Bierstadt Drones

Media artist Joseph DeLappe is in the midst of sharing a new series of internet based works that update Albert Bierstadt's iconic paintings of America's west by inserting animated gif flybys of Predator and Reaper drones. Bierstadt's highly idealized paintings are the representation of 19th century "manifest destiny" in their fantastic, virtualized representations of bucolic mountains, pioneers on the move and rapidly vanishing native cultures. His works played a key role in attracting "settlers" to tame the "savage" west! Scenes of western rapture have now been invaded by the iconic image of weaponized drones flying overhead. Idealized, imagined landscapes reified with the addition of our latest technologies of power and destruction.