Book Poem Visualization

Digging
by Seamus Heaney

http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/seamus_heaney/poems/12699


The construction of the book will most likely be an accordion style to show the transformation of the life long of the father in the field to the son in the writing room. The shape on the front will be a shovel and the back cover while the same shape cutout will be a pen.

Word Visualization

Collaborative Presentation Overview

Landscapes of the Mind:

How an artist's real world influences the alternate realities in his art

Florian Maier-Aichen - http://303gallery.com/artists/florian_maier-aichen/

George Grie - http://www.neosurrealismart.com/

Oliver Wasow - http://oliverwasow.com/

This exhibit brings together three artists, Florian Maier-Aichen, Oliver Wasow, and George Grie who each create alternate realities through the use of digitized media. While Wasow and Maier-Aichen begin with a photograph, Grie starts with an image from his mind. Each artists has unique intentions about what he wants the viewer to take away from his images. This also varies the degree to which each artist's work compares to the real world.

Self Visualization Project

Marriage is a big part of who I am. Any decision I make must first consider not only its implications on myself, but also my husband, and the One that we make together. While we can exist as individual people I cannot ignore the collective One without ignoring a little bit of myself.

The size of the piece was created as close to life size as possible without costing me a small fortune to print. The 44" printer width was a factor in this. Each panel should be of equal weight in a relationship with none above each other, this determined the orientation of the panels as well as their equal sizing. My choice of canvas as the printing material is because I feel that marriage is a traditional way of describing a person. Mounting the canvas away from the wall was to draw the viewer in and through the "painting." The care in the construction of the triptych was taken because of my belief of the reverence I have of marriage.

To begin construction of this piece I first took photos into PS, cropping the images and then selecting an area by using a layer mask. I then applied an effect to each figure and then took the image into AI where I applied live trace. The background was created through repeating the flare tool. The ring in the center was created solely in PS, from an image I cut and pasted, rotated, smudged, scaled, and adjusted the colors of the image to come up with the final piece.

Whitney Biennial compare/contrast

Untitled (I Do Not Always Feel Colored)
Glenn Ligon
Oil Sticks on primed surface door
80"x 15"x 1 1/2"





















Remember With Membry
Trenton Doyle Hancock
Acrylic plastic and Canvas
56"x66"


Both Pieces of work are word based art. The palette is similar with the addition of blue in Hancock's work. While Ligon's Untitled piece is set up in rows of text that get progressivley harder to read the text as the stencil built up residue toward the bottom. In Remember With Membry the text also has a way of becoming illegible but only as the text becomes smaller and twisted within the work. This is aided by the cutout portions and layers of text within to the piece. While Ligon uses only text Hancock combines his with visual elements. Both pieces replicate a phrase in their piece. There is also a story line behind each piece that gives it character. Ligon's Untitled tells about how she didn't see herself as black until she was sent to a school outside her tightly knit community of Eatonville, FL. This realistic background is quite different from Remember With Membry where Hancock depicts a world based more on personal mythology. Ligon looks back on the process of what has happened and Hancock depicts the result of a battle of his mythological creatures. While Ligon's work is slightly taller then Hancock's, the width of Hancock's piece seems to be about four times that of Ligon's. The materials used in each work shows Untitled more as a declaration of self and Remember With Membry a warning flag or relic from the past.

Artist presentation comments

When Video Game Worlds Collide

Andrew Matlack and Bryan Borut

Sid Meier and Shigeru Miyamoto

Andrew and Bryan did a good job of comparing a strategy type video game with one that had a storyline that was to be completed. The lack of reality vs the supposed reality of the strategy games was another great contrast. The comparison of a pc based game vs a console system game was nice too. I learned a great deal about these two game designers. The exhibit theme seems to be a little vague, and collide seems a little strong.

Reality, Virtuality, and Digital Synergy

Joey Gambatese and Ceire Parker

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Masaki Fujihata

The comparison of Lozano-Hemmer and Fujihata was a good selection. I enjoyed the differently scaled pieces of each artist. Joey and Ceire did a good job of going beyond what is described about the work of Lozano-Hemmer. I enjoyed learning about both artists learning about both specific works of art and generalities of each artist. The exhibit theme really encapsulates how these artist work.

Expressions of Color

Lindsey and Matt

Peter Jaworowski, Joe Mcnally, and Neil Duerden

The comparison of three commercial artist who use different levels of photo manipulation was interesting. Many days we see ads for various products yet know nothing about who created them. It seemed there was not quite the depth seen in knowledge of the artists as in other presentations. The information presented and comparison was of good quality. While not original the exhibit theme speaks directly of what each artist highlights in their work.

