Trevor Paglen is another digital artist who I found interesting on my trip to San Fran. He combines art with geography, photography, journalism, and activism. His obsession is exposing what he can of undercover covert CIA operations throughout the world. Most of his works may not show you top secret documents…but it makes you think about what powerful government agencies hide from us. Paglen’s series of photo landscapes don’t catch your eye until you read what they are, then you want to look through the haze to see if you can make out any illicit activity. It’s when surveillance goes under surveillance.

I’m big on collage….and Francesca Berrini makes the most interesting maps. I saw one at the Mark Wolfe gallery last weekend in San Francisco, and it’s one of those pieces that stick in your head. Her maps are a kind of a ‘Neverland’, and you don’t realize they are fictitious or made of hundreds of torn pieces of other maps collaged together until you stand up close. I wish I had the patience to try something like this!

Had an interesting day last Saturday in San Francisco. The digital art show I planned to see turned out to be in a different city…I was misinformed and very confused for a few minutes, and then let down. However, we ended up at the YBCA gallery which had a show called “Dark Matters”. It’s a group exhibition that addresses our bombardment with massive amounts of information through media and online, and how we can’t be sure of fact or fallacy…but I’m too tired to think critically about anything now except some sleep. Oh, an installation called “Listening Post” was there, which is over 20+ ft long and made up of a grid of suspended LED’s that bits of online chat phrases are captured and run across the screens at different intervals. A synthesized voice and background sounds accompany it and it is absolutely phenomenal and mesmerizing. Now every time someone walks past me chatting on their cell phone and I catch some of what they are saying I think of that installation…like a song you can’t get out of your head.