Project 7: Make Great Art

Gif: Ski Free at Mount Rose

I chose to do something a little challenging (to my knowledge that is..) and went with putting a gif onto a still image. After creating the gif it seemed as though all I simply needed to do was copy and paste all of the animated frames after the still image in PhotoShop. I was having trouble because the still image would only show up in some points of the animation and not in others. After some experimenting it turned out that copying and pasting was all I had to do EXCEPT I needed to place the still image as the background layer… Thus proving the littlest things are your greatest foes. 

Glitch Gif: Who's That Pokemon:

I wanted to try the glitch with a few photos and then create a gif with the series. I really enjoyed it! Although it was difficult to get used to the pattern, it was interesting to go through all of the code and find a result I really liked. I wanted to preserve the colors and even some of the parts of the Pokemon in order to make them fairly recognizable so each .png required its own special replacement. 

Answers:

Art Exhibit Write-Ups

Priscilla B. Varner's "Identity: The Military's Other Half"
November 1st, 2013
      This art exhibit was held at The Sierra Arts Gallery and served to present the 2013 Master of Fine Arts candidate Midway Exhibitions. I attended the evening MFA candidate, Pricilla B. Varner's photography was showcased and had a great time interacting with her work. There with other artists' works there but I decided to mainly focus on Priscilla's mainly because it was specifically her reception. Her photography identifies of individuals of those married to military personnel. It was a perfect variety of gender and ethnicity and I felt as though she was able to reach a broad audience as far as military spouses are concerned. She also did a fantastic job of capturing various kinds of emotions; one in particular was a series of photos of one woman's progress from being serious, to smiling, to laughter. It was a touching way to relate to his those that patiently wait for their spouses that serve over seas. 
      A lot of Pricilla's cropping choices were different but interesting. She really knew how to frame the individual and capture more than just their stance but their emotions. One individual in her photographs was placed in a steadfast stance, with a chicken under her arm, to exemplify her work on the farm while her husband is away. One thing that could have made the photographs more interesting would have been a different background or environment other than the plain, all white background her models stood in front of. For as natural as they all seemed, they could have used some guidance in how to interact as well. However, I could understand that the white background really makes the individuals' faces and expressions more clear. With their faces and stances being the center of attention, rather than the background, she is able to make the identities of the military spouses make an impact.


Holland Reno's 4 x 4 x 48 at The Nevada Museum of Art
November 21st, 2013
      The Holland Project's challenge to local video artists and musicians was a fantastic showcase of artist that do well working within a small time frame and with boundaries. It was a great atmosphere at the Nevada Museum of Art to be surround by many that are interested in the medium of video art. The exhibition featured five videos by the following artists: Alana Berglund with Kelci Mcintosh, Jesse McCloskey, Sam Santoro, Denali Lowder with Dane Haman, and Barbara Laukat. Each artist (or pair of artists) each worked with a local musician to coordinate a music video for one of their songs. Each group only had 48 hours to prepare, shoot and edit their videos and incorporate the following objects into their story idea: a pomegranate, a triangle, two of the four natural elements, a reference to a historical event that took place on November 21st, and the number 11 or 11:11.
      All of the videos were fantastic in their own way and all did an amazing job representing their song and artist. One video, completely in black and white with an old film filter, made an impact with personal shots of particular places, animals, and individuals. I enjoyed looking at these videos critically after having done the video project in class. For example, I feel like a few of the artists could have done a lot more creatively with the objects they were assigned and that one in particular was very under exposed. One the other hand, it was a great idea to challenge young artist and see how they use their creativity through video AND music. I have only attended one other Holland Project event but this event had me interested in attending more and interacting more with our artistic community.


Nate Joski's Ponder Over Yonder at Bibo Coffee
November 24th, 2013

      Dedicated to my new found love for the Holland Project events, I went to Nate Joski’s exhibit which was apart of the Holland Project's Micro Gallery at Bibo Coffee near campus. It is a fantastic idea to combine childhood toys or figurines with environments that are as vivid as a childhood imagination. I really enjoyed a lot of the photography that seemed carefully planned and uniquely framed. I'm a huge stickler for cropping and I believed the artist did a perfect job framing his toys and childhood reenactments with the background. There were also a number of fantastic drawings and sketches as well as fun dioramas. 

