art o mat
I am exploring the production of an Art*o*mat piece of artwork. At my current university SUNY Cortland, we acquired an Art*o*mat machine. The machines are retired cigarette vending machines that have been converted to vend art. Currently, there are 49 active machines in museums and various locations throughout the country. Artists of all walks of life and media are constructing vendible art.
This idea of making art accessible and affordable is of great interest to me. I also love the retro-interactive qualities of each machine as it is reconstructed to vend art. I am attracted to the notion of how digital technology can be implemented through this idea of mass production. The challenge is to create a multimedia work that can be vended. Multimedia is not as sellable as a print, a photograph, piece of jewelry or book. The provocative aspect for me is how can a digital multimedia work be vendable. The small size is very interesting to me in terms of the intimacy it creates as you hold it in your hand. The specifications require a design that must fit the size of a cigarette package. I am conceptualizing the ingrained quality of fairy-tale narrative in our society and collecting objects from the most well-known tales, for possible inclusion in an Art*o*mat application. www.artomat.org