Double Cell

Double Cell "Bob meets Barbara" - Juha Huuskonen

I'm not sure what the title means, but its a game where all you have to do is move your mouse around in circles in a square. Two "cells" inch closer to each other. Once they get really close you have to circle your mouse faster and faster or they will repel. Once they contact each other, POOF! They multiply into 4 pairs that you have to work with so the game gets harder and harder.

What's great about this game is how simple yet enjoyable it is. Once I figured out what I was supposed to do, I got really into it. I was talking to my computer screen trying to get the cells to come together. It made me laugh.

Industrious Clock

Industrious Clock - Yugo Nakamura

In keeping with the clock theme... I found another digital clock online. This one is a little more stimulating than the subtle Circle Clock. Its hectic motions remind us of how quickly time passes. Each moment has a name, but it ticks by so fast we don't even notice. Each moment comes and then is erased.

Circle Clock

Circle Clock - Hahakid


I found this clock online with a little explanation at the bottom.

The artist said that as a child, they always wondered what the inner workings of machines like clocks looked like. Here, I'll quote them:

"When I was younger I always wondered what machines really looked like inside, so I ended up opening up a lot of them, usually they were mine but that didn't make my parents that much happier about it when they weren't put back together. It was a dissapointing experience though, the internals never lived up to my expectations. This is the first of what I hope will be several virtual machines. "

I really identified with this statement because I had always wondered how electronics, cassette tapes, CDs, etc work. It seems like magic to a person who hasn't been educated about physics and electronics. If you opened up a clock, it probably still wouldn't make sense how the clock works. So, this person did the work of an artist which is to come up with their own explanation of how the thing works.

Business Card

Found: My house

This is not art, but it's a catchy thing. We give out business cards all the time and it helps to have one that looks good so people will remember they have it.

Tag

Found: My house

This another thing I found that alone, can not be art. It could be used as a symbol though. It could represent consumerism.

Of course, even though not art, price tags easily catch one's eye. We love to shop and look for sales, and the price tag for some of us can be the most important part of the garment.

Frog

Found: My house

This frog is representative of the multitude of stuffed animals I have. I decided that they are not art because they are made in a factory with machines and assembly lines. They aren't a labor of love. They aren't handmade. They aren't unique. They probably made over 1000 of these little frog key chains.

Also, I have not seen any stuffed animals as part of art exhibits. Of course, that doesn't mean there aren't any, just that it's not art in the mainstream sense. To me, stuffed animals are toys and decoration. They are cuddly and make cute gifts. But, they are not works of art.

Shell

Found: My house

This could be a sequel to the coconut. It's one of those things we find on the beach. It's something we love to hunt for and collect. Plenty of people use shells to make craft and paint pictures of shells. But by itself, unmodified, in its natural context, the shell is not art.

SMP Presentation

Today I attended Mike Benjamin's SMP presentation. It was my first time attending an SMP presentation and I was pretty impressed. I had thought of the SMP as a research project that you work on, then present, and get finished with at the end of the year. On the contrary, Benjamin's project will be an ongoing endeavor that he will be part of long after he graduates. His work on creating a "local immersion" experience for students has laid the foundation for a new class that would be comparable to a week study abroad program in our own back yard. Six to ten students would live for 3 weeks as close to nature as possible to learn how to maximize sustainability and minimize environmental impact. The purpose of the project is to try to break free from the institutionalization in our lives and to embrace new methods of learning and living. As a child, Benjamin said he only really learned something if he was fascinated by it and was immersed in it hands on. That was the basis for his idea of living close to nature to learn about it. He was well prepared to take ideas and answer questions, and provided good rebuttals for a few arguments one spectator had who doubted the genuineness of the project. As a result of attending this first presentation, I have to say I will definately be interested in attending many more during my career here at St. Mary's, along with presenting my own when the time comes.

La Jetee

I was able to watch the beginning of the film more closely and critically until I got really absorbed in the story in the latter part. Some of the pictures of the people were shown for what seemed like a really long time while the narrator said quite a bit about them. I found myself kind of willing the pictures to move or change to adjust with the narration. In contrast, the pictures of the destruction of Paris were shown too quickly for me to take in all the aspects of each picture. It was like the artist was showing us that the damage to the city was so unfathomable that there was no way to grasp it. Looking at the still pictures also made me feel more controlled. It was as if I was being forced to look at something even if it was unpleasant.

