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Thursday, August 25, 2011

Visual Art Currently Hanging: Every Playboy Centerfold, Golems, and the Human Race Machine

Posted by Jen Graves on Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 11:33 AM

Jason Salavon scanned every Playboy Centerfold from January 1960 to December 1999, and outputted a mean image representing each decade in the form of a 5-foot-tall, ghostly photograph. Over time, the women got skinnier, blonder, and whiter.

Jason Salavon says any of his 100,000 digital printouts would pass the Turing Test for painting. When you get close to the one at the Henry, you can tell its a print—but not until youre close. Up to that point, its incredibly convincing.

Jason Salavon says any of his 100,000 digital printouts would pass the Turing Test for painting. When you get close to the one at the Henry, you can tell it's a print—but not until you're close. Up to that point, it's incredibly convincing.

Salavon makes all kinds of digital images. At the Henry Art Gallery now, in addition to one of these centerfolds, is one of the 100,000 convincingly expressive abstract paintings that Salavon printed out en masse. He calls them Golem. A golem, in Jewish folklore, is a living creature made of inanimate matter.

Salavon also writes his own software. Arguably, his use of zeroes and ones gives him as much creative power as an artist who is tapping into the infinite possible hues of the color red, say. There's a great hacking tradition in digital art, and Salavon takes after one of its masters, Nancy Burson, best known for having developed the Human Race Machine. Back before she was an artist, at MIT, she invented the aging software police would adopt in the search for missing children. If you haven't tried her Human Race Machine, you must.

Both Burson and Salavon are in The Digital Eye at the Henry, and Salavon is coming to Seattle soon! He'll do a workshop at Photographic Center Northwest on September 14 and talk at 7 pm September 15 at the Henry. Details coming soon here.

Comments (20) RSS

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that is cool, especially how he codes his own stuff.

there is a whole subset of programming code-as-art.

here is some python code that looks like the image it generates:

http://preshing.com/20110822/penrose-til…

neat for nerds

Posted by Swearengen on August 25, 2011 at 11:41 AM

So does the position of the white areas show where dudes chose to jag off to over the years.

Posted by I don't want to be associated with my comment on August 25, 2011 at 11:51 AM

The Playboy scans are terrific, but I think much of the color shift can be explained by printing technology and tates in lighting, not skin color. I doubt very much that the almost-entirely-white women in the mag have changed significantly in the past sixty years; if anything, I'll bet there are more black and Asian women now, though they might come out lighter (and less red) in the photos.

Posted by Fnarf

on August 25, 2011 at 12:07 PM

I'd have to believe that changing lighting and camera technology / equipment over the decades has an effect on the appearance of color, though.

Posted by K on August 25, 2011 at 12:08 PM

There are more blondes now.

Posted by Keekee on August 25, 2011 at 12:11 PM

More blondes, yes, but I think the whiteness is from a trend of overexposed photography and more photoshop.

Posted by Reg on August 25, 2011 at 12:16 PM

And by photoshop, I mean retouching, which is now done by photoshop rather than airbrush.

Posted by Reg on August 25, 2011 at 12:17 PM

What can be said. Nude women still seem to be an object of interest. In this case when they are all merged together coming up with one image per decade representing the same ole nudity enmasse is a new approach to the dehuminizing of a woman and continuing the trend of objectifying her even in art. What would really be interesting is if we took pictures of nude men from the midwest over the last number of decades and watched them all get fatter. Oh yeah, that's interesting.

Posted by Judith Kindler

on August 25, 2011 at 12:43 PM

What can be said. Nude women still seem to be an object of interest. In this case when they are all merged together coming up with one image per decade representing the same ole nudity enmasse is a new approach to the dehuminizing of a woman and continuing the trend of objectifying her, even in art. Not that that is necessarily the intent of the artist. The analysis of the work is interesting, however, what would really be interesting is if we took pictures of nude men from the midwest over the last number of decades and watched them all get fatter. Oh yeah, now that's interesting.

Posted by Judith Kindler

on August 25, 2011 at 12:50 PM

Judith, I sympathize, but I also think it's possible to use nudes critically. Do you disagree?

Posted by Jen Graves on August 25, 2011 at 12:53 PM

One cause of the 'whiteness' of modern centerfolds could be an absence of pubic hair

Posted by DavidC

on August 25, 2011 at 12:54 PM

Also: These are all questions we can ask during this upcoming show at the Henry!

http://www.henryart.org/exhibitions/upco…

Posted by Jen Graves on August 25, 2011 at 12:56 PM

Jen, of course. I do like my idea of the nude mid west men series though. (Lol) I like the sociological implications of the work if hat was intended and love seeing the media used creatively.

Posted by Judith Kindler

on August 25, 2011 at 1:17 PM