late summer jam on a cold winter evening

Pure Bathing Culture - Ivory Coast from Sean Pecknold on Vimeo.


here is another by the same director as from my earlier post. he's got a really great eye. these are really beautiful shots and interesting to look at as well. and look at that hair!

great song. great video. great hair.

short history of the gif!

check out this totally rad video directed by a local pacific northwester on the history of the gif. really simple and clean, but also looks and sounds great.




A Short History of the Gif | Moving the Still from LEGS MEDIA on Vimeo.




pretty interesting topic and relevant in todays culture. i should like to do a bit more research and learn more about how the almighty gif came to be.

VIDEO GAMES ARE ART!!!! apparently.

so i know we have briefly discussed this topic in class and had a few presentations on it before, but now it seems video games as art AND design are now being legitimized. 

MoMa in New York is including a group of 14 video games in their art collection. Pac-Man, Tetris and others among them. Listen to the NPR story here.

don't think twice, it's alright

this is brilliant footage of johnny cash covering dylan's iconic song, don't think twice, it's alright. the first minute is the footage and the rest are just clips of the footage unfortunately.

  

incredible footage. incredible song. obviously dylan's version is better, but this is johnny's take on it and good and worth a listen. must have been an amazing time to be around back then huh?

defining art

as i was going through the introduction to our art & science book, i came across what i would consider a good commentary on the "what is art" discussion.

"in the last century, defining art has become a challenge. in earlier times, it was identified with time-honoured media such as painting, printmaking and sculpture, and was pursued for aesthetic purposes: the creation of beauty, the achievement of realism or the visual exploration of symbols, for example. in the twentieth century, many aspect of art's traditional definition were augmented as artists started working with non-art media, contexts and concepts. new media included technological tools, installation formats, performances, happenings and earth works. dividers between art genres such as sound, theatre, cinema and the visual arts were torn down, and the dominance of eurocentric forms and ideas were questioned. the traditional barrier between viewer and artwork was challenged. artists pursued many agendas besides the creation of beauty, including conceptualism, cultural commentary and socially engaged interventions" (8). 

while it seems that, overall, the discourse has calmed down a bit, i still found this excerpt quite relevant and a nice linear explanation of how art and it's definition is evolving.

so check it out. be ye cool.

austin parkhill

whilst researching different practitioners to interview, i stumbled across austin parkhill. he paints super realistic portraits of people and i found this video of him putting together this piece:

check it out.

video idea: for relaxing times, make it suntory time

i stumbled upon this video of musical artist father john misty's fake promotion of suntory whisky (lost in translation anyone?), which is an obvious parody of a 1970's sammy davis jr ad for the same brand. 

amazing. i can't tell if this guy is a genius or a....genius.

anyway, despite it's simplicity and eccentricity, i think something along these lines could be a good option for the upcoming video project. or perhaps because of those two things, it would be a good option. who knows.

the great debaters

two words: election season. you can't escape it. it is difficult enough to stay in the house without hearing about the upcoming presidential election, and far more difficult to go out without hearing or seeing some reference to it. of course it is important, of course it matters that you vote, but similar to many other people, i have had my fill. and when i've had my fill, i have to find a way to keep things interesting and relevant. to do so, i began a photo series tentatively titled the great debaters, where i have manipulated a photo of the two presidential candidates and inserted pictures i have taken of friends between them. 

no more talk. here are the first few:

1.

2.

3.

these make me laugh, and i guess that's why i made them. i just don't get what's so funny.

dan deacon music video

roaming the internets for proposal ideas, i came across this music video for dan deacon's song true thrush. basically the two dudes filmed a scene in a room, showed their scene to the next two folks, and those two folks were to make a recreation of that scene. the those two folks showed their scene to the next two people and those people did the same, and so on and so forth. it's amazing to see how the video evolves each time the next couple comes in and performs. 

check it out:

anyway, i thought something like this would either be a great idea for my proposal or my video...obviously not exactly the same, but something that employs some of these ideas.

sufjan stevens christmas!

anyone who is looking for some nontraditional christmas music for the upcoming season, REJOICE! sufjan is releasing yet another box set as a follow up to his 2006 christmas release. oh baby, it's cold outside.

check out this lego stop motion video he released promoting the new albums:

NICE!

remember my presentation on michel gondry not long ago? well he made a similar video for the white stripes awhile back. check it out (the production value is a bit higher than sufjans..):

"the digital as an extension of the social"...

last spring semester, i took a class called "digital diversity" that explored the many different ways digital technology has seeped into and taken over different areas of human experience. this chapter in digital visual culture reminded me much of some of the content portrayed in that course. and i have read much about mcluhan and his contributions as a media expert.

