Tagging / Paz

Christopher Hughes

Digital Media
Faculty Mentor: Prof. Mark Callahan

Kentucky-born Christopher “Kit” Hughes’ work ranges from conceptual sculpture/installation to project-based net.art. Hughes has shown his conceptual projects at venues throughout the southeast region since 1998, including the Fugitive Art Center in Nashville and the Murfreesboro Art Center, also in Tennessee.

Before returning to art school in 2002, Hughes worked in the fields of industrial and packaging design for an Atlanta design film. This design experience influenced his first solo show last year, All day and All night, in which Hughes bought and displayed every product advertised in a 24 hour period of network television. Designed as a show that explored American consumer culture, gallery visitors triggered a barrage of audio and video footage by scanning the products with barcode readers. Adding to the carnival-like atmosphere, the exhibit also included a firing range in which visitors fired a paintball gun at a canvas on the opposite end of the range. This show was sponsored in part by an Ideas for Creative Exploration (ICE) project grant.

Hughes is also a net artist who has received a grant from the Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities (CURO) for his Tagging project, an online tool for covering downtown Athens in virtual graffiti, which will debut in the spring of 2004. Concluding a test run in Athens, Hughes intends to implement a network of virtual graffiti utilizing existing wireless hotspots in major cities around the world.

The necessity of individual participation is still evident in Hughes’ latest work. After the recent bombings in Madrid, Hughes felt compelled to create a work that extends regret for the loss of life as well as protests the largest terrorist attack in Europe since the Lockerbie bombing in 1988. “Paz”, Spanish for “peace”, is an “interactive” painting showing in a group exhibit that coincides with the University of Georgia CURO Symposium, April 12^th-14^th. Gallery visitors may apply a white handprint to an extended painting of the Spanish flag. This iconology of a white painted hand symbolizes peaceful protest in Spanish culture. Hughes developed this concept after reviewing Associated Press photography in the aftermath of the attacks on March 11.