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[19 Apr 2004|11:00pm] |
Last 3 entries all new, be sure to check out all 3
I also altered my webpage, if you are so inclined to check that out too
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| Conceptual vs. Perceptual Art |
[19 Apr 2004|10:41pm] |
Reading:
"It doesn't matter if the viewer understands the concepts of the artist by seeing his work" WHAT? I feel like the communication of the concept would be vital, especially since "In conceptual art, the idea of concept is the most important part of the work," and the aesthetic quality isn't important....
Other thoughts:
from essay
[["all the decisions are made beforehand, and the actual creation is just a perfuctory affair"
"not theoretical or illustrative of theories; it is intuitive, it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is purposeless. It is usually free from the dependence on an artist as a craftsman"]]
Perceptual art is art whose aesthetic value has some importance. But conceptual art has to take some kind of visual form to be able to convey its concept.... and doesn't perceptual art generally have some kind of concept behind it? I am foggy on the boundaries... but I guess all boundaries can be foggy.
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| Nam June Paik interview |
[19 Apr 2004|10:02pm] |
I was reading the interview of Nam June Paik that was linked on this weeks website, and found it very interesting that he concealed his ethnicity to avoid racist criticism. Koreans would view his work as "too westernized" whereas Americans would view it as "too ethnic." I always thought that the intent/perception of the artist was critical to the import of the work, and the more the viewer knew about the artist, the deeper the understanding.
He says that the "korean"ness in his work is "automatically embedded"; he doesn't try to make it look the way it does. But by concealing his identity, it would seem that this ethnic quality was an intentional juxtaposition to the Westernized aspects. This seems like cheating. It really brings into question how much the artist's "intent" has to do with how valuable a work is.
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| Video/film collage |
[19 Apr 2004|02:26pm] |
For me, the entertainment quality to a collage film is what makes it successful. While you may think, well thats true for most art, I didn't think it was true for the collage music. I feel like I could listed to music and appreciate it as art, even if I wouldn't listen to it as entertainment. Conceptually though, I have a harder time appreciating film as art, when it just makes me feel like I'm on drugs. Not to say that I CAN'T appreciate it, because I did appreciate the experimental People Like Us.... but again, I was about ready for it to end when it did.
Maybe because film is generally longer that a music piece? Maybe because I've generally watched film only for entertainment purposes?
Now, some of the films we watched and mentioned in class really succeeded in the collage film field.... and were exceedingly different from People Like Us.* They were entertaining, plot-driven films, with the collage aspect added almost as flare. [One that might fall in the middle would be the Donland duck film that Jim brought in, but I can't really judge because I only saw a couple minutes of it]
I think an important distinction needs to be made between these two types of collage film. I wouldn't know exactly how to define it, except maybe by the intent of the film's author. Purely aesthetic collage films needn't follow a plotline or story, and 'entertaining collage movies' have collage elements that either add flare or help push the plot along. Suggestions for other distinguishing aspects, anyone?
The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, for intance, uses the cartoon segments as both character development and character insight. American Splendor uses the cartoon comic book bubbles as insight into the characters train of thought too. In Waking Life, the overlying animation is quite unecessary to the plot, but dramamtically adds to the aesthetic flare.
In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the cartoon element is essential to the story. I think this is an exception though, because the characters in the movie acknowledge their own state, and are aware of the contast between "people" and "toons." Without this awareness, there would obviously be no plot.
*for more on People Like Us, see that entry
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| Vicki Bennett, "People Like Us" |
[31 Mar 2004|12:45am] |
Well the show made me feel like I should have been on drugs, but I guess flash does that too. It was disjointed, and hard to pay full attention to after a while, but it was still quite interesting to watch.
She looped a lot of her images repeating specific motions (like lifting their hands in the air, or making an OK sign with their hand, or pointing). It made them look like they were conducting. Obviously the whole peice had the music theme throughout... and the looped images that didn't look like they were conducting, looked in a weird way like they were dancing or swaying -- the looping gave the images rhythm.
