Thursday, April 25, 2013

vidjaffects

Uploading my video failed every time, the only thing I could get to work was compressing it down to horrible quality.




Cultural Bodies reference

http://inkbutter.com/tattoos-by-jef-palumbo

Jef Palumbo was my artistic reference for the cultural bodies piece. I was interested in the role of tattoos in our image-based culture and where tattoos fit into our discussion of art. Palumbo's tattoo work is extremely artistic in both its form and content.

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Initial Soundscape Written Piece


      The space is somewhat tight, without much extra room to move around, and the ceilings are average height. A table, covered with a tablecloth, sits in the center of the room with only two bowls of soup. The soup is a light, summer soup, mostly made from broth and cream, with herbs like dill sifting to the bottom. There is a large chandelier above the table, and although the room is dim, there are many points of light reflected across the table and on the walls. Color-wise, the room is full of muted grays and dark blues.  There are two entrances to the space, but they are at the far edges of the room. Neither entrance has a door.  No people occupy the room, except for the viewer—who is not a person either.  The viewer is a disembodied (but locomotive) ear or microphone, able to listen and move around the space without affecting the materials with anything more than a slight rumbling, pulsing vibration. The object-ear will descend from the ceiling chandelier slowly (the sound bouncing off the many lights and hanging bits of glass), fall through the empty air below the chandelier, lowering itself out of curiosity past the chandelier and into a bowl of soup on the table.

Transition Space

Taptaptaptap taptaptap taptaptaptap taptaptaptaptaptap. My umbrella intensifies the sound of raindrops. Taptaptap taptaptap. Bleak dreary day. Taptaptap rumble thunder and a flash of light illuminates everything for a second. Taptaptap. I enter an open-air hallway before finally entering the building. The sound of rain and thunder is replaced by wheels rolling on the uneven slate floors. Catering student pushing her cart of desserts. Even closer. I smell the baked sweets. More and more. I avoid eye contact as I walk past. Wheels are all I can hear. Our paths cross, each going our opposite ways. She continues down the hallway to who knows where those sweet smelling cookies are meant for. I approach the exit and rush outside back into the storm. I like to use transition buildings to get places in this kind of weather. No use getting completely wet on my way home. I take my umbrella out. Taptaptap taptaptaptaptaptaptaptap taptaptaptaptaptaptap rumble taptaptap. April showers and a flash of light.

Sound Project: Push

Edith March
Push
2013
Soundtrack Pro

Process-Developing Concept:
Initially, I wanted to produce a set of sounds the depicted an object trying to escape a trapped space. By using sound effects such as echoes, panning or increasing tempos, I plan to depict the object’s desire to leave the trapped space. If the space was to be visually explained, I imagine myself as being trapped in a rectangular box. I am slowly running out of air so I am trying to break the sides of the box down.

Final Statement:
            The final collective sound piece Tight creates a small box-like space. The object jumps around, banging against the sides of the box (each side of the box has a different texture/thickness). The smallness of the box can be suggested with the use of producing a sense of friction the box has against the ground as the force of the object causes the box (trapped space) to shuffle around the floor. The additional dimension the sound scape ‘illustrates’ is the listener’s contribution to try and get the object out of the rectangular box. When the listener comes across the jerking/shuffling box on the ground, he or she comes curious what may be in that small space. At the same time, I wanted the listeners to fear what may be in the box. The listeners would retreat from the jerking box in fear that the object may break out.
Throughout the sound tract, most of the time, the object tries to leave the space; however, there are also a few lulls where the object gives up trying the break the walls. After a lull, the object restarts its efforts to break down the unbreakable walls. As a whole, I wanted the listener to feel nervous and unsettled even though there are relativity limited dramatic sounds throughout the soundscape. I want the listeners to be stuck in limbo where they are curious what is in the oddly textured box, but do not want the box to break apart to free the object.

movie upload

I didn't know we have to upload this........here..........

i promise to do better in the future.....sorry.........
(will use technology understanding for cultural bodies project..)

-->

Dass Image......

Cultural Bodies.......Upholding aesthetics?

Cultural Bodies......
1974. Crowd

1974. Tea party


Ronit Baranga: "Giving Free Will to Clay" --gallery name

http://www.ronitbaranga.com/gallery.htm


She effectively portrays a strong sense of aesthetics in her work even though they disgust the viewer. She literally degrades human body parts as everyday objects such as cups and other tableware.

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Soundscape - Walk

The goal of this sound piece was to boil the experience of taking a walk through civilization down to bare sonic components while keeping the soundscape recognizable and creating the illusion of movement. It consists of a loop of footsteps, pink noise whose equalization was gradually shifted in different ways throughout to suggest the movement through slightly varying spaces, and a few simple encounters with vehicles and other pedestrians.

