Tim Noble and Sue Webster

These two British artists work together on several different types of sculptures. The ones I find most striking are their shadow sculptures.
This piece is Miss Understood and Mr Meanor, 1997. It was made over the course of six months from the artists garbage - the remains of what they survived off of during the time they were making the work. Most of their shadow work, that I've seen, are self portraits.
They have pushed beyond the self portrait as being only representational or abstract. The abstract looking sculpture made from things they used over a course of time becomes representational when a light is cast upon it from a specific spot. They have made themselves from remains, light, and darkness.
I find the work to be striking and incredibly thoughtful. It is related to my idea for our project. I was thinking about using the camera to show things that the eyes can't see and I ended up thinking about things you can't touch. Shadows. They are representations of everything we see, but they are often distorted and constantly changing. I want to look at manipulation of light and objects to create things that are not there.

Ally's SMP - Imprints

I went to Ally’s SMP presentation with a few ideas in mind of what it had to do with because I had heard about a lot of the preparatory works she was doing. I also went to the gallery opening to see if I what I got from the work would be what she talked about during her presentation.
Her final works use the image of a fingerprint mainly. She talked about how people leave imprints everywhere they go, connecting unknowingly with strangers through shared spaces and objects. That is probably one of the most basic things to say about her pieces, but it is what struck me the most. She chose the fingerprint because it is the “physical manifestation of where we’ve been.” I am mainly going to talk about her hanging installation. She made six large pieces on Plexiglas with a simplified drawing of a fingerprint on each. She used black and white paint as well as cutting out shapes and used bubble wrap to add texture on some. All of them are graphic pieces on their own, but what is interesting about them to me is the way they are hung. Because they are hung in a way that you could walk through them from any area and because they are transparent, the viewer gets the sense of going on their own path while overlapping with others. Even the fingerprints themselves can overlap, but they are never touching. This is the same as how strangers lives can overlap or not, but the people never actually meet. [My favorite part of her presentation is when she talked about the day she spent taking pictures of everyone who went to the same gas pump.]

I don’t have really anything to say in terms of how to improve her work. I would enjoy seeing some of the projects she did throughout the year, like Letters to Someone, incorporated into a work she would do. I guess that would make it more personal to her and be about how she connected (imprinted) with all of these people through her study of other peoples lives.

dadaDADAdada

During our class there was a performance that was supposed to emulate a Dada performance. It was presented by one of the Art history classes. We walked to Upper Monty where there were tape outlines of bodies on the floor with people-like figures made with clothing and various items that had been stuffed in some way. I had already seen these in the building and had no idea what they would be for.

While sitting and waiting for the performance to start, most people from the class were talking to each other. I was mainly trying to be quiet and wait because I am particularly interested in Dada and was afraid something would happen and I wouldn't notice it. Julia and I noticed there was a group of students sitting in chairs who were endlessly texting. Only once during the first part of the performance did they look up at each other to talk and it had something to do with youtube. As time went on and the audience only got louder, it seemed as though they might be waiting for people to become quiet. To see how long it took people to figure out that what they were doing is part of the performance, since it is such a common sight nowadays. Eventually most people from our class left, thinking that this had been the entire performance. This is when things started to "pick up." The students sitting on their phones got up to leave, saying goodbye as if they had been hanging out. One of them came back riding a bike and the rest filtered in. They put the bike up on a white box as if for display and brought a board with pre-donutted tape and a box of magazine clippings. They started to tape them onto the bike. Everyone watching, including Julia and I, participated. When all of the tape was used up, they ripped all of the pieces off, took the bike down, and the same person who rode it in rode out on it. Of few of the students left the room, some of them moving the fake bodies on the floor slightly out of the tape surrounding them. Eventually all of them left and two returned and started talking about what they were going to do for the rest of the day until everyone left.

I thought the performance was incredibly interesting. I thought there was a great mix of things happening that made it clear there was a performance happening as well as things that could easily be overlooked and seen as typical behavior. It seemed to be a commentary on how technology/interacting through technology has replaced simply spending time with people. Spending time together is constantly being interrupted by texting and hardly ever am I around my friends for a whole day without sitting in a room where at least half of us are on our laptops. It is strange that technology has increased opportunities for communication and simultaneously limited communication. It is so easy to get wrapped up in your own little online world that people forget how to connect with people in real life.

