Technology as racial exploitation in 'Black Gooey Universe'
Art is often about making you look at regular, day-to-day objects in ways you haven't before. Artist and UNBAG co-founder American Artist has certainly done that with Black Gooey Universe , showing at Brooklyn's HOUSING studio until February 16th. The exhibition features pieces like "Mother of All Demos," named after the famous XeroxPARC GUI demo, and "No State," a 12-by-12 grid of shattered iPhones. The idea with the exhibition and accompanying essay is to show how the evolution of such devices relates to the African American experience. Early computers were developed by and for programmers to do a variety of specific tasks and featured black screens with white or green text. All of that changed following the "mother of all demos" that introduced the mouse and graphics user interface, aka the GUI or "gooey." "Between the Xerox Alto and Apple Lisa, the negative space of the screen began to appear white, replacing the black comm...