Can you tell which is the real Scott Snibbe? Click on the image for the answer.
We frequently read about artists exploring the ‘intersection’ of art and technology, but Scott Snibbe realizes this concept more literally than most. Trained in computer programming and fine art at Brown University, Snibbe makes use of both skill sets by producing interactive digital programming for commercial as well as fine art applications. According to his company’s website, Snibbe Interactive has undertaken installations in more than twenty countries, which makes for a good start on his goal of developing his work product as a ‘worldwide communication medium’. Most of his portfolio derives from orchestrating the human body to come into contact with a digital sensing apparatus, which then translates the encounter into visual form for others to see.
Modular art, as we untiringly remind everyone, is by its nature an interactive and co-creative type of art, since it necessitates a collaboration between originating artist and collector, spectator or designer to achieve form (a cluster of connected modules) out of formlessness (a pile of disconnected modules). It can also be described as a generative medium, because each module has been designed by an artist to automatically generate a coherent whole when the modules are joined to each other.
Snibbe’s drawing apps for the iphone and ipad can also be described as generative insofar as their internal computer codings automatically produce a coherent visual form when a finger or other suitably shaped body part is dragged across the touchscreen. As with modular art, Snibbe the digital artist takes the process only up to a point, and then leaves it to others to consummate the work.
There are several aspects of Snibbe’s portfolio we find appealing. First, unlike some of the more purely abstract and digitized forms of generative art, Snibbe’s apps require the intervention of the human hand (literally) to produce the work, which connects them to the manual tradition of historical art. Second, like modular systems, there are no limits in the number of formal permutations that can grow out of the coding, which makes them highly economical in every sense of the term. And third, we find the idea of using a mass-produced object (the phone or tablet) to make contemporary art an exemplar of the democratizing capabilities of the digital era, and an encouraging sign of things to come.
References:
Snibbe Interactive
Snibbe the Artist
