New Art: Nick Gentry Battles Technology

Author: Faith-Ann Young
Posted on: Monday February 1, 2010 at 12:00 PM
Filed under: art, nick gentry, british, floppy disks

Have you ever thought how slowly, the infinite source of information within Google, Wikipedia, Twitter and our immediate necessity to filter it fast is affecting our collective memory?

Don't know about you but depending on the day, it can be hard for some to remember what yesterday's breakfast was.

Which is why the art of Nick Gentry is intriguing.

His peices explore "how technological advancement is affecting society. Important documents, favourite songs, videos and more were stored on mountains of tapes, polaroids, cassettes and disks. As media is rapidly absorbed into the World Wide Web the rich variety of formats of the past are becoming obsolete."

His reaction?

He draws feverishly on old disks - you know - those pesky old floppy disks that used to eat up all your term papers? (Ok maybe we are revealing our age with that revelation.)

"Each floppy disk used in the paintings has a history and story of its own. It represents the increasing pace of the modern life cycle, where objects are created, used and disposed of quicker than ever."

To challenge this notion, as these personal artefacts of life are cast aside, the obsolete are now given new life and a renewed purpose by using them as a medium for art." (Via LOUDreams)

Like the creative cassette art we featured a while ago, this is a way of rejuvenating lost and abandoned technology forces us to remember how far we've come so fast (and to cherish the good old days pre-Goggle, Twitter, etc, when our brains may have actually worked a bit more savvily on their own...)

Do you agree? Do you like his work?

Nick Gentry's Website