Textual Poaching: An Identity Remix

Rothko, Mark. Untitled (Red, Blue, Orange). 

The remix.

I began by thinking about various aspects of my identity, and I thought of my identity as an artist—as a creator. I considered how I’d learned a new medium for another creation in this class—pixel art! It was sort of a curious art form to learn and pick up, but I loved how it permitted a new creative relationship with shape, line, and color. As I thought about art, I considered those artworks (and artists) throughout time that changed the progression of art in history. Artists came to mind such as Mark Rothko, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Van Gogh, and more. Then, I reflected on how the digital world continues to change the face of art and how we interact with and create it. As such, I thought it would be interesting to experiment with “remixing” a piece of art with pixel art. I chose Mark Rothko’s “Untitled (Red, Blue, Orange)” because I felt that the way he thought about color and form were unique and significant in changing artistic thought. Rather than having a particular “figure” to his artwork, the color and shape were the figure, showing an appreciation and commentary of basic artistic elements. The inherent commentary deals with a few matters, including how digitizing art and communication can sometimes distort them. It’s interesting to consider the idea that I created a remix of a remix. As soon as the art piece was displayed digitally, it already was constituted of thousands of tiny pixels. For my project, I went one square at a time (sixteen pixels long by sixteen pixels wide) of the original artwork, color picked a singular pixel of the 256 pixels within the square, and then colored the entire square that color. As such, the individual pixel was expanded significantly. This also produced an interesting investigation of color. Although it appears that Rothko uses only orange and blue, there are thousands of shades and individual colors represented within those, as the pixels convey. Digital media can also provide clarification, information, and ideas. As I thought about Barney’s article on responding, I considered the value of those conversations and how digital distortion can play a role in such communication. Additionally, digital media can provide an opportunity to have engaging conversations regarding how we interact with and perceive digital art.