Homework #5

I very much enjoyed working with Hannah (Hwang). It is always interesting to learn about how collaborative/ collective activities are interpreted in different ways.

The image below is the final work that I made using Photoshop from the picture that I took of my "peace" hand selfie as an in-class assignment. I think I had originally wanted to explore with the idea of repetition and variation by taking inspirations from the digital media as a whole-- I thought about issues such as conspicuous consumption, identity loss, virtual transcendence/ afterlife, and most importantly, the meaning of self within the larger society.

I guess I was visually attracted to the idea of adding a part of myself in front of a picture that covers the actual object behind it. From this initial image, I had several ideas to try making digital collage based on the idea of repeating self. Using Photoshop, I experimented placing different combinations of my selfie to use them as a background for my profile picture. Playing with filters and color adjustments, I finally came up with a design that I liked, and tried to give an emphasis on the image of my face.

The series of screenshots below show my process of working with Photoshop.

For my artist research, I chose David LaChapelle. If Andy Warhol had been the one of the major artists who captured the sixties, I feel that David LaChapelle is one of the artists who represents the hyper-commercial world of current pop culture and the postmodern sarcasm/ anxiety. I love how each photo shot is treated like a film, in which everything from prop to casting needs to be done in a certain way to satisfy the director's vision. Indeed, I respect his ability to orchestrate the whole set of making stills that requires a kind of deliberate perfection.

The first work is a staged landscape of an apocalyptic imagination. It is both fantastic, but disturbingly enticing in subtle ways. The light draws in the viewer into the world that he had created. Something must have happened to make the streetlight go down. The gas station is in a jungle, and no one is inside the convenience store. What's the red thing on the top of the store? It brings a kind of mystery and a sense of wonder.

The second work appropriates Jesus and his disciples in an ironic/ sarcastic manner. Jesus is the homeboy among the thugs. He is the holy boy who can do all things. Is it also about the disparity between the rich and the poor in current society? About poor nutrition? I am not sure, but with this work, I am again impressed by the artist's sensibility of composition and color. Jesus as the central figure allows a kind of dramatic recognition to be processed by the viewers, and its triangular and circular organization of the picture invites the viewer to go round and round.

Thinking about photography as a medium brings endless possibilities to making art. It captures the ephemeral, and makes it permanent. It reorients reality, and creates illusion. It can even also capture the soul of the artist, and expose it to its viewers. In fact, using this medium could create powerful learning for children of all ages.

Children can work with photography to develop their artistic abilities, and to experiment with the objects that are in front of them. It must be fascinating for children to work with photography because they can capture things that they like, and keep them. I had actually seen many children taking pictures for hours when they first gain opportunity to work with camera. There are lots of ways that art teacher might use photography for her lessons, but I feel like the most important thing about photography is finding what you want to take a picture of... what one is interested in, which comes from observations. Thus, I feel like to take a picture means that you are interested in taking the world outside yourself to make it your own-- to interpret the world in order to understand what being in the world means.

Photographic Assignment

Homework #4

I became interested in experimenting with infinity video art when I saw Ryan Gosling and Macaulay Culkin t-shirt follow-ups. My friend, Paisley, was working with the "Angry Ginger" video below, and I wanted to explore the aspects of cloning technologies by giving ethical and social associations that we deal in society. Rats, hamsters, and other rodent creatures has been, and are still being used for genetic experimentation for all kind of purposes, and I wanted to think about different ways to think about these issues through creating a video within a video, where I interact with the actual screen-- attempting to bring reality closer.

From collaborative video project, I learned about teamwork that works out itself through technology. Technology provides so much tools for us to experiment. While I had no experience with Final Cut Pro, one of our team member (Lina) was well-equipped to teach us the basics to try things on our own. Technology seems to bring autonomy to our personal tasks, but if it used creatively, it brings so much possibilities for communities outside classrooms. I used the Final Cut, and then experimented with Premiere Pro to create this short segment. 

One could be that students could create media content such as video or digital paintings in classrooms and share them at a shared community spaces, such as the library while using the online platform to reach global audience. Another could be that communities could use the media to create educational content specialized for the specific community members regarding an issue that they are dealing with collectively. Finally, it could be that students could take a stance on an issue independently outside classrooms using social media... there are endless possibilities. However, I feel that the most important aspect of using technology is creating relationships that can be forged for the social good.

Pipilotti Rist and Nam June Paik are two of my favorite video artists. Rist is well known for her large psychedelic and surrealist projections, and Paik was a pioneer in the field of video art. I am not too familiar with video art, but they seem to be the most well-known in this genre. For Rist, I think it is her way of selecting sometimes microscopic close-ups of objects and creating repetition and variation within that to create a world of its own that makes interesting. 

In an interview with the SFMOMA (http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/multimedia/videos/204), Rist describes her filming process as making brushstrokes. She says that she takes a lot of footage. Having a solid reference/ source materials is definitely a plus when you have a specific theme to work from. I especially love the way she juxtaposes seemingly different objects and subjects and mesh them together during filming, and using the site specificity to enhance the user or the viewing experience.

For Paik, I find humor. I was at the Asia Society last semester to check out his New York retrospective. He creatively used the video machine-- the television as a vessel to embed and encapsulate a scene in a loop to create specific visual effects that shaped his world of art. I was especially interested in his idea of robotics... robots giving birth to a set of robots, and so on. In a way, I feel like I am seeing this trend with technology expanding. He was a true pioneer. By taking footage from popular media, and creating video paintings, he transformed the way how people see the world and shaped how moving images can be manipulated in the form of sculpture, installation, and art in general.  

