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The Fabrication of Art and Beyond: Making and Inventing in Digital Culture |
David Oppenheim (Artist, Tel-Aviv, Israel)
From Objector to DEVICE
DAY-DREAM.com was launched in 1995, the site was a home for interactive exploration, mainly mine but also open for other contributors, one of the regular sections of day-dream was titled Objector, this section acted as toy, the user moved & played freely with these ambiguous pieces not knowing where she might end up. This section took over the entire site experience and after a while day-dream became objector. The DAY-DREAM.cdr followed this mindset & even the pieces of its collaborators kept this attitude, using this medium the pieces had to be non-linear & interactive and at the same time far from clear as to their purpose or predicted action promoting non-practical affordances.
After releasing day-dream’s twentieth issue my interactive work has moved into the physical domain. DEVICE project made its first appearance in day-dream 019 [circa 2000] as the only non-interactive issue presenting a metal housing, DEVICE has developed in many forms of electronic circuits, running code, spinning motors, blinking LEDs & beeping buzzers, some created as one offs & others as short-run productions.
The deception that took shape in a malfunctioning download window in day-dream is transformed in the way device objects respond to the viewer & in their appearance, knowing the previous origin of the used ready-made, seeing the un-professional craftsmanship & the combination of these with digital / electronic circuits that respond in a non-predictable system leave the viewer confused.
At a glance one can determine the origins of a specific ready-made, this is not a new invention, but at the same time the resemblance to a cinematic bomb & the unpredictable nature of the programed circuits keeps the viewer puzzled - maybe as a work of art it is an invention.
Biography:
David Oppenheim is an artist / musician living and working in Tel-Aviv. He studied graphic design, video and animation at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem, Graduated summa cum laude, 1992.
He moved to New York where he got involved in experimental net art and created commissioned web-installations as well as developing Day-Dream.com, an ongoing experimental web project that was formatted as a zine containing abstract & unconventional interactive pieces. This project was added to the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art San Francisco.
He moved back to Israel in 2001, continued with the DEVICE project, shown in group & solo exhibitions, and was commissioned by the Victoria & Albert museum, London, to create a piece for an exhibit at the Holon Design Museum, 2011. Around the same time he was selected for the Mamuta artist-residency program & won the artist encouragement prize from the Ministry of Culture, in 2014 he completed his Master of fine art at the Haifa University with honors.
He is also an active musician, he has composed electronic music for interactive, dance, theatre, video & film, and has been constantly playing live with a number of projects that released over 15 full length albums. His record label Heart & Crossbone [HCBrecords.com] has published over 50 titles. He currently teaches at the Bezalel Academy of Art & Design, Jerusalem, Holon Institute of Technology, and Wizo College of Art, Haifa.