One of the leading artists of our time, the author with the most buzz in global artistic circles and mega centers like New York, London, Amsterdam and Paris, front-runner of the younger generation of contemporary artists who grew up alongside digital technology, which they take up as their second nature – had a fairly modest start, growing up in Stonesfield, a village near Oxford:

Meet Ed Atkins (1982), British artist famous for his video installations and multimedia poetry, teacher at the Goldsmiths College in London.

His works will transform the way you experience reality and your own physical existence, will make you question the meaning of sex, love and death in a digital universe. Atkins’ exhibitions turn galleries into surreal spaces in which physical and virtual, auditory and tactile intertwine – and thus allow the unthinkable to the visitor:

– To physically enter a work of art and spend several hours immersed in it.

In other words, Atkins’ exhibitions are spectacles in which the viewer is not a passive bystander but instead becomes an active participant in the art world.

Hans-Ulrich Obrist, famous Swedish art curator, points out that Atkins – although young – is today considered to be one of the biggest artists of our times.
Just 35 years old, Atkins has already had solo exhibitions in world-famous galleries like Tate Britain, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Chisenhale Gallery, MoMA PS1, Serpentine Gallery, Palais de Tokyo, Kunsthalle Zürich.

Contemporary artist creates on a laptop

As his first loves, Ed Atkins lists movies, music, books and video games. Art is simply his way of pouring all his passions into one medium.

When it comes to the process through which Atkins makes his art, the entire process takes place on a laptop, where the modern artist assembles computer-generated objects into a work of art which is to astonish and shake the viewer and at the same time make them raise some essential questions that haunt the mankind of today.

The artist combines layered pictures with fragments of speech, music and writing. In order to create his works of art, Atkins often collaborates with CGI experts. The Artists explores hyper-realistic spaces created by the latest software systems and makes complex environments inhabited by a variety of avatars – virtual characters filled with dark desires and unconscious fears.

Digital technology in the service of art

Atkins buys the avatars that he uses in his art from websites such as Turbosquid, but he then organizes them in his own creative and awkward way and turns them into art that raises deep questions about the relationship of humans and technology.

Atkins animates his virtual characters using Faceship, the software that maps movements of facial expression. This is the same type of object-recognition technology used by Microsoft and applications like Snapchat. It applies motion capture technology in order to decorate human faces with different ornaments like flowers, bunny ears, dog muzzles and similar.

However, like several other contemporary artists do, Atkins, too, uses this technology to explore complex issues concerning the relation of human body and digital reality, the need for intimacy in the world of technology and the limitations of progress.

When you find yourself at one of his exhibitions, you will notice that you are moving through spaces of the gallery that has been transformed with his video-installations, surround music and sound effects – you are in a world made of a mixture of physical and virtual reality. In other words:

You are within the work of art made by a modern creator.

Art made in the bedroom

What does the creative process of a digital artist look like?

You might be surprised, but:

Its start is actually very similar to what we all do when we buy a new phone or install a cool interactive application able to change the shape of our face, add objects to it or create our virtual reality avatars:

He plays with it while he is lying in his bedroom.

Atkins describes his work as a “bedroom practice”: the artist plays with his face and his facial expressions, exploring what can be done with the software.

However:

Even though he uses technology that has a wide application in the modern world, primarily on social networks and on the Internet, therefore – technology that is available to everyone – there is one thing that makes Atkins as important an artist as he is.

The secret lies in the way he observes.

Ed Atkins plays with software, communicates with it, explores its possibilities and studies its impact on his own existence. The way in which, through a combination of writing, music and editing, he then creates complex works of art able to stir essential questions concerning human existence – is unique and it makes Atkins one of the most interesting artists of today.

How the digital in art brings the humans back to their own selves

Despite the fragmented poetic speech used by his characters and the emotional music that makes a part of the original atmosphere of Atkins’ worlds, the critique has noticed that the basic emotion the artist’s characters communicate is – emptiness.

But, the main question is: what lies behind this emptiness, or, in other words, what is the goal of this art?
It is simple: with this real, three-dimensional existence, Atkins wants to remind his viewers on one thing people keep on forgetting in today’s world:

– Corporeality.

Physically present, growing, developing, aging and decaying human body – this is the thing that Atkins wants his viewers to pay attention to. In other words, to pay attention to physical existence that loses its importance in the world of codes.

The virtuality of modern visual worlds and the deep impact they have on the way we perceive our corporeality and physical reality is the main motif of Atkins’ entire body of work.

The artist who made his dream come true

Due to the amount of popularity and acknowledgement from the critique and professional public, Ed Atkins of today can make a living form his art, and a good living, too. Which grants him freedom to completely devote himself to his art in order to explore new ways in which to pour his inspiration into interesting creations.

