Artist's Lecture: Joel Swanson

Joel Swanson is an artist, designer and writer who is the director of the technology of the arts and media program at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He teaches classes on digital art, media theory and the history of design. He received his Masters of Fine Art at the University of California, San Diego with a specialty in computing and the arts.

A lot of his art deals with language and text. It explores the nature and behavior of text, and how it has evolved over time with the development of technology. Some if his work is even handwritten and printed on a wall, such as his work, “Wish You Were Here,”, made in 2014. It is merely the handwritten phrase, “wish you were here,” blown up in size and scanned and printed. Another work falling along the lines of technology and the study of text is  “Untitled (Cursor)”, a digital animation of a blank white screen and the blinking line that occurs in a typing space on a computer. A commonly seen device on computers everywhere, it shows how small elements of typing and technology becomes a common yet overlooked part of our lives. Everybody recognizes it, but I don’t think people know how often it shows up.