A good friend of mine recently broke her phone. It has been a week or so since then and she’s been living without the quickest mode of communication. It has made things a little bit difficult in terms of getting a hold of her (she lives off campus so it’s hard to know where she is unless she is online). I talked to her about how it makes her feel not to have a phone and she loves it. She loves that she only really has to respond to herself and not deal with random texts asking “where you at?” Not that she dislikes these, but it is nice to not have to deal with it all the time. This is something I’ve been having trouble with lately. I love having my phone in case I need to get a hold of someone or if they need to get a hold of me, but it has increasingly been irritating to have to deal with my phone during the day. I have to worry about all of the things people text me about when I am busy worrying about all of the things I have to get done. It used to be that I felt weird not texting a lot throughout the day because it just became a habit, but it has started to increasingly make me feel the need for a break.

I feel that the performance definitely addressed the fact that people are far too attached to our portable technology and they need to step away from it (outside of the lines around the bodies on the floor, if you will) in order to connect to other people. The message came across clearly through the undefined interactive structure. I thought the fact that they waited so long was confusing and interesting, definitely seemed to hearken back to Dada. I think they accomplished recreating the experience of being at a Dada performance (as best I can because I’ve never actually been to one…). I don’t think I would change anything except the group of three students separate from the other five were also on their phones, but they weren’t as absorbed in them. I am uncertain if this was intentional or if they were playing their roles less intensely. Either way, the message comes across and I had a great time viewing and interacting with it.

Some more cool Dave McKean stuff

Dave McKean - Mirror Mask

He has done so many things. His art seems to create another world. It takes the viewer out of reality and into whichever fantasy or nightmarish world he is creating. The viewer is immediately struck by his use of "collage" or cut and pasting look in some of his images and his figures that are wholly imagined.
I want to talk about the film Mirror Mask. McKean has done many works and Mirror Mask was the first feature length film that he designed and directed. Basic plot is a young girl working in the family circus as wants to leave to join the real world. Soon after a fight with her mother, her mother gets ill and she feels responsible. This is where things get interesting. She gets taken to The City of Light, which is being consumed by shadows. She is trying to find the fabled mirror mask to get back home and save the kingdom (she also has a doppelganger who was the princess of the Land of Shadow - she is currently in her place in the real world acting radically different than she would). There's a lot more to it including the fact that all her drawings actually created this world and they are the portals into it (which the princess from the Land of Shadow is trying to destroy).
You really need to watch the film to understand, but his construction of the other world puts the viewer in another place and actually creeps them out, which I feel is the intended effect.

Alberto Seveso

Alberto Seveso is a digital artist from Milan living in Rome. He did not go to school/take classes for digital art and doesn't believe the profession requires one according to some of him interviews I've read. He taught himself how to use Photoshop and Illustrator and he doesn't use a tablet (he claims to be bad at classical drawing). He is most well known for his "sperm shaping" technique, which is what he uses in the fourth image above.
He was inspired to make the "sperm shaping" images, which are part of the A me mi place la gnocca! series, because of a joke. He didn't think they were going to be particularly great, but people responded to them. The title is loosely translated to "I like the pussy." His images use shapes that follow the curves of the body to emphasize the sexuality of the figures. In all of his work, the shapes/colors/patterns on the body and coming out of the body add emotion to the figure in the image.

Self Portrait

Trembled Blossoms - James Jean

James Jean was born in Taipei, Taiwan in 1979, but was raised in Parsippany, NJ. He graduated with a B.F.A in 2001 from The School of Visual Arts, New York, NY. Since then he has done work with several commercial corporations like Target, Rolling Stone, Prada, and Playboy. He has also done a lot of work for DC Comics as a cover artist, which is how I discovered him. I am a huge fan of the graphic novel series Fables. He has worked on The Umbrella Academy as well, which is pretty cool. He's won six Eisner Awards for "Best Cover Artist" amongst several other awards.
The work I am going to write about is an animated film Trembled Blossoms. It is a work which James Jean wrote and designed, but was directed by James Luna and animated by Sight Effects. I thought it would be interesting to talk about this piece because it was create for Prada to prelude the presentation of their Spring/Summer 2008 fashion line at New York Fashion Week. I found the work while looking at some interviews with James Jean.
The film starts with a flower that gets pricked by a hummingbird and turns into a nude girl (or nymph, I suppose) with white skin. She acquires shoes from bugs that morph to her feet, then walks through a pastel forest where copies of her with patterned skin pass by and one becomes her dress. She continues to walk and finder herself meeting Pan in a much darker forest (or version of the same forest). He gives her a handbag that was made out of a tropical fish in his pond. His exterior then cracks and he turns into the same type of flower the girl came from. Her purse opens to reveal the same hummingbird from the beginning and flies toward the flower. This is where the film ends.
The work is clearly about fashion derived from nature. The girl literally has nature become what she wears. It is clear that the film is trying to emphasize Prada's inspiration for their Spring/Summer line by using an intensely colorful version of the world and wrapping the "buyer" in it. The film also emphasizes the beauty of nature in a highly stylized way. It is the idea of the fashion being the embodiment of Spring, which is made clear by having Pan (being the Greek god generally associated with Spring) essentially becoming the girl (fashion).
The concept art of James Jean is much more successful in showing the beauty in nature than the film itself. The major downfall to the animation is how low the quality is. Making the 2D drawings 3D and animated would ideally make them even more overpowering because they are brought to life, but the animation simply falls short of fully capturing James Jeans concept art. The only parts I feel look as enthralling as they should are the beginning before the flower turns into the girl and the ending where pan turns into the flower. The image of the flower is beautifully created. The forest backgrounds are lovely, but do not compare to the concept art. Also, the mix of the backgrounds with the figures don't mesh because of how they were digitally put together. The technical aspect was my main problem with the work. I think the meaning is clear and while it is incredibly obvious this was created for advertisement, I almost don't mind. I think the beauty of the animation would have been focused on more closely if it hadn't been solely about advertisement. I also think the advertisement would have been better if there were more emphasis on the art, but I also understand that making things obvious is important for appealing to a wider audience. I would love to see James Jean do more animated work that isn't associated with advertisement.

