Home POLITICS Young Sydney artists all a Twitter

Young Sydney artists all a Twitter

Artist Yiying Lu has become the poster child for the online art community after her now famous Fail Whale was picked up by Twitter as it’s downtime logo.

At an exhibition on this week, Lu will be displaying a collection of artworks that make up part of a new breed of hybrid cross communication art that walks between digital, physical and commercial realities. “It’s about expanding the understanding of art, so it’s not necessarily the normal or traditional understanding of what art is,” Lu said. “Art can be anything, art can be anywhere and there are no boundaries.” For Lu, art is primarily about a person’s response to a stimulus. “You can see a piece of visual communication, even the composition down the street and it can be art,” she said. It’s almost as though the response, rather than the object which triggers it, is more important in defining what constitutes art for Lu. “Whatever triggers your interest can be art really.” Originally from Shanghai and now living in inner Sydney, Lu who is “somewhere in her twenties” said she was studying overseas when her big break arrived by accident. “I’d been travelling and after studying in different places including UNSW and St Martin’s College London, I ended up with quite a lot of friends from all over. “But I was always missing people and missing out on big events like birthdays. So instead of sending a worded email saying ‘sorry I couldn’t come’ I thought because I was a designer, I would send a piece of visual art that explains how I feel.” Thus the internet art phenomenon Fail Whale was born. “It was siting in my computer and I thought rather than having it in my own place, I would share it with the community and Twitter bought it from a site I had uploaded to and used it as a service corruption or ‘fail’ image,” she said. As the popularity of the image grew, after it’s incorporation by Twitter services, so did interest in Lu and her art. Other works by Lu have now been bought by Twitter and T-shirts and re-interpretations of Fail Whale abound on the internet. Everything from substituting the whale with Homer Simpson to using it to parody politicians has become popular. “People see it there often and because of the potential of the image itself - it’s surreal. “But at the same time, it is really something people see from different aspects,” Lu said. “They might see the Fail Whale there or they might say ‘I am the Fail Whale’. “Some people say ‘I’m the little bird’. It can be interpreted from so many different angles, which is why I think it is a very open picture. “It opens a lot of opportunities for me, but also for the viewer, a lot of people are getting interested and doing a lot of experimentations like making a sculpture, people doing animations or even cupcakes - all sorts of things.” Lu has benefited both commercially and artistically with Twitter paying for other works, far more handsomely than what it paid for Fail Whale, but the sudden fame is something she is also keenly aware of as an artist. “At the time I made Fail Whale, I was still studying and the whole reason I uploaded it to the internet was to try and showcase my work,” she said. ‘I think that it’s very nice experimentation for people to use in daily life, and to have the artwork become part of their daily life is lovely.” To see the exhibit of Lu’s work, visit Web Directions Exhibit, Parkside Foyer Area, Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, October 8-9.