Even though London remains his main residence, Atkins often changes places and lives in large art centers like New York, Paris and Amsterdam.

Ed Atkins is living the dream of many young artists, however, that does not amount to the best thing in his artistic success. In fact, Atkins has fulfilled the dreams of the two people without whom it wouldn’t be possible to become what he is today:

– His parents.

Atkins’ father was a graphic artist and his mother was an art teacher in a public school. Both of them dreamed of a career in arts, but had to give up their dreams for the sake of stable finances.

Ed Atkins has made real not only his own dream but the dream of his parents, too, and his is well aware of the privileges granted to him by his art: “Nobody in my family was given the opportunity to live like me or to ever do what they really wanted to do”, he noted in an interview.

In spite of fragmented poetic speech used by his characters and emotional music that makes a part of the original atmosphere of Atkins’ worlds, the critique has noticed that the basic emotion the artist’s characters communicate is – emptiness.

But, the main question is: what lies behind this emptiness, or, in other words, what is the goal of this art?
It is simple: with this real, three-dimensional existence, Atkins wants to remind his viewers on one thing people keep on forgetting in today’s world:

– Corporeality.

Physically present, growing, developing, aging and decaying human body – this is the thing that Atkins wants his viewers to pay attention to. In other words, to pay attention to physical existence that loses its importance in the world of codes.

The virtuality of modern visual worlds and the deep impact they have on the way we perceive our corporeality and physical reality is the main motif of Atkins’ entire body of work.

The artist who made his dream come true

Due to the amount of popularity and acknowledgement from the critique and professional public, Ed Atkins of today can make a living form his art, and a good living, too. Which grants him freedom to completely devote himself to his art in order to explore new ways in which to pour his inspiration into interesting creations.

Even though London remains his main residence, Atkins often changes places and lives in large art centers like New York, Paris and Amsterdam.

Ed Atkins is living the dream of many young artists, however, that does not amount to the best thing in his artistic success. In fact, Atkins has fulfilled the dreams of the two people without whom it wouldn’t be possible to become what he is today:

– His parents.

Atkins’ father was a graphic artist and his mother was an art teacher in a public school. Both of them dreamed of a career in arts, but had to give up their dreams for the sake of stable finances.

Ed Atkins has made real not only his own dream but the dream of his parents, too, and his is well aware of the privileges granted to him by his art: “Nobody in my family was given the opportunity to live like me or to ever do what they really wanted to do”, he noted in an interview.

The relationship between technology and art

One of the most frequently asked questions today is the question of relation between digital gadgets and artistic expression:

Is modern technology completely contrary to the world of art or can it be that it might actually help the artist to express themselves in a new and relevant way?

Atkins treats digital as an effect that enables art to achieve modern mode of expression and communicate through the means of its own time. However, the way in which he structures the digital in his video-installations and in other works is closely related to the structure of poetic language and cinematic art. His body of work is an example of a successful blend of digital effects and traditional arts like literature and cinema..

When it comes to the relationship between modern artist and new technology, Atkins holds a balanced stand towards the new media for expression:

Namely, technology is not a threat to art; however, its application in art should never become its own purpose. Technology thus becomes a legitimate means of modern artistic expression, in the sense that it enables the artist to apply modern language of here and now in order to articulate the things that art has been dealing long since its very beginnings.

In his works, Atkins brings art and technology into a perfect synergy that raises eternal questions about the purpose of life and it does so in a modern and unexpected way.

This is a world-renowned young artist who makes a very good living thanks to a combination of modern technology and artistic processes.

Digital knowledge studied at prestigious art faculties

As one can see from the example of the art that Atkins makes and the art of other creative people of his generation, modern visual art has exceeded the limits of the media in which it has been traditionally expressed.

Atkins’ achievements teach us an important fact:

Art has its rightful place in the world of digital technology, and a modern creative can make a living doing what he loves.

The secret lies in this:

It takes a mind open for new media of expression and a willingness to use them for artistic purposes.

The artists of our time create their visual identities both in analogue and digital formats, which is why, in addition to the knowledge from the sphere of arts, they also require the knowledge from the field of digital technology and graphic design, and that can be acquired at prestigious faculties of arts like Faculty of Contemporary Arts.

Studying at the Graphic Design department of the Faculty of Contemporary Arts will enable you to master the latest digital technology and learn how to use it for your artistic purposes, and will nonetheless provide you with classic knowledge in arts. Thanks to this, you will be able to sublimate various types of design and thus create unforgettable visual products that will astonish the world.

In other words, FCA prepares you to be a 21st century artist.