Art.CHI 2017

Interactive Media Works

A CHI2017 Exhibition

Artist Pointer

Artist Pointer is a kinetic sculpture with a hand constantly pointing at me. The sculpture contains an Arduino which connects to Dropbox, where an App running on my phone constantly saves my GPS position data. Hence, the index finger of the sculpture will constantly be adjusted using two servo motors to point at me through a direct targeting vector

Artist Pointer is critically questioning the role of the artist in a process of exhibiting digital art, no matter if being a piece of software or if the work became physical through digital manufacturing, like 3D printing, 3D milling or laser-cutting.

Artist Pointer, like any digital art, has a digital DNA, no matter if it exists as software only or if it becomes physical in an exhibition through digital manufacturing. Therefore, digital art can be downloaded and exhibited everywhere and by everybody who has internet access and theoretically even without the artist's involvement. That enables to easily clone the work without referring to its creator. This is fundamentally different to analogue art, where usually an autograph is indicating the creator of an art work.

With Artist Pointer I am questioning the artist's visibility in digital arts.

Artist Pointer is a location sensitive replacement of the artist's autograph as it will – whereever the exhibition is and I (the artist) am – always point at me.

Katrin Wolf
Professor for Media Informatics, Hamburg University of Applied Science