TK (publishing-speak for “to come”), my thesis project is a conceptual multimedia installation that serves as a response to the digital revolution’s transformation of print media.

Form: I produced a magazine — themed around topics of the digital and its impact on fashion and culture — which I completely designed and printed with images — photography, photo illustrations, and digital images — all created (with the exception of a few pick-up images) by yours truly and with articles contributed by colleagues. I then documented the magazine in high-definition videos of a hand turning its pages — some turning its pages sequentially with equal time spent on each page, some flipping its pages erratically out of order, and others. I then destroyed the one existing copy of the printed edition, leaving only the videos to be presented. Essentially, the videos are the magazine, as they are now the only way to experience it.

Content: The magazine’s contents include an article on the Internet’s newfound relationship with fashion shows and the impact on the industry, an interview with The  Shures (a band, formed over YouTube, whose members did not physically meet for the first two years of its existence), a fashion editorial following a girl traveling around the globe as spied on via GoogleMaps Street View, and much more. Some images below.

Concept: This is the aspect of the project most important to me. It’s an exploration of form, what happens when print becomes obsolete as mass media and instead a precious art object on a gallery wall. The project started as an attempt to relieve my career anxieties. I had hopes that magazine production would be somewhere along my professional path, but as magazine after magazine folded last year and as the Internet continued to threaten print’s relevance as a communication form, I was forced to reconsider that aspiration and to contemplate the value of the medium. My conclusions? I find value in its tactility, portability, and the dichotomy of its ephemeral nature and its permanence. It’s a work of art that I can hold in my hand, experience anywhere from the bathroom to the subway, archive on my shelf or cut up (for elementary school projects and ransom notes alike) then throw away. I can adhere to the editors’ prescribed sequence or I can flip through at the will of my ADD. Further along those lines, there’s something almost indescribably unique about communicating within the limitations of a printed page… in that the ideas and feelings communicated in the text and images are more controlled than the hyperactive web because the page-size and sequence is fixed and cannot so quickly be erased, edited, or updated. With the virtual state of web, I feel insecure about a story or a photograph disappearing into thin air just as easily as information travels through it. With a magazine? I can hold it, protect it. (And if I lose it, I can simply buy another one. These are mass produced works of art.)

This project then aims to emphasize all these qualities by stripping a magazine of them (while using video as a documentation tool to preserve the medium’s identity as “a magazine”). As a time-based form, the video(s) strip you of certain controls: you cannot look at the pages you want to, in the order that you want to, in the amount of time on each that you want to. That they’re played on screens installed on a gallery wall keeps you from holding it and taking it wherever you want to. Etc. Etc. Etc. By doing this, I hope to begin a contemplation of and a discussion about (and perhaps a celebration of) the value of the print form — and how we cannot let it die. If it becomes an obsolete source of editorial news, then at least it’s still a precious art object.

And hell, if the form does die completely, then let my thesis serve as a memorial.

Some images from the project:

© 2009 by Danlly Domingo

GoogeMaps — Street (View) Fashion: A fashion story following a girl through her travels on GoogleMaps’s street view function. The internet collapses spatial limitations and offers access to what was once limited by travel and, by extension, wealth. I’m contemplating how, in the future with a database of high-definition images of all places around the world, I can shoot stories without having to be on location. (Photo illustrations, 2009)

© 2009 by Danlly Domingo

Formulaic Fashion: A fashion story featuring clothes of which the designs are based on mathematical formulas. They currently exist only in digital renderings. The digital enables creation of fashion images with clothes that don’t exist yet; this story also contemplates the idea that computers can generate fashion. (Photo illustrations, 2009)