Images kept reappearing in different forms, although I can't say I noted any real progression in the film. Sure, the focus was a little more on instruments in the beginning and people in the end, but it didn't seem to evolve. Funny commentary, when the radio announcer's voice from the 1950s came on and said "You know, I dont think this is going anywhere. Maybe it's not." It was like a moment of self-awareness.
I also liked the comment when the announcer voice explained, "You need creative ingenuity" and "endless creativity" to create and appreciate, I assume, this collage piece.
She mixed/played all the music from the front and I thought that was pretty impressive. As we found out in the beginning, when we had technical difficulties, there was very little sound/sound effects coming directly from the video -- for instance, a trumpet noise when someone played a trumpet. I thought her commentary at the end of the performance was notable, when she explained that her "one rule" was that she had to transform whatever she got before/as she put it in her work. The new meaning/identity she tries and attach to the existing video or music clip is essential in collage/sampling/etc and all we were talking about in class earlier today.
We recognized the Prelinger video about the Angel in the clip -- and it turns out that she borrows most of her work from the Prelinger archive.
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| shit cake! |
[30 Mar 2004|11:04pm] |
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"It's not just any birthday cake! It's a shit cake!"
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| Set-List vote |
[28 Mar 2004|09:35pm] |
How eclectic. Here's my list, in no particular order:
Beck - Get Real Paid
Shins - Caring is creepy
Public Enemy - Contact on the World Love Jam
DJ Dangermouse - Dirt Off Your Shoulder/(or)/What more can I say?
Soulwax - Don't call me Blur
The Faint - Work Up so sexual
Further seems Forever - checklist before Chicago
Modest Mouse - What are people made of/(or)/Dark Center of the Universe
Soul Coughing - Buhhda Rhubarb Butter
Poe - Fingertips
The Books - All Bad Ends Well
Taking Back Sunday - Timberwolves @ New Jersey
People like us - Hi there
Super Furry Animals - Shoot Doris Day
Have a great night!
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| David Golumbia's Non-Standard Web |
[24 Mar 2004|01:47am] |
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I went to hear David Golumbia's presentation on standardization and I thought he well-represented the idea of the Internet as Collage. He mentioned how topics interesting a particular breed of person would get more representation on the internet. He also talked about Wikipedia, the establishment and maintenence of which I apparently didn't know anything about. He used Wikipedia and its maintenence as almost as a microcosm for the internet in general, and described is as "lumpy" -- with definitions for Star Wars getting pages and pages of explination and a hundred links, whereas a sort-of well known poet would have 5 sentences and 2 links. He didn't specifically talk about collage, but he also talked about search engines, and it made me think that they are also great representations of the Internet as Collage. After his speech, I showed him the Firmament and Riot sites because I think they challenge the regular conceptualization of the search engine -- no matter how useless they might be.
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| New Media Festivals |
[22 Mar 2004|11:03am] |
I did a fair amount of updating; so be sure to catch the last few journal entries too!
The projects from the particular media festivals, specifically the one in Texas, has inspired one of my final projects. I wanted to make a number of different web-page designs that changed the layout of my home page, and I want to set it up so that the user can choose his preferred theme and layout. I can't find the address to that particular project at the moment, but I really liked the idea.
Imagine there's no playlist - http://lifeduringwartime.ping.ca/imagine/imagine.html ...Provocative, no doubt.
I don't like how there are only 3 choices when the viewer looks at the songs, though. There's 1. A threat to US national security; ban it..... 2. Tasteless pop but don't censor..... 3. Meaningful lyrics that oppose violence -- first off, no one was banning anything, and the creator of this project knew that well enough to aknowlegde it on his first page. It's just a little misleading is all. I know it's cool to fight the Man, but let's be honest here.
I didn't find that Firmament (http://firmament.to/) did much for me. It was too random, even though it was an interesting idea. It reinfornced the internet as an interconnected Web; and I am in favor of the idea that knowledge linked together is greater than the sum of its parts..... but when it's this random, and clicking the word 'page' will take you to switchboard.com.... there's not really any way I could forsee this program as being beneficial. It would be better if every word was linked to its definition in dictionary.com or something; at least then you could have some consistancy.
