1. Biography
    Early Life and Work 

2. Selected Work
    Performances  BlogMixes  Data Formalism  Image & Text 

3. Notable Exhibitions, Presentations, and Performances
    C.A.N. PEOPLE (2013)  Drips, Zips, and Beams (2014)  Columns. (2014) 

4. Notable Concepts and Theories

5. References

6. Justin Lincoln

Justin Lincoln is a new media artist focused primarily on code and social media impacts on society. He has been an active artist from the early 2000’s onward. Currently, he is a professor at Whitman College as well as the art department chair.^[1]

Biography

Early Life and Work

He acquired his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and his MFA from CalArts. He has been an Artist in Residence at the Experimental Television Center, Squeaky Wheel, and Columbus University. ^[2] Most of his work here was centered around performance. He describes himself as having formalist or structuralist tendencies, shown particularly in his series using gifs to make the viewer reflect upon how they take in of a series of images. (cite here) Justin experiments with appropriation in manipulating code to form his own unique images. He also creates Blogmixes, a form of montage derived from things on the internet (particularly his tumblr blog). His works reflect a heavy influence of the internet, both directly on the works and in how the audience views them. He is interested in audience interaction with his pieces because a lot of them are similar to the way in which the audience would interact with a typical social media post.

Selected Work

Performances

Lincoln’s performance art is primarily prevalent in his earlier work. Performance is what he was interested in while studying at both Virginia Commonwealth University and CalArts. In most of these pieces, the frame is zoomed on his head so you can only see from his neck up. In his earlier videos, he places himself here in front of the camera and delivers a monologue that is soaked in self-reflection. His later performance pieces use props like iPhones and CD’s and are much more experimental in their editing, unlike his straight forward earlier pieces.^[3]

BlogMixes

Justin Lincoln has a heavy presence on the internet, particularly on the social media platform, tumblr (cite here?) On this website, each person running a blog has an option to like posts that they see. Lincoln’s BlogMixes take content directly from the posts that he has liked on tumblr and create a montage of them. These are meant to parallel a 1970’s movie montage to add conceptual context for the viewer.^[4] His platform for sharing his work is a big part of the actual work, blurring and redefining the lines for audience participation. These images are fed through code processing software to create the new versions that are far enough from reality to be different yet are still recognizable.

Data Formalism

This is a series of gifs in which Lincoln explores a mindset in which all images that we see are data. He creates these using programming language processing software. In these gifs, images change rapidly on the screen in a constant loop. In some of the gifs, you can make out actual images while in others, colored lines flash on the screen with the need for seizure warnings and some fall anywhere between the two.^[5]

Image & Text

The still imagery that Lincoln creates comes from breaking down code and then fixing it to produce his own unique series of images. This page is like a virtual sketchbook that he has created.^[6] His project with text is ongoing. It’s a series of black text on a white background and the text deals with theories that are derived from Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies and Marshall McLuhan’s work. These are short, conceptual sentences that are relatively abstract. ^[7]

Notable Exhibitions, Presentations, and Performances

Lincoln has been in exhibitions and shows throughout the country for over a decade.^[8]

C.A.N. PEOPLE (2013)

This is a digital piece that is part of Lincoln’s BlogMixes series. To watch the entire piece, follow this link.^[9] In this piece, the screen is divided in two. On the left half, images are flickering through quickly, all derived from the posts he has liked on tumblr. On the right half, the screen is white with large red text flickering through a series of words, such as ‘bite’, ‘kick’, ‘wash’, ‘love’, ‘sit, etc. The audio placed overtop is a monologue that Lincoln is performing, detailing his fragmented processes in reading that transfer over to internet use and his daily life. ^[10]

Drips, Zips, and Beams (2014)

This piece was a part of the FILE Digital Languages Festival in Brazil and is a part of his data formalism exploration.^[11] This is a silent video with strands of warm colors moving through the screen. The colors and video are derived from a picture of the sunset. They move left to right in the screen in the calming way that a sunset would move. It is meant to be projected in a large format, engulfing the viewer even more into the experience. ^[12]

Columns. (2014)

This piece was featured in the Fonland Digital Arts Festival in Portugal and is part of his BlogMix series. It displays five columns of different images derived from Lincoln’s blog on tumblr. These images are just snippets of his screen and it is difficult to make anything out entirely because the images are changing rapidly in each column. These quickly moving shreds of the internet have a swooshing sound laid over them that makes the piece seem as if it is moving to a rhythm.^[13]

Notable Concepts and Theories

Justin Lincoln is primarily interested in the internet with his artwork. A lot of his work is either posted on the social media platform, tumblr, or is derived from it. In the images he creates through openprocessing.org, themes of form, value and process are being explored through the destruction and reconstruction of code. The images showcased on his website are a series of three for each piece, showing his process in breaking down the code to reform these images.

In his BlogMixes, Linclon is focusing on ideas of social media interaction and how they affect us as the audience. These rapid flickers on the screen showing a compilation of things he has ‘liked’ on tumblr are meant to parallel a 70’s montage. ^[4] In both these things, the story or context has been removed and you’re left with only images. Now it’s up for audience interpretation. In some of these BlogMixes, there is audio laid overtop that gives the audience more emotional context, but some are silent. The pictures are, for the most part, placed on the screen in way in which you can’t read or decipher exactly what the post was originally. This is reflective of the ways that we, as a society, scroll through these social media sites too quickly to genuinely take any of it in. ^[14] And then, it is even further paralleled in our own lives where we are so used to a touch and go system that we move to fast and fail to truly embrace our experiences. In an interview, Lincoln talked about the abundant amounts of information we have now because of the internet and said that as an artist, he wants to “…take those bits and pieces of information and combine them in new and hopefully meaningful ways.”^[14] We are at a place in human history where technology is changing rapidly and it is important to have artists like Lincoln there questioning what this is doing to us as people.

In his data formalism pieces, there is a clear focus on form and process over only concept. They, of course, have similar themes as his BlogMixes, with images flickering on the screen rapidly in a similar manner. But, he talks about how data processing brings out his formalist tendencies. He’s thinking of images as data in these pieces, which is allowing him to create these gifs and rapidly changing videos. ^[5] This process of creation is not dissimilar to consumption in the age of technology. Images are being associated with information more so than memories or emotions when we scroll through so quickly. The process and the form of these pieces are what makes up the concept.

There is prevalent influence of John Cage (particularly in his audio content)^[15] and Allan Kaprow (derived from theories of chance and audience/artist blur in The Happenings)^[16] in his work, as Lincoln mentions in his artist statement. He shows the use of sound to not be purely instrumental and used to create a tone over top of his visual pieces. ^[17]The interest in new media and the effect that it has on us is only becoming more essential for artistic exploration.

References

Justin Lincoln

• Grey-throated bulbul
• Grey-Throated Bulbul
• Grey-Throated Bunting
• Grey-throated bunting
• Grey-throated Bunting
• Grey-Throated Greenbul
• Grey-throated oriole
• Grey-throated Oriole
• Grey-Throated Oriole
• Grey-throated toucanet
• Grey-Throated Toucanet
• Grey-tipped hummingbird hawkmoth
• Grey toad
• Grey toads
• Grey tooth
• Grey tortrix
• Greytown, KwaZulu–Natal
• Greytown Railway Station
• Greytown, South Africa
• Grey tree pincushion
• Greytshkelach
• Grey Ukraine
• Grey Valley by-election, 1878
• Grey Valley by-election, 1881
• Grey vireo