specifically, i remember studying this idea of the digital realm becoming an extension of the social/physical. the world as we know it today, and the way humans communicate, is completely backwards from what it once was (unfortunately might i add). we are becoming consumed with digital forms of socialization, i.e. social networking, email, text messaging etc. personally, this move from physical to digital in a social sense is somehow uncomfortable to me. strange, you might think, coming from a student of digital technology. but i suppose the more i study it, the more i realize that sometimes all i really want is a good conversation with friends. perhaps somewhere in the mountains on a cold night around a warm fire.

francesca bifulco

italian artist born in 1986. francesca bifulco. she studied in rome and has worked in different areas of the arts. she started her first painting project this year, in the crowd. she has had a few different exhibitions, in places such as los angeles and tokyo.

cool. interesting. i especially like the electro crowd series, the ones that employ a gradient.

ascii art

following our conversation yesterday on the topic of ascii, i figured i would do a bit of further research on the topic. interestingly, the earliest known ascii art was done in 1966 by "computer art pioneer" kenneth knowlton. pretty crazy to think that it's been around that long.

han solo ascii!!:

read more on the wiki page here.

what is real? (erik johansson)

erik johansson is a digital photographer who manipulates his photos with software we have been using in class.

here is a ted talk he did on his process. really interesting, really bizzarre photos. but really cool as well.

"the only thing that limits us is our imagination!!"

anyone disagree?

abstract triptych

here is my abstract triptych:

deconstruction of s

having never much used illustrator before, this exercise was great in familiarizing me with the software. i began with three capital S's in font type futura, which i find quite aesthetically pleasing. i then chose two different shades of orange that i felt mixed well. with the idea of experimenting with positive/negative space, i found myself wanting to stretch the edges of each letterform to reach the boundaries of the canvas. i then manipulated the shapes on the inside of the squares to create some individuality within the shapes. the end result, to me, is something quite interesting to look at it and while it is rather simple, i am pleased.

musicBottles

in our most recent essay reading in digital visual culture, ralf nuhn mentioned a work by the MIT media lab called musicBottles that i found to be interesting and worth further research. nuhn's goal was "to explore interrelationships and transitions between screen-based digital environments and their immediate physical surroundings" with his 6 interactive installations titled UNCAGED. he mentions musicBottles when addressing human-computer interaction. 

as you can see in the video, the removal and replacement of corks on the bottles triggers the start and stop of music. apparently, the media lab wanted "to maintain the coherence between the new digital meaning of the interface and its everyday functionality as a physical object."

what do you guys think? do they succeed in their goal? or is it just a cool installation?

VHILS

here's an artist i stumbled upon when i was researching for my presentation and ultimately ended up choosing him for my fa331 presentation. he began his artistic career at age 10 when he started doing graffiti in the streets of lisbon, portugal. since then, he's gained prominence with his work involving vandalism as art, where he carves and drills portraits out of building walls.

here is his website.

these are some videos i wasn't able to fit into my presentation, but are totally worth watching:

post discussion

yesterday's discussion topic resulting from heidi's post on douglas huebler’s 42° Parallel Piece was of some interest to me. mainly because of the overall reaction from the class, which seemed to be quite negative. I guess I can understand the position, but it still does not trouble me to consider this piece as art.

if i remember right, ryan peter made a comment along the lines of, "you either need to decide from the beginning that a piece is indeed art, or that it's not and then discuss why or why not"...something like that. and that totally makes sense to me. personally, i would say that i fall into the first group — when i go into an exhibition or gallery, i've already decided that what i'm going to see is art in some form or another. that said, i do not claim that i will always understand the art or its purpose, but only that i accept that it is art. so that is perhaps why it was not difficult to accept huebler's piece as art. sure, it's just a line on a map, but perhaps the concept behind it and the process have more to do with the piece than the final product that we see here. and i've seen a ton of other pieces that made me scratch my head even more than this. see my earlier post on cory arcangel. either way, i find the discussion as to whether something is or isn't art quite interesting and an ongoing, endless topic.

the johnny cash project

this has been around for a long time, but i rediscovered it this evening and thought i'd share, just in case any of you haven't had the chance.

started in 2010, the johnny cash project is a "global collective art project" that basically gives anyone anywhere the ability to create their own adaptation of a single frame from a music video for cash's song ain't no grave. apparently, more than 250,000 people have already participated.

here's a little clip about the project:

what a brilliant idea. there are some really incredible contributions, as well as some very simple ones, but overall they combine into something very moving. i think it would be interesting to do a project similar to this as a class where we each contribute a frame and create a short film using our work. although considering the small amount of people in our courses, it would be a short video, but still an interesting thought.

what do you guys think?

game-like interactivity

as i was going through the first paper in the digital spaces section of our book, digital visual culture, i found the section on game-like interactivity in new media art to be of some interest. the first example the authors give in luc corchesne's portrait one (1990). portrait one is  essentially a "static" portrait of a woman who remains motionless and speechless until she is "activated" when a user moves the mouse. once the mouse is moved, a menu appears giving you a menu of options to communicate with the woman. 

