Friday, December 16, 2016

lectures and exhibitions, fall 2016

Richard Lin

Artist Lecture: Janine Antoni and Stephen Petronio

Antoni and Petronio are a pair of artists who collaborated to make works such as “Honey Baby”. Antoni, prior to meeting Petronio, primarily were sculptures and photographs. Petrionio on the other hand, worked in performance art. He grew up, and as a college student, learned he wanted to become a dancer. Petrionio’s dances eventually became an expressive art.
Combining the talents of these two artists, they were able to manage interesting compositions. Antoni would make sets for Petronio’s stages, but eventually this relationship turned into one where their respective art forms would become closer meshed together.
What was interesting about this talk was how the two personalities contrasted each other. While Petronio talked a lot, Antoni was quite reserved and only talked when she had to. Additionally, the way they collaborated was explained by Petronio as a sibling relationship where they communicate every morning at least once or twice during the day. Furthermore, Petronio goes on to explain that artists are terrible at collaborating because they have their own vision for a project, and that collaboration is good for the ego, because you can explore new viewpoints by receding some of your own.

Artist Lecture: Jennifer Garza-Cuen

Garza-Cuen’s work consists of photography as a medium. She takes photographs of places and gives it new context, usually adding interesting stories behind them. Her lecture, likewise was different than most other artist lectures in that, instead of presenting work and explaining the idea behind it solely, she told about the stories behind each picture in a flowing fashion that was much like an actual storytelling.
I will admit that it was a bit difficult to hear her. Since I was not able to make the first 10 or so minutes of the lecture, I’m not certain whether it was because a mic was not set up or if they had technical difficulties with setting one up or if this was intentional. This, combined with the dark room made it me feel drowsy at times.
However, I can appreciate the uniqueness of the lecture… it offered a fresh experience. I’ve been to many lectures, and many of them are more or less similar in that they cover their work and explain the thought process behind them in a straightforward fashion. Because Garza-Cuen went through the pictures without explaining each one—rather just telling a story about them—it was made that much more interesting. It became memorable in that regard.
Two questions I would ask Garza-Cuen: her inspirations and process, and her favorite works out of the several photographs she has taken.
Two questions I would ask Antoni and Petronio are: what happens when there are conflicts in ideas, and what caused Petrionio to become more “artsy” with his performances.

Artist Exhibition: DePaul’s “Hereafter”

DePaul Vera’s “Hereafter” exhibition contained several works pertaining to the theme of gayness. In the exhibition’s description, it says, “…if there is a Heaven, but I can’t be myself up there, then maybe I don’t want Heaven. Hence the Hereafter.” This series of work depicts a multiple medium approach. While all of the works are framed and sized similarly and attached to a wall, some will use acrylic paint, or just be plain graphite. The exact materials used to create each work are typed out onto a fancy, sparkling sheet of paper which serves to make the exhibition more “fabulous”.
Within each work men depicted nude in various positions, containing up to 2 people—1 white, and 1 black. Perhaps this can additionally represent a racial theme, the mixing of races and acceptance of it. Many of these individual pieces contain sexual or sensual elements, such as kissing and being drawn in positions that can be considered sexual. This serves to question to the audience the acceptability of gays in our society. As a major trending contemporary topic these several past years, just how many of us can truly accept gay people? Is it still considered unusual, and if so, should it be?
Until society accepts gay activities without batting an eye, they may still feel excluded, and I believe that DePaul’s description of the exhibition touches on this idea. That even the best places are not the best if they don’t allow people to have the freedom to represent their own being.

Artist Exhibition: Antoni and Petronio’s “Honey Baby”

This work is a result of the collaboration between Petronio, who is a choreographer and performance artist, and Antoni, who does sculpture and photography. Honey Baby is a result of this fusion. The work takes place within what looks like a cylindrical chamber, lined with honey. A performer is housed within the chamber during the performance and gives the illusion of a baby within the womb. I recall Antoni saying that honey was used because it seemed like amniotic fluid.
            The use of honey and the gestures of the performer imitating that of a fetus in a liquid environment gives the feel of an antigravity environment, not unlike that of the baby within fluid. At periods of time, the camera would swap to a viewpoint which closely depicts the performer laced in honey. Honey Baby is composed of three parts, which get increasingly more active. The use of sound within these works also serve to enhance the imitation of a baby in utero. The sounds had a likeness to a heartbeat, but with a muffled sound, like being underwater… which is what being within the womb would probably sound like.

            This work is interesting in that it upholds both artists’ recurring themes of exploring the body, but at the same time it shows the power of collaboration between two artists. This work fluidly blends the works of two different artists into one impressive piece, and demonstrates the importance of interdisciplinary art.

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Scratch testing

In this link, I have posted the project in which I will be testing out various things in Scratch. This is primarily concerned with testing the time related attributes in Scratch. I am also in the process of re familiarizing myself with it, because I have not touched Scratch or coding in general for a while.