Rapunzel

In reaction to the reading, I considered how many fairy tales I could have read as a child without understanding the intentions of the authors. Were these stories really meant to be read to children? It's not that there is anything inappropriate about the stories themselves, just that they became under-appreciated over the years. It is proof that there is so much more to art and literature than we as viewers and readers could ever fathom. Even a simple photograph of a cityscape can be a profound statement. Stories are like staircases with levels of increasing complexity. Every time Thompson took the story up to a new level in his essay, it became more personnal to him. His writing became more opinionated and far out. It's as though he was taking Rapunzel and making it into his own story. To be able to identify with a story is another level of analysis.

Self Portrait

I actually made my objective portrait after the subjective one. I debated for a long time on how to make a picture of me objective. It seems like there is almost no way, since I'm the one creating it or selecting it. I decided to draw the portrait based off the web cam picture because it wasn't an especially bad picture of me, but it wasn't one I really liked either. It just seemed to be a pretty accurate mirror image. I wanted to show this image, but needed to create something at the same time so I made a drawing. I didn't try to make myself look better (not that I have that kind of artistic ability anyway). I just tried to translate my face from one piece of paper to another. To me, that seemed objective enough.

I came up with the idea for my subjective portrait pretty quickly. I wanted to have fun with it and try to represent my unusual self. I chose the same picture as a base, and put a bunch of other pictures of myself and things important in my life on top of the face. It looked like a monstrosity, but I figured it couldn't get more subjective than that. It was my creation.

National Gallery

Touring Robert Frank's exibit was more eye opening than expected. I learned about how much importance sequence can have in photography. I had never heard of photographers making picture books before, and I came to realize that it wasn't about picking the best pictures and just sticking them in a book. The artists that create these books pay close attention to all the details to convey their message. There is also a lot to be discovered in each individual photo. Frank's photos seemed like poems full of figurative language and hidden meanings. It's hard to believe that in one moment a person could capture so much.

I also went through the modern art section of the gallery. It was neat to be able to go through and see artists we have discussed in class such as Giochometti. To be able to see the art in person helped me relate to it that much more.

Peeps

The Washington Post has an annual Peeps diorama contest. In the Style section of the April 12 edition there is a two page spread showing several of the more notable entries. Everyone loves Peeps, and a lot of people love art. It's the perfect combination. Entries included the "Miracle on the Hudson" and "Octomom" themed dioramas. The entries in the competition reflect current events, the things that are on people's minds right now. The detail is really amazing and the Peeps will make you giggle. It's art that reminds you of the joy in the simple things in life. It proves you don't have to be Monet to make something memorable.

From the Beach - Coconut

Found: Beach

This coconut was found on a beach in florida. It could have washed up on the beach, or fallen from a nearby tree. Who knows where it came from? All we know is that it is not art, because it has not yet been modified. There is plenty of art that has been made with coconuts, like party decorations and bikini tops. However, just by itself, it's just a coconut and that's all it can be until it is changed by human hands. It is neat to ponder where in the world it might have come from though. What if it came from all the way across the ocean?

From the Beach - Stump

Found: Beach

This stump was sticking out of the sand at a beach in Florida. It looks like driftwood, but obviously it's not going any where. But driftwood itself is another interesting item to consider when you're trying to figure out what is and isn't art. People certainly use things like this for decorations. They're great to make coffee table out of. As beautiful as the wood is though, it's not art to me, because I see art as something man made, something that was created for some artistic purpose. I would allow a sculpture made with driftwood to be art because the wood was the material the human used to make the art. It's a medium, but the art is the whole finished object. This stump sitting by itself on the beach is neat looking and has some potential, but it's not art.

Tie Strap

Found: My house

I found this downstairs in my basement. There is just no way I could see this as art. Someone please show me how this could be art. It's not art because it's a very simple piece of plastic. It's common. It's cheap. It can be used for just about everything. The cops use them as handcuffs! There is no way that can be artistic. The remarkable thing about this everyday object is not that it isn't art, but rather, like the zipper, how useful it is. Whoever invented the tie strap deserves a thumbs up.

