Week 10: Inter-Action

Gabriel Orozco's work is playful. As Art 21 notes, he uses "the urban landscape and the everyday objects found within it to twist conventional notions of reality and engage the imagination of the viewer." He's a contemporary artist that's not confined to the seriously intellectual and rigid stuff that many other contemporary artists deal with. Instead, he creates contemporary art that is playful and that also provokes us. In many of his works, he takes an object that we know formally as one thing, and then he transforms it into something else, something more playful and yet at the same time something that's inquisitive, the way other contemporary art pieces often are. For example, in his Ping-Pond Table, we find ourselves wanting to play with it. We find ourselves perplexed and intrigued by the concept and  the actual form of it. We want to interact with it and see how it works for ourselves. The space between the pong tables, the pond, represents the interactive space that stills interrupts the game as a traditional net would. The pond and the net function the same in that they're kind of "booby traps" yet at the same time the function completely different on an interactive level. Using the pond as a net is creative and curiously interesting.

Orozco's car is also interactively provocative. The car, traditionally, is a cultural icon of industrialization, mass production, and multiples.  It's a machine that is inherently cultural and functional. He's all about the process as being inherently embedded in the end product. He says: "I don't separate the making and the final result. I don't separate the two." Orozco cuts the car in half and puts it back together, signifying the analyzation of the icon. And with this process of analysis of the object itself, the final product comes about on its own. Through the processing, the icon becomes active again, but the perspective is different, and definitely distorted.

Justin Novak's work is curious and introspective. He's asking questions. His work with ceramics is intriguing because it's the creation of one, of making only one thing. He's playing with this concept of the certainty of one object, with the possibility of making multiples.  Making more than one is possible, but when should we make them? Does making multiples detract from the original? Or does making multiples of an original make it more powerful? I think these are some of the questions that Novak plays with. His little figurines explore the language of traditional ceramics. Novak begs the question: what qualifies as traditional ceramics? And who gets to define it? What qualifies as beauty? These tragic figurines ask questions. He wants to know: Can you bring beauty into tragedy? I think Novak does so extraordinarily well. These figurines are disturbing and sad and they kind of break my heart, but they're also very beautiful. And just because they're disturbing doesn't means it retracts from their beauty. At first glance, a normal reaction is to be disturbed. Upon closer inspection, however, we find the beauty in this little statues. So, then that begs the question: what qualifies as beauty? For me, Novak definitely turns traditional beauty on its head. Our traditional notion of beauty, of these frilly ponies and butterflies, smiles and cupcakes and lollipops, is nowhere to be found. Instead, we find these tiny little things, inflicting pain on themselves and on each other. They're so tiny in size and yet they contain so much power. They're powerful because they're beautiful and disturbing at the same time.
The 21st Century Bunny evokes the traditional language of ceramics. We can see the influence of Michael Salter and Chris Coleman in these traditional, yet playful bunnies. These little ceramic bunnies turn traditional language of the bunny and of ceramics and of beauty on its head, n the same way that the disturbing little figurines do. They create tension between the weirdness of them and the beauty that's inherently embedded into them. Yet again, the qualifications for traditional beauty, what constitutes beauty and who gets to decide that, are challenged. The 3rd generation bunny, in the gallery setting, is interesting because even thought it's in a gallery, a place where, traditionally, we are expected to "look, but don't touch",  we can't help but try to repress this uncontrollable urge to pick up the bunnies and play with them. We want to interact with the piece, inside or outside of the gallery space, and I think this speaks tremendous amounts about the success of these ceramic bunnies as pieces that make us want to interact with them.

Brian Gillis talked all about this idea of multiples.  Central to his work is the use of objects as well. He highlighted the investigation of multiples, the process of creating multiples, and the singularity of one object, and how all of this functions together in art making. His main question: What is a multiple? And before his presentation, heck, I couldn't give you an academically sound, remotely profound answer. A multiple? The only multiple I know is the multiple choice test I have to take on Friday. And then I started listening to this concept of the multiplicity of objects, and I learned a little, and I think I maybe even understood some, too. A multiple is something, some kind of object that is "not intended to exist as an original." Instead, an object is created with the intention of reproducing that object again in a series of "multiple" objects. The multiples are limited in quantity, not mass-produced without limit. And, so although they are not a unique, singular object, I think that fact that they are re-produced as a multiple with limitations on the number being produced makes them special in their own right. It makes them just as unique as an original object without multiples because of this process of repetitive reproduction.

Now let's make some connections. On the literal front, we have this idea of multiples, present in both Novak and Orozco's work. Brian Gillis also mentioned "The American Supermarket" of pop artist Andy Warhol in Bianchini Gallery, NY and Orozco pays with the idea of the supermarket as well. The ceramic pieces are something you want to pick up and play with, and if you'd see them in a gallery you'd feel no different: you'd still want to grab the cute little things and pick them up. On the metaphorical front, we've got ceramics as a field of interaction between the process, the product, and the viewer. Novak uses his pieces as a means of processing traditionality, of questioning the world around him. The final products are the results of his processing the world. Orozco does the same thing. His way of viewing the world is through process, through deconstructing and reconstructing the traditional language of things. Orozco's car is representative of this industrial and repetitive process, that he turns into a process of one-ness, making a unique singular object. The final result is a singular car that has the process of multiples behind it, so it's embedded with two simultaneously opposing representations of one another. However, these two distinct  processes of multiples also work together to create a new meaning of an traditional, familiar icon. Gillis also touches on the process of multiples, and the duplicity of objects, focusing more on the process of the reproduction, as opposed to the original object. I think the process is ultimately the common thread. Novak makes things you want to pick up and play with. We want to interact with his little bunnies and figurines. It's the process of observation, discovery, and analyzation we want to partake in. We want to touch, explore, question meanings, even though we may be slightly disturbed or think it's ugly. Orozco makes things that you want to play with and interact with, in the same way as Novak does with ceramics. All these processes and products are a way of seeing the world. And it's these processes of questioning and viewing the world that make up the contemporary art of Orozco and Novak. It's thought provoking, fresh, and playful. And it makes us think. And better yet, it makes us ask questions. There's no way we can't interact with, and play with, this process of art making and the final products. We want to. We need to. We have to. Because our interaction is imperative to the understanding of our worlds.

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CerealArt: Multiples
Image 1,  Image 2, Image 3

Week 8: I'd Rather Be Bowling?

John Feodorov transforms "'sacred' items into recognizable consumer products." With a background in painting and drawing, his three dimensional works take on meaning all their own, interacting and analyzing the relationship between identity, power, spirituality and consumerism. In "Totem Teddy" Feodorov's putting the spirituality back into an everyday object, one that has an inherent meaning/identity as a teddy bear, and then when it's transformed into this totem/spiritual thing, adorned with unusual objects, embellished with seashells or something, it's meaning as a teddy is there, yes, but I think another layer of meaning is juxtaposed on top of it. Maybe the meaning is spiritual, maybe it's consumerist or anti-consumerist, identity based, maybe it's all of these things. I think that's the beauty of his work, that he has the ability to embed meaning and layer identity into a piece or a painting or a video that gets your internal dialogue talking, thinking, reflecting.

It's a Fence, But You Can Wear It If You Want To...