Homework #3

So, here are the three quotes that I found somewhat important in my life as a 21st century citizen of the universe:

Privacy is definitely an issue and a right that I think become an important aspect in my daily rituals whenever I have to log in. Not that I have a criminal tendency to "hack" into top secret documents or that I have the ability to do so, I am a person who wants to have her own space without interruption. I used to not care whether the government looks through my online activities, but I am afraid that the near future might be controlled and identified by "those who know." Scientific fiction fantasies are seemingly close as drones become smaller than butterflies. There are secrets that everyone wants to keep; some secrets will only be revealed once the person is deceased... it could be more interesting that way. Our lives are full of secrets. I don't want people to know how much I have in my account! I am a young graduate student. Anyhow, privacy is a controversial issue that I take seriously.

For my artist research, I was not able to find much on artists who exclusively use the social media for their art. So, I decided on An Xiao, who seemed to be most well known artist in this field. On her website (http://www.anxiaostudio.com/artphotography.html), she is described as an American artist, designer, writer and technologist. I found it's great that the artist has coined the term "virtual studio" for her practice. However, every artist has his or her virtual space in their minds. Indeed, everywhere she goes is a studio, because all of her work can take place beyond the physical location.

Specifically, she writes that her artistic practice tends to split along the lines of social media art and digital photography, which can blur into each other sometimes. Xiao writes, "I'm interested in the confluence of creativity and networks, impermanence and change (aka aware), visual culture and language. I'm concerned with identity and expression, and while my subject matter is often contemporary, I take a global perspective on what contemporary is and can mean, and how what we think is contemporary is often grounded in many layers of history. I wear many hats but I deep inside me, I am first and foremost an artist."

From her writings and online articles about her, I still do not have a clear idea of what she does exactly... unfortunately. I am not really interested in artists who use social media as a medium for their art. Tons of artists use the social media to make announcements or show progress on their work, and make art based on social media, which are very necessary to survive/ thrive as an artist in 2015. Nevertheless, I will still write about one project that she did was kind of interesting. I feel that the viewer needs to be present during the actual performance of the social media art to truly understand the deeper meanings behind the art.

In 2010, Xiao made a response piece to Marina Abramovic's The Artist Is Present, which was ongoing at MoMA at the time by re-imagining the piece as a Zen meditation exercise, with mats and cushions loaned by the New York Zen Center. And, the visitors were provided with instructions to examine the nature of contemporary social relationships, which are frequently mediated by digital devices such as cell phones and social media. The instruction notes:

Sit down with the artist.
Find a comfortable position.

Be present wih the artist in any of the following ways:
A text message to: [PHONE NUMBER]
A tweet to @anxiaostudio.
The artist will respond in kind.
When you have reached a satisfactory connection, or you simply grow bored, 
you may leave.

As for my own digital art practice, I sometimes make digital drawings with my phone and upload it on Instagram. Instagram is very fun... anyhow, the first digital painting was made with the Autodesk SketchBook app on my tablet PC using my fingers, and the second work was made with the Paint Joy app on my android phone using the pen.

I usually make digital sketches for visualizing ideas that I want to realize in traditional painting. I like painting digitally because it's clean, easy (fast/ efficient), and fun. Of course, all games and high end computer graphic effects were made painstakingly using the digital tools, but I still prefer to make my finished product using traditional methods... I like the lifetime permanence of a painting. I could certainly print out my digital paintings and frame it like David Hockney. Then, it becomes a product... something that I could hold. Looking at screens too much can be overbearing. 

Homework #2

Fortunately, or coincidentally, I had been away from my computer before even given the assignment (4 days before the assignment and a few more days off after) because I was too curious to start something not usually recommended for non-developers. I downloaded the Windows 10 Technical Preview over my Windows 8 PC without partitioning it first. Glitches and bugs, and all of those things broke down the essential "me" that I was so used to accessing without conscious effort. However, I was able to live without it. It was very uncomfortable... yet, it's not extremely necessary since I had the access to other computers. It's all fixed now, though! I feel like I can live now... I want to thank Dr. Alan Turing for inventing the first computer. The Imitation Game is such a great movie!

Technology in itself is so much embedded in my identity, and it is how most people most comfortably use to define their identity. Therefore I guess it is a part of ourselves, but not quite at the same time because technology is nothing without its users. Platforms such as Instagram and Facebook give us a network to share and communicate our ideas. While too much technology exploits and disturbs a healthy sense of personal space, I feel like the current society that I am living now wouldn't be possible without being "on" either of those social media networks.

For this assignment specifically, I thought about the sensation of homelessness when my personal computer was off. Computer is my home in a sense that it was a place where I store all my work and conduct most of my research. Thinking about computer as an extension of both my physical home and emotional home, I felt afraid. Thinking about the movie Her that came out in 2013, I imagined my computer having the potential of becoming something close to it in a few decades while it was still off. Black screen. Black screen gave me a feeling that was similar to an inner black hole.  

Connecting this On/Off exercise with the piece of technology I brought last week, I don't really know how or where I should position myself. I would position myself to where I feel the most need towards. I borrowed an iPad from the library because I wasn't sure if my watch or my glasses would fit into the category of "technology." They are technology indeed because they had been invented by human creativity. For the sake of the prompt, I will choose iPad. iPad without given specific instruction may create distraction and boredom, so I would explore the digital painting option with my students. Using the iPad, students will create detailed compositions of the world that they will create. It's an imaginary world, where the students will have to create its own currency, education system, clothing styles, diets, entertainment, and etc. By working on this assignment, they will engage with the world of imagination, and translate that using digital technology to share their worlds with students from other countries. 

The potential for the lesson plan above is great, and I am thinking that it could be extended using a blog, blog, Instagram, Twitter, and many more. Students will need to create their worlds first using the digital painting app.