Intro to Visual Practice / Fall 2010

In this consideration of systems, language, and the very way we systematize our expected recognition of faces, I wanted to respond by exploring a slightly different language system.

The haiku is a poetic system, but when translated into anglicized, it degrades into something slightly broken.  It cannot convey the same meaning in English as it does in Japanese, because of the different mechanics of syllables in the two languages.  These different mechanics change the haiku system, because the mora (which we translate into the syllable) is the basic unit of the haiku.  I wanted to explore this bastardized system to create a commentary on the created and altered systems we saw on Tuesday:

In the space between

words logic breaks down into

the smallest pixels.

Story Boards are an organizational process for motion picture, animation, and interactive media that began in the animation industry at Walt Disney. A storyboard consists of a series of illustrations that form the sequence of the final product. This process helps directors/creators to understand their final goal before attempting the final product. Often additions or tweaks in the plot result from the storyboard and the ability to gage suspense when the scenes are laid out. In Film, some scenes may be shot ahead of time to fill the storyboards that can then be shown to marketers etc. Today they are both hand drawn and digital.

Anti-art literally refers to the rejection of previous standards considered art. In the early 1900s Marcel Duchamp’s ‘found art’ became the first referred to example. Anti-artwork may convey a specific disagreement with the art world, art market, or high art  – most have become generally accepted today. Some anti art has denounced art making in general, and artworks have specifically been made for the act of destruction. The Dada, Surrealist, Lettrism, Situationist, and neo-Dada art movements all have their roots in anti-art. The most recent controversy regarding anti-art had to do with conceptual art in the Jewish Museum’s Holocaust exhibit.

Shoe stores are actually art galleries. I highlighted one shoe in particular to showcase, how one artwork is always more aesthetically pleasing to us than others. These are the pieces we focus on, the pieces we see as true art. These are the artworks we remember, though the memories of the others linger lightly in our memory.

I wanted to expand the commentary on a shoe store being an art gallery. I took the same image from my original IVP #2 and reflected it upon itself. When I think of a quintessential art gallery, I think of pieces standing on glass surfaces.  Because they are on glass, they reflect on themselves and the other pieces in the room.

My new image shows the artwork as if on a glass table, due to the reflective image. Also if you look closely, you can see 4 new shoes in the reflected surface. These represent the other art pieces in the room. Even though you find the red shoe the must beautiful piece, like in an art gallery, you can never escape the unwanted pieces around the piece you want. The unwanted pieces might be the artworks right next to it (represented by the 3 other shoes on the top row) or other artworks in the gallery (represented by the 4 new shoes in the reflected image); unwanted artworks reflect in the glass of the painting or an artwork’s glass stand.

All the artworks linger in our memory after we leave the gallery; this is also represented in my image. This is because, the 4 new shoes can be seen, they are lingering in our memory, but because we didn’t invest time to focus on these pieces the memories are not clear and strong.

I decided to use my cardboard to do a simplistic aesthetic and also try something new.

Firstly, I decided to use this opportunity to try to work with IMovie for the first time. With this in mind, I created a scene. I used my cardboard to create a stage, painted the background blue, and used construction paper to cover some elements to give it color. I than also create a fish out of cardboard, and a house for the fish out of cardboard. This house was supposed to look like trash thrown into the ocean. That is why i decided not to cover it or change the outside of the cardboard. I unfortunately can’t seem to post any images on the blog at this time.

Secondly i did a piece called Cardboardiery. I was inspired by embroidery items like Vera Bradley, and used a pushpin to create a simple yet elegant pattern on the cardboard.

Though there were many intriguing creations at the Record & Vinyl exhibit, the most compelling for me was the hands-on exhibit.  My father has a collection of records, but his record player broke when I was very young, so my memory of the record experience existed only as vague memories and glamorized nostalgia from TV.  I had recently purchased a record during my study abroad trip in Berlin, and I had been eager to listen to it.  Sneaking back into the Nasher with my treasure, I installed it on the turntables outside of the exhibit, and donned the headphones.  As the disk accelerated, I began to hear the characteristic crackle, and then the orchestral score.  It was more sublime than TV had made it out to be.