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

451 project week 3 update

After visiting rhizome and viewing various artists, I particularly enjoyed the interactivity and choice making of "Do You Want Love or Lust" where each decision made asks relevant questions endlessly and never awards a score, parodying similar questionnaires. It was interesting, and entertaining much in the same manner as a game. At this point I may be considering to make my piece more game-like, while still retaining its art-like qualities.

As for concept, I'm now imagining a time based website, where something different will happen depending on either a real time clock or a timer that a user can set. The imagery or interactivity will change depending on the time, most likely corresponding to a proportionate amount of time in human advancement, from past to present, and then a hypothetical time afterwards.

I'm planning on programming this at first, using Scratch as the coding engine, because of its simplicity, and then work on transitioning it to a website hosted for free, with an appropriately named url. Perhaps the website could host the Scratch project, as well as form its own thing, essentially becoming 2 different projects relating to the same concept.


Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Critical Play: Lectures + Exhibitions


Lectures
Terry Marshall
I felt that Terry Marshall’s talk was more interesting than Joel Swanson’s. Perhaps this can be attributed to the fact that he included a little bit of humor and spoke a bit more enthusiastically. I find his themes to be relevant but, at the same time, felt a little put off. This talk was a little after the whole Michael Brown shooting incident, which happened in Ferguson, MI. It was natural for Terry Marshall to include it into his topics about black equality. Specifically, centering around black people being feared when compared with white people, to those who aren’t black. While I agree that there are stereotypes concerning those of black people, I think they may have been exaggerated just a tad bit. When talking about Ferguson, while I believe that the case did deserve attention, the fact that the community caused a riot  to gain it seemed to be entirely ignored. Although it didn’t help the argument that he gave, or his work’s message, I did wish he did at least address the issue existed.
As for his work itself, I found them to be a little different than the norm. Not in a bad way though. They were humorous and I thought that was great. One such example that I liked was the Black Survival Guide. It was a guide that satirized the actions that black people have to do when faced with certain conditions, in order to survive in society.

Clint Sleeper
Clint Sleeper is a professor at UNR. His theme is disappointment. While we (the class) went his last lecture in the previous semester, this lecture was notably different. Mainly, this lecture is not about one work, but rather the entirety of his practice. It was interesting to see his background in music in action, as it seemed many of them did include audio as a major component, especially in his performance pieces (of course), which seem to be quite a sizable portion of his collection. Some of the works were pretty hard to look at, such as the razor blades being played around with. Combined with the lemons being juiced in the midi and the chance of causing a fire or shock, I have to say Clint is pretty, well, “YOLO”. Nonetheless, his talk was interesting and some of his work is pretty funny. One outstanding example of this is “Teaching Capitalism to Nature”. I found the lecture interesting, and think most people would stay awake. If Clint talking didn’t keep them awake, then the noise from his work being shown most certainly would have. Definitely an interesting tactic. Keep up the good work.

Exhibitions
Pink Elephants on Parade
Fairly certain this exhibit is named after the sequence from the Disney movie, Dumbo. In the movie, Dumbo gets drunk after drinking from water that contained champagne. He then begins to see pink elephants, and shortly afterwards, finds out he can fly. Perhaps these sculptures are supposed to represent the things that we have to see before we too, can “fly”. These sculptures, displayed at the Sheppard Gallery, contain a mix of an assortment of everyday materials in classic forms. A combination of the new and old, it draws parallels with works such as Pac-Mondrian, from Prize Budget for Boys, albeit not quite as humorous. With a wide variety of sculptures on display created with diverse materials, it was a little difficult for me to read into the context. Had it not been for the provided papers, I honestly would’ve been pretty lost. Once reading the papers though, it does become quite clear. The concept is quite interesting: he focuses on the fakeness of modern architecture. In addition, the pieces themselves were interesting, with color and shapes running amok.


Flo Oy Wong: You Gotta be Brave


Flo Oy Wong is an artist of Chinese descent. She works with several unusual mediums including rice sacks, funeral paper, and American flags. Despite the various mediums, she remains consistent on her style, which is collage. Each work also has a distinctly Chinese background, with portraits littering many of her works. On paper, it says “she interviews people she finds heroic in order to explore disquieting matters that transform her and viewers to a place of healing, connecting and understanding.” Each piece invites us into a part of Chinese culture. As someone who is also of Chinese descent, I find these pieces to evoke familiar feelings, as the aesthetic is definitely something I’ve been around many times in my life. Thus, it is hard for me to judge this work from an objective viewpoint. I believe these works are targeted toward those unfamiliar with this type of aesthetic, because of the fact that it’s supposed to provide insight into the Chinese heritage.

