Confessions Session 2 Review

I thought that today's confessions were more mysterious than Tuesday's. I felt like a lot of people gave less explanation so I was very curious. For example, we didn't hear the story about the painted footprints confession, and also we didn't hear more about what the girl from the portrait meant to Skyler, or why he lost her. All we knew was that this was once someone he loved and he spent 50 hours or more making a portrait of her, just to delete it in front of us. With an action that bold there has to be a deeper story than just a college relationship break up, not everyone builds monuments (virtual or not) to ex girlfriends.

I thought the most powerful performance was Catie's. Her slide show of her grandmother progressing in age and the action of her being blindfolded got the message across so effectively. It was a beautiful expression of love and loss and not being able to get past the fact that she had lost her grandmother for 5 days without even knowing it. It is an interesting concept to think that as humans we feel a need to know if someone we love is not sharing the same reality as us even if they are far away. The piece was a strongly emotional memorial to her grandmother. I loved the use of digital media as the medium of her project. It helped emphasize the fact that she had essentially relied on technology for her parents to get the message to her, and they did not. I liked the fact that her confession was not easy to give. She had been so hesitant but she gathered her courage and did it.

In class Katie said that she felt that the strongest confessions chose the person, I totally agreed with this. In the process of creating the project very deep things came to the mind, and I feel that we all try to shy away from these because they can be painful or too revealing, but letting out those things make for the most powerful pieces.

I thought that the weakest confession today was Alex's. I mean, I am happy for him that he went to Coachella and experienced music in a whole new way. It was interesting that he made a presentation that mapped his experience and his preconceptions about the whole concert experience. I could tell it was an event that was out of his element by the way that he spoke about it. That was great for him, but I think it revealed very little actually about him. It was more of a story piece or a shared experience piece but not a confession. I feel like the confessions reveal something about the person and that revealed that he went to a concert and had fun. That is just too common of an experience to merit confession status. It was well done. If he wanted to keep the same topic I feel that he could have gotten more personal with it and gone into what music means to him, why it was such a big deal socially to go to his first concert, why he hadn't gone before. He said his friends "just never invited him" his confession could have been about finally going and feeling more accepted or closer with them. I don't know. I just felt like I learned nothing about him really, and I would have liked to.

Free Form: What I've been Creating Lately

These are my latest works. I have been doing a lot lately with photoshop. The two top images are my favorite, they're images that I created from found elements through manipulation. I like them because they are very contemporary. I like the intricate style and the mirroring effect in the work. Symmetricalness is an element that I enjoy using and playing with. I think it automatically makes things more aesthetically pleasing. The third image is from the Daily Nexus for the "Ask An Atheist" column. I used images of fire and lightning and a comet and added them to a traditional image of God. The article was  contemplating the existence of an all powerful and omnipotent god, and how that kind of a force that is all good would create evil. I am loving the power and wide range of options that digital media offers, it can offer precision that is unmatched to create   images that have a high level of accuracy such as my mirrored pieces. I am so glad that I live in an age where this is possible because it would be so hard to create the precisely detailed images that I enjoy by hand. I probably wouldn't even consider creating some of the tings I do because there would just be no way that they were possible. It is so interesting to think of the art that you create using the aid and/or availability of a technology, service, or convenience. It makes me question how many artists would not have even ever created anything, and what the alternative medium would dictate that the ones who would still create. It is so weird to think that media and what is available to you dictates and determines what you do, and even what you imagine to do. Food for thought.

Confessions Project Session 1 Review

 I thought all the confessions were really well thought out and executed. They taught me a lot about my peers, everyone has something that they keep inside and don't reveal to the rest of the world on a daily basis whatever that may be. I thought that some were definitely more deeply revealing than others, and thus more powerful. I though that Erika's presentation was one of the strongest. I thought the fact that she implemented a story time structure with a well written easily publishable book about her situation. The focus was on the growth and love that she received from others around her instead of dwelling on the sadness of the loss of her parents and that was a very powerful and inspirational mechanism. It was a beautifully done confession and I liked the fact that it was centered on the fact that she now has an unconventional, but huge loving, non-genetic family that is her support. She said that despite the fact of what had happened, "She was not quite done being someone's daughter" and I though that that last line fully drove her message home. The setting brought the audience back to a vulnerable childhood moment of learning socialization and i think that was really relative because it was a time when we were learning whom was in our social spheres and the definition between friends and family, while Erika's two spheres were simultaneously shattered and merged to form less clear social groups.

Some projects were less clear and well executed. I personally didn't quite understand the message of Walter's piece. I got the message that his car was like his sanctuary where he could escape the pressures of college life and relax by listening to music. I feel like there should have been a deeper note to that, like why his schoolwork is so stressful, if it is more stressful to him than the average student and why.  I wanted to learn more about him than just his escape from student life. I also remember early on in Design 2 my teacher saying, "If you aren't particularly talented at drawing, don't do it" She stressed this a lot and it couldn't help pop up in my mind as I viewed the illustrations. They didn't add strength to the piece, they probably took more away. If I was trying to convey a message of where my sanctuary and escape is, I would have used photos as better representational and personal icons. I would have collaged them together in a way that is meaningful for me. Since he was trying to say that he uses his car and his hometown as his personal comfort zones, I would have collaged them into an arch-like space on the wall and would have stood in the middle demonstrating the comfort and protection that I felt from them.    