Rather than building three dimensional structures using the cardboard I collected, I was more concerned with creating negative space in cardboard, and using that negative space to project and create positive space images on other surfaces.  To do this, I cut a series of cardboard stencils.

I then organized a shirt spray painting event on the plaza.  I invited people to spray paint their own shirts, or shirts that I had left over from a Duke Arts Festival event.

The positive images weren’t carbon copies of the negative spaces that yielded them.  They were imperfect.  Crisp lines of cardboard yielded smudged or blurry borders, blending the delineation between man-made fabric and freshly painted forms.

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.

For my project I googled “art intervention” and after looking at many of the images listed under that name I decided that I kind of wanted to do some sort of installation, some sort of sculpture-ish thing in a place and I wanted that place to be Duke’s campus. With a little influence from one of my favorite artists, Barbara Kruger and her recent involvement with W magazine in their latest issue which happened to be the “Art Issue” I decided to do this project. It was really important for me to feel like I was making a commentary about something at Duke, about Duke, relating to Duke life and I think that a major part of my life here at Duke and many students’ lives here is appearance.  I think not only with the media news and issues that Duke has created for its public image lately (scandals, leaked fake theses, etc) and just the type of student social life that we promote or at least lead here on campus that appearance and perception is very very important.  Duke is very much about social life, social climbing, appearance, social classes and norms, the greek life has something to do with this as well.  I think that its easy to get stuck in the Duke bubble and not realize that all that is within these walls, within the privacy of this elite institution, this private campus, the seemingly infinite resources and tools and opportunities, the golden atmosphere where we might feel like because we go here we’re special, invincible almost, all that —isn’t all that’s out there in reality, in the real world, in the world outside that only encompasses Duke as a very small piece of the entire puzzle.  So I thought to expose the hierarchy on campus, the social structure that is somewhat corrupt or skewed or just a little bit sketchy, I wanted to install large mirrors in strategic places on campus.  Mirrors that are maybe like 4 feet wide and 8 feet tall that could stand upright like in a doorway in the middle of the bus stop, on the main quad, in the Bryan Center, in the middle of east campus, on the plaza, and Perkins.  That way students would have to run into these huge mirrors and would probably stop to look in it, look at themselves, and maybe, look into themselves. And even if they don’t it just shows the mentality on campus, how we don’t have the time to stop and look at ourselves, what we’re wearing, who we are, what we’re doing, what we are PROJECTING.  And I wasn’t really sure that that would get the point across completely so I thought, with the Barbara Kruger reference, that I could put some sayings, some text on the top of the mirrors or around the edges of the mirrors, text like

“LOOK AT ME”
“Who’s the fairest of them all?”
“Things aren’t always as they seem”
“What do you desire?”
“How do I look?”

For the physical project I did my original procedure on a smaller scale and this is how it turned out.

Process: noun, the series of steps through which one obtains a desired effect or result.
The word process brings to my mind the work of Yves Klein, who emphasized the process of art more than the final result in his live painting performances.  In such pieces, Klein used the bodies of female models as paintbrushes. The models rolled around on canvases covered in blue paint, documenting the creative process of the work.

Color Theory: noun, the study of the relationships between variations of light. It describes the formation and resulting hierarchy of light and pigment tonalities when different colors are mixed.
Color theory brings to mind the works of pointillist Georges Seurat. He juxtaposed secondary colors to create an illusion of depth and solidity.

Georges Seurat, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

Entropy is a word that has applications in both thermodynamics and information theory. The term is defined as follows in these two fields:

Thermodynamics:

-Entropy is the amount of energy that is not available for the process of work. It can further refer to the disorder or randomness of the microscopic particles that make up a thermodynamic process.

Information Theory:

-Entropy is a measure of the information that is lost during the transfer of a signal or other medium of message. It refers to the disorder, unpredictability, or uncertainty associated with a random variable.

Deduction is a type of logic that involves moving from a more general notion to a particular idea.

An example of deductive argument is…

1. All duke students like cheese [general notion]

2. You are a duke student.

3. You like cheese [particular idea]

An observer is something or someone who observes. While they watch or observe, they don’t take part in what’s going on. Someone may be observing without anyone knowing they are watching, known as spying.

