Rafael Rozendaal

His works

Rafael Rozendaal is a digital artist who primarily uses websites as his medium. His work allows many people to access it, as it remains public even after it is sold.

His websites are very simple, yet also very interactive, as the piece is basically controlled by the viewer. The simplicity of them allows each viewer to be impacted differently. Each piece carries a different emotion. For example, his piece deepblackhole.com is so simple that once you interact with it in a certain way, you can't undo what you've done and refreshing the page does nothing. This leaves the viewer with a sense of finality. Most of his websites deal with interacting in the page that allows the viewer to create and/or destroy.

I feel like he is able to accomplish the goals set by his artwork - to reach the public with his websites and impact them in such a way that makes them realize that the internet is also art, and that with each click we make, we impact it in turn.

Via Rhizome.

Vector Portrait

Revised

Original

Rob Seward - Four Letter Words

Four Letter Words from Rob Seward on Vimeo.

Seward works as an artist and programmer. He holds a master's degree from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and worked with composer Fred Lerdahl creating softwarebased on the Generative Theory of Tonal Music.

Four Letter Words is a robot that displays four letter words that are derived from a word association database. The algorithms used to generate the words take into account rhyme, letter sequencing, and association. The robot tends to display "dark" subject matter, which is influenced by different language and perception studies.

Essentially, the robot could be expanded to display any length of text, but the artist's choice to use only four letters sets a limit on how many words can be displayed. This influences the piece greatly - many of our most raw words are four letters long: love, hate, kill, hurt, etc. The piece also includes many swear words, possibly because of the many associations people make with these words. Overall, the simplicity of the piece is very impactful. The white fluorescent lights on the black background enhance the importance of the words being displayed and the associations with the words may or may not be what we expected, which can both allow us to relate to and feel alienated from other people.

Via Rhizome.