This art event was the opening of the exhibition in Boyden Gallery featuring the work of the Photojournalism Class. The work revolved around the student’s experiences with local St. Mary’s Community members. The focus being on local residents who are either underrepresented, unknown, or unappreciated. The setting of the exhibition was intimate and quite, but the visitors to the gallery were filled with excitement and interest. One example of a student’s work comes from Michelle Ladis who spent most of her semester documenting firefighters from a local volunteer station. She not only got to learn about firefighting but she also learned about the firefighters and their lives and commitment. In her work one can see the attachment michelle aquired while being with the firefighters. The images were personal almost. Often focusing on the faces of the firefighters and tense moments during drills and real emergencies. This exhibit definitely reminded me of images from newspapers and the like. It’s definitely a different genre of photography but it never lacks meaning, message, or artistic content. Many of the photographs are images of the figure caught in action.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Artist Entry #11
So this isn’t exactly an artist entry from Rhizome but I thought it might be interesting to talk about Michel Gondry considering he has been brought up on a number of occasions in class. It seems that much of his work has related to project we had been working on. Additionally, michel gondry has several videos on youtube in addition to his music videos, and commercials. I think this artist is extremely accessible to the masses. His work may be seen as commercialized…as he does work for musicians and companies such as levi’s. However, his work still generates great interest because it is unusual and on the artistic side of things and often thought provoking. One thing I’ve noticed after watching several of his music videos is he often uses repetition as a key element. Additionally, he often makes the viewer see one thing and then he changes that element into something completely unexpected. I think these surprises in form are often what’s so captivating about his work. He also uses digital art to enhance the hyper reality and surrealistic nature of much of his work.
Artist Entry # 10.
Analog Environments by jstchillin (Caitlin denney, and parker ito)
This is a piece of artwork by two artists jstchillin. When I clicked on the link I was not expecting what I saw. A new virtual world popped in front of me. There were several places in which I could click and enter a new world. This new space seemed a lot like an art exhibit/virtual spaceship. It seemed that there was 3d art at the end of separate hall ways. I then read the description. Apparently, jstchillin, is interested in the curatorial process and creating a virtual curated exhibit. I think this is an interesting take on curating because the exhibition space is created by the artist. So I feel that the curator aspect is very apparent, almost more apparent than the artwork being displayed. Because im in curatorial studies this interests me a lot. We often talk about the visible/invisible curator. Here the artist and the curator are the same thing. However, I think this wasn’t solely meant to be an exhibition. I think this was meant to be an abstraction of curating and exhibitions.
Artist Entry # 9
Andy Deck
This is an interesting piece of digital art. Basically this is a program that allows visitors to create their own “artistic license”. It’s humorous in a way. Essentially visitors can either create a fake identity and print out their own licenses. This is in some way a commentary about what makes an artist and artist. Is it information on a piece of paper, like many other jobs? Or is It about the process and what you create? This allows anyone to have “artistic license” its also a play on words that people often use when describing someone’s ability to creatively change something due to their “artistic license”. According to rhizome there was an exhibition featuring this piece and let visitors print out and laminate their licenses. Additionally, because this piece is online it reaches more people. Anyone and everyone can make this license and become an “artist”.
ARTIST ENTRY # 8
Claire Evans, Aaron Flint Jamison, & Jona Bechtolt
This is an interesting piece of web art. Well, I’m not sure if its art or experimentation. Essentially, the marfa ring is a webspace in which several websites revolving around the town of MARFA TEXAS are located on one webpage. These sites are made by local residents and businesses in marfa. One webpage was devoted to alien activity in marfa containing amateur videos and photographs. Another site simply displays the price of gas in Marfa. It’s a neat way to really portray the personality of the town. Additionally according to rhizome, this “Ring” causes these cites to come up more frequently on google when visitors search for Marfa. This gives people a different perspective of what marfa is really about. I am having difficulty seeing this as digital art. This is more of a webspace tool. It allows Marfa to become more accessible to visitors to the “marfa ring”. I suppose one way this could be considered art is by its use of appropriation and locating these sources to create one whole webspace.
ARTIST ENTRY # 7.
Andrey Yazev
This is a really strange piece of digital art. Essentially it looks like the scroll bar on safari web pages. However it is a bunch of these scroll bars placed next to each other. The piece is interactive so the viewer needs to “shake” the bars. This causes the image to move and blend all of the bars together. I thought that it was interesting because it allowed you to move the bars in a manner in which they normally don’t move. For instance, in the scroll bar on a safari webpage the scroll bar can move up and down. Here, the bars move into each other, bend, jump and move side to side, sometimes in a wavelike motion. This allows you to physically bend the scroll bar. It also reminds me of when my computer is slow or has an error and suddenly as you move the browser there are mirror images of that browser all over the computer screen. I also think its an interesting note that the screen has no scroll bar itself. Instead the scroll bar is all in the center. SO, I think this has a lot to do with placement, repetition and movement.