      The dioramas were similar to the assemblages that we did for our 3D projects which mad them really interesting and relatable. I could imagine that a lot of his work was personal and reflected the wonder he must have felt reliving the beautiful memories of his childhood. The toys, figures, and environments they were in always worked well together aesthetically and they were almost always pleasing to the eye. I always enjoy exhibits in which an artist explores more than one artistic medium and finds a way to make each piece, despite the differences in how they are made, work very well together. I could also be emotionally biased as I am still very drawn to a lot of my childhood toys. It was a great idea with an amazing impact.

The exhibit will be at Bibo Coffee until December 27th and I really recommend going!

What New Media is Not Reading Questions

Lev Manovich - One Million Manga

1. Do Manovich's Five Principles help to better understand New Media? Do these concepts and principles give more authenticity to the medium of digital art? With the emergence of new visual media and media culture in society, do you believe these theories are necessary? Why?

2. "What before had been a mental process, a uniquely individual state, now became part of the public sphere. Unobserved and interior processes and representations were taken out of individual heads and placed outside … What was private became public. What was unique became mass-produced."

I felt this was a fantastic way to describe Interactive Media. Now when we view "New Media" it forces individuals to connect with the artist by absorbing their individuality and being impacted by their idea. Do you believe art is more effective? How does this concept burn the "Digital Divide" article we read?

Art Evaluation

Digital Divide Reading Questions

After Videogames by Miltos Manetas

X-Ray Portraits by Ayako Kanda and Mayuka Hayashi 

1. In the article, Bishop says, "While many artists use digital technology, how many really confront the question of what it means to think, see, and filter affect through the digital? How many thematize this, or reflect deeply on how we experience, and are altered by, the digitization of our existance?" (p.2)
Do you agree with this statement? Also, do you agree that contemporary art largely ignores the digital? If so, why do you believe it is so often ignored?

3. What do you believe the 'divide' Bishop is talking about? Is the gap the amount of specialization? Or the alienation of terms? Or the lack of feeling in digital work?
How does this work for digital mediums like code in which it is an 'alien' concept but requires hours of anguish and tons of specialization in order to produce a desired art piece. For those of us working with glitch art or study glitch artists, what are your personal feelings on this 'divide.'

Note: About the one thing I agreed with was her opinion on the current retro fashion for analog media and that no exhibit is 'complete' without something old clunking as background noise. However, I don't believe she finds it beautiful like I do.

Project 6.2: 3D The Sequel

I was definitely taken by surprise with the amount of time this project would take. I took me at least two days of messing around with Blender before I really contemplated giving up. I went through a few forums asking desperate questions and watching tutorials until someone suggested I look a program called SketchUp (because I thought Blender and Maya were too difficult). If I could describe how different SketchUp is from Blender I would say it's the same different as using Paint instead of Photoshop. There are A LOT less tools, shortcuts, and methods to memorize. The only thing that was somewhat difficult with SketchUp was not having objects like cubes and spheres provided and each object you create has to be drawn together by different points. Luckily, I have a Wacom Tablet so that was not too much of a concern as I got used to it. The flowers were as easy as making one petal and then mass producing it. The origami cranes were about the only thing I got used to thanks to Blender and I was able to upload that origami paper pattern to the "materials" section and paint it onto each crane. The bottom of the pot was easy and the soil was just a duplicate of the pot with random geometric shapes on top to close it up. I am embarrassed that I was not able to put on the paper fan… or the sand dollar… or the om pendant… But I did something! And it was WAY tough. It seems like this program is popular amongst architects and engineers because it is practically drafting an object. Anyway, I enjoyed the challenge of trying something completely new. 

Final Writing Assignment

Yayoi Kusama and Olafur Eliasson Presentation

For this assignment I chose two artists that work in a wide variety of media but both find their strengths in environmental installations that challenge the audiences' sense of reality. Although they are not defined by the single medium of electronic art, both artists have experimented with the medium and use a great deal of digital work in their installations and videos. The two are not completely different but do not define space or reality the same. In the representative works I have chosen, both artists tackle the concept of infinity in their own ways which I will describe.



Yayoi Kusama, Fireflies on the Water, 2002

Olafur Eliasson, Feelings are Facts, 2010

Works Cited

1. "Olafur Eliasson." Olafur Eliasson. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Nov. 2013.
2. "Information | Yayoi Kusama." Information | Yayoi Kusama. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Nov. 2013.
3. "Yayoi Kusama." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 28 Oct. 2013. Web. 07 Nov. 2013.
4. O'Reilly. Basic Animation Aesthetics. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
5. Benjamin, Walter, and J. A. Underwood. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. London: Penguin, 2008. Print.
6. Raley, Rita. Tactical Media. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2009. Print.