Zipper

Found: My house

To me this zipper is one of those every day things we use that has been decorated a little to use for fashion. It's definately not a work of art in itself, but the color of the metal and the pattern of the string help make whatever it belonged on look more fashionable. I guess you could call it a helper. It's also something we use everyday without thinking about the genius of its invention. Seeing it seperated from whatever it was used on caught my attention. If it was part of the whole jacket or backpack, we wouldn't really notice it that much. But by itself, it's like an arm seperated from a body. It's in an unexpected place.

Gabriel Orozco

For Gabriel Orozco, the camera equals awareness. His focus is walking down the busy city streets, always aware of what is going on, and using his camera to capture the most minute details. He is unusual in that he doesn't have a studio that he goes and works in. He does not want to isolate himself from reality. To me, this kind of sets him apart from other artists. He also works with spaces a lot, altering them, and altering the amount of space between objects, like crunching the car together or put a pond in the middle of a ping pong table. He also likes to be a novice or hobbyist. He wants the art itself to be down to earth, to be something everyone can do.

James Turrell

I could easily figure out that James Turrell focuses his energy on working with light in an artistic way. It is kind of a combination of physics and astronomy with art. I liked the idea of certain rooms in his crater channeling light from distant stars. He called this "old light" because it came from stars so far away that it may have taken hundreds of years for the photons to meet our eyes. That's a pretty awesome concept. In his Quaker meeting house, he designed the roof so that "the sky is brought down to you." It illustrates his concept of what his grandmother may have meant when she said they were going inside to greet the light. He works it into the physical sense by making the sky-light, but also demonstrates the spiritual sense by the location. A house of worship is a place to meet the Lord, who many call the Light.

Mel Chin

I wasn't quite sure what to think of Mel Chin. He was supposed to take an old abandoned house in Detroit and make it so it would pivot over the basement. He would grow nightcrawlers in the basement to sell to fishermen. Did he ever complete this project? Was it even real? He also made the videogame KNOWMAD using patterns from carpets made in the Middle East. The "revival field" was one thing I could understand and did like. It's a creative way to perform bioremediation. He says that he's not much into politics or anything, but his projects seem to have humanitarian roots.

Sally Mann

Sally Mann is a photographer, but not one who takes photographs for news stories or the average family portrait. Her work has a greater level of depth to it. Her favorite element to incorporate into her pictures is ambiguity. Sometimes it's hard to tell what your looking at in one of her photographs, and it could turn out to just be a dog bone. She takes pictures of a lot of everyday objects, and she does collections of them. For example, she did a series on the dogbones, using different bones and techniques to develop the photographs. In regard to her art, she is pretty down to earth. She says she just does it for fun, even though critics will try to dig deeper than she intends. To me, her pictures look like antiques. Her portraits of her children look like they came out of a fantasy.

Obzok

Singlecell.org is a website that hosts a collection of digital creations by various artists. I stumbled upon Golan Levin's 2001 creation while clicking around looking for material to cover in my blogs. The website now is linked to its new version, Double Cell.

This creation, Obzok, responds to the movements and clicks of your mouse. It changes color each time you refresh it. It's a cute funny little thing that offers a neat distraction and elicits a few giggles.

From the Beach - Seagull Wing

Location: Beach

This could be the second installment of my "dead creature on the beach" series. It's a seagull wing. It's not art itself, but it does remind me of it. It's like a piece that has a mystery about it. What happened to the seagull and why is it separated from it's wing? Where's the rest of it? Did a shark get it? Of course, I didn't get close enough to thoroughly investigate. The wing is similar to a piece you go up to in a museum. It makes you wonder what the artist was trying to convey, what story they were trying to tell.

From the Beach - Man of War

Location: Beach

I found a lot of these critters washed up on a beach in Florida. They are beautiful to see sailing over the water, but quite painful to bump in to. The Man of War has a pretty blue color made by nature. It's not art because basically it's just a dead organism washed ashore by a storm. However, as will be seen in later posts, we are drawn to strange things that show up on the beach. We stand there are gawk and poke and prod at them like they were some kind of art. I stood there for a good while studying the jellyfish because it was strange to see it out of its element. It's like artifacts from other cultures that have been taken and placed in a museum out of their intended context.