Throughout his work, it is clear that Feodorov expands on the human search for meaning and identity. His paintings are ambiguous, mysterious and whimsical, causing the viewer to create a dialogue of meaning for themselves inside their own heads, a dialogue that, in actuality, does not exist outside of the person's head. It's all about the viewer creating a dialogue in their own way, space, and time, using what they see in front of them to search for meanings beyond the two dimensional. The participation is more internal. For example, in his painting "Office Deity" he uses humor to depict this kind of moral and corporate power struggle, causing the viewer of the piece to reflect on the relationship of power in corporate america. In turn, the internal interaction with this piece may cause the viewer to question their own identity in their work environment. The installations and interactive pieces seem more participatory externally, in the sense that the work, such as "Animal Spirit Channeling Device for the Contemporary Shaman", plays with the relationship between human connectivity and consumerism/capitalism. There's more of an outward and intentional interpretation and subsequent analyzation of the relationship between consumer and product, between identity and consumer, between identity of the product and the identity of the consumer, between control and commodification.  Feodorov says, "For some reason spirituality is an important part of what I make, not necessarily how I live, but of what I can create" which I think aptly describes his relationship with art. There's definitely a spiritual element present, manifesting itself in different ways throughout different pieces, and yet at the same time I don't think his pieces are meant to be spiritually innate or explicit. Feodorov says that spirituality interests him, so obviously it's expected to be seen in his work, but he says it's something that he doesn't want to "be", rather he sees spirituality as something he's unable to ignore, and thus, the spiritual element manifests itself into his work. There's a real ambiguity and vagueness to it though, in the sense that it's not black or white, all or nothing: instead, it's shades of gray, the not knowing, the examination of the space in between.

Who do you think I am? Why wouldn't I want to crush my OWN cup?!

Yes, there is a deep and clear sense of spirituality, but I think it comes about more sub consciously than anything. As for bringing the precious and delicate into the everyday life, and what it's implications have on the shaping and/or recognition of certain identities, I think Feodorov illustrates it best when he recalls: "I remember when I was a kid, when my grandfather passed away, I remember in the funeral they were laying all these really beautiful pieces of jewelry, Navajo blankets, and pieces of pottery in the coffin, and I remember being really, really touched by that. And that had a profound effect on me." As Feodorov mentions above, there's this comforting, beautiful, aesthetically pleasing, almost magical feeling in the act of adornment, whether we're adorning ourselves with jewelry or body piercings, or adorning a coffin at a funeral. We could just leave everything plain vanilla, no mint chocolate chip or banana nut chunk, but we don't. So this begs the question: why? Why do we adorn ourselves? We do we embellish our lives? Because it's beautiful, that's why. And more than that, because these aesthetically pleasing adornments are an expression of ourselves, of our creativity, of our individuality, of our identity. And the expression of identity is powerful, profound, magical, in all the ways it manifests itself.

On the subject of ownership and power, I think we've got to dig deeper into what ownership represents and what having power over an object signifies in a cultural and social and consumerism driven society. Feodorov says: "Owning an object gives someone power over that object, turns the power that it once had into the only power it ends up having, maybe accentuating the pattern in the sofa." That is to say, that when we consciously choose to take ownership over some object, we are consciously choosing to exercise our control, our ability to make something our own. This hierarchical system of ownership and power is a manifestation of how we perceive ourselves, in that we believe we have the power to take ownership over something, and so we do. It's not only an expression of our inherent need to exercise the power we think we have, but also to express our consumerist identity.

Ohhh, that's where the fork goes... 

Anya Kivarkis highlighted three methods of production, those which I think relate seamlessly with Feodorov's method of making art. His paintings don't necessarily fall into the "handmade reproduction/original copies" explicitly, because I think they're all his own ideas and thoughts transferred on to canvas, with little inspiration coming from one particular piece. And I'm honestly not sure how to classify his works, such as "Animal Spirit Channeling Device for the Contemporary Shaman", "Office Shaman", or the angel (from the "Angels With Crosses and Bullets" installation) because they seem to be a mix of the 'original copies' catergory (although they aren't explicitly coping one object) and the 'post-production with intervention' category because often times he's taking everyday objects and transforming them into something new, with a different meaning attached to it. Okay, okay, now that I think about it actually, when I reallllllly sit down and reflect on what category some of Feodorov's works pertain to, it's definitely 'post-production with intervention' because he's intentionally using ordinary materials and cultural objects that we're familiar with to create a new meaning, as seen in "Animal Spirit Channeling Device for the Contemporary Shaman." He's taking an everyday, recognizable object (in this case, a childhood toy), and turning it's identity on its head, so that there's a kind of muddied or ambiguous meaning. The cultural object retains its original identity and at the same time takes on a new, more powerful meaning when adorned with feathers. There's the cultural meaning of the original object, coupled with the fact that it's a consumerist driven object that can be owned, and then Feodorov takes it one step further by embellishing it with another everyday object (feathers), easily recognizable and that has it's own meaning already attached, and then he fuses these two things together to create an object laced with consumerism, flooded with ambiguity, and embedded with opposing meanings and identities, making the viewer of the work define the gray area for themselves.




SOMETHING THAT MADE ME LAUGH:

     Art 21 asks:

	Why does anyone choose to become an artist?     And Feodorov says:
	You're asking hard questions. I don't know. I ask myself that all the time. Would I be a lot happier if I went bowling?  [I think we can all relate in some way or another. Or maybe it's just me. But in theory I'm sure I'd be a lot happier bowling- on paper the odds are good. But put me in those smelly shoes and give me a 10 pound orb and I'm pretty sure I'd be miserable.]

Week 7: Processing the Grey Area

Kiki Smith's work is open-ended and a continual process of play. She creates a space where the interpretation and giving of meaning through the audience is essential. The physicality of the body, the roles the body plays in our reception of our own and others thoughts and ideas, and the necessity for constant observation of our worlds. Art 21 describes Smith's work as "the body as a receptacle for knowledge, belief, and storytelling". She is interested in the process, of letting her work evolve in its own time and in its own way. It is interesting to note Smith's take on Catholicism and art, and how the two go hand in hand because "both believe in the physical manifestation of the spiritual world" and there is also a great deal of story telling going in, in both religion and in art. Smith also mentions the transcendence of art through space and time, and how the making of art is really all about bring the unconscious (inside of us) out into the conscious (the world). She says "art is in a sense like a proof: it’s something that moves from your insides into the physical world, and at the same time it’s just a representation of your insides." Smith also thinks along the same lines as Barthes in regards to thoughts, in the sense that what we may be thinking is something that has either already been thought, or that other people in this very moment are also thinking. She says "That’s why you can recognize things from two thousand years ago because it’s not radically different" which I think is a great representation of why art now and art back then, along with writing, or whatever other medium, may be a bit more difficult to relate contextually, but we still do recognize and understand elements, thoughts and ideas from two thousand years ago because they are relatively the same elements, thoughts or ideas that are transpiring today in the minds of many. Our relationships to objects in our daily lives is also something Smith mentions. She views these relationships we have to "things" as inherent to human nature. She also says that designing, or making, is different in the sense that one must be a listener and a collaborator of your own self at the same time; that is to say, to make art, there's the listener side of things, wherein you listen to yourself and your world, and the collaborative side, wherein you listen to your thoughts and ideas in the context of the world around you, and then you being to create something meaningful from there. It's a continual process, and I think, for Smith, she views these making process as playful and likes to keep things fresh and exciting. For example, she mentions that she had only ever drawn animals before, and then one day, she drew a person, however horribly, and then everything, her drawing, the process of making, it just evolved from there. I like how she doesn't have a strict and rigid thought process; instead it's more about the process itself, and letting it take her wherever it may. She sees making art as a way of thinking, much like Kentridge and Bengston.