Untitled

Ryan Janelli andLizz Lesso

Feng Mengbo and Paul M. Smith

We are told that both artist put themselves in their work, it seems there could have been a stronger connection between the two artists. Seeing the artists' work right after speaking about them would have been less confusing. The lack of a title leaves nothing to say about the exhibit theme.

Synthesizing Nature: Digital Art in Music

Annea Lockwood,Kuljntansta, and Hildegard Westerkamp

I thoroughly enjoyed this presentation. I felt the depth to which these artists were compared was thorough. The comparison of the way noises were manipulated gives more information than covered in the text book. The title specifically tells the viewer that what they are going to see or rather hear.

Marina Abramovic/Frida Kahlo/Cui Xiuwen Comparison

The time in which these artists have created their artwork has spanned many years, each living in a different time, yet all deal with some sort of feminine portrayal. Frida Kahlo was the first of the three artists who lived in Mexico, growing up during the time of social change, and died in the 1950’s. Kahlo paints self-portraits most of the time because she claims she is the person she knows best. The main elements portrayed in her work are the emotions of joy, love, creativity, and passion. Physical and emotional pains are important factors but not the main elements of her work. Kahlo This is not long before the time of Marina Abramovic started her work in Yugoslavia around the time of WWII. Her work was always on the cutting edge, pushing the boundaries of art and use the body as an expression of form. Her current work at MOMA is a retrospective, recreating several of her prior works and in her eyes the finishing of a huge amount of works. Her interest right now is legacy because she is “in the third act” of her life. This is quite the opposite spectrum of where Cui Xiuwen is. Xiuwen was born in 1970 in Haerbin, China. In her work she portrays a young, Chinese girls and the social expectations of women of the time. Some of her recent work portrays the issues of the female at a time of motherhood and related issues such as pregnancy and maternity. The mediums with which each works is different, although all have been painters at some point in their art career. Kahlo’s work has always been painting and is best described as surrealistic although Kahlo herself argues that she says, “ I do not paint dreams…I paint my reality.” Both Abramovic and Xiuwen had begun painting and had epiphanies to cause them to feel like the medium wasn’t able to convey their work any longer. Abramovic has worked in several mediums such as interventions, sound, video, and performances. Her work often tests the limits of the body and elicits cultural critiques and these are often of a feminist kind. Xiuwen addresses emotions of anxiety, concerns, vulnerability, ambition, and compassion for women in her work. This is done through photography and video. For Xiuwen painting wasn’t able to present time lapse and switch of space nor able to have the narration her current work does. Each woman deals with a struggle and deals with it a little differently. For Kahlo it was that of boredom and physical constraints when bedfast. Her work however has a positive outlook on life, which made her work become both a cultural and historical icon. Abramovic has strong feministic influences and is a reaction against the cultural restrictions on the females of the time, pushing boundaries, and having resolute emotion. Xiuwen follows some in Abramovic’s steps but just highlights the struggle and not screaming for attention. Yet the overall mood created by Xiuwen is cooler and one of stress and despair. Kahlo produced work about herself, Abramovic the female artist, and Xiuwen’s work is about every woman in China.

Coffee Cup

Inherited Traits discussion

We are taught from an early age that art is the result of the creation process and a product that an artist creates. Traditionally this art followed a cannon where one could gauge the success of the piece by following set expectations. Today the definition of art has expanded through different art movements and new technology available. Conceptual art has lead greatly to the push for the thought process behind the work to be just as important if not more important than the product. To me art is a combination of these two schools of thought. While there should be some skeletal framework of artistic elements at play the thoughts behind the resulting piece should be taken in great consideration. Genealogy of the Supermarket echos this balance of what art was and what art has become. Most importantly the definitive mark of today's art is to create emotion. It could be anger, regret, loneliness,uneasiness, fear, pride, or happiness. What part of the process is considered art today, seen in the exhibits, is a combination of what we are shown with what we are told about the piece. There are those pieces that one could argue that in their sheer creation becomes the art with elaborate setups such as Transplant or Trace by Heidi Kumao. The sheer manipulation of the projection onto a tag within a bell jar or a blank book placed in front of the screen. Another trend in art is that the piece is not necessarily entirely constructed by the artist. In Nina Katchadourian's The Nitegown pictures she uses photographs that had been taken of her mother and combines them with photos that she had taken. In the talk we discussed the commonality of the artist not printing their own work so one could argue that it is the more the creation of the idea and setup that encompasses the art rather than the piece that hangs on the wall. In her piece Accent Elimination the viewing experience of the piece became just as much a part of the artwork with Katchadourian giving specifications of the pedestals, size, and types of TVs for the art to be displayed on. The art of today has grown into something that is a result of many things that the artist controls although not all of them the artist may physically create.