In science, mass is a fundamental property of an object and includes the amount of matter it contains. In everyday terms, mass is often used as a synonym for weight. A three-dimensional property, mass in art refers to the amount of bulk an object possesses (or appears to contain) and what weight that matter has in space. There are two types of mass, actual mass and implied mass, and they differ in whether mass is present in reality or illusion.

Pyramids of Giza

Sources:

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/mass.html

http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/Map.html

Fichner-Rathus, Lois. “Foundations of Art and Design”

http://www.portpromotions.com/upload/1272055963_giza-pyramids-at-dusk.jpg

Process art gained popularity in the United States and Europe in the mid 1960s. It emphasizes the actual process of creating artwork instead of focusing on a plan or final outcome. Process art usually contains elements of change and transience.

Artist Richard Serra “splashing” paint on the walls in 1968

Robert Smithson, Yucutan Mirror Displacements (1-9), 1969

My idea for transforming a site into a piece of art stemmed from such discussion in class about other artists.  I wanted to create something dealing with nature, harmony, and friendship.  I went through several ideas and decided on using different color streamers to transform a tree.  I decided on playing a song to inspire the movements of throwing the streamers.  The song Earth and Sky by Tea Leaf Green is a piece that describes the harmonious forces existing between the ground holding us here, and the heavenly divine spirits in the sky.  The lyrics are as follows:

I don’t plant crops and

I don’t build fences

I don’t ride on railroads
And I don’t dig trenches
I’m living in between
The earth and sky
I don’t go to school
I don’t go to churches
I don’t visit graveyards
I don’t know the purpose of ‘em
I’m living in between
The earth and sky
Following phone lines
To good times and bad times
Under the starlight
Under the moon
Shining down on me
Shining down on me
I’d write letters
But i’d never send ‘em
The post script on ‘em
Is never ending
I’m living in between
The earth and sky
I’m living in between
The earth and sky

I thought the song captured the harmony that I wanted my art project to be about.  I played the song in a room with 3 of my friends 3 or 4 times while I told them to think about the lyrics and what it meant to them personally.  I then told them that I wanted them each to take a streamer and go outside to the tree I had picked.  I played the song on a loud speaker.  Then, we followed an orderly but harmonious pattern to create the design on the tree.

I told my friend Megan to throw first, then Kelsey, and then Kristy, and then I threw last.  Then we each retrieved our end of the roll and all threw again until the end of the first chorus.  We repeated this pattern until the end of the song, or if someone ran out of their roll.

At the end we observed the work and thought the overall design was fun and original. It was an exhilarating experience for all of us together, and created a source of conversation for people asking why the streamers were on the trees.  I would like to repeat this process in the future but on a much grander scale – like in one of the old trees on East campus and with much larger streamers or strips of colorful paper.  Also by involving more people, the harmonious aspect would be greatly amplified.

For my IVP#2 project I wanted to be able to create something that maintains an element of playfulness. I played around with the idea of altering nature because we have such beautiful scenery around Durham, but kept coming back to the idea of decorating a side of a house with cards.  The idea was to pattern the side making it looks like bricks, while still displaying the cards. I wanted it to be joyful, but when creating it my mind kept coming back to marriage. A house of cards, in the traditional sense is so fragile and susceptible to break, and so are the relationships we create and try to maintain within our homes. These two sides of the house: the joyful and the wary both came out when looking at my piece, but at different times during the day. This difference was unexpected, but I was happy to see my thought processes in the final product.

I wanted to play with the idea of nature as a means to transform a site into artwork.  I transformed a site, a box, into art by transforming it into my favorite site, my house in the fall.  I photographed my house decorated for the fall, and I painted it.  Then I put it in the box and placed pretty fall leaves inside with dead leaves at the bottom, transforming the box by placing pieces of the surrounding environment, pieces of the season of fall, into it.  I transformed the site, the box, into artwork by transforming it into my favorite site, transformed into artwork by the seasons.

In other words, I see fall as artistically transforming of my neighborhood.  So I was inspired by that transformation to transform something else into a representation of it.