[spectre] new media art input

[{ brad brace }]

you are numbered
you are product
you are doomed

PROXY Gallery
http://cart.iabrace.com
http://bit.ly/proxygallery

now showing: Profile Portraits (the asia-other collection)
build your own exhibition + catalogue
now accepting commissions for encaustic profile paintings on 12x12" panels, any
subject!

PROXY GALLERY (now showing: the asia-other collection): Select and assemble your own 
custom art exhibition with catalogue! Ultra hi-res art files, suitable for 
printing, are delivered in one custom pdf/ebook. Thousands of enlarged (custom, 
patented algorithms) and enhanced photographs (now, likely several hundred 
thousands, soon over a million,) mostly low-res cellphone, web-cam, and low-end 
digital camera self-portraits (self-packaging), culled from dating/social 
websites -- as you might expect, there is some explicit content (more than is 
permitted here unfortunately: you really should see them all, but it probably 
makes little difference) -- fascinating and occasionally disturbing. I've decided 
to also add a set of painting-filters -- this was good, as it enabled a 
'recovery' of many more worthwhile images, and also clouded any possible 
erogenous/irregular corporate claims, but the project now extends beyond my 
life-span. I could easily make small paintings from these images but who support 
that activity? Let's see: commissioned portrait paintings, I'm thinking 12" 
square encaustic on panels, from your choice of subject are available for 
$15,000US. It's interesting to find the balance/inertia point between the look of 
photo and painting, and it speaks to the current social/heroic condition! Often 
it makes faces look squinty so it's necessary to 'bring-back' facial aspects. The 
display images on this site are but quick approximations of the larger art files 
which simply don't scale -- kinda like paint on canvas. Another advantage of the 
painting filters is that they drastically reduce the file sizes and make it 
well-nigh impossible for someone to covertly res-up these display images for 
printing. It's quite incredible to realize that many of these pictures were only 
3-4K or so when I started to work on them. You may realize that this is not the 
first time I've collected anonymous found-public imagery: notably dumpster-diving 
(bicycling with backpack at midnight,) at photofinishers' in the 70's. And of 
course, there's the "Insatiable Abstraction Engine" -- collections from 
newsgroups. [http://bbrace.net/insatiable-abstraction.html] But come to think it, 
nearly all my work involves repeated multiples or collections of imagery. My new 
friends. Whenever possible I retained any color casts, cropping and lighting. The 
portraits are actually very considered, sometimes selections made/altered merely 
to obscure the identity that they wished to presumably portray initially. 
Sunglasses are a popular ruse, as are close-ups of cleavage, butts, tattoos, feet 
and groins. (Curiously, I've yet to see a picture of hands... ok, now I have: 
some intricate fingernails and the love/hate finger-tats.) Many 
feature-obilerating camera-flash-portraits in the bathroom mirror. Many of 
course, occur in and around motorized vehicles. Only one (so far) in a grocery 
store. And some, but surprisingly few, are filched from somewhere online, but 
this must be a risky choice in the event of an 'actual encounter.' How much 
introductory information/description do you want to put out there to begin with? 
There are some very creative, even artful, solutions to this dilemma. Various 
select groups of portraits are included in each PDF 500-page ebook/catalogue for 
$250 (sorry about the price but it was a hellish amount of work and I guarantee 
you won't be disappointed or YMB), and can be ordered directly. The images 
contain sufficient resolution to print them out on letter-size/A4 paper (or 
coffee-mugs, keychains, magnets, photo-stamps, cards, calendars, tea-towels...), 
for an instant exhibition. Use my verified Paypal account to have the DVD 
delivered at no charge: [bbrace at eskimo.com; 
http://bradbrace.net/buy-into.html] Or, even better, assemble your own 
catalogue/exhibition at the Proxy Gallery storefront [http://cart.iabrace.com/]. 
Art files are only $1 each. My new friends. Having been recently kicked-off 
Facebook (there was an anonymous report of a depicted nipple!), and losing 5,000 
appreciative friends - it was the perfect place to host a social-media 
profile-portrait-collection, I've decided to also open an online storefront where 
individual high-res files will sell for only $1/each. [http://cart.iabrace.com] 
How hypocritical to object to profile pictures that were on FB to begin with; but 
it's fun to now position coloured boxes and bars over n¥pples, c¥nts and c¥cks. How
idiotic is that? The prints of course required different custom algorithms
and some masterful retouching -- they look great! Technically given the
incredibly diverse range of imagery it was difficult to make them all
equally legible; despite a variety of intricate processing directives, the
scripts would inevitably crash or be unable to render a decent image. These
were handled individually as were the painting-filters. If I receive a
reasonable number of orders, I'll offer additional states of the union or
countries... but California had to be the place to begin. Sure to be a
collectors' (socio-anthropologists') item! An amazing and compelling,
collective portrait! The interspersed military/gangster imagery (or maybe
something else), also introduces a new spin on the hopes for this already
tenuous social-media culture. I've had to organize/sub-divide these in some
fashion, so by state/country seems to be the prevailing approach. And given
how often workers are compelled to move around, there's more of a local
difference in cultural self-perception, body language, and social-sexual
proclivity than you might expect. It really is a perhaps overlooked
(overly-present), socially significant era when a massive proportion of the
population is able to individually exorcise their self-imagery instead of
being routinely dependent on existing systematized systems of portraiture
and presentation -- which is not to say that it's entirely free from
stylistic-cultural-corporate constraints and codification (and why, for now
at least, I left the imagery in a nearly random arrangement), but the
individual, probably for the first time ever, is seen freely negotiating a
shifting porous skein of varied reception... well, something like that...


PROXY Gallery
http://cart.iabrace.com
http://bit.ly/proxygallery

now showing: Profile Portraits (the asia-other collection)
build your own exhibition + catalogue
now accepting commissions for encaustic profile paintings on 12x12" panels, any 
subject!

/:b