Second Life

So, besides the whole trouble of freckles and trying to save as a targa file in a program that won't do it, this wasn't so bad! Let me explain, freckles are impossible to replicate, it just makes you look like you have stuck your face in dirt. AS to the tga file, as soon as I used creative studio, it all worked. I wish my chin wasn't quite as pointed. It makes me look like an elf in second life, but overall, it is cool to see how my work turned out!

Here is how it turned out in second life!










And here is my alternate avatar! Clash of personalities, bright shiny flower and goth girl!

I had a bit of trouble getting my flower to float like I wanted it to, but I did eventually figure it out (this was my built object).

3-D Sculpture

My original piece was titled "I Have Left My Heart in So Many Places" (see earlier post), well now I have left my heart and soul in a computer considering how long this project took. I chose to work with Google Sketch because it seemed the most user friendly to learn and this is my first 3-D project. There were disadvantages and advantages to using this program. On one hand, it was more user friendly, but this also means that I had to create new ways to do things that may have been easier on the more advanced programs. Several of the problems I ran into were working with the sphere and the stamps on the box. First, I tackled the stamps on the box, this problem really ended up as a learning curve. I first tried to insert scanned pictures of the stamps into premade shapes as textures, however could not figure out how to then size and edit the texture. Then I figured out I could just drag and drop the picture onto the googlesketch screen, but that had its problems as well. I decided to work on another aspect of the piece and in the process accidentally figured out how to edit the textures. Therefore, it still took a while to do, but this frustration turned into success when I figured it out (plus I really like how the box came out). My other frustration was the sphere and basically everything that went with it, and this did not turn out a success. Googlesketch will inform you that you cannot do very much with a sphere after creating it, which includes sculpting, adding lines, and texturing. I had naïvely thought that I could sculpt the piece on googlesketch, however never figured that one out. Since the sphere on googlesketch is made up of a whole bunch of little parts, it is very difficult to color or edit those parts because there are so many of them, therefore, my earth is colored and designed, however it is not as realistic as I had hoped it would be.

Persuasion (gallery critique)

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU READ THIS PHRASE versus this phrase? Those first seven words probably sounded louder in your head right? Why? All of the letters are the same as the second portion and the font size is the same as well. The meaning doesn’t change, however the tone in your head sounds angrier, more excited, or just in general louder right? As we grow up, we don’t just learn how to read and write, we also learn how to manipulate the words we are reading and writing. We learn to use quotes, bold, capitals, italics, underlines, and many other tools when writing in order to influence how our reader absorbs our text. In the same way, others use these things and others to influence how we are understanding text, pictures, ad campaigns, and everything else in our daily lives. In other words, how we are persuaded or how others persuade us.

Priscilla Varner plays with all of these ideas in her exhibit, Persuasion, which was shown in the McNamara Gallery for most of April. In her artist statement, she mentions the idea that differences in texts could change how a viewer views her pieces, therefore, for her six pieces, each has text “associated” with it, but the text shows many different fonts, which induce different feelings in the viewer and therefore change the whole experience for the viewer. The text in this case is six or seven different adjectives or nouns that could be associated with the image. Sometimes these words work together and other times they are very different, however they “persuade” the viewer to think of the piece in a certain way, the same way titles often influence viewers to see pieces how the artist wishes. For instance, in a piece titled Un Jour D’hiver, the words listed are cold, dreamy, historic, soft, somber, unhurried, and whispers. Clearly a broad range of terms that all have varying degrees of strength. “Cold” would most typically be assumed as a bad thing, for instance a cold waiting room, cold hands, being cold, but at the other end, cold could be a cold drink on a summer's day, it could be crisp or refreshing, all of which aren’t typically bad things. The same goes for unhurried. On the one hand, it could be nice lazy days were you have plenty of time to dream and relax because you are unhurried, but at the opposite end of the spectrum it could be those frustrating unhurried geese that are crossing in front of your car when you are late for school! All of this depends on the viewer. Please note, these words all bring images together but we have not yet discussed the actual image for this piece. This one was a black and white snowy picture of France, with several notable landmarks within it. Therefore we have the cold idea (snow), the dreamy idea (snowy days are sometimes dreamy, as is being anywhere in Europe), historic idea (with the landmarks and the black and white), soft (the picture looks a bit blurred from the black and white and snow), and so on. Yet these impressions all depend on the viewer, for somebody who doesn’t like snow, this piece is going to bring a lot of different thoughts to mind. Plus, we already had images of geese and waiting rooms in our minds when we finally looked at the image.

