Throughout the course of history, artists have always been some of the first to adopt and support the development of new technology and tools, shining a light on how we can navigate our past, present, and futures through new lenses. From the invention of photography to the introduction of the personal computer and the proliferation of the World Wide Web, artistic practices have evolved alongside technology, often forecasting what our next steps can be. As our lives become increasingly mediated through and dependent on all things digital, the works of digital and new media artists have also become expandingly relevant and crucial, holding up a mirror – and a crystal ball – to how our rapidly evolving relationship with technology looks like.
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Recognising this, Art Dubai introduced the Digital section in its 2022 edition, committed to the championing and support of digital and new media art in the Middle East, and more broadly, the Global South and beyond. This year, the Digital section returns for its second iteration, expanding further into the virtual landscape and presenting artists working at the cutting edge of art and technology.
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As much as the majority of us have accepted that our lives will become increasingly online, some artists also point out that it is worth taking a moment to take a good hard look at our behaviours and question how we would really like to shape our individual usage of technology. Lying in bed, doom-scrolling Instagram in the middle of the night is something that many of us have fallen into, once in a while or even on the daily. Singaporean artist, Brandon Tay, zooms in on this obsessive and mindless urge to scroll through online media in his cheekily titled video, The Error of Calm Technology. Through the use of screen-recorded sessions of the very act of doom scrolling and prompt-based machine learning, the artist mirrors this experience in his work, even placing the visual-scape within a 3-D CGI glass case to enhance this notion of watching back on oneself. Beyond the act of doom scrolling, the work can also be seen as a broader commentary on our passive acceptance of how rapidly technology has become an intimate part of our lives, and how much more it will be if we continue to allow it to.
