Jeff Baij

Triceratops/Tapir/Red Panda

Jeff Baij is a young digital artist who lives in Venice, California. There isn't much biographical information on him either as a person or an artist but some things can be inferred from his website. A lot of his artwork seems to have a lot of humor in it--his Shitty Food in a Gallery is a Photoshop experiment where he takes pictures of supposedly "shitty" food and puts a spotlight on them as if they were in a gallery. A lot of his work also uses .gif files as the medium. .gifs are somewhere between images and movies--they are animated images that show a couple frames of movement. One piece of his in particular, though it didn't use .gifs, caught my eye. Baij's ANIMALMIXUP! is an interactive media piece where the user can choose from the head, body and tail of twenty different animals (including a human baby, triceratops, woolly mammoth and red panda) to make different combinations of animals.

Rabbit/Zebra/Cat

By allowing the user to make their own combinations, Baij leaves his art in the hands of others. His real work, then, is selection of the animals, separation of the body parts, and creating the framework for the interaction (the website). The animals he chooses are very diverse--many are common animals (cat, dog, rabbit, hamster) and many are uncommon (triceratops, woolly mammoth, tapir). By putting these different types of animals together in one place and, potentially, together in one new "animal," Baij gets allows the user to play God. The way in which Baij makes the animal parts, though, is interesting. The framework is not flawless--the pictures do not all line up and the image does not take up the whole frame but, instead, starts to repeat, creating a disconnect in the finished "animal." I think Baij may be making a veiled statement about cloning and cross-breeding between species. Today, there are many new combinations of animals like the liger and the zorse. Perhaps, through this digital creation of a new animal, Baij is trying to show people how absurd it is to mess with and alter animals. Sometimes, the combinations don't even work and the parts don't line up. In addition, every finished "animal" is flawed by the slivers that are repeated when the image does take up the whole frame. Even if this is not his intended concept, there is definitely a statement being made about how digital image manipulation can change and alter nature's form--the program Baij creates is not meant for the user to make "real" animals but new, unnatural ones comprised of many different combinations.

I don't know if the incomplete frames are intentionally flawed but I think they detract from the piece. The slivers on the right-side of each frame that start to repeat the image make it harder for the three body parts of the animals to combine seamlessly. In addition, the way Baij cuts the images of each animal into three parts sometimes does not match well with the division of another animal. I think if this was better executed, the interaction, creation and concept would be clearer and more successful. However, most of Baij's work seems to be done in a hasty, quick-witted manner that speaks more for a volume of work rather than quality. This is a casual piece with a light-heart to it, not a serious work of art and I think it works for Baij--someone needs to have a sense of humor!

Human Baby/Rabbit/Woolly Mammoth