I don't think I'm the only art collector who secretly wishes that her budget for purchasing hard drives, memory upgrades, and software could be siphoned into purchasing paintings instead. Luckily, there's a quick fix: the limited-edition screensaver by artist Sue Coe. This "ambient art installation for the computer" is both a video screensaver and a stand-alone application that turns your monitor's utilitarian frame into a thought-provoking showcase.
Titled Monkey Business, Coe's screensaver represents her first work created expressly for the computer (her large-scale paintings and illustrations appear not only in galleries around the world, but in the pages of The New Yorker and Time as well). Monkey Business features a collage of arresting images, a visual commentary that questions the motives behind humankind's supposedly advanced culture. Coe offers colorful frames depicting serene jungle primates existing peacefully within an idyllic nature juxtaposed with dark, gray scenes of violent human primates attempting in vain to control and manipulate nature into "civilization." All images are taken from a series of original paintings that Coe created exclusively for this project; some scenes are animated - a baby chimpanzee blinks, a colorful butterfly glides across the screen.
Monkey Business is the second in the Kickstand series of artist-created screensavers issued by antenna tool & die co., a New York outfit that produces and promotes innovative digital art. Priced at a collector-friendly US$22.50, the Coe screensaver is a buy that's both practical and aesthetically pleasing, allowing art lovers and computerheads alike to experience, firsthand, both the computer as a valid new art form and some of the freshest ideas in contemporary art.
STREET CRED
Speech Recognition - To Go Dutch Hitmeister
When the Background Eclipses the Game
Monkey Business