Carla Bengston was intriguing to listen to. I definitely felt as though she viewed art much in the same way Smith did, not in terms of technique or thematically, but in the way she honored and embraced the process. What I found exceedingly brilliant was her making of the paintings with the ants. This perfectly demonstrates her work as an ever evolving process. Through her work, Bengston asks questions, questions of meaning, intentions, the impact of subtlety versus blatant intentions when making work. The work she made in the forest demonstrates he relationship between the artist and the environment, and also between the artist and the audience. How we viewed the piece and took the meaning was entirely up to us. Bengston gave us a piece, and imparted her own meaning into it through her making process, and then through our process of viewing the piece(s), we then impart our own, perhaps entirely different, meaning onto the work.

This is much the same idea that Barthes expanded on in his "The Death of the Author" writing. He highlighted this grey area, where we, as viewers, have the responsibility to extract meaning from a piece. We all took away a slightly different meaning from Barthes piece, much like we all took away a different meaning from Bengston's pieces and talk, and Kentridge's pieces. The meaning that is taken away from a piece depends, largely, on the audience that is viewing or reading it. Barthes also illuminates the power that signs hold in our culture; signs have meaning built into them, and neither the artist nor the audience can do anything about the meaning that the sign inherently holds. The tricky part is, then, that the symbol, much like the painting or the meaning behind a writing, is different for everyone, and thus it is interpreted differently. This means that the artist doesn't hold all the power, and doesn't get to define the sole meaning of his work; the audience does. In this sense, we as observers of work, symbols, meaning, writing, whatever, we are essentially being "born", as Barthes notes. And on the flip side, the birth of the reader (or audience/observer) comes as the expense of the death of the author (or artist). It seems Barthes main question is this: Who gets to make meaning? And there really is no implicit answer. The transmission of meaning is not a linear, concrete thing. The transmission of meaning is ever changing, a process of observation and interaction between the work and the audience and the artist, in that meaning changes in context of space and time.

William Kentridge's work is also a continual and playful process of the exploration of meaning. His ability to play and experiment is imperative in his creative process and the success of his work. He views looking and seeing as a metaphor for how we view the world, as we can see through his continual playful processing and experimenting in his animated films and opera productions. He, much like Barthes, encourages us to utilize "the agency we have, whether we like it or not, to make sense of the world" and symbols and meanings in our world as we see fit. Kentridge wants that we make our own meaning. For all of these artists, there is a definite trend. There is a necessity of the maker to create, there is a necessity of the observer to listen, and there is the power of the interpretation of a work that manifests itself through the inside out, starting in the unconscious of the observer/audience/reader, and then perpetuating and projecting its interpreted, differential meaning outside to the world around us.



Lady Gaga in general, and specifically in this music video, can be interpreted differently depending on the person. At the end she chooses to be a nun and her mouth and eyes disappear, symbolizing, to me, that she is is choosing to leave the evils of the world behind her. But that's just me, Lady Gaga is a crazy cool lady that will never fully be understood by anyone, including herself. Her work, specifically seen in her music videos, showcases the ever evolving process of playfulness and creativity that provokes the audience and encourages them to take away their own meaning from it all.

Week 6: On Talking Heads, Hearts, Machines, etc.

Anne Pasternak, the curator of "Playing the Building"  shares some thoughts in regards to David Byrne's piece that quite eloquently sum up what the installation is all about: "'Playing the Building' seems to be layered with rich meaning relating to human nature, our contemporary  relationship to place and sound, and considerations of shifts in culture at large". That we are able to relate our experiences in installations or interactive pieces with a contemporary understanding of the relationships in human nature seems to speak leaps and bounds about what such interactions and installations are capable of imparting on an audience. Byrne agrees that the piece was "socially" successful because there was an overwhelming sense that a shared communal experience was taking place, and that it was not in fact just merely an exhibition. It engages the audience in the act of "careful listening", which can be related to careful observing or careful thinking in regards to visual imagery. But instead of observing closely and carefully with the eyes, the ears are employed and engaged. The ears are to be the observer. It's an interesting and powerful notion, using our ears as the main sensory participant, when as a culture we're so visually conditioned and fixated on imagery.

Although we all love and appreciate music, there's something uncanny or simply unexpected about going to an art installation that focuses more on the audible parts and less so on the visual aspect (although there is still a refined visual quality to the work). In a sense, Byrne's turning consummation on its head: there's "less separation between cultural producers (the artists, writers, musicians, dancers, singers) and cultural consumers." Instead of simply just taking in what's being produced by someone else, you have to produce it yourself. And you have to do this while simultaneously and carefully observing with your ears. Anne Pasternak says that the piece is "highlighting the nuance and quirks of space" through transparency and simplicity; everyone can see how it's done and how it works in a physical sense, yet the sounds are still fascinating and intriguing. Although the sounds were seriously creepy, I found the inner workings of the whole thing to be quite impressive. There were strings (well, they looked like strings, anyway) hanging from every which way and other little peculiar contraptions fastened to the sides of walls and other places, with the organ being the "heart" of the whole operation. The position of the organ in the building also gave the installation a sense of simplicity and, at the same time, a sense of intrigue. Why is the organ standing alone, in the middle of a run down building? Why aren't there other instruments? Why is the organ significant? Is there some kind of religious connotation (as alluded to in the interview)? These were are the questions I found myself asking.

With this whole idea of the spiritual, there exists a slightly more psychological/emotional level to the piece. Byrne believes that "we have an innate longing for the spiritual and ecstatic. If we're not getting it in church, synagogue, or temple then eventually we'll locate it elsewhere: at a concert, a rave, Burning Man, or through sports or drugs, or even through some kinds of art." And it seems that these ecstatic experiences are made accessible many times over through popular cultural. But why do these ecstatic or spiritual experiences resonate with us? Do we indeed have an innate longing for the things more unseen, the unexplainable, the uncanny? I think we definitely do. I found the video of "Playing the Building" to be seriously eerie. It was like the soundtrack to a freakishly scary zombie or psycho-killer movie. I am going to have nightmares about the sounds. I felt this innate sense of the uncanny. Something didn't seem quite right about the whole installation, like someone was watching the building, like the building itself had a heart and the sounds were actually tortured squeals from the depths of the building's soul. I don't know. It was like I felt what the building was feeling. The building was speaking to me. And yet now, looking back on it, the person actually speaking to me was the person controlling the organ. So maybe the building is the medium, and we are connecting to the building and the artist and the person playing the organ, we are hearing all of the nuances of the building, the empty spaces, dark crevices, the soul, the heart, we're hearing and feeling everything. I don't know, it's tripping me out just thinking about it.

For Byrne, making and participating in art serves some kind of therapeutic value, therefore it is also able to have some social value attached with it. He sees art as becoming more and more of a status symbol/item, and yet simultaneously becoming more widely popular. Of this, he says "It's a weird moment. I often find that I am excited, inspired, and cynical all at the same time." And I think that this notion is ultimately what makes Byrne's art making and music making successful: his willingness to delve into different realms of creativity while his pieces simultaneously converge with all of his feelings and emotions surrounding the creative process. There's not just one sentiment, feeling, or emotion felt with Byrne, and likewise, there's not just one theme, ideology, or purpose behind his pieces. They are all accessible; there are no boundaries between the artist and the audience, because in certain moments the artists can be the audience, or the audience can be the artist, and there are no boundaries between the artist and the performance, because the artist is the performance, and the performance is the artist. I know that sounds like a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, and it probably is, but what I'm trying to encapsulate here is that the boundaries in Byrne's work are few and far between, and that in place of boundaries, what we get through his work is a sense of accessibility and the sense of communal experience. And what we also get is a talking head- our own.

