Artist Category Week 1: Brandon

B R A N D O N, Shu Lea Cheang, 1998

Shu Lea Cheang's 1998 New Media Art project, entitled Brandon, first grasped my interest for it's purely visual qualities. The presentation is in collage format, featuring a number of disconnected images that work together to form a narrative. The structure is similar to that of early Dada work, combining explicit, mass produced, and anonymous imagery with snippets of text in order to garner an immediate reaction from the viewer. The effect is that the viewer plays an active part in trying to piece together the story and message being displayed through their own cultural lens.

The content of the website also features a subject that finds a fitting place in New Media Art. Brandon's story is one that has received national attention, and has been featured in a major motion picture, but the very nature of sexual deviation is private and intimate. The website provides a personal space for each viewer to individually interact with Brandon's story. This particular format for displaying a singular person's story also speaks of the ability of New Media Art to create intricate personas that can be based entirely on reality, or not at all, but still feel real. Recently, the internet has been utilized as as a new form of promotion through viral marketing campaigns. These advertisements are presented through websites that imitate reality in order to draw potential customers into the products, namely films, as if they were part of the story. The Brandon website is similar to this because we are allowed a glimpse into the life of a person, who may or may not be what is represented on the site, but we are able to feel as if we know them and are able to participate in their story by creating our unique visual collage through the use of rollovers.

The particular form of New Media Art employed by Shu Lea Cheang in the Brandon website is at once visually stimulating, but it also allows for a participatory aspect that engages viewers more fully with the message she is trying to convey. The images used might seem vulgar to certain viewers, but like Dada artwork the point is to elicit a reaction from viewers that will cause them to engage with the subject even if it is not something they personally identify with. The random and chaotic formation of the images also reflects the senselessness of the violence that is part of Brandon's story and how very raw the whole situation remains. The internet has created a venue for complete anonymity and detachment from human interaction, but because of this it frees users, and artists, to devolop much more intimate connections.

The splash page of the website, with its transforming graphic, gives a brief clue into the nature of Brandon's story, while the collage provides a different perspective on the story. I am drawn to this format for presenting a work online because it allows each piece to be detached and stand alone as a work of art, but also function as links between the pieces of a much broader narrative.