Intro to Visual Practice / Fall 2010

My excerpt from our description:

The goal of our project was to intervene on the hierarchical, egoistic classroom setting and foster a more inclusive community experience in which the learning process could take place. Some people willingly joined us at our five tea party tables before we explained the project, yet few actually partook of tea and snacks, or of a conversation with their tablemates. It was not until Pedro asked, “Can we start?” that the tea party really was allowed to begin. At that point people began drinking and eating.
I do not think that people’s hesitation to participate marks a lack of success on our part. As we said in class, people’s decisions to join or not join are what help make the piece. Watching how the tea party transpired was research, even, about how such a rigidly utilized space, with its unspoken rules of behavior and etiquette, can be very hard to change. The altered space had little effect on those who chose to reject it and instead attend to their laptops or cell phones.
Creating a true difference in classroom interaction may not be possible simply through changing the way the room looks and where one subsequently sits. It would be interesting to attempt different kinds of interventions to see which had the greatest effect on behavior. Setting the room up as a living room with sofas, easy chairs, and lamps would force people to be closer to one another, but would it change their behaviors?
I agree with Bill’s comment that we could have done more with the work aesthetically. It would have looked better if each table had a more fleshed out “theme” or environment to it, rather than a collection of cups and snacks on a tablecloth.
The project provoked a discussion that ended up consuming almost an hour of class time, and overall I think it was a success because it challenged students to not only behave differently, but to think and talk about why they do certain things in certain environments.

Book, n. a written work on pages bound together; a record, script, or collection of something in parts bound together; something that contains information that people can read

“Design” can be a noun or a verb.

Verb:

- to plan, devise, or scheme

- the act of creating a visual design

Noun:

- a blueprint; something used as a guide for something else; a sketch

- an arrangement scheme

- a decorative work

Interior design refers to the act of planning the decoration and furnishings of a room in a specific visual, aesthetically pleasing way.

“Volume” is a noun with a few different meanings. Its most common use, especially related to art, is the amount of 3-D space an object takes up. The volume of a container is considered to be the amount the container can hold.

Volume also refers to:

- A book or publication that is one of a set of several related publications.

- A magnitude of sound.

In painting, volume is depicted through the use of shadow and light in a spacial situation. Volume is also an important sculptural quality.

Mingering Mike, an unintentional outsider artist from Washington D.C., created dozens of records during the 1960s and 1970s. He had a prolific career as a singer, producer, and record label manager. However, this entire life was a fantasy. The records are make of cardboard and paper, and have elaborate drawings and decoration, extensive liner notes, grooves in the records, fake shrink wrap and even little sale stickers. Mingering Mike thought of every detail. These records allowed him a venue in which to project his alter ego as a famous R&B singer. His songs range from topics like love and heartbreak to poverty, drug use and the Vietnam war, and everything in between.

Mike’s records are so detailed that they are easily mistaken for actual records until one takes a closer look. For some people – especially in the age of iPods and mp3s – records are now appreciated mainly for their cover art…in this sense, Mike might as well have been a real R&B superstar.

Mingering Mike did record some actual music with family members. He created the records, he said in an interview with the New York Times, so that if his music ever became famous he’d be ready. I think it’s fascinating how these records became a way for Mike to live a whole imaginary life. They are a place where he can experience how his real identity morphs into Mingering Mike’s. Music and the record artifact become sites of exploration, discovery, and fantasy in this case. I don’t think Mingering Mike ever saw himself as an artist when he was making his records. I think it was just more of a personal exercise in thinking about what it might be like if his daydreams could be real.

Anne Hart

Cy Twombly’s created his ‘Four Seasons’ (1993-94) using paints, pencil and crayon. Mixing paint with pencil is typical of his work. The canvases display paints violently dashed onto the canvas, as well as others which have been placed and allowed to drip down the canvas. Each canvas also has writing scribbled on it, and they all say somewhere “Ah, it goes, is lost.” The work is of course about the passage of time, but it also has a mood of loss, decline, and consciousness of what is lost with time.

This is an example of a product of my drawing machine. There are many differences between Twombly’s piece and mine, but I also saw some interesting comparisons. My piece does not involve an exploration of color or the combination of words and image like his does, however both of our pieces are somehow about abstractness, randomness, and the effects of time. Twombly uses abstraction of shapes and colors to achieve a mood for each of his four seasons. To me, his abstractions create a feeling. My abstractions were not intended to have any specific kind of effect, because the nature of my machine creates a randomized product, something untouched by the human hand in a way. Just as his different seasons are in some way connected to nature, I think the coffee and tea stains I use are evocative of something natural, something of the earth. Twombly’s piece uses randomness in the way he allowed paint to move around on his canvas, without any specific control or intention. He mixes randomness with intentionality in his more violent strokes and writing. My machine inherently creates a random product, because of the nature of removing human choice and touch from the equation (I poured tea and coffee through a series of different funnels). The effects of time are expressed in his piece both by its theme as “Four Seasons” – time passing, things coming and going, etc. But they are also expressed by the changes in the actual work over time – the movement and drying of paint. The passage of time is also captured in my piece, as that is what creates the different hues on the sheet. The darker areas are where the liquid pooled and stayed static as it dried, and the lighter areas are those that had tea/coffee on them but then the liquid moved, leaving only a trace of where it had been.

Alan Storey creates what he, like we, call drawing machines. He is best known for his public sculptures that interact with architecture and space, but over the past 20 years has started developing drawing machines. He defines a drawing machine as “a device that records traces of human activity in a specific environment.” ‘Device for Drawing the Movements of a Ballerina’, for example, traces the dancers movements across the stage over several evenings of a performance by reducing her movement to simple lines.

‘Device for Drawing the Movements of a Ballerina’ : http://www.c4gallery.com/artist/alan_storey/ballerina-traces-detail.jpg

Storey’s background and Drawing Machines exhibition at C4 in Los Angeles : http://www.c4gallery.com/artist/alan_storey/artist-alan-storey.html

Artist’s website : http://alanstorey.net/

Zevs is an anonymous French street artist. He has created different kinds of graffiti/art, for example what he calls “proper graffiti” where he writes on dirty walls with a high pressure jet, and liquidated logos, which he has become famous for. He drips paint under brand logos, giving them the appearance that they are dissolving (examples here).I think Zevs’ liquidated logos are drawing machines because he follows the same process every time (an M.O.) to alter the original and create a new product.

Cy Twombly is an American artist who is well-known for his large, graffiti-style paintings. He blurs the line between painting and drawing, often using a combination of both. Examples here. I will discuss him more in my Drawing Machines post.

Machine: anything that uses energy to perform or assist in the performance of human tasks; the machine modifies an input (data, raw material, etc) to produce an output, or product.

Drawing: the deliberate creation of visual art.

The operation of my machine requires human energy. The inputs are the raw materials of tea and coffee. My machine consists of a colander, a spatula, a slotted spoon, and a sieve. The colander is raised on a stand and holds the sieve inside of it, and the operator holds the spatula and slotted spoon underneath the colander.

The operation of this machine is straightforward but it allows for different permutations. One must pour tea and/or coffee into the sieve and it filters down through the four instruments to land on the paper, creating a randomized splatter pattern. Different permutations are achieved through the angling and arrangement of the spoon and spatula as well as through the volume and rate of input.

Anne Hart