Soundscape- The Hunted



As you walk through the sparse woods, with a gentle storm around you, you feel like you've finally escaped. 

They can't find you here. You've finally escaped.

Thunder begins to rise in the distance, as the storm draws nearer. 

Something is wrong. It's not thunder. 

They've found you.

You duck behind a tree, the ship hovers around the woods, passing back and forth over your hiding spot. The ship is so massive that it makes the rain simply stop. It blocks out the sun and the rain. With the gentle pattering of the rain on the leaves now gone, the noise of engine and the pounding of your heart are all you can hear.

You are sure that this is the end of your escape.

But just as quickly as it arrived, the ship is gone. 

You're safe once more. 

As your heartbeat calms down, you begin to walk again, into the rain and freedom.


Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Cultural Bodies Work


Akira - directed by  Katsuhiro Otomo


Godlike power corrupts and transforms a boy into a monstrosity of flesh and machine, allegorical of the corrupting power of nuclear weapons.

#shamelessbrownnosing

Jessica Harrison

Cultural Bodies Artist



http://www.jessicaharrison.co.uk/page8.htm

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Hey, Look!

Night Watch (1642) by Rembrandt van Rijn, though famous, hardly relates to the viewer. Through this project, I wanted to bring the viewer into the art. Some key features of the painting (or this small photograph of a specific portion of the Rembrandt painting) are 1.) the characters depicted looking in several different directions but never breaking the fourth wall and 2.) the hand that we know extends out to the viewer because of the shadow. I placed a photo of a man looking directly at the camera on the extended hand and integrated his shadow onto the painting to make him seem a part of the painting, though obviously separate. The presence of the man addresses the lack of relationship between art and viewer in Night Watch. His presence also creates three "planes" or layers of content: one containing the painting, the second containing the man on the extended hand, and the last contains the viewer because the man addresses them as part of the art. The size of the print turned out smaller than I intended with no way of enlarging it without distorting the image. I did not know whether this added to or took away from the meaning of my work but it seemed a successful move to pass it around like a "postcard" during the critique.

footprints


Unwanted Present


“Unwanted Present”
Digitally Altered Image presented in Four 5x7 Prints
Eric Mistry
March 2013

Some images define more than moments; they can define an event, a life, a war. Eddie Adams shot the picture that defined the Vietnam War, the famous shot mere moments before a police chief general executing a member of the Viet Cong. The emotionally-charged image sped around the world press and earned Adams a Pulitzer Prize and a place in history. The image is widely regarded as one of the most important in history.

It is that pedigree that led me to alter this photograph into something completely different. My new image is a perversion of history, the offensiveness almost too much to handle. I wanted to explore what happens when an unquestionably serious photograph like the Adams image meets the ubiquitously whimsical red balloons. The result is a difficult to handle. Almost everyone has seen the Adams photograph, so this new image causes dissonance between what is shown and what we all know happened. By erasing the general's pistol and giving him red balloons, this image takes on a new narrative, a moment that never happened. The unreal moment now exists in the bizarre reality of the altered image.

I wanted to raise questions surrounding the sanctity of historical images. What happens when we remove key pieces (the gun in this example) and place in pieces that do not belong (the red balloons)?

In presenting this piece, I wanted to reference film in a few forms. I set up the image with four matted prints aligned vertically, like a filmstrip for a movie projector or a set of film negatives. Either way, these four frames capture a clip, a mere moment in time, moment that never existed.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

kaleidoscope


look again...


The Baroque Imaginary


This semester I’m taking a class with Professor Lyon called The Baroque Imaginary and have therefore spent a considerable amount of time reading and thinking about the theories underlying Baroque art.  Something I have found particularly interesting in this course is the concept of layered realities.  The best description I have come across of this theory is William Egginton’s, in his book The Theater of Truth, wherein he explains that “the dreamer who dreams us is in constant danger of discovering that he, too, is living a dream in an abyssal cascade that never permits an end point to the situatedness of knowledge” (85).  We studied how these “dreams” are present in several Baroque works (i.e. Rubens’s Eucharist Tapestries), and I was intent upon trying to explore this theme in my own work. 

With this photo manipulation, my specific aim was to make several of these layers of reality visible while implying the existence of many more.  My hope is that a viewer will be able to both recognize a familiar scene (museum goers engaged in the expected act of observation), and a the reversal of viewer and viewed (figures from Velázquez’s paintings occupy the gallery), while also being forestalled by certain visual distortions or unrealities (i.e. the curtain and illogical reflections).  Ideally this print visualizes and perhaps even elaborates on Egginton's "abyssal cascade" and posits questions to an observant viewer about the nature of art, illusion, and reality.  