Pictionary Reflection

The Pictionary project was a great oppurtunity for me to explore Photoshop a little more. I put a lot of thought into the many different ways I could convey my word through images. I also really enjoyed the discussions we had about everybody's projects. It was fun to try to guess the words, and then to hear different students' interpretations of the pieces. It really did teach me how to look more into the art I see.

Quark

Quark, by Mark Napier is an interactive program that can be found on The Alternative Art Museum website. You can watch a unique piece created before your eyes. A black screen will come up and you can click anywhere in that screen, setting off an infinite series of lines and waves of color that represent the fundamental particle, the quark. Quarks are composed of three electrical charges, each represented by either red, green, or blue which together are said to make up white light. Computers also use these three fundamental colors to make up the myriad of colors constantly shown on your screen. This is called RGB. This project ties the concept of the quark into the RGB color model to create each picture. The result is a vivid series of colors complexly wound around each other. I highly recommend trying it out.

Shower

Location: My house

This is a photograph of my shower. It is not art because it is a plain standard design. However, it does have a sculpted look to it. Also, it is a very important aspect of my daily life.

This shower isn't particularly exciting because it's not one of those massive tiled walk-ins that you see in $3 million homes. Now that has to be some kind of art.

Beta Fish

Location: My house

This is my beta fish, Sangre. He is not art because he is a living creature. I'm going to take a stand right now and say pets are not art. The same goes for that lady that was trying to sell "gothic kittens" on eBay.

He is very pretty though, with a bright red body and shiny blue and silver scales. And, he lives in a very pretty fish bowl with glass sea creatures that could be considered art, but they are not the focus of this entry. I wish to change the saying to "Fish are friends, not art!" That's not to say that paintings of fish can't be art.

I like to argue that nature is not art because our perception of nature can be skewed by art, especially if we have not seen much of the natural world for ourselves. Some people go hiking and expect to see waterfalls that look like they do in paintings, but it should be the opposite way. We should expect the paintings to look like the real thing. Our perception of art is generally shaped by our culture, so why is this often not the case when nature is the theme of the piece?

Graphs of Functions

Location: Schaefer Hall


This is a graph of a piece-wise function from a calculus test. It is an image but not art. Especially to me because I am not very fond of math. However, someone who doesn't know math and doesn't know art might be confused about its identity. They might think its some kind of abstract drawing. It certainly looks strange enough.

More Pictionary Versions

Pictionary Project (continued)

The completed version 1 (right) and a second attempt I am currently working on (top). I haven't figured out what I will keep or add to it, and I'm still looking for ideas for the third attempt. I may try to make a drawing.

Eclipse

Created by EcoArtTech, a digital environmental art platform, Eclipse represents air quality in national parks from data obtained from nearby cities. In a process known as data-scraping, Eclipse searches for images tagged with the park's name from an image sharing database and then pulls real-time AQI (Air Quality Index) data from airnow.gov for the designated region. Eclipse then corrupts the photograph based on the levels of particulate matter observed by the website. The more air pollution, the more corrupt the new image will be.

This is the kind of New Media art that captures my attention the most. I love learning about anything to do with the environment and raising awareness to protect it. I am also fascinated by how artists can hijack data to make a statement about our high-tech lives. This is a perfect fusion of the two concepts.

Rock

Location: Parking Lot near the ARC

I found this rock on my way to class near the parking lot that is located beside the ARC. I was trying to think of ideas for this blog and I remembered something I had seen in the Art21 documentary. The first artist we viewed, Vija Celmins, had pieces that were photographs of arrangements of rocks and their cast duplicates. She had made this natural thing into art. However, in my opinion the rock alone is not art. Art has to be something that has been man made or at least modified by a human. Since the rock shown here is just something I picked up, it's still just a rock. The fact that I took a picture of it is only for demonstrative purposes. I didn't pose it with other objects or change the colors or lighting. It's just an example of an every day, often overlooked natural object.

The Mole

The moles have invaded Nana's House!

