丹‧诺顿

丹.诺顿1968年生于英国北部列斯,就读于格拉斯哥艺术学院,后在邓迪大学攻读数码影像。现于苏格兰格拉斯哥生活及工作。

诺顿不但在现实环境中展出作品,同时也在网络上利用虚拟工具创作装置艺术及即场演出。诺顿的数码动画需要观众积极参与,而不仅仅是想象。像作品《Ablab》本可以独立运作,但当观众拿起鼠标,与之产生互动时作品才更见完整。《Ablab》是英文Abstract Labyrinth(抽象迷宫)的缩写,意即多层次的内涵被渐次发掘,并层迭起来。作品含义不定,只能在观众心中创造,且每次效果都不一样。《Ablab》最纯粹的形式存在于网络中,艺术家可以不断更新数据。这个作品强调了数码世界数据的广泛流通,即容许多样化观点的存在。

《Ablab》的第三种存在形式是表演。诺顿利用自己设计的控制面板操控作品,并引入另一组变量,就是艺术家自己对作品内容、场地和观众的主观反应。《Ablab》的变形特质,超越了早前有关艺术走出画廊和进入公共空间的讨论。数码技术让作品的体验不受地方限制,由格拉斯哥夜店到孟买市中心的网吧,甚至你睡房中的手提电脑都可以展现作品。旧有的价值观已经被搁置,因为每位观赏者都能体验免费送递的原作。

诺顿的演出和展览包括︰英国波罗的当代艺术中心(盖茨黑德,2004);威尼斯双年展(2003);当代艺术学院(伦敦,2002)。

Dan Norton

Dan Norton was born in Leeds, in the north of England in 1968. He attended Glasgow School of Art before going on to study Digital Imaging at Dundee University. He lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland.

Norton exhibits his work both on and offline, creating installations and live performances using virtual tools. His use of digital animation demands an active rather than simply imaginative engagement from the viewer. Although a work like Ablab can play happily on its own, it really only comes into being when the viewer takes up the mouse and begins to interact. The title is a contraction of “abstract labyrinth”, referring to the multiple layers of content which can be progressively explored and layered over one another. Meaning is here entirely unstable and can be created only in the mind of the viewer, different each time he or she engages with the work. Ablab exists in perhaps its purest form as a web-based work which the artist is constantly updating. This is a work which foregrounds the flux of data in the digital realm and allows for a democratic multiplicity of viewpoints.

A third state in which Ablab exists is as performance. Using a console designed by himself, the artist operates the work, thereby introducing another set of variables in the form of his own subjective responses to the content of the work, the place and to the audience itself. Ablab's very shape-shifting quality situates it beyond earlier debates concerning art taken out of the gallery and into the public realm. Digital technology allows for a work to be experienced almost anywhere – from a club in Glasgow to an internet café in downtown Bombay, to the laptop in your bedroom. Old parameters of value are neatly sidestepped since everyone viewing the work is experiencing the original, which is free at the point of delivery.

Norton’s performance and exhibitions include presentations for BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, 2004; Venice Biennale, 2003; Institute of Contemporary Art, London, 2002.