Art343 Exhibition Review/Artist Talk

Day of the Dude - Exhibition Review

On the first floor of the Church of Fine Arts building there was the Day of the Dude art show. There were multiple artists that collaborated on this exhibition. All of the pieces are themed day of the dead. Each artwork has some sort of skull on it. The pieces are a combination of sculpture and paintings. The biggest piece that stood out to me was a quite large painting by Michael Sarich. I watched him create this piece in my painting class. He used a stencil to put his signature skull on his brightly colored background. It seemed like he was playing with the innocent girl devil in the background and the giant skull meaning death.

            The other piece that stood out to me was the twelve baby skulls hanging on the wall. There were six on top and six on bottom. They were hung in perfect alignment. Each skull was slightly different. It’s unusual that you see baby skulls because adult sugar skulls are so popular. Each one has some sort of heart etched into the heads and some have an inverted cross. Inverted crosses used to be known for Christianity but lately it has taken on the meaning of anti-Christianity. I am not sure what the artist was trying to get across with these. There were also boxes attached to the walls, which almost looked like a shrine to the dead. There were many pictures hanging from the work and little religious symbols on the top of the boxes. The colors were very bright and looked like a celebration to the dead.

The Yes Men - Artist Talk

The Yes Men are to guys that have become an activist duo throughout the world. They target social issues in their work. These two men have a lot of different websites that they have created to look like big companies websites but they have spoofed them. They started to get recognition to have interviews and be on television to speak about what they were doing. In the movie, they impersonated individuals that they disliked in big corporations. They want to get to the bottom of why the world gives more power to the market system instead of giving it to something else that could have more importance. The Yes Men get away with a lot for posing as people that would be big in the industry. It is so interesting to me that these people that are at these conventions don’t even really listen to the speaker. They would have been found out much quicker if people paid more attention to the speeches that these people are giving. One of the movements that stood out to me was the Survivaball. People dressed up in this inflatable ball costume to hit corporations that where threatening the climate. The claimed that it was “a self-contained living system for surviving disasters caused by global warming.” This got shut down immediately. They have used these Survivaball outfits in multiple places that they took action on. I think that the world needs more people like these Yes Men. Big corporations have control over everything which isn’t always what the world needs, and in most cases it’s what the world never needs.

Art 343 Final

For this final project I got inspiration from In Defense of the Poor Image by Hito Steyerl . I find it very interesting how she uses the poor image to her advantage. “The poor image is a copy in motion. Its quality is bad, its resolution substandard. As it accelerates, it deteriorates. It is a ghost of an image, a preview, a thumbnail, an errant idea, an itinerant image distributed for free, squeezed through slow digital connections, compressed, reproduced, ripped, remixed, as well as copied and pasted into other channels of distribution.” Throughout the paper, Steyerl is defending the poor image. She wants it to be recognized as something that people don’t really pay attention to. I watched some of her other videos and got inspiration from those as well. She uses some dry humor in some. I wanted to incorporate all of these things as well as putting my own twist to it. I chose to make a short video uses appropriated images from popular advertisements. I chose each ad from Googling popular advertisements throughout the last ten years. I chose to put the Old Spice man as the main voice behind the project. The commercial is about how if you use this old spice cologne everyone will love you and you will be the best man around. I decided to end the video with the McDonald’s theme slogan, “I’m lovin’ it.” I made the voices lower than they were originally. I wanted everything I put into this video to be different than what I originally grabbed from the Internet. Each picture I chose, I edited it some different way. I almost randomly put different filters and edits on each picture. On some ads I made have movement in them. I tried to use some humor in the video as well. I put the chocolate man at the very end with no sound because I wanted him to look scary and like he was put of place.

Steyerl talks about how a poor image is passed around, edited, given to someone else, and changed. I wanted my video to be like that. I wanted to change the pixilation of them, the colors, and just change them to give them a different look. When photos and other media are passed around like this, the piece is given a different meaning and most likely less of a meaning. Popular advertisements are all over the Internet. You cannot get away from them. Whatever website that a person goes on, it is likely that there is an ad somewhere on the page. This is a problem in today’s society. Seeing bill boards or different posters everywhere give the product or what they are selling a different meaning. In today’s society photographs are also perceived differently than they use to be. Pictures were taken with a digital camera or a disposable camera and you had them printed. My parents have boxes and boxes of photographs where as I only have digital files that I have taken with my phone mostly.