The picture on the left was actually taken at the location, but it did not turn out well, so I borrowed another picture from the web.

I don't know of anyone who would consider the work of these little pests to be art. However, they certainly capture our attention when they ruin our lawns. Personally, I delight in walking on top of them and feeling them squish down underneath my feet.

Another thing that caught my interest as I was thinking about these tunnels is how they kind of resemble the mounds that certain Native American tribes made hundreds of years ago. These artifacts are still around today, and can be conidered art because they are man made symbols.

Lab Sketches

Found: Schaefer Hall, the POB Lab

Several of my labs in Principles of Biology consist of looking at slides of organisms through a microscope and then sketching out the cells and structures. My work might be somewhat informative and funny to look at, but I would not call it art because in my opinion. it's not good enough. It really doesn't have to be, either. I just have to show that I made an effort to observe the organism. I think that if I really put a lot of work into it, and wanted to use the sketches for some purpose other than to get a good grade, they could possibly be art, but that is not why I made them. My opinion is that not all illustrations are art. For example, a parent would not likely consider a diagram of a toy they have to put together for their child to be art. The picture is not made to make the viewer think deeply about its meaning. In my case, you can read my notes and know that these are rough sketches of leaf sections. I think what I am trying to say is that context is so important in cases like these. The type or brand of context I'm referring to is purpose, the reason why a drawing was made.

Blank Paper

Found: Campus Center

Be environmentally friendly. Go buy a composition book made out of recycled paper. They're available at the bookstore.

To me, a blank sheet of paper is a reflection of potential. This paper has the potential to be a medium on which to create a work of art. However, the paper itself won't be the art, but the art can not exist without it. So, even though it is not art, it is still very much related to it.

You don't see great works of art on composition notebook paper, but this paper can represent a big sketch pad or a canvas. It is there, just ready for some creation to be wrought upon it.

Pictionary Project

1st attempt. I finally remembered how to resize the images!

20 lines

This was an important part of my introduction to Photoshop. I never realized how detailed you can make your drawings. You can zoom in and edit pixel by pixel to get lines so perfect that the naked eye can't even appreciate the time it took to make them. That was my problem. I got too obsessive with making some of my lines perfectly straight. I strained my eyes and would spend thirty minutes on just one line. It didn't take to long to get inspired about what kind of line to make next. I drew some thick perfectly straight ones. I made one that looked like ugly colored paint dripping down from the ceiling. I drew a giant black block, absolutely perfected, as a sign of mourning. I kept within the one line limitation. I didn't draw funny designs or blobs or pictures. Just 20 lines.

Pink Fan

Found: Queen Anne

I keep this in my dorm on my desk. I turn it on at night to drown out the noise from out in the halls and that my other roommates make.

I decided that it was not art because I don't use it as a decoration. I use it as a fan. I'm not thrilled that it's pink either, but like I said, it does its job. That's not to say that no painted pieces of metal are art; just that this one isn't a metal sculpture.

Nail Polish

Found: Queen Anne

The medium is not the art. I haven't heard of an artist call their paint the artwork, even though it is what makes the art. It's a profound concept. This nail polish can represent finger paints, watercolors, or house paint. Before it's on the canvas (or nails), it's not art.

infobreath

Christopher Robbins used Carnivore for his project titled infobreath. The idea is that we live in a world where the air around us is abound with bits of information floating around through the wireless networks computers have created. These pieces of information are likened to carbon dioxide and oxygen, elements vital to the lives of plants and humans. When the cyber flower is breathed on, it picks up wireless signals that are in the area nearby it. A microcontroller that links the flower to a computer formats the signals and sends them to the computer, which projects them into the air where the observer is breathing on the flower. The signals are turned into letters and numbers that the observer can recognize. The plant searches specifically for information that one person is sending to another, making it look like there is communication between the plant and the observer.

To me, this project exemplifies another definition of art. It is taking something we can not see and turning it into something that we can visualize. We can also visualize the bits of information, the different symbols, as the elements that make up the air we breathe. Natural air contains a mixture of gases such as nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, and carbon dioxide. Today, we could think of our air as also containing data provided by wireless networks.