Response to Lecture

Lecture today was all about maps and how humans perceive archetypes of things like beauty, demographics and hierarchies of power. My favorite thing that Kip showed were the examples of quotationalism. I love seeing how images are recycled through societies consciousness over time. It is also sad sometimes how stereotypical roles are used again and again in movies. It shows how culture hasn't really evolved over all this time. The stereotypical goofy looking Asian that is present in Sixteen Candles, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and many other films shown comes straight out of WWII propaganda. That struck me as a serious flaw in society.
Ethnicity stereotypes are a thing that are super prevalent in society and can be a problem, I think that whenever a group of people are pigeon holed into a certain archetype of visual signals that it inhibits the people who harbor this thought because it closes their mind. At the same time it makes it easy to get a visual message across like below Is me at an "Adios Motherfuckers" Party clearly manipulating the stereotype.

I also really liked the examples of the art that manipulated nature like the projects of  Nina Khachadourian and Min Yi Lin. The bird car alarm was amazing. It was so well done and amazing, I also loved the merge of technology and nature in the "Tribe #4" project it was beautiful. Both these projects were really inspirational to me.

Reading Response: John Cage

John Cage is an example of a very smart and talented artist that is also a philosopher. He was so intelligent  and was brought up in a very normal environment in a very well to do family. He was interested in music and noise as an art medium. The story of his life as the son of a wealthy inventor and composer with great grades and a high college education is very interesting to his practices later as an artist. It seemed that his failings as a composer, even though he did compose simple and beautiful pieces, and his rejection of the idea of becoming a man of religion led him to examine things more closely than some of us do. He had a love for sound, just simple and raw sound being the thing that draws people together as a sort of international language. Sound gives people much pleasure as it is and his work drew on the happiness and universal understanding that comes from experiencing sound. This of course could be done in a dramatic and dark way as well for there are some sounds that we know mean trouble, hurt or pain but I think that John Cage wanted to light people up rather than expose darkness. He did a piece 4'33'' that showed the inner workings of an orchestra and the relationship between the conductor and the musicians that is comedic in a way but also very expressive of how music is done and that the sounds of the people themselves could be examines and considered musical as well. His composition "Dream" is a piano piece that I think is really lovely and relaxing. I used to sit as a kid and play on the piano stringing together notes that sounded good to me and that's what his compositional work reminds me of. I never had any trining in the musical field but I always enjoyed doing this sort of thing.  He had talent for pieces that would be a string of sounds that were nice when put together if nothing else. His work has a sort of existentialist theme to it because it invites the listener to realize their own place in the world and the sound that they make and those that surround them. I also enjoyed listening to his ideas on sound and silence in the Video "about silence on youtube. It tells his philosophy behind his work.
Link to "about silence": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcHnL7aS64Y
Link to "Dream":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExUosomc8Uc
Link to 4'33'': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUJagb7hL0E

Art Show Review

Today I went to the Santa Barbara Museum or art. I wanted to check it out and see how it compared to the LA museums that I am used to. It was a lot smaller but they did have some good exhibitions going on right now. It is a formal and small museum. I was kind of sad that they didn't have any garden areas but it was really great all the same.

The exhibition that I paid special attention to was the Tsukioka Kōgy exhibition of Japanese wood block prints made from scenes in theatre productions. The exhibition was called Noh Drama. It was an action filled exhibition that featured great traditional style wood block art. The style was a little more modern than that of Hiroshige who died about 50 years before Kogy was boen but I could still see the definite traditional style present in the work. This exhibition was extremely interesting to me because I had seen a massive collection of Hiroshige's work on display at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena and was curious to compare the two artists. I think one of the main differences in the work was that in Kogy's pieces the background was often in grey creating a lot of contrast between the subjects of the print and the background whereas Hiroshige preserved a lot of detail in a very vivid background. It was interesting to see the evolution of this tradition and one of Kogy's pieces even reminded me of modern anime. (below). I couldn't help but notice the recurring theme of the ocean. It makes sense that the ocean which is so important to the Japanese because it's a main source of where they get their food from. It is a great symbol of their culture.

Kogy's piece titled Nue (1925-1928)

Hiroshige's Naruto Rapids

I think that the art of wood block printing is so beautiful and so stylistically appealing. I love to go to see these kind of exhibitions when I can.

Press Release of the exhibition that I went to: http://www.sbma.net/library/files/Noh%20Drama%20release%20FINAL.pdf

Comics Reading Response

The topics of the readings this week were how to convey emotion and message through lines and text.
Lines can convey many emotions when they are manipulated into images. Fear, confusion, control and order are among these emotions and feelings that the viewer can believe are conveyed by images. The concept of  dynamically provocative lines is one of the oldest concepts used in art. I actually was assigned to convey emotions using only lines in my Design 1 class at my CC. It is very interesting to go from conveying feeling abstractly using only lines and then also implementing them in larger more detailed pieces to emphasize the meaning of the piece.

The second part of the reading was all about text. The earliest form of text was actually closer to art than one would expect. Pictographs were the earliest text and followed early art. The text in art can be used to enhance the meaning or to add to the art piece visually but usually it is used in a meaningful way that informs the reader as to the purpose or concept behind it. Text can also be a sort of art itself. typography has always interested me. Sometimes the way a word is written can be more powerful than the word itself. Type can be used as a medium even such as the picture below. Opening ones mind to the use of fundamentals like lines and text in art can be very effective. It's important not to forget the simple things.