Leaving Digital
Link: https://preneo.org/nwylde/leavingdigital/
Artists: Nanette Wylde
Description: Leaving Digital is an animated, browser-based project which reconsiders Nicholas Negroponte’s seminal, and visionary, 1995 book, Being Digital, almost 30 years after its initial publication. The text in this work was extracted from a physical copy of the book, Being Digital. Each section of text is from a single page. All pages were sampled. The text is presented in sequence. This project is in both English and binary code.
Artist Statement: I like stories. I like stories that engage me, teach me, and show me perspectives different than my own. Stories can teach us about different worlds and have an incredible power to develop empathy and awareness in listeners/readers. Good stories illuminate flaws in my own beliefs, inform me of sanctioned "facts" that in truth are not true; and bring light to accepted societal practices that are ignorant or unjust. The gift of a good story is the brief interlude it allows me to understand how another person thinks or perceives the world around them.
My work often starts with a story, a question, an observation, or an experience. Some unanswered phenomenon will go nagging around my gray matter, repeating itself in hushed, slightly obsessive tones until I satisfy with research‚ and then a response. While it is the research that points me to answers, it is the actual making of the work, completing the project that satisfies the question.
Leaving Digital began with a physical copy of the book which I was reviewing as I prepared to leave a digital media teaching position. I proceeded slowly, methodically, over several years time, considering with each page how much digital technologies have changed our world since Negroponte wrote the text.
My interests include: language, personality, difference, beliefs, systems, ideas, movement, reflection, identity, perceptions, structures, stories, socialization, definitions, context, memory, experience, the natural world, change, and residue.
Bio: Nanette Wylde is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and cultural worker making environmental and socially reflective works using a variety of hybrid media. Wylde has a BA in Behavioral Science from San José State University. Her MFA is in Interactive Multimedia and Printmaking from Ohio State University. She is Professor Emeritus of Art and Art History at California State University, Chico. Her artists' books, prints, and electronic works are included in significant international collections. Wylde’s interests include: language, personality, difference, beliefs, systems, ideas, movement, reflection, identity, perceptions, structures, stories, socialization, definitions, context, memory, experience, the natural world, change, and residue.