Riot.com was a great concept too. But it too, got old really quickly. It really just depends on how many graphics a particular site had that determined Riot's incorporation of it. A for effort.
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| Grey Tuesday |
[22 Mar 2004|10:51am] |
This was part of my MDST app's final question, see what you all think:
Hundreds of sites participated in Grey Tuesday, and afterwards the Electronic Frontier Foundation issued a legal analysis of the protest. According to www.greytuesday.org, they are leaning towards supporting protesters' fair use rights over EMI's claim to hold White Album's copyrights.
Grey Tuesday successfully brought to light an issue of copyright laws on intellectual property in the age of easily-accessible digital marketplaces, true. And some aspects of the laws are being considered for reformation. However, Grey Tuesday's significance does not lie in its tangible results. The notable impact of this event lies in the participants, who identified the internet as a suitable medium for coordinated civil disobedience.
Downhill Battle itself wrote the revolution rhetoric: "coordinated day of civil disobedience." Civil disobedience is a loaded word with a lot of historical connotations. Besides Thoureau, Ghandi, and King, the term was used by anti-McCarthyists in the 50's, was used in opposition to the South African apartheid in the 60's, and was reinvented by anti-war activists in the 70's. It's been an admirable notion throughout history, and to conceive of this type of resistance capable on the internet, the very elusive network lacking physical presence, represents a huge faith base in the power of digital communications. In this moment, in this conceptualization of the internet as a civil protest medium, the Grey Tuesday event serves as a "watershed" moment.
Although online protests existed before, most were accompanied with a physical demonstration. In addition, because of Grey Tuesday's success and the fact that it was geared at younger generations, it has planted a seed where other online protests did not.
Since the conception of the internet, the ways in which people perceive its usefulness have outweighed the impact of strictly technological advancements. New conceptualizations of pre-existing capabilities, therefore, can be extremely influential in dictating a user's perception of the internet. Take for example E-commerce and broadband, while still in use, they have no doubt given way to more personal communications, like the rise of instant messaging. Similarly, personal communications have given rise to personal interactions, like peer-to-peer file sharing and weblogs. These changes required minimal technological advancements, but more significant conceptual modifications. In time we've become more comfortable in our computer relationships, and have been simultaneously realizing the internet's growing power and influence.
Grey Tuesday is an example of the internet taking on the role of a personal voice, and a customized representation of ourselves. This representation lacks in physical presence, but that is no matter. As the digital age progresses, so does power become decentralized, and physical space no longer holds the same importance that it used to. The Critical Art Ensemble discusses this phenomenon, recognizing that in an age of decentralized power, resistance must also be decentralized. On Grey Tuesday, the internet was a collective voice, a decentralized, coordinated act of civil disobedience. The event's most noteworthy aspect lies in this conceptualization: We are beginning to perceive our digital voice as a right to which we are entitled, and one that can't be take away.
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| Mass Media and New Media |
[22 Mar 2004|10:42am] |
From Wikipedia, no less, I have started to think that it's the new conceptualizations of recent media that makes it 'new.' According to Wickipedia,
"In the late 1990s, new media referred to the rise of the Internet and the use of interactive digital technology for news and entertainment content, signifying a major shift from highly concentrated, television-oriented media organizations to more grass-roots, personalized and customized content. "
I propose that it was the technology that made "new media" what it was in the 90s. Although we haven't run dry our resources for new technology, I think that the different uses of the computer and the internet, specifically, that changes/expands its role, and changes its relationship to us.
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| Rick Prelinger |
[25 Feb 2004|11:06pm] |
I had no idea that there was such a title as archeologist of archival media.
Prelingers films, or I guess I should say choices of films, were amusing because of their social implications of the time period in which they were aired. Simple enough, I guess, and in that way I could argue that they were epherma. It's a dangerous statement though, after the intense debate in class over the definition of epherma -- since it isn't a physical object, but it does seem to evoke the same sentiments that aren't nostalgia as much social commentary. (Now someone could argue that the physical reels of the film themselves are physical ephemera, but I say not unless they were only being collected for that physical 'touchable' object of reel film in itself, and not describing the projection of the information on the film.)
