My Life in My Hands-Xerox Project

I started thinking about how I could relate xeroxed parts of my body to who I am as a person and it made me think about the interaction of my hands with objects during different aspects of my life so I decided to make a sort of tree of my life with branches of my hands and different items that have some meaning to parts of my life. In a way I felt like this was acknowledging the fact that I have a bit more life experience than most of the other students, something that often makes me feel a little out of place or out of time. I was going to explain all of the items on my tree but I think I should leave it up to the viewer's imagination. These are the objects on the tree: band-aid, rain poncho, car, joint, mascara, baby pacifier, baby bottle, condom-one opened, one in package, losing lotto ticket, screwdriver, laptop hard-drive, dice, white-out, pain medication, assorted bandana's, hot sauce packet, super-glue, pop rocks candy, a mini-light. At the top I have my eyes in their glasses mounted on my open hand with two hands covering the area where my mouth would be if the open hand were my face. You could take this as an expression of shock but to me I think it's more an expression of how I've gone through most of my life being a quiet observer, not saying a whole lot, so I'm watching but not contributing my voice. This is something that I'm working on changing even though it has kept me out of trouble at times.

Leigh Bowery

In 1988 Leigh Bowery did a show in  Anthony D'Offay's Gallery in London in which he was dressed in varieties of his ostentatious outfits and makeup and simply spent time interacting with himself and a lounge chair. He did this behind a glass that was mirror on his side so that he didn't see the audience watching him but only saw himself. While this was going on random street sounds were playing. This gave the people watching him from the other side of the glass the feeling that they were like voyeurs watching him primp and pose for himself in the mirror, things that most people wouldn't normally do in front of an audience. Watching the videos of his performance made me wonder what he was thinking when he was doing it, wondering if he became so self absorbed that he forgot there was an audience watching him or if the fact that he was on display for others to watch him was always in his mind and influenced every move he made. I also wondered if it would have influenced him at all if instead of not being able to see the people watching him if there had been maybe a small tv on his side of the glass that would show him the people watching him and their reactions. Would he have then played to the audience and would that have changed any aspect of his performance or would he have done everything exactly the same? From the opposite perspective I wonder if he had been able to see the audience and if they had known he could see them would that have caused people to react in different ways to what he was doing? It would be interesting to me to be able to see what people's reactions were at the time. I think someone should have been video taping the people viewing the performance. Since it ran for days I would be curious to see what the average length of time was that people stayed and watched and if very many of them returned to watch more than once. 

The Shock Value of Art-Orlan

Orlan likes to go for the shock value of art. Her work encompasses many things that people would find shocking, especially conservative Americans. She uses her own body in her art in ways that many people might say is degrading and irreverent. I'm pretty sure the Catholic Church would not like her at all. She is expressing herself and her work definitely provokes a reaction in her audience. I think the one area of her work involving surgeries might be considered by many to be a little over a line between art and absurdity. Of course, it is fairly shocking to have surgery done as a work of performance art. But for her it's kind of just an extension of the use of her body in her art. Some though, would see it as a desperate cry for attention. If a person were to go sit on a street corner or other public place and proceed to hammer nails into their feet or saw off a toe it is very likely they would end up getting locked up for a psyche evaluation. If that same person were to do the same thing in a gallery with witnesses and a camera rolling and call it performance art, does that make it art? One might say that Orlan did not cut off any appendages but many would see the things she did have done as a mutilation of a type. It's all a matter of perspective which is influenced by ones own moral values and life experiences. I choose to believe that a person has a right to do what they want with their own body and if they want to offer up themselves as an expression of art then they should do it. Some will see it and view it as art and others will see it and view it as shocking or possibly disgusting. Either way it will get attention and illicit a reaction and if provoking thought and reaction is the goal then it is a success.

The Artist as Provocateur

"To provoke means to evoke something. By making a sculpture with fat or a piece of clay I evoke something. I ignite a thought within me- a totally original, totally new thought that has never existed in history, even if I deal with a historical fact or with Leonardo or Rembrandt. I myself determine history- it is not history that determines me....every man is a potential provocateur." Joseph Beuys, from an interview with Willoughby Sharp, 1969, as quoted in Energy Plan for the Western Man, Joseph Beuys in America, compiled by Carin Kuoni, Four Walls Eight Windows, NY, 1993, p.86.