"Carnivore Is Sorry"

-It's Mark Daggett's "apologetic snooping program." The wikipedia page lists Radical Software Group which I mentioned in the earlier blog about "PoliceState."

"Carnivore Is Sorry" is another client of Radical Software Group's snooping program named Carnivore. Daggett's program finds people that the network has been spying on and sends them an email that has a compilation of images from websites they've viewed. However, a feedback loop blurs all the images together.

This is a program that takes seemingly meaningless data and turns it into a digital masterpiece that looks like abstract art. It has a lot of meaning in it. If only we could figure out what those images are and where they came from...

Response - Growing Up Online

1) Before Myspace and Facebook, "social networking" was a much less sophisticated concept. Online chatrooms, instant messaging, and dating sites have been around longer. However, they didn't have all the games and applications. They didn't resemble a personal web page like myspace does. Social networks themselves, visualized as webs or groups where all members are interconnected, were obviously much smaller until the advent of Myspace and being able to accumulate "friends."

2) How do you explain Facebook to...

Friends - It's a website that you join where you make a profile of yourself with pictures and stuff and you find your friends on there and talk to them.

Parents - It's a website that you sign up on to get an account and you can put pictures on it and send emails and do games and quizzes and keep in touch with friends.

Grandparents - Ok, so you go on the Internet to this website called Facebook. You join it almost like a club. You can type in information about yourself and put pictures of yourself up for people to see. You can search for other people you know that have joined the website and you can send them emails.

A teenager living in 1950 - Why bother? They wouldn't believe me. "There's this machine that's kind of like a television and a library and a calculator and it can show you anything you want. It's called a computer. You just have to type in what you want to see. These places you see are called websites. There's one website called Facebook. It's like a club because you can sign up for it and so can all your friends that have computers.

3) Visiting a stranger's Myspace page...
This page has a lot of personality quiz results on it, telling me that this person would rather indirectly show people who he is instead of writing it or demonstrating it himself. He views himself through others' eyes. His background is a repeating photograph of a city on a canal at twilight. It doesn't appear to have much symbolism, but rather it seems to show that he likes landscapes. The colors of the boxes are plain gray. They aren't very exciting, and there's too much boring text from quiz results to really interest me. The display name and his friends deter me because he seems like one of those nerdy introverts who is trying to be cool. To me this page is not an expression of his own self. The pictures also offer little. There aren't many of them, but there is one album devoted to pictures of flowers and trees, and they demonstrate no skill on the photographer's part. The pictures of the profile owner do not show him to be a very engaging person. I would not be tempted to get to know this person.

4) Facebook compartmentalizes everything. You have to click on some button or link to get to most information that you might want to view about a person. You can't create your own layout for your page because Facebook dictates where everything goes. While it's more compartmentalized, it's very unorganized.

5) On Facebook you have fewer oppurtunities to convey your message because everything is so compartmentalized. Using this site as a medium isn't very effective at putting your message out front.

6) I thought the documentary presented all facets of the issue quite well. Obviously, the Internet is great for keeping and touch with friends and for education. But, as other technology such as television, it can be used in excess and for the wrong purposes. The fears it shows are very real, and not everyone understands the consquences of being careless on the Internet. It showed me that I actually tend to agree more with the parents.

Coins

Found: Wintergreen Ski Resort. Change from the token machine in the locker room.

This is another question of functionality versus aesthetics. Even though the coins have these illustrations on them, I don't consider them to be art in the sense that they have any noteworthy merit. They aren't something you would stick in an art museum, but they might go in a history museum.

I also considered this point of view. Maybe the images themselves are art, but the coins they are on are not.

Are Containers Art?

This water bottle came to my attention because it is a plain container. There are some containers that people consider art. Pottery, vases, and china are often considered to be works of art. However, this plastic water bottle was not intended to be decorative in any way. It is purely utilitarian.

I remembered from the reading "What is Art" by Bart Rosier, a section began, "Only when objects recovered from prehistoric contexts, or ethnographic contexts, are placed in the art museum and presented as art do they become works of art. But then they are placed outside their context, or maybe even outside any context."