John J Park was wonderfully brilliant and he advocated for power of the human hand and mind amongst all of the machines. The most striking thing about Park was his attitude toward technology and his reservations about it. His view on technological advances and using them to our advantage is the perfect balance between letting technology enhance our lives and also using it as a communicative means of expression, without completely succumbing to the power that such technology holds. The danger of technology, according to Park, seems to be that many in our generation rely on it too much, so much so, in fact, that we begin to lose ourselves in it. Park showed a short video on the beneficial uses of technology with the street artist who had Lou Gehrig's disease and the subsequent use of a play-station headset to create some kind of crazy contraption that allowed him to draw/make art using his eyes. I thought this video was an awesome example of the use of technology being beneficial and powerful in a profound way, as opposed to the manner in which most of us use technology in a more superficial and indulgent way. I also thoroughly enjoyed his work that he's currently doing in collaboration with the dance department. His use of technology to enhance a performance piece strikes a beautiful balance between the art of the human hand and the creative and responsible use of technology. His interactive light show/installation really reiterates what Byrne's "Playing the Building" is all about: engaging with the audience, while simultaneously erasing the boundary between artist and performance, and artist and audience.

David Byrne and his "idea that the artist's hand must be evident and visible isn't as crucial anymore" is interesting because it relates with what John Park spoke about. This whole idea about machines and technology taking over, people becoming so engrossed and aroused by visual imagery and technological devices that the evidence of the human hand is diminishing, and in fact, less crucial in our society. But, for Byrne and Park, it seems that they're advocating for a harmonious and respectful relationship between the hand and the machine. That we should use such machines and technologies as tools, and nothing more. That the human hand is in fact as crucial as ever.

According to Art 21, Paul Pfeiffer "dissect(s) the role that mass media plays in shaping consciousness" and I couldn't agree more. Many of his pieces are centered around photos taken at sporting events, something very socially and culturally accessible. In these pieces, where he seemingly "erases" the main figure of the image, we must project our own doubts/thoughts/narratives of the possibility. There's also a spiritual dimension and religious ties in some of his work, such as "Poltergeist", similar to the work "Playing the Building" by David Byrne. Both Byrne and Pfeiffer examine the history of the human consciousness and the relationship between popular culture and its audience.

In Pfeiffer's work, the process of manipulating the images isn't really about erasure, but instead it's about camouflage, taking pieces and applying them over the image to cover up a figure, and in the end it's all just one big illusion. How brilliant, adding more to an image while it's seemingly diminishing. In "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" Pfeiffer describes his work with images of legendary sports players and how he manipulates them, removing all contextual detail, "so that what remains is not an absent figure but an intensified figure by virtue of the fact that you are lacking some aspects of a context to place it in." For example, he explains that in the Wilt Chamberlin image, he manipulates it so that Wilt is more or less invisible, leaving a figure in the background that puts a whole new spin on the purpose of the image. Instead of Wilt in all his star studded glory, there remains a figure less prominent, causing the context to change- in this case, the figure looks completely out of context. The photo was obviously not taken of the figure in the background, but when Wilt is removed (or camouflaged) the image . He also speaks about the editing process and how, much like John Park, he believes that computers/technology are useful, yet the human eye and human hand ultimately should have the final say. In other words, technology should be used as a tool, and nothing more. Human innovation and human interaction with technology is a great thing, but we shouldn't solely rely on it for creative processes. We must remember to use our hands and our eyes and our minds. Above all, these things- these physical, tangible, sensory, human things- are far more valuable, and far more advanced than any piece of computer equipment, in my opinion.

In regards to Pfeifer's "Poltergeist" piece, what I found most intriguing was the use of computer programs and technological machines to make the sculptural piece from start to finish, employing barely any human contact with the object itself. I also found his fixation on horror stories in popular american culture to be intriguing. Pfeiffer not only draws from celebrity images in pop culture, he also draws creative inspiration from sources such as horror classics "Poltergeist" and "The Exorcist", reverting back to these movies in his adulthood after he spent his childhood submersed in their images. In "Dutch Interior" he says he drew from the doll houses he used to create as a child. He also mentions that, in his youth, after the completion of the doll houses he would then burn them, creating a "moving" or fluid image from something that was initially pretty static. All of these pieces seem to be created from, or surrounded by, influences of not only popular american culture, but also by his youth, protestant upbringing, notions of the spiritual, and most crucial, the sense of the uncanny. That is to say, through out all of Pfeieffer's pieces the foundation of his creativity seems to lie in the ability to produce, camouflage, or construct images that are based in a supernatural, or inexplicable context, as we see in his erasure of figures in legendary images or his construction of a pile of chairs in "Poltergeist."

On visual imagery, Pfeiffer explains that "there’s something really seductive at the same time about the comfort of pre-digested images that are available. It makes me wonder if ultimately what we are talking about is not just the proliferation of images or a more distracted viewer or freedom of choice in terms of the consumption of images, but really a shrinking of the imagination." I wonder how this "shrinking of the imagination" plays into the development of technology: is imagination really shrinking because we have computers and tools and programs to do all the hard work for us? Or is our imagination really expanding because we have to create and implement new ways to work with such technologies without losing the creativity of the human hand? I don't know the right answer to this, as I'm more or less technologically illiterate, but it seems artists, such as Pfeiffer and Byrne, have expanded on their imagination and creative process tenfold when they think about ways to work around and work with these machines. Our minds are battling back and forth with this machines, and in a sense creating some kind of dialogue, although it's all just talking in our heads.

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller As if the events were taking place live, in real time.
It's a "bizarrely intense sensation of psychological immersion" into a place that's not really there. It's real and alive in your mind, you feel it, you think it's real, and maybe it is for the duration of the audio walks, and then in the flip of a switch you're back to reality and the world you were just immersed in for 20 minutes no longer exists. These narratives really get into your mind, they're hypnotic-like and establish this strange sense of intimacy. It's strange because we can't see the person talking in our ears, and yet throughout the talk we develop this intimate relationship with them. For me, the visual aspect of all of these walks takes a back seat. The true art is in the narrative, it's in the literal, intrusive, yet simultaneously comforting voice talking in your head. In "The Telephone Call" the audience response at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco in March oh 2001, as described in the excerpt below the piece, was overwhelming, in the best way possible. It's essentially a glimpse into the inner-workings of another person, intimately detailed, imparting a sense of closeness both psychologically and physiologically.  Of her audio walks, Cardiff says that "the virtual recorded soundscape has to mimic the real physical one in order to create a new world as a seamless combination of the two" which is an absolutely brilliant concept. When we experience the audio walks, we hear a person speaking to us intimately, we feel connected to this person that's literally inside our heads. And at the same time of this feeling intense closeness, there's also this sense of ambiguity and disconnectedness about it.