Beuys was involved in the Fluxus movement but was heavily influenced by Duchamp and the idea of readymade, taking objects and turning them into art by calling them art. Beuys believed that everyone is an artist and that art is not confined to the production of things that we call art and display in galleries but that art is the process of interaction that incites and provokes. His performance art was meant to make people think. His concept of "social sculpture" was the idea that the entire society should be seen as one artwork that every person should be contributing to.

Allen Ginsberg's Howl

Howl is a poem that epitomizes the beat generation. Ginsberg was heavily influenced by Jack Kerouac's On The Road. We tend to think of ourselves as an enlightened culture, free from excessive censorship, but when poem's like Howl are not allowed to be shown for fear of heavy fines by government sanctioned agencies we are confronted with the truth. We are probably the most heavily "protected" first world country. We are protected by the moral value system of a group of very conservative whitebread Christian people who I don't believe represent the majority of our population but seem to have a voice that counts more than everyone else's. These, I believe are the same people who blame non-white people for urban poverty and crime and gay people for HIV. Most of us believe we've come a long way in the past few decades in our more mature perspectives on issues of humanity and our interactions with others of variety, but quite obviously we have a long way to go when radio stations can't even broadcast what should be revered as a classic poem, not to mention that we still live in a society in which many freedoms are denied to large parts of our population, the least of which is to be able to express ourselves in words and have others hear them.

Grid Art-Chelsea Football Team

When I was deciding what to do for my grid art I was talking to my daughter who is a quite serious Chelsea fan. Most conversations don't go without some mention of a game or a player and this one was no exception. I had already decided to use different colored straight pins to make my grid but I hadn't decided what image to do, copy a work of art or create my own. So talking with her made me think of Chelsea and the familiar team emblem I've been seeing on all of her stuff for many years so I decided to use that as my subject. I bought all of the colored pins they had at my local Walmart. Some of them were white and the others were all multicolored boxes so I had to separate all of the pins by color. Then I realized that I wasn't going to have the proper shade of blue so I got nail polish in the right shade of blue and painted a bunch of the other colored pins. I had to stick them into styrofoam to paint them and it was quick drying nail polish so I had to stop every few minutes and seal the bottle up for a bit so it wouldn't dry out. Then I ran out of white and after a thorough search in every nearby store that might have colored pins I decided I'd have to paint some white ones with white nail polish to be able to finish. The pins are stuck into a round cut piece of styrofoam that's covered with dark blue cross-stitch fabric which provides a nice even grid to work on. The finished project has already been given to my daughter who says she is going to hang it up in her new apartment when she moves in in a couple of months.

Interactive Art & Rotary Glass Plates

In creating Rotary Glass Plates Marcel Duchamp was a significant influence in the beginning of performance art. He worked on this with Man Ray in 1920. It was a set of plexi-glass pieces shaped like wings that had stripes painted on them. These were placed along a rotating shaft. The user had to push a button and stand at a certain distance to see the effect as the glass rotated. Later he made Disks Bearing Spirals using the same model, this time attempting to make a three dimensional film out of it. This became Anemic Cinema, a film of alternating shots of text and spirals which were mounted on spinning disks. All of these endeavors used the effect of optical illusion that happens because our eyes retain images for a fraction of a second after the image is removed.

My Flipbook

Flipbook made for Art211 Spring 2011.

Xerox is an idiot

I used to work as a computer repair tech. I took a computer repair course and learned everything I needed to know about MSDOS, Windows 3.1, and Windows95. It was 1997 and the A+Certification test for computer repair was still testing on DOS and Windows 3.1 so even though Win95 was already out I had to learn everything about Win3.1 and Win3.11, which was the business version at the time. During that course we learned some computer history but since it was a pc repair course Apple was only mentioned as being a different course. The thing I don't remember being mentioned at all was Xerox having any part in computer history. We were told that Microsoft stole the idea of the GUI and the mouse from Apple, but not that Apple actually stole it from Xerox. This would have given me a whole new respect for Xerox as a company, except that they gave it all away. Now I see it as a demonstration of what happens if the people in control of a big company have no insight into technological advancement and the effects those changes are likely to have in society. They should have listened to their geeks!