Project #1

Project 1

A snow storm is a magical time if you are lucky enough to not need to be across town. With each major snowfall it is like a vacuum, all of the sounds of the hustle and bustle have stopped and you are left in a dream like state where you are frozen, transfixed at a particular point in time.

Digital Art Introduction

Digital Art begins by distinguishing between art that uses digital technologies as a tool to create art and those that use digital technologies as their own medium.

I found interesting the link of conceptual artists as Duchamp to the digital art

The shaping of digital arts by science and technology-no surprise there

Good to understand right away the issues being faced in digital technology today:
The inability to store or difficulty to store these works of art reminds me of many conceptual pieces

Those works intended for the Internet pose problems in which while one can display their work outside of the gallery and the limited access to Internet inside the gallery

The fact that those Internet works can't be easily placed into a context

Expanded Internet access doesn't eliminate the fact that Internet art usually requires a relatively private engagement over a longer period of time-Lounge area as possible solution but concerns are "ghettoization" and the removal of the piece from contextual pieces

The value and sale of digital installations

Responsibility of maintaining the work, often thought of as ephemeral and unstable-upgrade of software and hardware

Benefit of piece being on view all of the time vs only available by rotation

Reaction to Students comments on 4 artists

Most of the comments of my classmates seemed plausible and in line with what i had gotten out of viewing their work. There are a few exceptions such as Joey who looked at Jeff Wall's work, saying that it depicted that landscapes that were boring. I myself had problems getting to understand his work until I read some of his writings. Wall's work is something someone can not just take for face value. They must look closely at it and have a little back story to understand it fully.

Teun Hocks was an artist whose work seems to be appealing to everyone, some calling it a dreamlike state and others commenting on it's comedic elements. While one didn't have to read writings by Teun Hocks to understand him there were those artist who you would have to understand more about them such as Cindy Sherman. Katie brought up a good point about her work being about a type of woman instead of a specific woman and Susan spoke of the familiarity to her work. This is in large part because of the context in which these photos represented the woman. From my understanding her work is about the woman's place in the world and uses what is supposed to be the male gaze. Elle thought that there was a sense of tension and an awareness to Sherman's work but I disagree. This awareness is not of being photographed but rather of viewing by a male not far from sight. This is a distinct difference between Sherman and Crewdson's work.

Photoshop Exercise 1

Artist Observations

Gregory Crewdson


This untitled piece is a geletin silver print and is one of the b&w photos Crewdson produced in 1996. While most of his current work is done as large scale color inkjets this piece is the smallest I have found at 20"x 24."








The bridge print was made in 2001 and is much more typical is size at 57" x 88." His work tells a moment in time that is staged in ordinary looking places. Everything in his work is staged from the lighting to the few figures placed in his pieces. He does this to elicit feelings of anxiety, isolation and fear.



Teun Hock


The only figure in Hock's work is himself. His process is a little more detailed then Crewdson by first taking a b&w photo and then using oils to hand color the images.
The atmosphere created is lighter and more cinematic than Crewdson. He construts the backgrounds creating a tableau that is both cinematic and elicits the feelings of confrentation of fear, puzzlement, and wonder. Like Crewdson the size of his pieces are large.



















Jeff Wall

His work has shown the greatest transformation, in his earlier works he would recreate old masters works while working on gestures. Today he creates pieces that are compilations of many images. He displays his work on giant light boxes instead of traditional mounting. His work is "painting the modern life." His use of b&w photography is a reaction to what the medium is. Like the others his scale is large.

Cindy Sherman


Sherman photograped herself like Hocks but worked on a little smaller scale then the others. Her main focus was about how women were seen in society. She didnt' place her work as "high art" Her work concentrated around the her ideas.

Artistic Influences

The thing which influences me most in my work is nature. The elements to which nature can be broken down into is juxtaposed to the infinite possibilities to which these elements create. This order within what sometimes seems random fascinates me. My work exists between photography and oil paintings at the moment.