For all of these works, I found myself asking: How do we place ourselves in the context that the talking voice is putting us in? Do we submerse ourselves completely? Or are we a bit wary and uncertain of what the voice in our own head is telling us? I found myself completely and unconsciously captivated and connected when I listened to the audio walk, or watched the "Playing the Building" video, or viewing one of Pfeiffer's pieces. Yet through all of these I was consciously trying to keep my distance. There was this beautiful juxtaposition going on in my head. How do I reconcile this artificial talking that's going on in my head with the talking that's unconsciously going on in my head? How do I differentiate between the two? What if I can't? Suffice to say that I found the works engaged both my unconscious and conscious at the same time, creating this swirling and ambiguous and controlled and limitless and overwhelming and intimate world. I think my head was literally talking.
 

The Stage as a Musical Instrument: Nine Inch Nails

Week 5: Seeking Your Own Reality + The Power of Curiousity

Photos have this way of deceiving us because we don’t know what’s really going on in the moment the photograph is captured; we only see a small frame shot in the context that the photographer wants us to see. It is, in a sense, a censored image of a certain moment, a censored image of the world. Each lens is unique to each specific photographer, and for that, each photo tells a different story. Morris challenges us to look at our relationship between photographs and trust. Why do we trust photographs?   

It’s obvious in our society that the power of visual imagery is immense. We expect that the photos taken for newspapers and other highly-respected new sources to be objective and honest and true. There’s a real disconnect going on, to have a tampered photo accompany a front page news story. We expect, as readers, to be handed the objective truth (although, let’s be real, that doesn’t always happen), and when we are presented with this phony image, we begin to question the whole validity of the article, and of the newspapar itself. If the photo is fake, why wouldn’t the story be, too? Or atleast be inaccurate and include false facts and other misteps, such as the photo implicated. As they say, “A photo is worth a thousand words” and in this case, I’m not sure exactly what those thousand words are.

But I know what Errol Morris would say: “I guess the moral of the story is we should always consider the possibility that we may be comparing something fake with something else that is fake.” He explains that “doctored photos are the least of our worries”. After all, if you want to trick someone “all you need to do is change the caption.” For example, the photographs presented by Colin Powell that were used to justify the war are very low in quality, and it’s hard to see anything clearly; it’s the captions and labels that the added in to the photo that turns the original photograph into something more powerful.

Errol Morris says, If it’s fake, fine, but what is it that we are supposed to infer from the photograph? The L.A. Times credit the photograph to the Revolutionary Guard, Errol Morris explains that this attribution tells us we’re looking at a genuine Iranian photograph- the photo really came from Iran- not that the photograph itself is genuine. I thought this was an interesting point, and something that I had not considered. And the point that even after exposing the fraud of the photo, the missiles are still real. We are still left with real missiles, whether it was three or for. They’re real. So I guess what we’re to infer from the photograph isn’t that the missiles are real or fake or whatever, it’s to understand that the power of visual imagery is immense. It’s to understand that one photo, whether photo-shoppped or not, has such control and power over us. 

As I was reading the comments of Errol Morris’ blog post, I stumbled across one that really got me thinking. Someone commented: “As a historian I take interest in what’s not true, because sometimes it tells us something important about how we feel.” Wow, this really struck a chord with me. It got me thinking about the person that doctored the missile photo, and how they must have implanted the fourth missile into the photo, altering the reality of the original, because they wanted to convey a certain message. The fact that whoever photo-shopped the photo has absolute control over what our eyes, and in turn, what our minds tell us, is an extremely powerful notion. They have the power to control, convince, and deceive, and we’ll absorb, and most likely believe whatever the photo’s saying/trying to convey because that’s the way our brains work. We absorb and accept and believe in images that come from accredited (and not-so-accredited) sources. We are visual animals. We thrive off of imagery. Plain and simple. So the problem, then, with this whole fourth missile controversy, may not after all, be whether the fourth missile launched, or was ever really there, or if the photo was altered—the problem is that we’ve been manipulated by the photograph. Photographs can deceive.  And the power in all of this, is that photographs have the ability not only to copy, but to alter reality. And in turn, this alters our perceptions of the world.

 

Looking at photos and all visual imagery critically is imperative. We want sources to be reliable, but that isn’t always so. We don’t want to be fooled, but at the same time we’re more or less conditioned to see a photo in a newspaper or magazine and believe in it. But nothing’s ever that certain in reality, so why should we blindly believe that everything or anything’s that certain in photograph? What about our first hand experiences versus experiences/photos/images we saw in a movie or newspaper: how does our brain really separate these? It seems they are overlap quite a bit. Hanry Farid explains that roughly half of our brain is doing some sort of visual processing at any given moment, so it makes sense that what we see and experience directly as part of our reality and what we see and observe in a newspaper or photo album on Facebook tends to get a bit blurry. We’re constantly processing all of these images, both real and altered, so how does our brain know the difference? How does our brain know what’s real and what’s been altered? And if we do indeed recognize and acknowledge the fact that a photo’s been tampered with, do we still accept it as reality? I think, that as a society, whether we like it or not, we accept images as they are, as truth, as reality, even if we subconsciously know that they’re fake. Maybe it’s this longing for altered images to actually be reality, this longing for a more epic or more beautiful reality, so that’s why we accept all of the altered visual imagery as the truth. Or maybe our brains are to blame, and although we do know better, our brains can’t seem to truly differentiate an altered reality from the true reality.

Alfredo Jaar explores the “public’s desensitization to images and the limitations of art” in a profound way. Every work is a “response to a real-life event, a real-life situation” that has impacted him or moved him personally in some way. In “The Rwanda Project” his main strategy is to reduce the meaning of “one million dead” to focus in on one individual, giving the person a name, that way the public, who was is desensitized with such a large numbers, numbers almost unfathomable or incomprehensible for our brains, now holds a greater impact and really resonates with us because we are hearing and seeing the story of one single person that has been affected. And we’re all just a single person. We know firsthand what it means and how it feels to be one person. So the fact that the one individual could be us, it wakes us up. The weight that “one million” holds is overwhelming and unrelatable. But one, one person, we are one person, so it’s relatable. Jaar mentions that balance between the content and the visual is important, and something that he strives for. If there’s too much visual, too much image, and not enough content, the image becomes just another image. But having a story, or a message, or some kind of content to back the image has such effectiveness and is so powerful because through the visual image there’s a real story. And that makes it memorable. Jaar’s communication through photographs is a process of visual and personal curiosity.  All of Jaar’s pieces are emotionally charged because both the aesthetics and the ethics of the photo are clear. They really have to do with how the audience will view it- what projections they’ll make about it, what assumptions they’ll make, what connections they’ll make, and in what social or historical context they’ll put it in.

We see the importance of the audience’s projections when Jaar speaks of the piece “The Rwanda Project” in regards to Chile. He says that the shape/form of the heaped photographs, visually representative of the one million dead in Rwanda, takes on a different visual interpretation depending on where and when it’s viewed. In Chile, Jaar says the shape “would immediately suggest the Andes”, which will then directly connect the people viewing it with whatever situation is going on there. I thought this was an intriguing point; as much as the artist holds the power in terms of form and aesthetics in the creation of a piece or installation, the audience holds just as significant power in the interpretation and connection with the piece. The artist can’t make the audience connect with the piece; they can sure as hell give it their best effort, but when all is said and done, it’s the audience that projects their own feelings, thoughts, and ideologies onto the piece. Therefore, it’s the artists job to visually construct a piece that’s communicative and compelling enough for the artist to make the connections that the artist, in this case Jaar, is striving for. The communication between the artist and the audience is imperative to the success, not only of the piece, but of the bigger picture in the genocide in Rwanda. And if we view any of the pieces in “The Rwanda Project” and aren’t patient enough to attempt to communicate or understand it, well, that’s our fault.