I think in our class discussion we discovered most importantly that we can't make up one definition and try an apply that to everything ephemeral. I feel like things can be ephermal in their physical authenticity, or abnormal collectable interest, or their historic social commentary. Something ephemeral can fall into any one or all of such categories, and no parameters drawn up will effectively define what this ephemera can be.
The "House in the Middle" propoganda if you will for the fix it up company was ridiculously funny because of the dramatic tone or voice that our culture now associates with take-offs. Almost all the films did, actually. They looked like Saturday Night Live bits. I would have believed in a heartbeat that they were jokes, because our culture tends to make fun of itself in that respect, and it tends to get a good response. "In the suburbs" was strange because it seemed to start out as a documentary and turned into a magazine add. "Perversion for Profit" was the one I had tried to download pieces of off the internet and failed. George Puttnam, nice touch. Now that film I had mixed emotions about -- part of what he was saying psychologists know to be true -- about how pornography often leads to increased instances of sex crimes and sexual violence -- but I still couldn't help laughing -- especially with the communist comments. It seemed to unnatural to have such ridiculous assertions made in the same breath as legitimate assumptions.
I didn't get much out of the very last film about the telephones and the angels (I forget the name), except a little more social commentary, really reinforcing the 'everything's perfect' front of the 50s household.
All in all, it was a unique experience, and I think that I would argue that the films are characteristic of epherma.
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| Barthes |
[24 Feb 2004|09:47am] |
The Photographic message seemed more concerned with the contextual, cultural messages, and the sociology behind photographic connotations. He breaks down the messages into their denoations and their connotations, denoations --- pretty straight forward, and connotations built on the conceputal identities of objects/scenes that are built into the socio-culture. He breaks down 'messages' into 3v parts: Source of emission, channel of transmission, and point of reception (also known as encoding, exchange, decoding). He breaks down connotations of photographic messages into trick effects, pose, objects, photogenia, aestheticism and syntax -- which gets a little repetitive...probably only because it reflects things I already studied in 201.
He talks a lot about the relationship between text found on a photograph and the picture itself, and the how that changes/determines what the picture connotes. Just as I pointed out in my last rsponse, the text loads the image, "burdening it with a culture, a moral, an imagination." He acjnowledges that the way the text is presented effects this as well -- "caught as it were in the iconographic message, the verbal message seems to share in its objectivity, the connotation of language is innocented through the photograph's denotation."
One of his most interesting points, I guess just because I hadn't thought of it, while most of the other claims in this essay had come to mind (probably during MDST201), was how he said this: "It is impossible however that the words 'duplicate' the image ... sometimes hoever, the text produces (invents) an entirely new signified which it retroactively projected onto the image, so much so as to appear denoted there." I liked the way he put that.
Everything else he said was in reference to the encoding/decoding of messages and the cultural codes of connotation. Another good quote:
"in the relationship that now holds, it is not the image which somes to elucidate or realize the text, but the latter which comes to subliminate, pathecize or rationalize the image."
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| Susan Sontag, "In Plato's Cave." On Photography |
[23 Feb 2004|06:58pm] |
Several things. She defines photography over and over again in different lights, but she contradicts herself it seems, when it comes to the role of the photographer: Photographs as experiences captured, photographs as the appearance of participation, photographs as non-intervention, and photographs as "participation in another person's mortality, vunerability, mutuability."
She states that "photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it," but I think that they are used as just that. The industry backing photography, making it as successful and useful as it is today, is the manipulation of photographs or photographic representation to make a statement of somesort. Thats what advertising is all about. A picture it worth a thousand words; and it's true. Pairing the right picture with the text A and then text B can completely reverse the message, and both texts can be reinforced by the exact same picture. Anti-ads, or ad-busters --- something we experiemented with in MDST201, -- played around with this concept -- using the momentum of the visual to reverse the message.
