reading four - the new aesthetic

 

Untitled works by Zack Dougherty (hateplow)

   

  When browsing The New Aesthetic's blog, I was pleasantly surprised to see Zack Dougherty's work was included. I've been following Dougherty's blog, hateplow, for a few months now and what captivated me from the beginning was the relationship he’s developed from the influence of the classics in collaboration with digital means of seeing. There’s a saying that, “the classics never go out of style,” and whether that be in correlation with the classics of Roman and Greek sculpture to the classics of merchandise in our current day (through brands such as Vans or Converse), Dougherty uses the familiar subject to his advantage. It’s something a viewer has seen before, therefore changing the way we perceive it is more comfortable to the eye than if he were to use a futuristic entity. With the generalization of forms, he’s forcing the observer to view what would translate into millions of polygons of a mesh down to a few tens to hundreds. From afar, the eye may not be able to distinguish the difference between the two if side by side, but his use of animation to deconstruct the form forces the viewer to see exactly what is happening – the process of simplification.  With this process, Dougherty wisely manages the speed of his animations so that they’re quick enough to keep the viewer engaged, but slow enough for the viewer to process and interpret what’s happening. What I appreciate most about Dougherty’s work is every time I view his work, my eye is never fixed to one area of the composition; I’m constantly seeing new patterns and transitions in the form that wouldn’t have been interpretable if viewing the entire composition at once. It’s that zoning in on specific areas that forces a viewer to watch it over and over again, meanwhile experiencing it each time as if it were their first encounter with the work. 

Post in The New Aesthetic: http://new-aesthetic.tumblr.com/post/43147809612
Dougherty’s blog, hateplow: http://hateplow.tumblr.com