At this time, it seems impossible to discuss Cory Arcangel's work without confronting the issue of technology in art-making practices. While it is indisputable that technology has always played a role in the creation of art, classically technology was subservient to the product of the art process-- that is, with technical innovations such as the development of scientific perspective, the devices of perspective themselves were not the subject of the work, but subsumed in the presentation of the work. Like da Vinci's Last Supper, the focus leads to that single point, Christ's head. It was only until the advent of Modernism that the technical devices of art-making became suitable subjects for artwork itself. Until then, the artist's hand was judged by his ability to conceal his hand.

Synthetic Cubism put the lie to scientific perspective by challenging the tyranny of the artist's point of view. Arcangel's work puts the lie to the tyranny of the new media-- his work is a dismantling of the processes that produce the gestalt of consumer culture. Arcangel's new show at Team Gallery, appropriately and ostentatiously titled Subtractions, Modifications, Addenda, and Other Recent Contributions to Participatory Culture samples various elements of popular culture and manipulates their presentation in order to effect an aporia of presentation.

Cory Arcangel, Untitled (after Lucier), 2006

While this sort of investigation is an old hat by now, Arcangel's has revived it by turning his attention to media whose substrata are so deeply integrated into the system of their presentation as to become almost invisible. Consumer culture is broadcast on increasingly complex instruments of distribution, while the very platforms that make their availability omnipresent have themselves multiplied in complexity. Recording instruments, encoding devices, and mixing instruments all require levels of technical ability and knowledge that cannot easily be mastered by the dilettante, in the same way that a Sunday painter could approximate the works of Vermeer. This difficulty is further compounded by the fact that often those who manipulate these devices are themselves unaware of the basic engineering features that allow them to function; I might upload a video to YouTube, but I know next to nothing about the Flash encoding technology that makes it possible.

Untitled (After Lucier), 2006, confronts that specific issue head-on; Arcangel appropriates the strategy of avant-garde composer Alvin Lucier's 1970 piece I am Sitting in a Room, in which Lucier continued to re-record a recording of himself reading "I am sitting in a room..." until the recording became an abstract sonic portrait of the space he was recording in. Untitled (After Lucier) examines the implications of compression, by continuously digitally re-compressing a video of the Beatles famous Ed Sullivan appearance. As the video compresses it becomes more and more abstract-- a visual representation of the process of compression. Essentially, Arcangel asks us to question how the experience of culture is transformed by the container it is presented in. When a video is uploaded to Youtube it is modified by the technology, and thus takes on the characteristics of the "room" in which the viewer experiences it.

With Sweet 16, 2006, Arcangel draws from American minimalist composer Steven Reich's vocabulary and Guns and Rose's Sweet Child Of Mine to produce a syncopated loop of the intro of the song. The viewer is left in constantly deferred state, waiting for the familiar tune to begin playing, as a video of the band rocks out in the background. Instead, we are only treated to two overlapping clips of the first few notes, as they oscillate in and out of synch with one another. While less concerned with technologization of art, Sweet 16 seems to engage one of Arcangel's other major interests: the mass-media explosion and inculturalization that developed during the decadent corporate expansion of the '80s.

Cory Arcangel, Colors, 2006

The culture of the '80s has long been a theme of Arcangel's work, from the hacked Nintendo cartridges that first drew international attention to his work, to this latest exhibition. Here he seems to be reveling in the humor that has more often than not added levity to his otherwise dry cultural deconstruction. Occasionally, though, he can be a bit self-indulgent; The Bruce Springsteen 'Born To Run' Glockenspiel Addendum, 2006 plays it close to the line, skewering the re-mix culture as well as critical pretensions. As insightful as it is humorous, however, is the collaborative re-dubbing of Dazed and Confused, where the script was out-sourced to India to be re-read in English by Indian voice actors.

In the rear of the gallery, Arcangel continues to explore the abstraction of film. Colors, stretches the first line of pixels visible in the frame of the '80s cop drama, Colors, and plays the modified video in conjunction with the soundtrack. While ostensibly establishing a narrative between the color relations and the audio, this work actually charts a disjunction between the violent narrative of its source material and the formal beauty of Arcangel's modifications.

Cory Arcangel at Team Gallery
83 Grand St in SOHO
Sept 29-Nov 4

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