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NET ART
ANTHOLOGY

out_4_pizza

Laura Brothers

2007 - ongoing

Laura Brothers’ out_4_pizza is a LiveJournal blog to which the artist posts digital paintings and animated gifs. Each post, which may contain one or several images, is labeled only with a brief, cryptic title and displayed against a black background.

out_4_pizza is a rigorous exploration of the particular affordances of “painting” with the computer for an online audience. Many of her works use pixel-perfect compositions that create moiré effects when resized or scrolled, coming into a kind of focus only when viewed at 100% scale. Brothers takes particular interest in the possibilities of vertical scrolling, which enables modes of viewership and narrative that have few precedents in art history.

Initiated in 2007 with the intention of posting a single entry, Brothers’ blog has been ongoing for more than a decade, tracking the progression of the artist’s practice amid changes in imagemaking tools and the web platform itself.


Laura Brothers, out_4_pizza, 2007-ongoing. Screenshot of digital painting on LiveJournal.

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Laura Brothers started the out_4_pizza LiveJournal with the intention of posting a single entry: a collection of found images from around the web. After several such posts, she began posting her own digital creations.

Brothers’ works are sometimes described as digital paintings. She creates them using a computer mouse and consumer-grade software tools such as Photoshop or MS Paint.

Laura Brothers, egyptianfieldgame.jpg, 2012. Click to open in new window for full-size viewing.

The works often involve a shifting interplay between hard-edged pixel fields that reinforce the digital grid of the computer screen and organic, brushlike gestural marks made with a computer mouse.

When Brothers’ images are in motion on the screen, their pixel-perfect grids pulse with moiré patterns. It is only when the user is at rest that they can be viewed clearly.

Laura Brothers, LONELY1.png, 2014

Brothers also posts gifs of some of the pieces. While gifs are non-narrative, they are time-based, requiring the viewer to linger to view a full loop, adding a further temporal dimension to the blog.

Laura Brothers, contusionface.gif, 2009.

Brothers began posting her work online in part to enter into a dialogue with viewers and other artists. The LiveJournal led to involvement in Computers Club, a group of artists who post their original works to a shared online platform.

Laura Brothers’ profile page on Computers Club. Screenshot taken in Google Chrome, 2018.

As LiveJournal has changed, the viewership and format of out_4_pizza have been affected as well.

For example, one of the central attractions for the platform initially was that it did not compress or resize images, which was important for Brothers’ precise compositions. After a design change, full-sized images could only be seen on the platform by clicking through from the LiveJournal post.

Nevertheless, Brothers has continued developing out_4_pizza as an iterative act of storytelling through images.

Laura Brothers, disulpitch_block.jpg, 2012

By scrolling through Brothers’ posts, visitors can track shifts in her practice over time: recurring motifs and images, discrete phases, moments of low or high output.

The eleven-year scroll of out_4_pizza draws the viewer‘s attention to the artist’s own chronology of thought and production.

“I want the character of the image to come to life only to tell the same story over and over.”

– Laura Brothers

More From CHAPTER 3: 2005-2010

11/30/17 Hell in Lamb UC Pedro Vélez 2003 - 2007
12/06/17 into time. com Rafaël Rozendaal 2010
12/14/17 EverythingIveEverWantedtoKnow.com Martine Syms 2007
12/21/17 Nine Eyes of Google Street View Jon Rafman 2008 - ongoing
01/12/18 Art Thoughtz Jayson Musson 2010 - 2012
01/19/18 Domestic Tension Wafaa Bilal 2007
02/02/18 Scandalishious Ann Hirsch 2008 - 2009
03/01/18 VVEBCAM Petra Cortright 2007
03/08/18 Blind Spot Miao Ying 2007
02/22/18 93.1 JACK FM LOS ANGELES 2008 Guthrie Lonergan 2008 - 2012
03/22/18 Refresh Kristin Lucas 2007
03/29/18 I-BE AREA in Out of Order YouTube messy-format Ryan Trecartin 2008
04/20/18 RMB City Cao Fei 2008 - 2011
04/27/18 Versions Oliver Laric 2010
05/04/18 Grobari Aleksandra Domanović 2009
06/01/18 Transborder Immigrant Tool Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0/b.a.n.g. lab (Micha Cárdenas, Amy Sara Carroll, Ricardo Dominguez, Elle Mehrmand, and Brett Stalbaum) 2007 - ongoing
06/14/18 The Revolving Internet Constant Dullaart 2010
06/20/18 Spirit Surfers Kevin Bewersdorf, Paul Slocum, Marcin Ramocki, Ethan Hayes-Chute, John Transue, Luke Murphy, Krist Wood, Aron Namenwirth, Harm van den Dorpel, Dragan Espenschied, Travis Hallenbeck, Olia Lialina, Peter Wilson, Patrick Armstrong, Patrick Groth, Peter Blasser, Chad Hopper, Rachel Abelson, Petra Cortright 2008 - ongoing
08/07/18 Paperrad.org Paper Rad 2001 - 2008

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