Friday, May 8, 2015

Advanced Digital Media: Artist Lectures + Exhibitions + Paper




LECTURES
Joel Swanson
Joel Swanson is an artist working with words in a mostly digital environment. He plays on the use of wording in the English language, such as the case with the 3d palindrome, a sculpture which spells the same word no matter which way you view it. Other interesting works include a work that transfers Lady Gaga’s tweets into morse code. I found the irony within the fact that modern communication methods are being intricately transformed into an old and (mostly) dead form of communication. However, while the works themselves were not too boring, I felt Mr. Swanson himself was not the most interesting speaker. However, one thing that he said, I believe, was that he did not know that much code, and that he only learned what he had to. His knowledge of code was built upon that. I thought that was pretty interesting, in that he was able to learn something just by doing art. However, the amount of code that he actually knows is still a mystery, so it’s hard to tell how how much weight that carries. With that in consideration, I would probably ask how much coding he knows (probably should be related to artistic practice but it’s really problematic for me). Secondly, I would ask what he thinks of the English language in earnest, because many of his works are based off of words and how confusing it could be, what would he do to perhaps revise the language. Alternatively, if he is fine with English as it is, what makes it so perfect?


Tehching Hsieh
Tehching Hsieh is a Taiwanese immigrant artist who is very dedicated in his performance of his pieces. This is most evident in the one year performance where he absolutely refuses to get inside the police building to remain faithful to his art. While Tehching Hsieh seems to integrate the idea of art and life together, as evidenced by the performances, he also seems to show the human perseverance through adverse conditions. Tehching Hsieh’s commitment to being on time and going through with his proposals are something of awe, and might even be considered of the sublime. While Hsieh’s fluency in English was not excellent, the troubles caused by it definitely did not detract from the works he had shown in his talk. That in itself made the lecture very well worth going to. Also, Hsieh kept the audience entertained with his own sense of humor. For example, toward the end of his talk, a member of the audience gave him a question worded very complexly. Hsieh responded to him by giving him a bit of a general answer and then apologizing saying that he gave a general answer because he could not grasp the full extent of his question. I thought internally that it was a little bit inconsiderate and unfair to use such complex wording for a question after hearing him give his presentation, but Hsieh pulled off his reply really well and it did make me respect him more. As a whole, I really did enjoy Tehching Hsieh’s presentation.
Two questions I would ask Hsieh are: 1) “What made you want to be an artist of all things?” and 2) “What kept you going, other than your mom’s ideals, what gave you such drive to be so consistent in all these works?”


EXHIBITIONS

Pricilla Varner: Emancipating Jane: Challenging the Representation of Legal Sex-Workers in

Fine Art

Quite a long title for the exhibition. First a little background. Varner is a photographer that commonly photographs children, families, and weddings. Quite a departure from this work. Nonetheless, the concept was interesting. Pretty self explanatory. Features a bunch of sex workers and attempts to fix society’s image of them being portrayed negatively. While the work does a fine job invoking thought on the subject, a couple of questions do come to mind. Should legal sex work be portrayed positively? What are the consequences of said portrayal? While I understand many people may objectify sex workers (maybe even worse), and that they are people as well, how far should we take this idea? The idea of working an unskilled labor job that no one wants to do surely means that something is wrong. It is an “easy” job but at the same time it is as far from “easy” as you can get. The mental strain and constant condescending attitude received from others is definitely not something most would like to cope with. That, backed with having no job and the lack of ability to get one can definitely be a reason some choose that path. So, in summary, my feelings are mixed about the subject at hand. I agree that workers should be treated as humans, because they are. But at the same time, if we do treat them as humans, would we be encouraging people to engage in such work? If there are no drawbacks, why would we not do it? Perhaps it would not matter so much if we are headed into technological unemployment, but that time has yet to come.

Tehching Hsieh
In Hsieh’s Exhibition, we find the paperworks he used for the videos he had shown in his talk. In this rendition of his work, we can find his proposals in still form, giving us close readouts of all of his work. This is crucial, because there may have been some points missed from his talk due to the language barrier (unfortunately). One important thing I had noted was that in each proposal he had so meticulously written down, there had been a calendar with circled dates, allowing the public to view him on those days, something that I had not realized in his talk.
When placed beside each other, Hsieh’s 1 year of no art and final work of many years of art completely symbolizes art as life. The contrast, when placed next to each other, makes it apparent that those two are supposed to be together. The timestamp performance pictures also differed from the video in that we can clearly see the amount of effort put into the project. When laid out, we can see Hsieh’s different feelings each time, although he tried to remain relatively neutral. We can say Hsieh is very dedicated to his piece, each time having the correct clock position to the dot. When seen through the exhibit, I believe that the idea of life as art is much clearer than when he showed his videos, which made me think about humans in adverse conditions and the will to live.

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

the box story


 I approached this project by relating to our attachment of childhood items. Sometimes, we have to let things go at certain points of our life. This story is supposed to invoke similar feelings. By using chroma key, I was able to take out the background of the 3d printed box. The video is made in somewhat low res in order to create a similar style to those with moving lines, although it makes it harder to tell the actual form of the box. I decided to keep the box in video because the motion makes the box feel alive, which often occurs when dealing with items we humans are attached to.