What is Andyland? Where is Andyland?
These two fundamental questions have interesting answers for the curious. Andyland, as the name suggests, is a place. The drawings are minimalist surrealist landscapes. They represent a virtual world, Andyland, and also contain virtual worlds. Encompassing a key feature of 20th century media art, one of the main figures in the landscape is the landscape television. The rounded rectangle suggests television, historicized by contemporary screen based culture. A generational link exists between vintage network television and Internet-based media. In the age of YouTube, the cathode ray tube (CRT) can certainly seem anachronistic. But it contains the pre-history of virtual culture and foreshadows exciting developments in new media arts. Video art by artists such as Nam June Paik and Ant Farm used the cathode ray tube as both sculpture and subject. Reduced to iconic logos status, the television in Andyland is the delivery mechanism for contemporary world culture, to wit, a virtual world. The television as landscape recalls specific media art histories: the 1950s early television history, 1970s video art history, 1990s cable television culture and the promise of video on the PC (CRT) desktop. With the backdrop of popular computing, screen based culture has become increasingly interactive, as evidenced by popular culture (gaming), global internet culture, and virtual worlds. Television as video and Internet hybrid has become increasingly dialogic. Virtual worlds have an embedded dialogic. Andyland televisions become part of the logos of virtual worlds, and exist in a virtual world.
Network Art and Social Media | Media Archaeology and Cultural Studies | Postal History and Intermedia | Virtual Worlds and Media Theory
