EYES ON CULTURE #004
Digital Skins
EYES ON: John Yuyi’s stickers
Taiwanese artist John Yuyi (born Chiang Yu-yi) has played with bringing our digital selves to the surface (the skin’s surface, that is) for much of her career. Enlisting the body as canvas and sticker as paint, she looks at the very real role social media's iconography plays in the shaping of our selves.
WHY WE’RE WATCHING:
Outside of the strange satisfaction that comes from viewing that glossy plastic on dewy skin, these images capture our attention because of what they are about.
Yuyi talks about “playing with putting faces on faces” when she refers to the icons placed on the models. In these portraits, the visual language of the internet isn’t contained to the digital. It seeps through to our physical selves, altering our real lives and appearances.
The Screens of Your Imagination
EYES ON: Universal Everything‘s Screens of the Future
With their solo show currently on display at London’s 180 Strand, the unbelievably innovative work of artist collective Universal Everything deserves a long and hard look. And in our eyes, their ongoing series Screens of the Future warrants a near creepy stare.
Based on the emerging technologies of flexible display, this project explores the wildest and wackiest creative potentials for URL digital viewing through a series of CGI prototypes of futuristic devices.
WHY WE’RE WATCHING:
Unfeasible or just plain absurd, it doesn’t matter if these display prototypes never make it to the production line. It matters that they were thought up.
With screens ever more important to our experience of art (see Fred Wilson’s latest articlefor a personal account), creatively thinking about the way we could interact with digital work is extremely worthwhile. In melding fantasy and product design, the series questions the borders of our imagination for digital viewing.
The Most Iconic Shoe
EYES ON: Obvious X Nike
The Nike by You Workshop (2020) brought together 21 artists to create their own interpretations of the iconic brand’s most iconic product, the Nike sneaker. Obvious — the french artist collective — did what they do best and used code to produce something completely groundbreaking for its time: an AI-designed Nike sneaker.
Using a GAN trained on images of previous sneakers (Nike Air Max 1, Air Max 90 and Air Max 97 to be specific), the project’s final result is an amalgamation of the legacy of Nike’s design. It quite literally pulled together the strings that make up the collectible's infamous design history.
WHY WE’RE WATCHING:
Since nearly every internet visit is now graced with AI-created images, and so much of their shock value has dissipated, you might think Obvious’ sneaker is yesterday’s news. But we can assure you, this sneaker is worth remembering.
Whilst not only reinvigorating the traditional sneaker design process with AI as a new tool, the project also prophetically sheds light on the future of digital collectibles.
With a tool that can smash together a history of the best-of-the-best design traits to produce one pinnacle look, is a whole new level of collectible — the ultra collectible — opened up? Can what has already been hailed the ultimate digital collectible (the digital sneaker) become even more legendary with the help of AI tools?