Jiayi Young Artist Talk Reflection

One aspect I noticed throughout most of Jiayi's pieces is a sense of tangibility. I didn't make this realization until the end of her artist talk. After she went over all of her works, I saw that each of them (or at least most of them to some degree) had a connection to something physical. Obviously, at an art exhibition, there are going to be physical pieces (paintings, photographs, prints, etc), which is why I didn't think anything about this at first. But what I thought was so special about Jiayi's pieces is that a lot of them have to do with concepts that aren't tangible; they are centered around being digital.

A lot of the concepts for her pieces came from websites or the internet. For example, the one with the liquid and the clicking sounds. That one was about the usage of specific Twitter hashtags. Which is very relevant in a lot of people's lives, but it is completely centered around our phones or other technologies. I believe Jiayi said that with the help of others, she created a program that accounts for each time one of the hashtags is used. Instead of displaying the program, she decided to create a material device that represents what this program does. I feel like actually having something in the real world allows the audience to connect with the piece in different ways.

Another part of the installation that I found really interesting, but also fairly simple, was the line of photographs on the wall (in the image above). I just thought it was cool to see her camera roll and get a sense of her timeline, and also the notes around them were fun to read. What really stood out to me about this piece was the fact that these were just printed out screenshots from her phone. She easily could have just had a monitor and a slideshow of the pictures. This is another example of her taking something digital and turning it into something physical. It is very similar to all the graphs that she printed out. Seeing those graphs/pictures on a phone/computer would be a whole different experience. 

Jiayi's artistic abilities allow her to take all these different digital concepts and turn them into pieces of art. She creates a different context for all of her art, which is very important when viewing art. Everyone already views it differently, but changing the setting it is viewed can also change how people react to it. You could have the same image in a museum and in a store. There would probably be a stark contrast in what people think of the image based on where they saw it. Also, the fact that I was seeing Jiayi's work at an artist talk probably made me view it differently than if I were to go and walk through the gallery by myself. Overall, the context surrounding art is very important, and Jiayi did a very good job of manipulating the context to how she saw fit.