Joseph DeLappe
Man Ray's Mouse
2023
- Artist / Artist group
- Joseph DeLappe
- Title
- Man Ray's Mouse
- Year
- 2023
- Category
- Sculpture
- Material / Technique
- mixed media, Apple bluetooth mouse, carpet tacks
- Dimensions / Duration
- 4,5 x 11 x 5 cm
- Collection
- ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe
- Description
- Born in San Francisco in 1963, artist Joseph DeLappe has been working with new media since the early 1980s. Since 2017, he has lived and worked in Scotland, where he teaches as a professor at Abertay University in Dundee. DeLappe’s works are included in international collections and explore the boundary between artistic practice and activist action. In his works, DeLappe creates intersections between art, history, technology, and political issues. His projects critically reflect on the use of digital media and their societal impacts, while also encouraging viewers to adopt a questioning stance. At the center of this is the exploration of apparent contradictions, such as between analog and digital, physical and virtual, or art and politics. DeLappe reveals the interconnections between such opposites and recontextualizes them. The basis for his series “Mice and Game Controllers” was the observation that the computer mice in his teaching lab were regularly damaged due to frequent use. Instead of discarding them, DeLappe began using the broken devices as material for various sculptural works. Since the late 1990s, Joseph DeLappe has developed a series of works in which he transforms everyday computer and gaming interfaces into mixed-media sculptures. Created in 2023, “Man Ray’s Mouse” is part of this series and consists of a computer mouse (Apple Bluetooth) to the back of which DeLappe has attached carpet tacks. These tacks, arranged in a strict, regular row, disrupt the mouse’s original intended function and render it unusable. The title “Man Ray’s Mouse” refers to the Dada and Surrealist artist Man Ray, who died in 1976. As early as 1921, Man Ray created an art object titled “Cadeau.” Instead of a computer mouse, Man Ray used a cast-iron iron as the starting point for his work, onto the surface of which he also affixed thumbtacks in a strict line. DeLappe takes up Man Ray’s iconic motif and transposes it into the present. His computer mouse thus offers a critical perspective on new technologies by questioning the apparent ease of use associated with them and depriving the user of direct control over the device.
Author
Lara
Mainzer