The example the author quoted to clarify his position was this:

"Until now, African pottery, wooden carvings and textiles had been viewed
essentially as handicraft because ... they had not been created as art, to be
appriciated for their own sake. Even after 'primitive' African art inspired Picasso,
Brancusi, Braque, Modigliani and Henri Moore earlier this century, it was its
magical and mystical quality that counted most. But at the Royal Academy,
objects made by African hands are seperated from their cultural context and
can be judged simply as art."

Orange Grass - Not Art

Found: Behind the Medical Center on campus

This was from a spot marked on the ground with orange spray paint. It looked like someone was planning to dig a trench to run wires or something, so they marked a few spots around the building. It drew my attention because it is bright orange. The purpose of the paint is to draw attention. It is meant to be noticeable so that whoever is digging knows where they should be working.
I was driven to use these little objects because they bear some irony. Normally, something that has been painted is considered art. However, this is not art, strictly because of its purpose. It is for work, most likely excavation of some sort, for very utilitarian purposes.

Google Earth placemark

What is the purpose of art?

There is definitely no single purpose. It's just something that we do. It is unique to us as humans. No other organisms create art, yet to many of us, it is just as much a part of life as eating and breathing.

To me, the most important purpose of art is communication, or expression. The artist is trying to tell the viewers something. A photograph of a national park may be a way of communicating the beauty of nature. A painting full of angry reds conveys the artist's emotions or the emotions he wants to elicit from his viewers. The list can go on and on about communication and symbolism.

Art can tell a story. A sequence of photographs is like a step by step narration. Detailed paintings can describe busy settings. Paintings or sculptures of the Stations of the Cross in a church tell the story of Jesus' Crucifixion.

Art is visually appealing and stimulating. It can be used as decoration. It can spark conversations.

It is a visualization of an experience.

For the hobbyist, creating art is just a fun experience, meditation, and relaxation.

Radical Software Group's "CarnivorePE" - "PoliceState"

The federal government has a history of tapping into its citizens' personal lives, especially their travels through the world wide web. RSG developed a software program similar to what the government uses to track people's actions. However, this program, named CarnivorePE doesn't track identities, just general Internet traffic. Various artists, called clients utilize the program to create technologically based works of art. The one that grabbed my attention was PoliceState by Jonah Brucker-Cohan. In this piece, the artist uses CarnivorePE to track Internet searches containing key words such as bomb, and plane crash that one might envision the government tracking to keep tabs on "terrorists." These key words activate 20 toy remote controlled police cars that respond to each term after it has been translate to its respective police ten-code. The ten-codes trigger a sequence in the police cars causing them to move around a certain way, spinning, going in reverse, etc. They are all tuned to the same frequency so that they move together. In the background, sirens go-off and a police officer's voice can be heard giving the message over a speaker.

The artist's vision was to reverse the concept of police response to make the toy cars dependent upon the terms that we as a nation have come to be so paranoid about. To me, it shows how we have become enslaved to our paranoia about the "war on terror." The authorities are actively searching for evidence of terror, and when they find it, they must act. The dance of the police cars is quite comical and makes a satire of the government's surveillance.

Here is the link for the PoliceState project

Matthew Barney (Part 5 of 5, "Art:21")

Matthew Barney - A sculptor, filmmaker, and performer, he is probably most famous for his five part "Cremaster" series of films that depict biological conflict and evolution through history, violence, and sexuality. The clips from his films shown in the documentary indicated how extravagant and complex his work is. Barney plays many roles in his films wearing elaborate costumes and makeup. The most interesting characters to me were the horses in "Cremaster 3." I could not find a picture of them, but they wore full-body latex suits designed to make the horses look like corpses. They made the animals look extremely grotesque, but also highly intriguing.

Bruce Nauman (Part 4 of 5, "Art:21")

Bruce Nauman - I don't really know what to say about him. His work is some of the strangest I've seen. He watches infrared videos of one of his rooms where mice come in and out every night. Their entries are so subtle that he advises you must not watch anything so you can be aware of everything. In other words, watch everything so you can observe what you seek when it is least expected. The only thing I saw from him that I would try to call art are his stairways. They are long and unecessary, set on gentle slopes that people could easily scale without them. But of course, they still do. The heights and lengths of the steps are uneven, so when someone walks on them, they can't produce a rhythm.














