Ep. 44: Net Art w/ Kevin Heckart

Kevin Heckart is a Kansas City based artist who created the artwork behind seapunk’s original aesthetic. This special episode coincides with both the one year anniversary of Silent Generation and the relaunch of the seapunk clothing line Mainframe, which features many of Heckart’s designs. The first half of episode is an interview with Heckart that serves as a spiritual threequel to Silent Generation’s prior two seapunk episodes while the later half is a broader conversation about net art and net artists such as Brad Troemel, Hito Steyerl, Laturbo Avendon, and Lorna Mills. Amongst other things they discuss how Heckart has gone viral on Tiktok for hacking animatronic fish and furby toys, how Nathan and Brad Troemel did the same undergrad program, how Hito Steyerl incorporated real life biographies into Factory of the Sun, and how Skibbidy Toilet shows how thoroughly post-internet aesthetics have permeated popular culture.    Links: mainframehq.net Mainframe’s Instagram Kevin Heckart’s Instagram Kevin Heckart’s Tiktok  I hacked a singing fish. - Kevin Heckart “and yet a trace of the true self exists in the false self” meme HIS BRAIN? NO. HIS HEART Brad Troemel meme The Post-internet Culture Report by Brad Troemel Untitled, 2016 by Laura Owens Trojan Horses: Activist Art and Power by Lucy R. Lippard Color(ed) Theory Series by Amanda Williams  Rhizome’s Net Art Anthology My Boyfriend Came Back from the War by Olia Lialina  Madison Beer #NoFilter by Dis Magazine I was Raised on the Internet exhibition at the MCA Transdimensional Serpent by Jon Rafman The Jogging Tumblr blog Army of Ants by Brad Troemel Giant Arthropods Eating Doritos early meme Liquidity Inc. by Hito Steyerl screenshot Factory of the Sun by Hito Steyerl takeSomeCrime Youtube channel  In Defense of the Poor Image by Hito Steyerl In Defense of the Poor Image-esque Instagram post GIFS by Lorna Mills Repetition Mindset: Artists as Snowflakes by Brad Troemel Artwork: Provided by Kevin Heckart Recorded on 10/16/2024