this type of interactivity has always been intriguing to me. the ability to communicate with a computer and have them understand you. obviously, we do it on a day to day basis with computers, it's just when the computer is given human characteristics, it is exciting and somewhat terrifying. on a larger scale, we see this kind of thing in movies all the time and most recently, david, in the film prometheus. it really makes me wonder if humanity will ever reach that point with computers and what sort of advances that would really create.

since portrait one is unavailable to try, i did find a bot modeled after captain kirk from star trek. i played around with it a little while, which was fun, but i had the most laughs watching this video:

you can try it out here.

jochem hendricks

amidst the many artists we're reading about in our digital art book, one of the most intriguing pieces in chapter one was jochem hendricks "eye drawings". in the above photo, you can see the device hendricks uses to scan the movement of the human eye across the page. he then takes the path that the eye creates, digitizes it and then is able to print it out. 

a very interesting concept. i thought it might be interesting to see a comparison between two different people who read over the same page. just to see the differences and similarites. i think a lot could be revealed about personalities in that sense. 

go here to check out his website and other works.

emilio gomariz

i stumbled across this artist's videos and found his website. here's a video and tidbit from his website:

"Emilio Gomariz explores a large area into the digital field. He uses the computer to create imaginary environments and sculptures, which most often are exported and published online as a GIF. Inspired by computer's interface, Emilio works on desktop performances, creating different kind of manifestations by the use of Mac OS X."

comic relief

sometimes i feel like this when i'm talking about art, or when i'm listening to someone talk about art. i've been on both sides of this conversation, mind you. 

digital self portrait

when given the objective to create a digital self portrait of myself, initially i had no clear idea of what sort of narrative i wanted to develop. obviously, i wanted to make something that would represent myself and my interests. i also knew i didn't want to make a self portrait in the literal sense, rather to lean more towards the experimental. as i began browsing through my photos, i happened upon this old rodeo photo from the 70's of my father and my grandfather. my father is on the bronc and my grandfather is on the right side of the photo. i've always liked this photo and the historical narrative it tells, especially since i am close with my father, but never had the opportunity to really know my grandfather before he died. keeping that in mind, i thought of pasting my face onto each face of the crowd. i thought this would add to the historical narrative, connecting present and past in a sort of intertwined and contorted way. it presents myself (many times over) and what is important to me — my family and their history. i've always wondered what it would be like to meet my family members in different periods of their lives, to see what they were like, if our personalities were similar, etc. that was sort of my driving force behind this project. 

dan deacon app

i just came across this article about dan deacon creating an app that allows fans to participate in his performances. pretty rad idea, and definitely falls under the umbrella of postmodernist art.

watch the trailer:

on post modernism, briefly.

in preparation for our discourse on modernism and postmodernism, i've been doing a bit of research outside of the wikipedia article. firstly, i wanted to gain a better understanding of the term "postmodernism" in relation to art. the wiki article described it as, "a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects of modernism or to have emerged or developed in its aftermath." since i found that definition to be kind of boring, i located another one that offered more insight into the movement: "A late 20th Century style and conceptual theory in the arts and architecture, characterized by a general distrust of ideologies as well as a rather 'difficult' relationship with what constitutes art." this 2nd definition really gave me a better understanding into what is the driving force behind postmodernism, as opposed to just knowing that it "developed" in modernism's aftermath (already quite obvious from reading the titles). it seems that where skill once championed over creativity (modernism), the opposite is now true for postmodernism. 

however well our discussion goes on tuesday, i doubt that one movement will be proven superior over the other. it's all a matter of opinion.

is this art?

during discussion in class this evening, the question popped into my head, specifically when peter brought up cory arcangel and his work with gradients in photoshop (here are some examples). essentially, these pieces were done with a few clicks of a mouse.

while looking at these pieces, i couldn't help but draw some comparisons between this and some minimalist/abstract pieces i've seen (malevich, stella, rothko, etc). i know the medium is completely different, but just looking at the final product, it seems that some of the same questions might be raised.

in speaking of similarities, i find that the artists composing these pieces more often than not are making some kind of statement. in doing so, it seems they were not so concerned with whether or not their work could be called art, but rather that their work conveys a message. regardless of the answer, their work is hanging in a museum somewhere and raising discussions such as this. i'd say that counts as something.

behold the monkey

anyone seen this recent restoration of a spanish fresco? 

apparently an elderly lady from the church where it is displayed was allowed to do the restoration and very clearly had no idea what she was doing. frescos are not typically my cup of tea, but it's unfortunate to see this kind corruption of art, just in the sense that the original is now lost forever. however, it does raise some interesting points about interpretation.

on a lighter note, it has become quite a sensation since it hit the media and tourists are flocking to the small town to view it. the unfortunate restoration has garnered the fresco the title "ecce mono" (behold the monkey), its original title being "ecce homo". in addition, other artists have used the restoration in interpretations of the last supper and mona lisa.

the full article can be viewed here.

the end of western civilization as we know it.