This is my euology for Tyson Tan, which I’m socially obliged to present because I killed him. I took his work and I took every ounce of the artist and smashed him over the head with their combined forces; whatever is left is the raw distillation of whatever it is he was attempting to do with this piece. As asked yesterday, “What is the purpose of art if there is no meaning?” This was answered a few weeks ago. Clearly, it’s meant to look cool. I can’t fault it for trying.
Most thing are without meaning. You can look at a tree and find it very pretty but it won’t tell you of the cold and chaotic nature of the world — that’s on you. It’s therefore an expectation that when we have the opportunity to create life — sorry, the illusion of life — through pretty pictures, we expect them to not just be pretty, but for there to be a meaning in it being pretty. Why does it have wings? It’s a symbol for how society limits us despite having limitless freedom. Why is it on fire? Because it’s pissed. It got kicked out of the anarcho – capitalist club for treading mud on the floor.
I chose this piece because of its very poignant message. Don’t you see it? The message is that I was stuck wondering how in the world I was going to hack this thing without completely disgracing what the artist intended to do with it. Sadly I’m not an anarchist — despite the promise of hot chocolate on Thursdays — so I couldn’t alter the message. I was then stuck on my old fallback as to what the late, great, Tyson Tan, wanted me to do with this piece. I poked my hands with my pen, sat down spread – legged, and gyrated my hips until I heard something that sounds faintly like a Nintendo executive.
“Make it cool,” said He.
“Gucci,” said Me.
What can a man do but listen to his betters?
If Tyson Tan, may the Chaos of the Universe rest his soul, died in service of making something cool, then I must carry on the torch and keep making it cool. It’s a bird on fire. On fire! And it also has dirty feet — what’s this? Four feet? Four feet! Boy, I feel like crying. It’s just… amazing. Four feet… I’m going to tell my grandchildren about this one.
Being completely and utterly unable to match Tyson Tan, May Our Father in Heaven Give Him Respite, at the sheer impact of the thing he had created, I decided rightfully that the only thing to do was to make it cool but in a different way. So I slapped a gold filter on it. I removed a bunch of pixels. I cropped it, but not enough to give those nice, even numbers that I force myself to ignore because I don’t have time to worry about numerology. Did I know what I wanted to do with the piece? Of course not. But at the same time I have this shaky feeling that Tyson Tan, Lordy Lordy Lordy, didn’t either. So that makes me as good as he was a decade ago. I’m okay with that.
The introspective of you will wonder why I chose a piece solely because it looked cool. The answer is because it looks cool. If you disagree that it looks cool, you are scientifically uncool, which I know because I am a scientist. It would be better to ask why the piece exists at all; no matter what artists think, the audience is not obliged to indulge in their work, nor will they do them favours by looking at it. Sometimes the audience is viewing because they like who they are. But almost nobody is doing it to “support” artists. The fact is that an audience comes because indulging in their work is the best option they have at the time. If a work has no reason to exist, then the audience will treat it like it doesn’t. For some people, looking cool is a good enough reason. For me, I’d like to believe there’s some sybolism involved, if only to avoid violating the non – aggression – pact.
Date: 2017–03–30. Size: 3,792 bytes. Colours: 5.
Upscaled Dimensions: 489×618. Original Dimensions: 163×206.