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.

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.

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.

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.

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.