Scott Blake - Portfolio 2015
Channel: Scott Blake
Date: 04/02/2015

I’m a remix artist who likes to poke fun at consumerism. Most of my work is interactive and some test the boundaries of societal norms. I tagged every Walmart and Target in my area with these questions. I know it’s against store policy, but I consider what I’m doing a public service. Sneaking my art onto the shelves was a really fun way to protest inside the store. I even got a review in the newspaper. My Chuck Close filter was a little more controversial. I dissected several of his paintings into thousands of tiles. And then my filter could rearrange the blocks to look like any image. Chuck Close said my project was jeopardizing his career and he asked me to take the website down. I believe my filter is fair use, and I defended my position on Hyperallergic and in a TED Talk. I’ve embraced computer technology to explore innovative ways to tell a story. I found every time Marilyn Monroe walked through a door, and when you scan a barcode it plays a scene from that DVD. There is a video projector behind the print that tracks the scanner with a red line. I enjoy deconstructing icons and allowing the audience to play with the pieces. This is a self-portrait in which I am represented by the foods I eat. I hand-painted each individual barcode; in addition, I developed an app which is used to scan the barcodes and will play videos of me eating, drinking, and talking about the products. This project underscores the link between identity and consumption in a world increasingly dominated by big data. The size and number of paintings pays deliberate homage to Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup series. Roy Lichtenstein’s benday dots were influential to me as I created my barcode halftone. I use this black and white icon to explore a variety of topics... from copyright and religion to individual identity and consumption. I made a portrait of my friend who has an eating disorder using the barcodes from junk food she ate as a child. I created a custom Power of 10 flipbook which zooms into the Skowhegan offices in New York City. I made this 1,000 page flipbook for the Los Angeles Art Book Fair. Finally I’m assisting an independent journalist make a documentary about two men that were wrongfully convicted and have spent the last 44 years in prison... less than an hour from where I live.