Blurring digital interactive media and fine arts

Digital Surrogates brings together four artists from across the globe who blur the line between digital interactive media and the fine arts. The show will feature five large digital portraits from a series entitled “13 Most Beautiful Avatars” by Eva and Franco Mattes, alongside paintings by Bronwyn Miller and photographs by Pippa Stalker.

Together these works translate into an analysis of self, public perception and possibility.

Eva and Franco Mattes, also known in techie circles as 0100101110101101.org, are internationally recognised as supreme interventionists. Most of their projects involve different forms of media hacking and bogus culture trafficking. In one instance the duo temporarily hijacked the Nike logo for a public installation in Vienna. In another, they created an entirely fictional artist, only to murder him once he was sufficiently famous.

Here, they have made a series of dramatic portraits of avatars created on Second Life with New York printmaker Jean-Yves Noblet. Second Life is a 3D virtual world in which one can build an alter ego or avatar to meet with others, be entertained, buy land and even trade real-life products. Miller will be showing paintings of a new avatar, created in preparation for the show with a photographic, animated portrait of her ideal self. Through her examination of the subversive nature of art games, Stalker has created a photographic body of work documenting the hundreds of characters she has killed online.

The event opens at David Krut Projects, 142 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood, Johannesburg, on 11 October 2007 at 6pm.

For more information, go to www.davidkrutpublishing.com/dkp/latest/2007/09/digital-surr/ and www.0100101110101101.org/home/portraits/index.html.