Constant Dullaart: DVD guy MAK Vienna II

(Media archaeological prequel for millennials: When movies were not yet available every moment on the net via providers like Netflix or Google, people bought or rented movies on DVDs, for example. To play movies stored on these physical media, you needed a DVD player).

When the DVD player is idle, a so-called idle animation (a kind of screensaver) appears. This consists of the DVD logo moving back and forth on the screen, much like the ball in the computer game Pong. Each time it bounces off one of the sides, it changes color. In 2009, artist Constant Dullaart made a webcam performance in which he analogously recreated this idle animation: looking concentratedly at the screen while recording in (his) kitchen, the artist in a white fine-rib undershirt tries to change the red, blue, yellow, and green DVD logos in time. This work combines two different media formats - the Internet and the DVD. The 2009 video became a popular Internet meme ("this DVD guy"). In 2021, the artist turned it into an NFT (non-fungible token).

We are showing a version of "DVD guy" recorded in 2011 at the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) in Vienna. (Inke Arns)

 

Constant Dullaart relies on existing frameworks, websites, search engines, and the like, treating them as “found objects” on which he enacts distortions and witty reconfigurations. With a practice focused on visualizing internet vernaculars and software dialects, a political approach critical to corporate systems influencing these contemporary semantics becomes clear through his minimal and sometimes bricolaged gestures. Editing online forms of representation, and the user’s access to it, he creates installations and performances online and offline.

Constant Dullaart’s practice reflects on the broad cultural and social effects of communication and image processing technologies. He is known for his work series Jennifer in Paradise, and for distributing 2.5 million bought Instagram followers. In doing so, he distributed artificial social capital. Dullaart was the winner of the Prix Net Art in 2015 and chosen as a staff-pick Kickstarter campaign for a start-up called Dulltech™. He participated in the exhibition Evil Clowns (2014) at HMKV. He is based in Berlin and Amsterdam. https://constantdullaart.com