The FAX gallery really pushes the limits of the traditional views of a gallery. In place of framed paintings or prints lies a lone fax machine, and from it spews a medley of artwork that can be deemed nontraditional to say the least. The idea of a fax machine to me is something that is of little utilitarian worth now. With advancements in file sharing technology, as well as an increasing drive to have everything computer based, fax machines have become obsolete. Putting one in a gallery is breathing new life to this played-out machine, giving it a home in a world where practicality has cast it aside. There is an almost nostalgic, blast-from-the-past feeling behind it, like watching an old cartoon or finding a toy from you childhood. Granted, there is a different, much less "fun" association with a fax machine, but there is still a feeling that is hard to ignore.
For my submission, I wanted to explore the obsolete nature of the fax machine. Nowadays, if you need to share something with somebody, typically we will just upload the file somewhere and share a link. This is what my piece focuses on. It is conceptual, challenging the artist's expectations of a typical gallery visitor. I first created several graphic representations of a fax machine and posted them to popular image sharing sites (photobucket, flickr, snapfish, and dropbox), all under the title "Nostalgia." Then, for my actual fax submission, I laid out the url's for these images in a simple, straightforward manner. I also made them look weathered to illustrate the fact that, whether you are faxing or file sharing, information always has to go through several channels and pass through several hands before it gets to its final destination. My hope for this piece is that the text will be recognizable as a url and that someone will take the initiative to follow it to find the true "artwork" of my submission. However, I am also aware of the effort needed to copy an entire url by hand, and, in this day and age of copy-and-paste gratification, I am curious as to whether or not anyone will be willing to take on that task.
Here is one of my links:
(Gallery visitors won't have this luxury of course.)
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