The Ghost of Vannevar Hacked my Server

The Ghost of Vannevar Bush Hacked My Server is a website that continually reloads. Every so often and image of "the ghost of Vannevar" appears. He is formed from varying shades of 101010100111010o101010101000101. Which is computer code. This really only made sense to me once i looked up who Vannevar Bush was. During part of his career he worked on constructing an analog computer. I could see how this could be connected to the visual art presented by Michael Demers. I actually really didn't like this piece of digital art. I felt it was repetitive and lacked any other meaning. I suppose this could be a visual pun. Through this i mean that because Vannevar had great influence (I assume) on computers he has prematurely "hacked" into our computers (or servers). And because the digital code is a type of analog he, visually, is made out of an analog (part of his life work). Additionally, i believe there is a purpose to the continual and random reloading of the web-page. It's sort of like the pattern for the computer code (1000101 etc...) Its random but there are only two options for the next element...1 or 0. In this instance, Vannevar either appears or he disappears. Maybe this is a commentary on how the computer can take a life of its own..not in the sense of a robot...but as a different entity that "hacks" or oversees all that you do. I'm probably way off target...but i would really like to hear someone else's opinion. Because for the most part my reaction to this piece is, "huh?".

Art Week~ Open studios in AA hall and a review of the week

Because i am part of the curatorial studies class i had the opportunity to see multiple studios open up for art week. It was really interesting especially to see the studio SMPs open. I think its often important to see works in process. It gives great insight into the building of a complete set of works. Most of the studio SMPs are still in the brainstorming process. Mary Gotschalk is working on a story based painting project. Montse is working with texture and i noticed beginning pieces that have female figures in them. I think it would have been neat if the smps had written descriptions or information about the projects. The professors additionally had their studios open. Sue Johnson, carrie Patterson, and Billy Friebele all had their studios open along with displays of their artwork. Carrie Patterson had a few of her pieces left over from Placing Color. It was really neat to see her work space, again giving insight into the development process of creating art. She had an entire station of brushes paint and a table full of blocks being prepared for a new art work. The visiting photography professor also had her studio open. Most of her work dealt with photographs from a different country. Most of the photographs were portraits and they exhibited the lifestyle of these people. In terms of artweek as a whole i think it was a major success. I hope it will continue to be a feature every semester. I think it really solidified the art department as a whole group and working entity. It also really created awareness of the different art projects and how important many of them are. I think it inspired people to maybe become more involved in the department. I really think its great that we have art events and lectures throughout the year. But, something like this, where we feature art in process or simply art theory, is just as important. It shows that art is important and interesting even when it isn't a finished product ready to be placed on a white wall in a sterile exhibition. It would be neat to try and incorporate other departments. I think this was attempted in the Professor Throwdown at the end of the week. That could really show how art is an integral part of other departments and the school as a whole.

Artist Entry~ Sveriges Radio

I stumbled upon this piece of new media art through BetaSpace, a new media art source. The Title of the piece is Let Them Sing It For You. Basically it is a program in which you can type in any words of your choice. They can be a famous quote, your own words, or a sentence (or several). Once typing in your words you press the play button. Then, from a data base of songs, the program will "play your words". Essentially it is a database full of words taken from songs. So, for instance, one might put in the word "never" and the database will play "never" from some song that they took that word from. I tried out this program. From the website there was little to no information about the program so i had no idea what the program was going to be. I was wondering who "they" were. I entered the words, "How is this art? Can you tell me please? Is it because you use appropriation? Good luck finding that word in your database." And sure enough the program played my words through a bunch of words from songs...but, of course, appropriation was not found. The program used a series of words that, when placed together, sort of sounded like appropriation. There really isn't any writing on this piece of art so i'll make my own assessment. I think this piece of new media art is amusing at best. The most apparent thing to me is that it definitely uses appropriation. I think one thing that is interesting about this is that music is a huge part of culture, especially popular music, which is where most of the words come from. Another interesting thing is that even though each word has its own melodic sound the final piece that is played doesn't sound like music. It is disjointed and maybe even unsettling to listen to. I think this piece could be highlighting how music is created and how one cannot simply string together what makes up a library of popular music and create a new song.