Jeopardy and Watson

I watched when the two top human champions of Jeopardy's history played against Watson, IBM's supercomputer. It was an impressive display, not only because the computer won, but because the two human competitors kept at it and managed to do fairly well in spite of playing against an advanced computer with mega-speed. I wasn't surprised at the few times when Watson failed to come up with the correct answer or when it repeated the same answer that had already been deemed incorrect. These incidents demonstrated without doubt that Watson wasn't 'thinking' like a human, but 'processing' information, like a computer, which is what we expect our computers to do.
I think the biggest challenge to humans in our not so distant future will be to remember when confronted with computers that seem more and more like they have human persona's, that they are not lifeforms and that they don't have emotions and creativity and potential for intuitive leaps. We may end up with androids among us, but they won't be like C3PO, displaying emotions like fear and worry and cowardice or bravery. If we forget that and begin to rely on an advanced computer to use emotion based criteria in a decision it could lead to some really bad results.

The Past and Future of Television

The history of Television has always been of interest to me. Being an older student I have a different perspective on tv than the average student. I was among the first generation that grew up with tv being a part of everyday life and it was definitely a part of my every day life. I think I was one of the first kids who was addicted to tv. I was barely more than a toddler when I tuned in every day to watch Lassie save Timmy from another hazardous situation, then spent my afternoon playing out my own stories using living room furniture as mountains, train cars, horses, or whatever other props I needed for my scenes. I grew up on Lost in Space, My Favorite Martian, Hogan's Heroes, Combat, Dragnet, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, and original Star Trek. I remember the introduction of color tv, but of course we didn't have one until much later. My grandparents got one and the first show I watched on it was How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Later, when I saw more of my favorite shows in color I realized that I had always been imagining the black and white picture in color anyway so seeing it in color just took away the need to assign colors in my imagination. Maybe kids who have grown up watching tv in color don't see color when they watch an old show or film that's in b&w. I don't know, but I suspect that if you never had to develop that as an automatic compensation maybe it doesn't happen.
MZTV is a great place to go if you want to get details about television history, see what events led to other events, and understand how radio influenced the development of tv programming. I really like the different quotes that come up on the main page, like this one:

"Television is bubble gum for the mind." Frank Lloyd Wright
For me, tv used to be a place I could go to escape into someone else's stories. I always ended up getting ideas to write my own stories from shows I watched or often I'd rewrite the stories to change things that happened, or write my own stories using the characters from a show I liked. Later, when the internet connected me with the rest of the world I discovered that there were probably thousands of other people out there who also wrote stories based on tv shows. They called it fanfic. I joined in and started posting my own stories and through that medium I ended up meeting people and making new friends across the US and in a few other countries. Television led me to writing and writing led me to the internet and the internet led me to connecting with people all over the world.

I'm pretty sure tv is heading into a more interactive direction and it won't be long before just watching a show will be considered odd. There will be more and more tv options that will have some kind of user interactivity component, but there will always be people who just want to zone out in front of the tv or who let the tv play as background noise while they do other things so I don't think it will ever end up requiring user interactivity for all programming. The future is gradually turning all of our information and entertainment sources into one entity. We already watch tv on our computers and access the internet on tv's. Why have different devices? We'll end up having big flat screens mounted on our walls where we can watch broadcasts that are stored on massive servers for on demand viewing, interactive broadcasts in real time where viewers all over the world will be interacting with each other and with the broadcast program, and where we can access the internet for anything we use it for, do video chats with friends or groups of friends on social networking sites, or make phone calls, etc. For traveling outside of home we'll all end up with portable personal devices that function as phone, computer, tv, much like out current iPhones and their competitors, but with greater functionality.
When I was a kid I told my mom that in the future we'd have little handheld portable tv's that would run on batteries and could be carried around anywhere we went. She laughed and said that was ridiculous. Later I told her that we'd soon have tape recorders that could tape tv shows and that they'd be common in every house and she laughed at me again and said nobody would buy them if they made them. Of course, a few years later I came home one day and there was a new vcr in its box waiting to be connected to the tv. I guess my father saw the benefit of having one. Pretty amazing really that he's 80 years old now, grew up without tv, retired from a job where they were still using punch cards with an antique mainframe computer system, and he now has satellite tv, uses a DVR, and keeps up with all of his friends using his laptop.