Okay, just who or what is 0100101110101101.org? Must be about something digital. Well it, um, they are Eva and Franco Mattes, describing themselves as "a couple restless European con-artists," who use unconventional communication tactics to "obtain the largest visibility with the minimal effort.
If you were into some of the early browser art or other kinds of online multimedia art in the early and late 90's, you will enjoy visiting their project page and having a look at their incredible body of work. Exploring digital worlds, from Second Life avatars to manipulating code to use browsers and the web as a platform for artistic performance on the internet.
Of late Eva and Franco have been creating avatars for both first and second lives, as it turns out, for substantial compensation in creating photographs of the avatars and mounting them on canvas. Thus,
0100101110101101.org creates work that they say is "a riff on Warhol," and questions both the traditional role of portraiture and the "morphing relationship between identity and public presentation in virtual worlds. It has been for artists working in any number of environments and technologies to break through and find acceptance in the gallery and museum world. After watching a live Second Life performance from New York, and seen around the world live as
Synthetic Performances,
ARTnews writer Rachel Wolff commented on the surreal nature of the live performance, where the avatars took off their clothes and other avatars nearby came by and also took off their clothes. ARTnews notes that while a few galleries have sold digital works of artists from multidisciplinary genres, many galleries admit they don't have the IT infrastructure to support many digital artists, and in the cases of live performances or interactive multimedia, they're simply not sure how to sell the artwork. In some cases artists are taking the approach of "limited edition software."
So it played well in Soho, and new media art has growing recognition around the world as a way for artists to express their opinions about the increasingly blurring lines between the real world and the digital world.
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