The next interesting thing that Varner mentions in her artist statement is that oftentimes people read the title before looking at the piece and interpret the piece based on the title, or vice versa. In this case, the titles were all in French, so that didn’t have as much effect on me, but the words included did. Therefore I made sure to alternate, sometimes I read the words first and other times I looked at the piece first and then at the words. Obviously I read the words first on the snowy picture, Un Jour D’hiver, which can be seen by how much thought I put into the words above. However, I interpreted one of the other pieces, that of a stone with the word Juillet printed on it with a little bit of greenery growing over it, very differently. Since I looked at the image first, I saw it as a stone on the ground (which could be wrong) that was used as a marker for a grave (which could also be wrong). Therefore, while the image was bright and inviting, I still thought of it as a little bit sad because I made the association of a cemetery. I then read the title, Juillet, which really meant nothing to me since I had already read the stone, and then the words, in this case they were, anniversary, monumental, reconciliation, revolutionary, rights, and unity. Now some of these could go with my cemetery idea, but others don’t quite fit, for instance, unity? Therefore, I viewed this piece drastically differently than I would have if I had read the words first. So, the artist did manage to persuade me in both cases, while I made the choice to pick which part of her art was going to persuade me.  

Manovich Questions

Manovich States that classical art is interactive, for instance, when we have to
fill in missing details in a piece, we are interacting. He says modern art just
pushes this further. Yet he says many are using "interactive media" to strictly
and ignoring the psychological  interactivity, like filling in the missing
pieces. He says everyone is focused on  physical interaction, like pushing a
button. Do you think these types of interactivity should even be classified the
same? Or has the difference in interactivity between classical art and modern
art become so big that they should be separately defined?

Many science fiction and future predicting stories make claims of "extending the
powers of reason" just as this text mentions. Whether it be shared consciousness
or expanded brain function, many criticize and applaud the ideas. This piece
mentions the idea of returning to the "happy age of pre-language,
pre-misunderstanding" however this brings up the question of pre-understanding
as well. Is it better to return to that "happy age" and lose all of the modern
advances we have discovered? Or should we stay misunderstood and keep
the technological advances?

What Do You Hear? Artist Critique

           It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all, it’s a small small world. Are you singing it yet? What is the connection between humans and sound? Obviously it is one of our five senses, but is it more important than smell? Or taste? Sound is something intricately connected into our lives and we have been raised to obey it. We jump when we hear something that startles us. We get ready to leave class when we hear the bell. 75% of us have an alarm clock that plays some sort of noise to wake us up. We are all already very familiar with one form of sound art, more commonly known as music. From Mozart and Bach to Lady Gaga or Lady Antebellum, we have musical artists who make art. Yet there are other ways that art may incorporate sound as well, as can be seen in the pieces of Don Ritter (Intersection) and Shu Lea Cheang (Baby Love: Drive Me Drive Me Crazy).

          First, the pieces and artists. Cheang has created the piece titled Baby Love: Drive Me Drive Me Crazy, or just Baby Love. It is the second in a series of three, with this one appearing in 2005. If we return to the Disney metaphor, on a base level, think of the teacup ride mixed with any type of bumper cars. This is what Baby Love is. There are giant teacups that are directed by the riders while public selected love songs play. When this piece was on exhibit, riders and other viewers could provide music on any form of memory drive and it would be inserted into the system, or distant viewers could upload love songs over the internet.


One key thing here is each teacup has an additional permanent rider, an oversized baby, which doubles as the music player.

Each teacup/baby pair starts by playing one of the selected songs until it crashes into another teacup/baby pair. At this point, the two don’t only physically collide, but their musical portions collide as well, providing a disagreeable music clash.



















All of the music clashes are recorded from the exhibitions.




           While the actual art piece is original, as are its three sibling pieces, the idea for the whole unit, The Locker Baby Project, came from the 1980 Japanese novel by Ryu Murakami, Coin Locker Babies. Like futuristic novels, this book looks at how our world is advancing and what the possible future advances could be. In this case, the idea that children could be grown from a salt water pearl and placed in a locker to be nurtured with a soundtrack of a beating heart.

          We can see how sound can be used to affect the viewer in a different way through many of Don Ritter’s pieces, but in this case, we will take a look at Intersection. If Baby Love is the teacup ride, then Intersection is Space Mountain. The ride is obviously thrilling under any circumstances, but even more so because you have no idea where you are going. You see light every once in a while, but mostly live your life for those 30 short seconds through your ears. Take out the little portion of light and the riding in a car, and we have Intersection. Shown at several galleries and museums, this piece is always set up so that there is a pitch black room for viewers to walk through and it must have a sound system. As viewers (or participants) walk through the piece they hear cars rushing all around them, in fact, they hear four or eight lanes of traffic around them as they walk through the piece. The key factor here is they don’t just hear the random noises. The “cars” are timed to sound like they are rushing at and by you, coming out of a speaker on one side and then the other to have maximum effect. Finally, thanks to sensors that are triggered by the participants, the “cars” will screech to a stop if you stop in their lane. Feel what it is like with this video (fast forward to 2 minutes).