In “The Gramsci Trilogy”, an homage to Italian thinkers Gramsci and Pasolini, we encounter the “Infinite Cell.” I found this concept to be the most powerful. As Jaar says: “What I’m expecting from the audience is that they feel their bodies compromised by the space. I think this is a key element of all my installations. I think that the body has a language, and when the audience enters this place their body language will change. I’m interested in these shifts. It’s the capacity of architecture and art to produce those changes. They are merely physical changes, but of course the metaphor here is that this also suggests the possibility of an intellectual change, a mental shift.” I think this is brilliant. Jaar uses architecture and art as compliments to each other, constructing a physical space in which the audience is forced to change not only their physical “language”, that is, their physical presence, but the audience is also forced to change their mental and intellectual thinking. The fact that the space is aesthetically and architecturally constructed in such a way that brings about a shift in the thinking of the audience is remarkable. That the audience inside of the jail cell actually feels what it must have been like, that they feel trapped, small, all those things that someone in prison must feel, and that because they are physically/outwardly feeling this way their internal/mental feelings start to shift- man, that’s incredibly powerful. It speaks to the tremendous talent Jaar has-as both an architect and and artist-to create a space that allows both a physical shift in body language and a mental shift in intellectual language. It’s interesting that Jaar mentions that “ideas never die” in one of the interviews, because I think this sentiment directly connects with his “The Gramsci Triology” piece; here he takes all these ideas and ideologies of past thinkers, and uses them, fusing his own ideas with the ideas of Pasolini and Gramsci to create something meaningful and significant to the present day.

Jaar’s background in architecture helps shape his construction and communication of his pieces. His use of light as an illuminating factor in the Rwanda piece, revealing the truth and horror, is really interesting. As he mentions, light is traditionally a sign of hope and faith, but here Jaar uses it to literally “shed light” on the horrific conditions in Rwanda. It’s a very powerful thing. We see what we don’t want to see, what we are desensitized to, and when this happens it’s uncomfortable.

Craig Hickman showed some of the work of Caleb Charland, who uses his scientific curiosity to artistically investigate the world around him. Upon further inspection of his website, I found these really cool “BioGraphs”, which are essentially just photos of bacteria growing on film. In these ; .What started out as a photograph transformed into something more: a ‘biograph’ of life, telling a story of a living thing, a trace of life, “an index of existence.” Charland explains that in this BioGraph series he refined the experiments time and time again, as we also see in Jaar’s work. It’s this constant state of curiously wanting more, more knowledge of how life works, of how life functions in relation to visual imagery, and how we as a human audience take it all in, how we connect with and react to these images. These images, in Charland’s biographs, are little slices of life, a glimpse into the world of an organism, much like Jaar’s pieces are a “life-scapes” on film, or in an installation.

I think these biographs accurately pertain to all the artists we’ve discussed this week at some level; there’s a curosity about the work of Charland, and how things work and processes function, like we’ve seen in both Jaar’s work (his view of the creative and architectural process and his curiosity of humankind) and also in Errol Morris’ article (his curiosity and constant questioning of visual images and what’s really going on behind the photo). The photos start out as a simple photograph, and yet through processing and audience participation, they turn into something more- photographs that tell the story of a life. They seek this truth through curiosity of life, of what’s happening around them (be it historically, politically, or biologically), and subsequently test the power of visual imagery through this constant state of processing their own worlds.

They all use the world around them, whether it’s the investigation of a forged photo (Morris), a political thing (Jaar), or a biological thing (Charland’s BioGraphs), taking these real-life events or situations and turning them into power visual imagery that connects the audience. The power of visual imagery just keeps going and going. And it’s our responsibility as observers of our reality and participants of the world to keep asking questions. Don’t settle for someone else's version of reality. Instead, seek your own, such as Alfredo Jaar, Errol Caleb Charland have done.

Photo Source:

Caleb Charland Portfolios

Week 4: We Call Them Artists

Ann Hamilton’s installation art dealing with borders, the space in between, of art and the written word and how they act as conduits to bring into focus this so called “edge” is fascinating. Not only does she push us out of our comfort zone and out of many of our pre-conceived notions of art, she, quite metaphorically, pushes us to the edge. It’s all bout how we establish borders in the literal sense, and also how we establish them figuratively,  “working at the edge, but living psychically in the middle.” It's about how we're engaging the place in between for both the artist and the viewer. In one of her pieces, black silk organza curtains hang freely and organically, enabling and engaging the viewer with the concept  of borders and un-containment. In her work, it is the viewer who crosses the threshold and it is the viewer who gives meaning and breathes life into the installation. The installation is transformed day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute because the audience is constantly changing; what they take away from it becomes what it is in that moment, a kind of social space where the viewers decide for themselves how this installation, this “making” of art is important, and why the “making” has the effect that it does, and in what context the viewers put themselves and the art in order to benefit from it. 

The impermanence of these art installations is what I find most crucial to the viewers engagement with, and the artists success of, the art pieces. This impermanence makes visible something seemingly invisible, something that’s present in a certain space or location, but only for a short period of time. It has no visual representation in the society, thus the installations give the hidden, the invisible, the un-contained, a voice through art. I found especially that in “ghost: a border act” there was no specific narrative, but instead there's an open-endedness, with no sense of closure, so that the viewer can narrate and engage with the it however they want.  The most intriguing concept of Hamilton’s work is the paradox of  the “laying out” and the “erasure” in the same moment, in terms of the un-containment of the work and of letting the work be defined in its own time and its own place. Hamilton is not containing the work, naming it, labeling it as this or that, but letting it take on any and all meaning that it is able to in a space, or at a certain time, so that the viewers get the most out of it and so that the piece gets the most out of itself. I also appreciated Hamilton's point about the unconscious, of what we look like when we truly become engrossed or engaged with what we are doing, seeing, or making- that place where you’re vulnerable yet, at the same time there is an implicit sense of strength for being able to put yourself or your art on display- that's what's beautiful. 
 

The Pinhole cameras were also quite interesting. To the have the mouth become the eye for the camera hole (how insanely brilliant!), she noted that the mouth is very much like the shape of the eye, so that its a transference of an experience. It's the notion that what you experience and how the picture would turn out has a lot to do with the space that the camera occupies; that when the camera pinhole occupies the mouth, the space is transformed, and thus the experience that you have is transformed and takes on a completely different meaning, even though the piece/object (in this case, a camera) has retained all of its parts, and functions relatively the same. That is to say, in a broader sense, that a piece can be transformed tremendously, and even become exponentially more powerful, when the space or location that it was once in, changes. That space and location play a major role in how we view an art installation, and how we view the world in certain (or all!) moments.

