THE MARIUS CODE
Here is a small photo album from the opening
I went to an exhibition opening yesterday of work by the Norwegian artist Marius Watz. I somehow bumped into Marius in my early days in Oslo and I became impressed by his methods and attitude I guess. He came to work in our faculty in Oslo, a bit complicated in execution since he is a flyer, has been mostly living in Berlin and later in New York. His work is strangely exploratory through digital code – something that is not appreciated in classical art schools where the understanding of art is as something heroic and based on the Beaux Arts tradition. My opinion is that art schools do actually discriminate against people that arrive at art and design through computer skills. Most professors in art schools look for applicants that have the potential to become copies of the professors. A major problem in universities generally that has made various creative explorations and innovations to happen outside the boundaries of academia.
Anyway, Marius has been a member of our faculty for a while and is now more linked to the school next door, AHO that has more focus on digital interactions.
What I liked about the exhibition is the physicalization of the coded work that Marius is doing. The wooden structure bringing promise of new and larger structures generated by code, hopefully ending in maybe even architecture and grander public art works. This is something that some architects have become quite anal about, for example the project by Hadid the Guangzhou Opera House for example. To me actually a rather boring and repetitive architecture that has little to do with people. A kind of a heroic architecture for the sake of architecture.
Marius on the other hand can enjoy the freedom of being an artist working in code and then later bringing forward physical enjoyments. I wish him luck in the future and wait for more stuff, not only on my computer screen but out in the open.
March 12, 2011
Tags: art, DESIGN, digital, oslo Posted in: ART, DESIGN, PONDERINGS
