Artist Blog #2

Katriona Beales is a freelance digital artist from London, England. She is not famously known in the industry, but rather a small-scale self employed artist. She manages to stay afloat working with multiple galleries around London through artist educator freelance work as well as commissioned work. I particularly liked her work because of its approach on todays technological world. Karolina explains,    " At the heart of my practice there is tension between fascination and wariness with new technologies… I am intensely excited by the simultaneous nature of display, consumption, and production that these interfaces (types of media) encourage but at he exact same time, I am wary and perhaps even frightened at moments." Beales goes on to say that she does not feel safe knowing that she can be located at any time by the simple GPS facility programmed into her phone. The rapid growth of technology that has been introduced into our everyday lives has conjured recent debate on whether such technologies have been beneficial or harmful? While Katriona believes the pros outweigh the cons, she believes there needs to be an awareness of the ill effects or excess of too much technology in ones life. Most of her artwork deals with this topic and especially the act of viewing such technologies and how our bodies interact with it. Beales most intriguing artworks include "Constant Screen' (2012) and 'Disembodied Gaze' (2013). 

Both of these pieces are 'a reflection on our subjective response to information overload and excess' says Beales. The 'Constant Screen' is specifically a reflection of our interaction with the screen and the viewing experience. The video contains multiple windows playing several differently things. Some show a security cameras recording a certain place while other show eyes peering into those certain places and viewing whats happening. Beales attempts to show that even though technology has the ability to show endless information, (such as a security camera footage from a specific place) the act of viewing this footage has an affect on us physically. The eyes in the video look distracted, and tired almost as if they have been given too much information and cannot process it all. 

Disembodies Gaze  attempts to offer the same type of feeling of reflection and our experience with viewing technology. This piece consists of a single digital photograph which has been manipulated to create hundreds of versions of the same photo. Similar to the way we used text edit to change the text within photos, the image of an eyeball has been manipulated in hundreds of different ways. Alongside a constant loop of these images is an extract describing the act of watching a film in a cinema. Beales work contrast the act of looking at digital technology with the cinematic experience. The detached eye brings attention to the way we experience both digital and filmic world (through the eye). In a unique way it sheds light on how we do this as well as the risk of 'detaching' our eye from technology with too much of it. 

In a way Beales artwork makes her audience step back and take a literal 'look' at what they are doing while working with digital art. In a Brechtian way Beale 'estranges' her audiences and influences them to think outside the box about the process of the art rather than its (face value) or artistry. 

Overall, Beales states, " technological utopias and dystopias exist at once and together ". While she is more pro-technology she doesn't show much bias in her artwork. She understands there are both pro's and con's but allows the viewer to decide what he/she thinks by portraying the way in which we interact with todays technology.