In the “Untitled (Body Object Series)” Hamilton interacts with everyday objects, as Sara Rabinowitz does with her use of fibers and making of textiles. The objects as “developing” a body, or the body as having “grown” an object, is a very interesting and intriguing concept. In a sense, I think that’s what Hamilton’s work is really about, that kind of spatial, time, and body-presence or consciousness with an object; that an object can insert itself into our lives with this presence that can be felt, or that we can inhabit the border, the edge, the in-betweeness of on object, simultaneously feeling its presence while it feeds off of ours. We are able to interpret these pieces, such as the photograph of a woman with a woven basket situated on top of her torso as a head, as a way of re-interpreting the narrative of the original photograph, giving it a new meaning and language that has been created through the integration and fusion of everyday objects or textiles. Also, the idea of the age of the body as having significance is mentioned; that the body of a child with a basket on their head can be interpreted as playful, while the same image of an adult aged basket-head can be interpreted as someone who feels isolated. For me, that’s a deep and insightful observation, because the context of the original photo not only changes when the integration of the basket is introduced, but the context also changes when the age-time-spatial thing is considered. I also really enjoyed the “tropos” piece because of the sense of transcendence it brought to the space: “the piece referred to the larger social history of the neighborhood, uncovering forgotten narratives of labor and material.” I think this another one of the main goals of Hamilton’s work, to be able to dwell comfortably and consciously in the gap of language and art, in the gap of the natural world (i.e. horse hair) and the “commerce and letters” world (i.e. the burning pages of the book). That the juxtaposition of the space and time, language and art, historical events past and present, are not only juxtaposed, but that they also simultaneously dwell in one another. 

Cai Guo-Qiang’s methodology and work is not easily defined or contained; instead, it’s wide open. He says that if he were able to contain it, it’d be “somewhere on a shelf.” I thought this was brilliant, and relates back to Hamilton’s whole idea about the contained versus the un-contained, and how the un-contained is able to transcend space and time, is open to different narratives and interpretations, and is free. The idea, as Guo-Qiang so eloquently puts it, that “maybe not everything has to be resolved with a finite answer” is the beauty of it un-containment. That the work is not contained and fixed in one place or time, but that it’s fluid and chaotic and transcends all that we can see, so as to bring into focus all that remains un-seen. His views are inherently rooted in his Chinese background, in that the Chinese way of thinking that has influenced his life and his work and lends itself to the expansion of such ideas and concepts: “sometimes you can allow uncertainties to exist within the same space and situation.” I found that Guo-Qiang’s work is definitely more on the technical side of things, in terms of astro-physics and mathematics and working/painting with gunpowder, but that these technical aspects do not dissolve or discredit the power of his work. On the contrary, we can see his work as a process rooted in biology and nature, while at the same time taking origins from a more philosophically curious, or intrinsically intangible world. Guo-Qiang says: “these play back and forth: the material, your idea, and what you’re working on. It’s actually quite a biological process, it’s very visceral.” In the Tiger Room, the response of the viewer is strong and immediate, not from the actual image itself but from what the tiger represents: pain. And the pain is felt in the viewers, not in the tigers on display, because the tigers aren’t alive, living and breathing; the viewers are, and thus, they’re the recipients of the pain felt. It’s all about how we, as viewers, are involved in the moments.

Guo-Qiang says that the boat piece “Reflection” is a direct result of him wanting to start from scratch in a new place, creating something from a space where he initially had nothing: “I wanted to begin a dialogue with the local people. I wanted to have a dialogue with the earth and the universe and the cosmos here. So the idea was to start with nothing, begin very local and reach for something much grander in scale.” His idea reiterates what Hamilton was all about- that everything begins with the people “here and now”- that the dialogue between the people and the universe isn’t stagnant, but that it's constantly in motion, changing, transforming, alive. Overall, I found Gui-Qoang’s work brilliant and invigorating because he was able to incorporate both space and time elements, as well as biological and intangible elements to create pieces truly unique and expressive of his Chinese roots. 

Sara Rabinowitz was a true pleasure to listen to. What I got from her presentation was that the commonality of everyday fibers, textiles, objects, what have you, is what makes this kind of art relatable, but at the same time it makes the art alienated or isolated, in the sense that the textiles and fabrics used in a lot of her pieces, and of other artists pieces working with fibers, are so common in our daily lives, often over-looked and under-appreciated, taking such pieces or objects and inserting them into a different context is challenging. The collaborative piece from Anne Wilson's exhibition, "Wind-Up", which I stumbled upon on her website (and which Rabinowitz herself participated in), is relatable to the concepts of space and time, between that which is visible- the weaving of the fiber around a giant contraption- and that which is un-seen- the performance of the labor, and the greater, more profound historical context behind it. In the same way that Guo-Qiang and Hamilton use their pieces to explore the relationship between what is seen and what is not seen, so do Rabinowitz and other artists that she mentioned. They live and work and engage with this “in-betweeness”, creating pieces that tell a story or reveal a truth about a space, place, or time that, one that’s not visible, or one that perhaps has been forgotten. Yet at the same time, this conceptualization and construction of pieces is open and un-contained, leaving sufficient room for the viewer to contextualize and interpret the piece for themselves.

To bring all of this full circle, I think that, while there are a lot of differences in terms of craft and material, the concepts, ideas, and intentions behind all the works discussed here are very similar. With Hamilton, Guo-Qiang, Rabinowitz, and others, it's about how you engage in your world, how you "step into our own agency" in the world, how they take their gifts as artists, as a conceptual thinker, as a knitter, whatever, and use that to show people what's at stake, what's going on in the world, their world, our world, what's invisible, what's been forgotten, what's tangible, what remains un-seen, the magical moments, the vulnerable moments, and what can't been seen with the eyes, but only felt, and how all of these things are one in the same. I think Cai Guo-Qiang sums it up quite perfectly when he says: “So it’s easy for us to depict things of this physical world, of the way we live now, but it’s very difficult to depict things that are not seen but have a profound effect on us.” And the people who are able to depict these things, these things not seen, but felt, with such profound impact, we call them artists. 

*About the images: A play on the 'Knitting Nancy' game of childhood, this architectural installation uses everyday yarn to bridge the gap and celebrate "interwoven" cultures in London, evoking a sense of fun and playfulness, but also promoting the viewer to engage in the seen- the Knitting Nancy- and un-seen- the broader historical context of it all.

Source:

Giant Knitting Nancy- Daily Tonic

Week 3: The Closer I Look, The Stranger It All Becomes

Michael Salter finds “comfort in discomfort” and our consumerist and visual culture does not. We are constantly engulfed with the latest and greatest, the overwhelming amount of visual “junk” that serves no other purpose than to look pretty, or to denote your “status" in our culture. When Salter speaks about his departure from the materialistic and consumerist driven job he once held in his days as an icon designer for name-brand surfing clothing, to his arrival as an artist completely infatuated with discomfort and concise form,  we sense that he’s at peace now, with what he does, with what he makes, and with who he is. He seems unwavering in his own truths, and is deeply rooted in his consciousness and efforts to make art the way he needs to make it. As a self-proclaimed “obsessive observer” he challenges us to be aware of how we see things, how we assign meaning to logos, brands, or icons that represent something important to our culture, whether it’s a symbol of “status” (as Salter mentions his high-top converses and their “low” status) or a representation of some other emotion or feeling through a culturally constructed icon.

 

The main thing I took away from Salter is that  what you think is a direct product of what your brain is consuming everyday; photographs, ads, commercials, graffiti on the side of a bus, it all affects us negatively or positively, depending on the social and cultural construction of all the visual junk. He has this way of seeking the truth in his art pieces through simplicity and confusion. His images are so simple and concise stylistically, yet they bring this mass wave of confusion, multiple meanings and discomfort when we see them. And his ability to do so is brilliant, because I don’t know about you, but when I think about something being uncomfortable and confusing, I think of something super complex and complicated, full of details and other garbage that makes it hard to wrap my mind around what’s going on. But, with Salter’s work, he gives me a seemingly simple image in terms of aesthetics, and once we encounter it we are immediately taken for a ride: What does this mean? How am I supposed to feel about this? Why is this simple icon making me so uncomfortable? How can I make this uncomfortable feeling stop? Why do I want to stop feeling uncomfortable?!?! I found myself asking all of these same questions when I first saw his hand-in-the-mouth icon. When he showed us the icon of the tongue sticking out with a fork in it, I got really uncomfortable, yet I couldn’t look away. I kept imagining that the icon was me, that that was my tongue, that it would hurt a lot, that my tongue was now starting to hurt because my mind couldn’t get this image of  a sharp metal fork piercing my precious tongue like it was a piece of meat at the dinner table. How disgusting and uncomfortable and insanely brilliant all at once. I couldn’t look away. I wanted more!