Untitled, 1998-99

Ann Hamilton (Part 3 of 5, "Art:21")

Ann Hamilton - Not the typical artist most people think of. She does embroidery, sewing, knitting, and makes art with words. One of her philosophies I found attractive was the idea that cloth is made up of individual threads. The threads make up one big whole, but you can still see each tiny one, and without them, the cloth wouldn't exist. It's much like the world we live in. Shown below is Lineament, 1994. The objects are lines taken out of a book and spun together into a ball like thread. The purpose of this piece was to take two-dimensional objects, words on the page of a book, and turn it into an object with three dimensions, the ball of thread. It reminds me of how people would always say you can't touch words, you can only touch the ink and the paper, but it still seems like they are there. This project makes them all the more palpable.

Elizabeth Murray (Part 2 of 5, "Art:21")

The Sun and the Moon, 2005

Elizabeth Murray - For Murray, painting is an extremely physical exercise, like squeezing the paint out of the tubes. The paint is fluid and out of control, and it is her job as the artist to harness it via "my mind letting my arm make the decision." I found that she had many metaphors to describe art in a way that I could understand. Being an artist is like being a safebreaker listening for the click. She describes her cartoony work as shapes onto each other like a weird lattice with intense color. However, she takes each piece very seriously. She doesn't want her work to be too descriptive, rather, she wants to leave room for the viewer to interpret and reflect. That ideal is a key aspect of what art is. To me, she appears to be a fairly intense person. She relies on her children to help take her mind off herself. She works in isolation as many serious artists do. Art is about the self. It is an activity of intense reflection and often social isolation for many individuals.

Vija Celmins (Part 1 of 5, "Art:21")

Vija Celmins - My impression of her personality was that she seemed very abstract and scatterbrained. However, she seems to have a good work ethic. The painting of the stars is a project that she is determined to see through to the end until she is satsified with it. She has worked on it so many time, painting over it again and again, that she feels the work has its own memory. To Celmins, her job is building a painting. Every project is a significant undertaking. She seems to be guided by routine and repetetivity. She created several pieces that were inspired by waves, making the same general image, but with subtle differences in medium and finish. Featured below from the left are Untitled (Web 2), 2001, Web #1, 2001, and Untitled (Web), 2000. Note how she features the same topic in several images, while finding different ways to portray it each time.

Reading Images Group 1

Reading Images Group 1
It is difficult to summarize a relationship that all the images in the group share. The relationships appear to more web-like, with some images linked to others through intermediate images. To start, images 1, 5, and 6 are all signs. Their purpose is communication. Their appearance is intended to be universal, so they communicate the same desired meaning wherever they are placed. On the other hand, image 2 is less universal, since the general population does not know Latin (at least that's what I think the language is). The signs that are often placed on doors and around buildings relate to image 4, the footprints in the sand. We are a highly mobile people, always busy and on the go, and we need simple images to guide us. That's why the stop sign is so effective. It's not full of complex pictures and directions. If we had to read signs like image 2, we wouldn't get very far in our daily lives. A fingerprint (image 3) can also be interpreted as a sign or indicator. Each ridge and loop holds some significance, and the combination of the 34 grooves results in the truly unique finger print of one individual.

Torolab's "The Region of the Transborder Trousers"

Using GPS units attached to the clothing of five subjects, Torolab documented the travel of the individuals around Tijuana, Mexico and San Diego, California over a period of five days. The GPS plots and fuel consumption data from the subjects' cars was displayed digitally on a large grid representing a topographical map of the area. All the data of the movements are displayed in an eight minute loop.

This project has several interesting implications. First, one can visually see the daily movement of several average individuals. To me, it represents our "on the go" lifestyles. The area that was chosen for this project is a border crossing hot spot, representing the very politically charged issue of immigration in North America. Finally, it is also a statement of how practical technology can be used to make a stunning artistic presentation.

The presentation itself was very eye catching. The colors and intricacies grabbed my attention, and the concept behind the project reinforced my curiosity. One of my concepts of art is that it is something that conveys a message, which this clearly does. Its peculiarity, being a large square grid full of lights, colors, and movements, is also visually appealing.