All together I think that my video could be more expanded. There were some good suggestions brought up when doing a critique. I could make the video longer and keep repeating the short video over and over but making more edits. I think that would have given the piece more of a meaning. Also I would have used more commercial voices instead of just the two that I used. I needed to layer more and more. When looking at my video if you were an outside viewer, I think that it would be difficult to pick up a meaning from it. I definitely want to expand more on this to prove my point that I am trying to get across.

Steyerl, Hito. "In Defense of the Poor Image." (n.d.): n. pag. E-flux. E-flux, Nov. 2009. Web. 10 Dec. 2014.

Curated Show - ART 343

For ART 343 we had to curate a show. When thinking about what the show was going to be and where it was going to be it was hectic. No one could make a decision and come down to a solid idea. When the show ended up being in the little gallery I think that it turned out well. Even though the theme of the show went out the window and not very many people came, it was slightly successful. The food was the best part. The show turned into a plus one show. I could not come up with anyone to be in the show as well. I asked a couple people and some of them were already in a show at the same time or they couldn't come up with anything in time. If I had more time to find someone instead of a week before the show I could have found someone.  I created a blue piece for the show because it was supposed to be monochrome. I used watercolor and used ink to paint flowers on top of it. When all the pieces were hung up the show came together well. But I think that it wasn't fully curated by us. The show was just sort of planned and it came together. We didn't get very many outside artists. Next time I would say we would have to reach out to different artists instead of waiting for them to join in themselves. We needed to have more time when we actually figured out what was going to happen. We only figured out what to do at the very end when we had pretty much the entire semester to get it ready.

Triptych Art345

The main idea for this triptych project is everyday life. I used different scenes that happen in my everyday life. I wanted the two outside videos to be more complicated than the one in the middle. The hands represent how much we have to do in one day and how busy they always are. Whether it is driving, washing hands, writing, or tying on a computer. The video in the middle was to represent how life is passing by quickly and there isn't a way to stop it. The bench keeps swinging while everything else is going on. Video 1 and 3 have everyday actions that go non-stop and life keeps going on. Even the simple things in life that we all have to do take up time. I wanted the audio to be very simple. All the sounds are what was happening in the videos. You can hear the pen tapping and the typing and washing hands. While the outside two videos speed up more and more, the middle video slows down. I wanted it to seem like all the things that I put in this video go by fast and are almost meaningless to use. Washing hands doesn't stay in your brain after you do it or what letters you typed on a keyboard. I think the videos were quite successful. What would have made it more successful would be making the video longer and drawn out. Everything could have been more exaggerated then I made it. When I showed the video to the class I set it up that each video was playing right next to each other. If I didn't do this the person watching would not be able to tell that the outside two videos were speeding up and the other was slowing down. The audio that was used was the original sounds from what the videos were. I did not want to mess with the audio because I wanted it to be pretty simple.

Midterm Instrument and Visual Scores Art 345

For this instrument I wanted it to be similar to a wind chime. I wanted it to have a light sound but also use it to make very loud sounds as well. I chose a bucket as the base because I could hit the bottom of it and use it like a loud drum. I decided to use copper pipes for the wind chime sounds because it was easily available to me. The pipes being strung over the drum made a better sound than the pipes just hanging. I wanted it to be a different variation of a wind chime and I think I accomplished that. In the picture the instrument is taken apart because I had to give the parts back.

Eric had a very simple instrument so I wanted the visual score to be quite simple to read. I wanted to use colors so he would know when to make louder sounds or softer. He could use his shaker instrument to do quite sounds and increase the volume. I started the visual score slow and then let it build into the height of the piece. I used different patterns and lines with color to portray the slower and faster parts of the piece.  After the climax of the piece, I wanted it to wind down so I used swirls to close the piece out.

When Eric brought up the idea of a visual sculpture, I thought that was a different interesting aspect of the project. The visual score he made me was quite easy to understand. The piece was supposed to be read left to right and horizontal. I had different ways to play my instrument, which was great for the score he gave me. I started with a band and then built it up to the middle of the piece, where he wanted me to just go crazy and make chaos of noise. Then the piece repeated itself and brought to a slow close ending with another bang.