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Nick Gentry's Floppy Disk Art

by Matthew Zuras on January 28, 2010 at 08:45 AM

Central St. Martins grad Nick Gentry appropriates obsolete tech materials -- like floppy disks and VHS tape -- as the media for his paintings. As the world moves further away from these kinds of storage devices, Gentry suggests, we lose touch with the terrestrial. His work is nostalgic for a time when objects were less disposable, before "human existence [was] governed by billions of invisible data files," as he writes on his site.

There are some flaws in Gentry's argument. While the Internet is popularly conceived as a free-floating entity without boundaries, it is in fact confined to the countless servers that hold its data, and the devices between which that data flows. We are not drifting away from physical objects; we have simply invented ways to put more information into smaller spaces. The codex gave way to the scroll, and the scroll gave way to the book, and so on. Each iteration has simply expanded the storage potential of its precursor, but we have not yet devised a way to put information in the ether.

Gentry's work, we'd say, is best digested as an archeological combine, of sorts. His media should not be lamented, then, but regarded as the skeletal remains of recent history. We do love his paintings' aesthetic, which reminds us of artist/porn star Zak Smith. (We just think he needs to rework his artist statement.) Neat stuff! [From: Neatorama]

Tags: art, central st. martins, CentralSt.Martins, floppy disk, FloppyDisk, nick gentry, NickGentry, vhs, zak smith, ZakSmith

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