P.S: He has an exhibition called Rebus at the Martha Otero Gallery in Los Angeles, CA until April 30th. It looks amazing.

Music Sketchin'

Reva Stone

Reva Stone is a Canadian digital artist who works with video, robotics, and interactive installations. She focuses on the boundary between human and machine, born and manufactured. More specifically, she looks at that boundary as blurred. I found her work Carnevale 3.0 on the Rhizome site. She explores the idea of machines slowly "weaving themselves into our everyday lives until they are nearly invisible." In this piece, she worked with technicians David Sandeman, Victor Goertzen, Chad Harris, and Richard Dyck. With their help, she created a robot of sorts. It is two hollow outlines of a young girl (a younger version of the artist herself) made with aluminum, on top of a robotic platform that moves throughout the space. Between the aluminum outlines is a small video camera and projector. The robotic figure interacts with the viewer through the gallery space by moving and turning toward them. Randomly, the viewer is captured on the video camera. The images captured "combined and overlaid with previously stored images and projected outward from its metal body through the small video projector." The computer then adds new video to memory or discards the recording.
Carnevale 3.0 builds "a database of lived experience" where the video images captured become "memories" of the event. The work itself blurs the line between technology and human experience. It recreates the experience of memory through video and computer programming. The images overlay, change, and sometimes disappear all together, just as memories do. The figure interacts with other people, just as people do. Most interesting is when the robot is alone it still overlays and projects random images from its database. Even while alone, it is recalling "memories," as a person would. Just in viewing images and reading about the work, I can understand the immediate relation between born and manufactured. Everyone has technology with them at all times nowadays. iPods, computers, and cell phones at the very least can be found on the majority of people you see. Furthermore, people have technology literally implanted into their bodies. Where is the line between natural and artificial? If being human and having a body is part of our individuality, what does it mean to have mechanical devices as part of the body?
I find the work to be incredibly visually interesting while clearly portraying its message. In a time where people almost define themselves by the technology they have it is important to explore these boundaries. The body as a hollow, aluminum outline makes the figure feel cold and almost two-dimensional. It forces the viewer to engage with a possible future where humanity gives way to machinery and individuality is lost.

Slipping the Knot?

^ My first version, I think I like the simplicity more than in the next one.
This background adds some interesting dimensions especially in comparison to the flatness of the hand and such, but I definitely think the black background looks better.

imagesimagesimages

Daniel Canogar

Daniel Canogar is a Spanish artist born in 1964. He works with digital images an pieces of technology that have been discarded. His work as a whole has to do with the relationship and/or similarities between human mortality and the short life span of ever-changing technology. Our reading used some examples focusing on his digital wallpapers, but I was struck by his more recent installation pieces.
In this piece, Scanner - El Tanque (2010), Canogar tangles electric cables into a web-like structure inside of an oil tank converted for the exhibition. He aims projected light onto the cables, which makes it look as if light is running through them. "As we watch the light surge through the installation, parallels are drawn between the human circulatory system and the energy that animate our information society." This is how it was phrased on the site and I saw no reason to try re-wording it as it describes the piece perfectly. In his artist statement, he says that he also tries to "reanimate the lifeless."
From what I looked through of his work, I actually love it. Especially Scanner -El Tanque. You should look at the video on his site, it's much cooler than the images. Anyway, I think Canogar definitely reaches his goal of linking human and technological life and he does it in a visually stunning way.

Intro Digital

I'm not sure what to post so...
And mystery link.