Okay, so as if I wasn’t uncomfortable before, the animation of the body fluids really put my discomfort level over the edge. “Is it even possible for me to feel this uncomfortable? Why would anyone ever want to feel this uncomfortable? Is it even healthy? Will my brain implode? Should I be worried?” These were all the thoughts running through my head. And then, with the seeming flip of the switch, I discovered my answer: discomfort means you’re growing. So I watched that bodily fluids video, with every drop, ker-plunk, or fluidly spray, whole-heartedley convinced I was in the process of growing, and expanding on my notions of visual culture, discomfort, chaos, simplicity, and what they all meant together. And what I found was that I, indeed, was growing. I was expanding on all these ideas that had once held such, limited, un-challenging, and unsatisfying ideas of culture, art, and life. I’ve never felt so nauseated, intrigued, overwhelmed, and confused at the same time. But I’ve never felt so satisfied.

When Salter presented us with his styro-foam robots it was a sealed deal: this guy is brilliant in every sense of the word, and uses literal garbage to create something so beautiful, honest, and yet completely overwhelming all at the same time. I think it was at the Rice Gallery where Salter constructed one of his insane robots out of styro-foam, but instead of it standing 30 feet tall, as others had in the past, this one was crouched in the room, sitting on the floor with its knees bent. I thought this was a wonderful representation of what Salter was all about: taking some symbol or icon (in this case, the giant standing robots) and changing the form ever so slightly, so that an icon that you knew was still recognizable but in its new environment [the robot] takes on a different meaning. What were once intimidating, overwhelmingly large styro-foam structures standing tall in large spaces, had now been transformed into a more approachable, accessible, even gentle-looking robot. The impact and the meaning changed in an instant for me when I saw it. To what exactly the impact and meaning is to me, I’m still fairly uncertain. But I think that’s okay. And I actually think that’s the point of all of Salter’s work. To not get it, to not understand its meaning in its entirety, to have the “WTF?!?” moment, and to recognize that it has had an impact on you, whatever that may be, and to embrace the impact and discomfort that it possesses.

Scout McCloud and the concept of an icon and the confusion and complexities surrounding it all took a lot for my brain to wrap around it all. What I really got out of McCloud’s cartoon is that symbols and icons are so much more abstract and complex than we even realize, and yet they are considered so “normal” in our culture.  The “These are not separate moments” icon on page 26 blew my mind. But they are separate! At least that’s what my mind tells me, because his hat is on and then it’s off. How can those not be separate? The icons of science, language, and communication blew my mind as well. I’ve never, ever thought about letters as icons. Letters as language? Sure, you bet. But letters as icons? Never! How insanely simple yet completely uncomfortable it makes me feel when I think about the words I’m writing write now are actually are symbols or icons of their own, and yet I have no idea what the icons really mean. I just know that they go together to form a word, and then a sentence, and then, ultimately, an essay. I don’t know how or why they really go together, but they do. The idea of non-pictorial and pictorial images and fixed versus fluid meanings also intrigued me, as I’d never thought about symbols and icons in that way. McCloud says that an “M” or a peace sign will more or less always represent what it stands for, regardless of the shape/form it takes, because it is inherently an “M” or peace sign. The meaning is fixed. It won’t change. But pictorial images, such as drawing a face (as represented on page 28) can have a multitude of different meanings and representations depending on how it is drawn. I find it fascinating that until this point in my life, I’d never given much thought to this notion, and I’d never given much thought to how much symbols and icons are embedded so deeply into our every day lives that they become so normal and accepted, without challenge or confusion.

Chris Coleman provokes us. He owes us something! We want to know more! We want the bunny to take off his bunny suit and actually be the owner of the house hopping around in his backyard. We want the grass in the front yard to suddenly grow really tall and then engulf the house so it turns into one big ball of weeds. And then we want to Weed-Monster to overtake the neighborhood, leaving the nearby police station to save the day with a weed-whacker. We just want something! Anything! Same goes for the “Collusion” video. Three uncomfortable minutes of watching smoke billow in and out of a rooftop pipe. In and out. Out and in. In. Out. Back in. For three whole minutes. We want something to happen in his videos, but nothing does. Or does it? As seemingly “boring” videos in disguise, I think the thing to take away from it is this: Why do we feel an inherent need/entitlement to see something happen in his videos? Why can’t we just watch the video with no expectations of what’s to come? Why are we constantly waiting for something “better” or more exciting, the latest and greatest, if you will, to come along? Because we are so culturally conditioned to feel this way. We are bombarded with videos, television shows,  and ever-evolving technology that tells us faster is better, more is better, more is exciting and worthwhile, more, more, more. And the reality we face in Coleman’s videos is that there’s nothing going on. We can’t accept that someone would “waste” five minutes of our time with some dorky, dull, downright boring video. But why do we think it is it boring? And why do we think it isn’t  worth our time? Because it’s uncomfortable to sit through five minutes of watching an animated tree ruffle in the wind, and a little bunny or bird scoot by every now and again, that’s why. Because, as a culture, we don’t know how to embrace the discomfort, and we sure as hell don’t really know how to be alone for five minutes watching some video without a smidge of interaction from the other side of the screen. We have this need to be constantly stimulated with our environment and we engross ourselves in the latest technologies so that we don’t have to ask the tough questions, so that we don’t have to interact and think and do the work for ourselves. We want things to come easy to us. We want it handed to us on a silver platter, wrapped up neatly in an aesthetically pleasing package with no room for  confusion or discomfort. Through all this, what I mean to say is that Coleman’s works, especially the “My House is Not My House” series, challenges our notions of what it means to really be uncomfortable, and to be aware and fully conscious that you are doing so.

There is a clarity and a peacefulness about both Salter and Coleman’s work. They seek to find peace and truth through their works despite the chaos and visual overload of our culture. They challenge us. They make us uncomfortable. They bring the conscious to the forefront, kind of yanking it through all the visual junk of our culture, and bringing us to a more simple and concise, and yet ultimately much more uncomfortable place.  “What does it meaaaaaaaannnnnn???” I kept coming back to this question throughout Salter’s presentation, Coleman’s videos, and McCloud’s abstract cartoon explanations. And the questions never got any easier to answer. However, what did get easier was the discomfort. I began to find ease in the uncomfortable. I began to accept that the discomfort is a beautiful thing. That the discomfort causes me to look at my visual world, in all its icon-laden and symbol-filled glory, with a closer eye and a clearer conscience. That’s not to things got any easier, because they certainly did not. Instead, dare I say it, I embraced, even relished in the fact that the images where strange. I had no idea how to react or respond to them, and that was okay.  Because I was conscious of what I was seeing, and certainly hopeful that maybe I’d find some ease in the discomfort and strangeness of it all. And I did.

I think Michael Salter said it best: “The closer I look, the stranger it all becomes.”

 



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