Overview
Magritte Revisited: Technology-Critical Art aims to use selected works by Reneé Magritte as the foundations for refactored works that express technology-critical messages. These refactored works will be printed at poster-sized dimensions and displayed in high-visibility locations throughout the RPI campus. Through this project, I hope to raise awareness of and encourage dialogue about the often-overbearing roles that computers and technology play in the lives of most RPI students. Hopefully, this will encourage students to keep technology in its proper place, or at least to reflect on the role technology plays in their lives.
I feel this is an especially appropriate project at a school such as RPI, where computers play an unusually large role in all aspects of life. From schoolwork to interpersonal communication to entertainment, RPI students use computers for far more than the average person. With this in mind, I would like to encourage dialogue about the pervasiveness of technology at RPI and how this effects the student population.
I feel that Magritte's work makes an excellent starting point for anti-technology messages because his work was extremely critical of society and the various "advancements" that had led society to where it was during Magritte's lifetime - World War I. The juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated images in Magritte's work would make it relatively easy to refactor his works to convey messages that are critical of technology rather than of society, while still letting the power of the original works show through.