So while Sontag could argue that photographs are pieces of the world more that statements, this idea can only hold true if the image is taken completely out of context. How the images are defined = how they are perceived. She even kind of addresses this point later on in her essay. She said that 'in deciding how a picture should look, in preferring one exposure to another, phtographers are always imposing standards on their subjects." I guess she's making 2 seperate points, ok, but it certainly sounds like she is contradicting herself.
She makes a good point about the historic use of photographs when she talks about photographs 'furnishing evidence.' She uses the phrase "seems to have a more innocent, and therefore more accurate relation to visible reality than do other mimetic objects." However, it's becoming easier and easier to manipulate photographs, with the increased access to upscale photoshops and the like -- photographs that are increasingly easier to tamper with compromises its veracity.
One assumption she lays down that I dont agree with is on p. 6 -- " While a painting or a prose description can bever be other than a narrowly selective interpretation, a photograph can be treated as a narrowly selective transparency." What is she talking about???? A painting or a prose has AT LEAST just as much room for interpretation as a photograph. She doesn't even say anything to back this up, just goes on about "taste and conscience" of photographs. Crazy talk.
Her points on the history of photography were interesting, and the gun/camera metaphor, although a little silly sounding, pertains perfectly to a book I recently read called 'Metaphors we Live By," which draws certain topics/ideas in the english language to their common metaphors. The choice of each metaphor in turn explains (a) cultural perception(s) of that thing being described. The study of how cameras came into the social scene is a cultural-shaping event that was responsible for the perception of photography.
Very avant-garde: "As industrialization provided social uses for the operations of a photographer, so the reaction against these uses reinforced the self-consciousness of photography-as-art."
I also liked the insight into how she recognizes picture-taking as a restructuring tool. It "gives shape to the experience" of experiencing something. Capturing something on camera seems obligatory if you have a camera on hand, it seems like an important part of the experience. I think she's a little far fetched when she says its to appease "the anxiety of the work-driven" who essentially cant relax on vacation without assigning themselves some sort of task.
"Photographs shock insofar as they show something novel." True. Which is a much more concise restatement of her earlier arguement about photographs evoking feelings (starving children, travesties, etc), and then later those viewers becoming numb and 'saturated' so that they do not evoke the same feeling. Simply, they are not "novel" anymore. She should have put those 2 ideas together.
Lastly, "Photography implies that we know about the world if we accept it as the camera records it." Very true. There's really a measure of trust between a photographer and the people who view their work, and Sontag is right about the offhand assumed viability of a photograph. This brings me back to my earlier point of the manipulation of photographs, both with context and with photoshop that can sell an image as something other than/stronger than/bolder than it really was. Censoring some images and showing others is an example of the most effective manipulation -- embedded reporters in Iraq anyone? Giving the ILLUSION of being 'right there on the action' and the ILLUSION that the US public was viewing what was going on in the war? HA.
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| Christian Marclay |
[16 Feb 2004|05:29pm] |
I went to hear Marclay's presentation in Newcomb theater....unfortunately his almost monotonous and melodic voice that doesn't fare well in the slide show world. Luckily, I found the material rather interesting.
I liked several of his art pieces -- for instance the 'Tape Fall' piece, because the time element of accumulation gave it a whole new dimension. His collage of album covers was also cool, but more 'fun' than anything else. It got a lot of laughs, but I didn't think they had much depth. The sheets of sewn together album covers that grouped different themes (women, blues/jazz) had more of a social commentary, and I liked those more.
Like he said, he used the music element as a metaphor. The footsteps albums and the inaccessible albums that he produced is a very interesting concept, but did he really expect people to buy them? I like the way he looked at music and its audience, but I dont feel like using the production industry to sell an 'anti-major-music production industry' message is very suave.
Probably my favorite piece, although it was really straightforward, was the "Sound of Silence" -- a life size photograph of the Simon and Garfunkel album -- because that idea of the grooves on the record (info on CD, etc) being a 'photograph' of music was (I thought) his most provocative idea.
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