Artist Post: Raphael Rosendaal

I first became interested in Raphael Rosendaal’s work when I came upon his piece jello time several weeks ago. I think jello time struck me because it was unlike anything I had seen before. He took jello, a simple and fairly commonplace object, and made it so we can interact with it in a new way. Jello time is visually appealing, featuring bold colors and smooth lines. The viewer is able to interact with the jello and make it move with his/her mouse. There is also sound that accompanies the movement. If you were to giggle a plate of jello in real life there would be little to no sound, but Rosendaal created his own sound to represent the movement of jello. Being able to interact with the piece made jello time especially interesting for me. I think it is the ability to interact with the jello that keeps me coming back to his this site. This site also has a comical element to it, or a sort of randomness. It makes me wonder how and why he chose jello. Somehow it just works.

A major theme of Rosendaal’s work is timelessness. For example, in his piece paper toilet, the roll can be continuously unraveled and is also simultaneously refilled. In big long now, doors can be forever opened and closed.

The websites created by Rosendaal represent a new phase in art that has become possible by technology and the internet. His art expands beyond standing in a museum and looking at a painting on a wall. The viewer can experience his work through his/her own computer screen, phone, iPad, etc. These screens are his canvas and he does a lot of unique things with this space.

Blog Commentary http://idyrself.com

Krystal South’s blog Identify Yourself was an interesting read. She covers a wide range of topics concerning the Internet, but the part I found most interesting was her description of the creation of our “internet selves.” She describes how the Internet is not only a part of our human identities, but also allows us to make new identities that live in the space online.

When I read her description of internet selves, I began to think about how our current generation spends an enormous amount of time creating virtual selves via social media. “We feel phantom vibrations in our pockets or as we drift off to sleep at night. We hear an alert and we all check our devices to see who got the message. The sounds are ubiquitous and we allow them to interrupt our most private moments. We are always connected, always listening, always watching for the next piece of feedback that brings us back into the loop of our virtual selves.” This quote perfectly describes how our generation is constantly tuned in to social media. But by being attached to our phones and computers we are linking ourselves with our internet selves. We depend on this constant connection with the internet to control how our internet selves interact with everyone else. Our human and internet selves are very distinct but also linked. It is almost as if our internet and real selves are in competition: our internet selves invade our real selves with constant notifications and updates, but our real life commitments keep us from our internet selves.

In a way, our internet selves have a life of their own.  South writes, “we project our Internet presence outward, with no specific relationship to the activity we are physically engaged in.” As we go about our days, our internet selves continue to interact with the rest of the internet and are available for anyone else online to see. In a sense, there is no longer a separation between our real lives and life online, they are both alive and constantly interacting with each other.