Lopez, Josue (Week 7)

Immersive realities

I found Claudia Zapata’s essay The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now extremely insightful in the way she analyses Chicanx artists’ use of new technological mediums to engage with social movements, contest social subjectivities of Latinos, and reframe Chicanx identity for the twenty-first century.  One of the things I found interesting was her discussion on the impact Web 2.0 has had on the ways Chicanx artists create and disseminate art. Zapata says that Web 2.0 is defined by the unprecedented levels of interactivity it allows between online users. Chicanx artists can now create “born-digital” art that is both digitally created and distributed. Artists are now able to easily engage with audiences directly and create and foster communities around social issues. By having a medium through which artists can directly engage with audiences, traditional institutions like the museum are subverted, and new unrestricted dialogues can form. Zapata also talks about newer technological mediums like augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) as platforms where Chicanx artists can create works that have the potential to fully immerse audiences in the art to embody the work.

 Recent talks about the potential of these new technological mediums like Facebook’s Metaverse are promising and offer a new level of interaction never before seen. However, as Zapata points out, artists should continue to seek the subversion of power, even while using these new technologies.  As tech companies continue to grow into powerful behemoths, artists should create art that contests not only immediate and contemporary social issues but also the modern technological apparatus and its dissemination algorithms.