Quintessential childhood pastime and likely literary invention, cloud watching unusually resonates with neural network modes of pattern recognition. Ideally positioned on a grassy hill, lay back until your field of vision is nothing but uninterrupted blue sky, with a long endless summer ahead of you wait until clouds intercede the frame and then interpret. Match form with archived images, deduce meaning.
Reclaiming ad space within the infinite scroll of Facebook’s wall, Angeline Meitzler’s unavailable space (2018) is a performative piece of code, executed as a Chrome browser extension. Replacing targeted advertisements with images of cloud formations, it attacks the financial foundations of the social media giant with imagery coherent with their blue-sky Silicon Valley mindset. The endless summers of our childhoods coalesce with the bottomless absorption into media feeds. A visual parodying of how adolescents, and adults, are trained into addictive cycles of refreshing to feed ad venue reports.
Expressing a deep comprehension of the psychological manipulation of technology companies, Meitzler’s code based practice unfolds as a series of astute and often whimsical critiques, activated software that intersects with our daily screen-time. In a web programme piece, spaghetti (2020), Meitzler instigates a gradual colonization of the screen, pop-up windows randomly appear, each showing YouTube videos featuring either American or Philippine spaghetti on multidimensional surfaces. A product of Second World War shortages, Filipino spaghetti features a bastardization of tomato sauce substituting in banana ketchup. By integrating this colonial legacy with contemporary communication media, Meitzler draws attention to the homogenizing power of globalised systems and the contrary idiosyncratic offspring they create.
Both unavailable space and spaghetti are available to purchase for the first time with anonymous gallery.
Finally, in The Fortune You Seek is In Another Cookie (2020), Meitzler’s addition to The Terminal (2021), the artist invites users to select for websites using popular cookie and policy popups to become reimagined as data health advisory labels. Featuring pop cultural figures such as the machine skeleton of the Terminator and WALL-E’s AUTO steering wheel in place of corrupted lungs, these warnings create a raised awareness toward data complicity. Available as a Chrome extension the work carries the hallmarks of intervention strategies and will continue to be updated to include more cookie plugins as they are created.
Angeline Meitzler (b. 1992) is an American Philipinx artist, writer and software worker based in Brooklyn, currently studying for a Masters in Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters of Fine Art at the Art Institute of Chicago. Performances and exhibitions include: 24-HOUR DRONE, Basilica Hudson, Hudson; Initial Public Offering, Reddit, online (2019); Beyond The Hashtag: Failures and Becomings, HTMlles Festival, Montreal (2018); and Electron Salon, LACDA , Los Angeles (2015). She is a member of Soft Surplus; one third of istorya-istorya; and a co-founder of Club Dirty Talk. Previously she had spoken at The New School and carried out workshops with Pioneer Works. This year she will be resident with the Tropical Futures Institute in Cebu, Philippines.
The Terminal: Human Shaped Whole
directed by: Jason Isolini
featuring: Bob Bicknell-Knight, Ian Bruner, Joshua Citarella, Jessica Evans, James Irwin, Claire Jervert, Kakia Konstantinaki, Angeline Meitzler, Erin Mitchell and Neale Willis
curated by: Off Site Project
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:
Angeline Meitzler .