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Roya Jakoby
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Rise + Shine

Rise + Shine also has an alternate title: Parvaneh. The cultural significance behind this other title is more crucial compared to the “nice” title of Rise + Shine. Parvaneh means ‘butterfly’ in Persian/Farsi – the butterfly symbolizing the free spirit in Persian poetry. Jakoby’s stress upon this free spirited notion is successful through the expression of movement by her images that are always in flux, moving randomly in and out of the computer screen. The abstract form is not easily recognizable to a butterfly’s but this does not really take away its free spirited-ness. Nevertheless the fact not many people are familiar with Persian words, ‘parvaneh’ will not completely convey the free spirited-ness; thus the meaning of the art is culturally chained to those who understand its alternative meaning, while other viewers are left to visually interact with the image movements.
The images are themselves digitization of flowers and other natural materials, as Jakoby has supplied in the interview. In the Islamic culture (which includes Persia, India, Iran, etc.) flowers are connected to the notion of Paradise, also known as the divine garden in the Quran, their holy text. With these flowery images, Jakoby does not intend to bring up issues of “typical western stereotypes of feminine imagery”* but instead to communicate a sense of visual poetry “using minimal means to convey the most meaning.”* It is obvious from Jakoby’s manipulation of the images that she seeks to apply minimal means by using simple outlined forms and repeating them (so that they will seem familiar after awhile) to reduce visual clutter-ness. However, since the Net art is situated on a web space called girlfish, feminist implications has potentially been set in motion; the audience could assume that Jakoby’s aim was to comment on feminine issues especially with the delicate shapes of her images.

Now if we backtrack a little to Jakoby’s aim to express her personal interest in the Islamic culture, she asserts that because the images have been broken down into simple pixels, these pixels remind her of the Islamic tiling patterns (http link:). How so? Well since Islamic tiling patterns carry a reminiscence of the mathematical and geometric processes behind their creation, it is linked to the fact that Rise + Shine is a “totally computer generated”* art piece – computers, of course, driven by mathematics and therefore its creations derive from it. Despite Jakoby’s claims, it is difficult to distinguish these “pixilations” from mere design patterns that one might assume the artist has used; that is, because of the smoothness of the edges, these images do not immediately scream pixilated. This is because through our experiences with paint/picture programs, the average computer user would have a preconceived understanding that pixilated images are extremely blocky and rigid.

On a broader outlook, with Jakoby’s multi-cultural background and upbringing, she has been exposed to many notions about different cultures. She believes that “the way we perceive art is something that is definitely shaped by our culture,”* which echoes true in her art from the way she has allowed viewers to be separated between the ones who understand the meaning of the title Parvaneh and those who do not. Jakoby also believes that her Net art has “a lot to do with cultural identity and branding”* by firmly displaying only images; and this illustrates her belief that the Islamic culture should not be “branded as ‘anti-image,’ but [the culture] is in fact just more conscious about the use of images.”* On the other hand, because Jakoby feels that “our cultures are all very closely related to each other,”* it does not truly matter what cultural upbringing one has had; in the end we view art in a similar fashion/ideology thereby making an allusion to the existence of a global culture whose growth has been aided by the nature of the Internet.

Rise + Shine also works as a global contemporary piece because according to Jakoby, it was conceived shortly after 9/11, hinting its response to the events of and following that day. Especially now with the world bombarded with all sorts of commentaries and opinions about the current situation in the Middle East, we find ourselves swamped with information and needing to take a step back to view the situation more simplistically. Because of the nature of Net art, the digital typography of Rise + Shine has both strengthened and weakened the way it can be viewed on a global scale. Viewers who find themselves immediately reminiscing the Islamic motifs and memories of wanting simplistic ideas without subjective commentaries, will map out a sort of new “community” of people with similar ideologies unrestrained by their physical locations on the globe. However Rise + Shine’s image-only structure can also lead to frustrations in understanding the piece during times of peace and the reversion to more quiet times when the global society does not have much weighing on their minds.

In conclusion to the interview, Jakoby proposes that her next project with girlfish.net is to project some of the pieces on huge screens in a “real space context,”* not truly removing them from the Internet (which she believes has already helped reach a wide range of people because of its “free, open access”* nature); but perhaps to install some sort of significance onto an already existing community.

 

Footnotes:
1http://www.vpl.vancouver.bc.ca/branches/LibrarySquare/
bus/newmediawhat.html

* Quotes taken from the interview with Roya Jakoby

Written by: Lian Choo

 
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Site: http://www.girlfish.net/