http://aesthetic-machinery.com/intersection.html

          Again, the question of why are humans drawn to interactive pieces? I purposely chose these two pieces because of their interactive nature. In Tactical Media as Virtuosic Performance, by Rita Raley, Lovink makes the comment that tactical media “offers participants in the projects a new way of seeing, understanding, (and in the best-case scenario) interacting with a given scenario.” Many humans respond better to interactive pieces, partly because they feel they have something to contribute and are therefore a part of the piece, and a base need of human beings is the need to belong. This can even be seen in other forms of media that have become more interactive, for instance, crowdsourcing. In Crowdsourcing: The art of a crowd, by Carol Strickland, the idea of human beings wishing to belong and be a part of something is brought up, pointing out that crowdsourcing is “eliminating the boundaries between artist and audience.” In both cases, it is possible for multiple people to be interacting with the piece at once. In the case of Intersection, multiple people can be crossing the dark space at once, while Baby Love works better with more people involved. Finally, both share the obvious characteristic of being digital media and as such being part of a more modern era of art. If we look back to the readings from earlier this semester, we see that change has never been accepted in the art world, from The Work of Art and the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, by Walter Benjamin where we see photography as the evil that will phase out painting to Claire Bishop in Digital Divide and her idea that old media is more “precious” than the new media. Part of the point of art is to open our worlds and present new ideas, yet with every single one of these new ideas criticisms also appear. In the case of these pieces, I emailed the artists to ask their opinions and any criticisms that they had encountered with their pieces. Ritter never responded to me, while Shu Lea Cheang didn’t really tell me any criticisms she had encountered, however she did respond about her opinions on changing medias, saying, “I believe each era/time has its own technology in art practicing and I do not believe one new form of art should not be killing the older art form. We do update ourselves—hardware and software wise.” However I believe she is also a little biased, coming from a digital media perspective, besides our reading I would be interested in hearing the opinions of an artist from an older media on this idea. Yet this is a similarity that the pieces share, being part of a controversial period of art history (which all art has probably been a part of at one time or another). Overall, these pieces have similarities, but it is within these similarities that we can find the defining differences.


          For instance, not only do both pieces have interaction, but the main interaction is through sound. Yet the sound is used in different ways and the viewer can interact with the piece as a whole in different ways. Cheang’s piece is focused on the interaction. The viewer must first submit the love songs which then changes the whole scene depending on the type submitted. For instance, if a group only submits love songs from one artist who creates very similar songs, the clashes will not be as dramatic if we are hearing the love song of a Japanese pop artist and an English country love song. Intersection gives the choice of participation to the participant as well, however the piece can still function without participants, there will not be any screeching stops, but the cars will still be there. While Intersection mainly interacts with the participant through the sound, interaction is not the point of the piece, as stated by Jozef Cseres in the reviews on Ritter’s site, Ritter “is not a technocrat; for him the interaction is not the aim but the means to test the influences and impacts of nature, machines, and media to humans’ personalities.” He is seeing how the people respond to the piece and in order to accomplish this goal, the people must interact, however their interaction ends at walking through the piece and causing the sound interaction. Baby Love has the interaction of submitting the music, choosing to ride in the car, choosing how to drive the car, and choosing to run into others and cause crashes/clashes. This one does have the aim of interaction.

          Another similarity that the pieces share is the clash of motifs within the piece, however once again, looking deeper into this idea shows us more differences than similarities. Baby Love has the literal crash of teacups and clash of music, but it also has the clash of the old, carnival style teacups ride with an oversized baby clone that is based off of a science fiction book. Intersection also has the element of modernity, with the technology of cars and the speed at which we go through our lives, however it clashes with the idea of one of our most primal fears, the fear of the dark. So many myths, legends, and stories circle about the idea of the human race finding, winning, or being given light and how it improved their (and therefore our) lives. By having to walk through this pitch black room with cars roaring around, participants are taken back to that prehistoric time without light, but with the modern fears of technology. In some of the galleries that Intersection was shown, viewers had to walk through the piece to even get into the rest of the show. Many couldn’t do it and missed the rest of the show, they could not conquer their fear of the unknown, which brings us back to the very root of Baby Love, which was based on a science fiction novel from the eighties of what is to come in 2030. Both pieces deal with the fear of the unknown, one taking us back to our fear of the dark and one looking ahead at the future.