My altered image puts a familiar subject in a new (absence of) light. The original image was taken of a residence in the middle of the night, which I saw as a dead ruin only vaguely nostalgic of the comforting sanctuary homes can be. The photograph didn’t communicate this impression accurately, and I hoped sinking the subject to rest in suffocating depths would better convey the sense of loss associated with rotting remnants of something once intimately valued.

original





A Literal Interpretation

The photograph is by Henri Cartier-Bresson and is called "Mario's Bike".  I'd been reading an article about art in the digital age, and it mentioned that someone had posted this famous (?) photograph to Flickr and it generated a lot of critiques.  Since I didn't know the photograph, I Googled (R) it and, instead of the photograph, mostly got pictures of Super Mario.  This piece responds to that experience.

Gif Project

                                      Traditional Spring Scroll

Monday, March 11, 2013

Monsters In the Light


Altered Image

For this project I was interested in altering the past in terms of memory. The original image is one I took on a trip Paris with my parents so in this way, it is a representation of my memories. However, I altered it to change the people in the image to my dad and me. I wanted to explore the idea of changing how events in my past happened. In addition, I was interested in not just the alteration of my past memories but also in playing with the idea of heritage. My dad and I are in the place of two people who were actually from France. By placing us in the position of these two, we become more a part of the country. This was interesting for me because people often think that I am French. In some ways, this is also an alteration of memory. In playing both with the interaction of more immediate and heritage I’ve created an alteration of reality on different levels. This concept of different realities and the ideas of “what could have been” or “what it seems like” are very interesting to me. This interaction was a way to play with these ideas.

Altered Image


Somewhere Beyond the Sea


Barred


enveloped


Hendrix


Altered Photo


Mr. McGibblets


Altered Image


At first, I approached this project by adding different things into a image. I manipulated colors, size, shapes, or even took a figure from one image and put it in another. The images that resulted lacked cohesion, simplicity, and was obviously altered. I thought back to the first day this project was introduced and tried to change my mindset of what an altered image meant to me. Alexander Apóstol's images stood out to me, because his images were so realistic that in some cases you were not sure what was wrong/missing from them until someone else told you. This changed my focus. I had taken this image originally because the sky was so awing. But as I looked closer it was really obstructed by the power lines. I used inspiration from Apóstol's work and removed the power lines. Now the image is almost representing a fantasy of what I wish I had seen or of what could have been seen without man-made structures interrupting our views. 

Bones are for Ugly People


Two


Into Da Moon

Thought process:
1.Over the top...
2. What's literally going over the top?
3. Cow over the moon.
4. More over the top?
5. Going into the moon.
6. More over the top you say?!
7. BA BAM!!

Shoot the Poochie


        For my altered image, creating a sense of unease was my priority. I chose a non-threating image of two well-known childhood figures, and then shot each of them in the head. By using Charlie Brown and snoopy, I hope to create a personal connection with the viewer while simultaneously making them feel uneasy. The characters are not the only familiar aspect of this image, by using newsprint for printing; I mimicked the medium in which these characters are normally viewed. My initial reaction to this image was unease, but as I continued to manipulate the image, I became desensitized to the guilt I was feeling for shooting a childhood memory in the head.

GIF


With some nice musical accompaniment for your viewing pleasure. 




Altered Image



In my altered image project, I used a photograph I took in San Francisco of a long, tree-lined street and removed many of the objects that cast shadows. The trees, cars, motorcycles and lampposts are gone, but I left their shadows in order to identify the absent objects.

I think the composition of the original photograph works well for this idea, because it allows the main focus of the image to be the triangle of the sidewalk disappearing into the distance in the background. The overall dull color scheme doesn’t overly glamorize the image, and the lines disappearing to a single focal point give the illusion of the strangeness continuing into the rest of the city. The composition also allowed me to set limits on which objects to remove and which objects to keep, because the background objects are too unimportant to remove, while there are a concrete number of objects in the foreground that leave noticeable shadows and that make sense to remove.

The most interesting places in the image, for me, are the edges where the shadows meet up with their absences—for example, where the shadow of the car meets the street and where the shadows of the trees meet with the holes in the sidewalk. These are also the most important places, because they are liminal spaces between illusion and reality.

The essential concept behind this image is questioning what is reality. Because the shadows do not correspond to any real life objects, the reality I’m presenting is clearly false. This is similar to the Zizek article “Desert of the Real” and the idea we get through films like The Matrix that the reality we’re living in is too perfect to be real.