          Does this root make these pieces more similar or more different? That is the beauty of art, it is the interpretation of the artist of something, but is then still open to interpretation on the part of the viewer and it therefore evolves and changes depending on the person, their experiences, and the situation. It is interesting how perfectly a quote in the Bruce Johnson press release for Intersection also fits Baby Love as well, “Norbert Weiner created the science of cybernetics, envisioning systems where humans and machines merged to create a new hybrid” (Ritter). We are in the age of cybernetics, which could be some people’s unknown fear and others’ dream come true. It is all in the perspective. For instance, the song from earlier may make no sense to someone who hasn’t been to Disneyland, just as someone who is used to the hustle and bustle of a city may not be as affected by Intersection as someone who comes from rural town with a population of 10 people and over 500 cattle. But even beyond the reference to “It’s a Small World,” the lyrics themselves describe the idea of the unknown perfectly, “It’s a world of hopes, and a world of fears…it’s a small small world…”

Works Cited

Benjamin, Walter. "The Work Of Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction." Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. 731-751. New York, NY: Oxford UP, 1999. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 28 Apr. 2013.

Bishop, Claire. "Digital Divide." Artforum. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Apr 2013.

Lea Cheang, Shu. Baby Love: Drive Me Drive Me Crazy. 2005. Photograph. BABYLOVEWeb 16 Apr 2013. http://www.babylove.biz/html/exhibition.html.

Raley, Rita. Tactical Media. Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2009. Print.

Ritter, Don. Aesthetic Machinery. N.p.. Web. 16 Apr 2013. <http://aesthetic-machinery.com/index.html>.

Strickland, Carol. "Crowdsourcing: The art of a crowd." Christian Science Monitor. (2011): n.page. Web. 16 Apr. 2013. <http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Arts/2011/0114/Crowdsourcing- The-art-of-a-crowd>.

Ser y Durar by Democracia (exhibit critique)

Parkour, “a holistic training discipline using movement that developed out of military obstacle course training.” Participants try to make their way through environments as fast as fast as possible, using only their bodies and environment, without being unsafe. This probably is not such a new phenomenon, but it is new to the average person (not military oriented), which is similar to digital media. It isn’t all that new (forms of it are, but the basic idea is not), however it is still new to the average viewer. Both of these are combined into the piece called Ser y Durar, by Democracia. Ser y Durar, which is Spanish for To Be and To Last, was created in Spain, using a group of traceurs, the name for those that parkour. It is currently a video installation at the Hirshhorn in Washington DC. It is in their black box theater, which means it is all very dark and you do not know what you are walking into until the movie begins.

            Democracia is known for their “socio-political work,” and this is no exception. The traceurs all have symbols on their red sweatshirts. According to the artist statement, these symbols stand for working class, internationalism, anarchy, secret societies, and revolution. On a more aesthetic note, the traceurs all wear these red sweatshirts, with their hoods up most of the time. This gives the display a uniformity, but also a hint of danger. Playing off the audiences’ subconscious feelings, Democracia makes us feel a little bit of fear. Red: the color of anger, of passion, and of blood, it makes us think of danger. As a society, we feel more comfortable seeing people’s faces and heads, to us it is disrespectful to leave your hat on inside and faces shouldn’t be covered because facial expressions in our society are used as an extension to words and feelings. All of this means that subconsciously, we believe that people wearing hoods are up to no good, and this paired with the red uniforms make the audience feel fear or at least uncomfortable, it may not be fear of the traceurs, but that uncomfortableness could possibly be fear for them.

            While not directly interactive, this piece pulls the audience in by making them feel like they are running alongside the traceurs. The viewpoint changes constantly within the twenty minute film, from running along the ground and focusing on the feet, to taking in the surroundings as if we are a traceur. Finally, there are multiple viewpoints where we get to see the traceurs and their tricks. Sometimes the video slows down, while other times you speed along as if you are running with them. The last view that appears throughout the movie involves the surroundings. The video doesn’t always focus on the people, sometimes we are looking at the bricks or the headstones in the cemetery it was filmed in. Multiple times we zoom in to the logos located on the sweatshirts. I got the impression of no matter how many obstacles you make it through or over in life, or how fast you are running through life, there is still a futility to it all. We are all going to end up in that cemetery, or as ashes, basically dead.

            On a more positive note, despite this futility, the traceurs continue to run, and the camera continues to provide us with different perspectives, all moving at a high speed. They follow their motto, “never stop and never give up.” We will all end up there, but may as well do what you can while you are here!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkour

http://www.hirshhorn.si.edu/collection/democracia/#collection=democracia&detail=http%3A//www.hirshhorn.si.edu/bio/black-box-democracia/&title=Black+Box%3A+DEMOCRACIA  

3-D Sculpture (In real life)

I have left my heart in so many places.

 This quote is always something that has meant a lot to me, and I believe it applies very well to me. Some of the best relationships that I have cultivated have been across the United States and in other countries. Even if there is not a specific person there, I fall in love with places and leave a little bit of my heart there. Yet while my heart is "fragile" and must be "handled with care," it is still traveling and leaving itself more places. I find a certain amount of beauty in that and that is what I tried to portray.