LINE
In this collection of line drawings I aimed to capture the movements of quintessential New York. The facets of daily life here that are often unspoken of but an integral quality of my city culture. To do this I portrayed a variety of daily occurrences that I often ignore and explored the compositional qualities they posses. I began with my start into New York city being Staten Island. In doing these projects I used different styles of lines to represent different strengths and sizes of their respective counterparts in reference to Certeau’s description of how “Style specifies a linguistic structure that manifests on the symbolic level” (101). When I stay grandparents house I was able to diagram their household movements and then chronicle the harbor and the Staten Island Ferry, including the Ferry Terminals fish tank coming back into Manhattan. I also chronicled my weekly routine as this is usually a mindless path to me that others that do not live in an urban landscape would find interesting.
Writer Michel de Certeau inspired me to compose this with his piece “Walking in the City” in which he describes “walking, which alternately follows a path and has followers, creates a mobile orange city in the environment a sequence of phatic topoi.” Additionally, I wanted to depict the beauty facets of humanity I experience on the regular living in Greenwich Village and particularly close to Washington Square Park. Almost always there are street performers and various artists exercising their skills to the publics and their motions are often lost in the mass. I found a particular dancer that was representing the University’s dance program and documented her movements as she practiced her own mundane routine to the parks audience. To do all these demonstrations of movement, I used lines in varying colors and weights. In doing this I synecdochally represented the facets of urban life down to lines of motion. Certeau describes the synecdochal quality as “a spatial element in order to make it play the role of a “more” (a totality) and take its place” (106).
World Wide Web
Associations between Tim Berners-Lee WWW and Jorge Luis Borges "The Library of Babel"
In this week’s readings we read articles “The World Wide Web” by Tim Berners-Lee and “The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges. In Berners-Lee’s article, he takes a very technical and scientific approach in how information is processed in the contemporary manner of the World Wide Web or more often known as the Internet. On the Contrary, Borges takes a figurative and allegorical approach to explain a fictional place of information that behaves in a similar manner to real World Wide Web. The idea of Borges “The Library of Babel” is that there is a wide vast library containing all of the universe’s knowledge. This is parallel to non-fictional idea of the World Wide Web that Berners-Lee represents and this comparison is often used to associated the virtual world with the tangible.
Further “The Library of Babel” is known for containing all the knowledge but stores it in an unorganized manner. In other words, the information is present it is just too much to browse without direction and conveniently find something you may be have interest in without any help. This again is similar to the original idea of the World Wide Web, individuals had much more information available to them than ever before but they had to be certain and specific as to what they were looking for and be able to identify things of importance. Further, Borges explains the idea of Librarianship in which people are dedicated the library's knowledge and know where different points of information can be found with their internal organization system. This internal organization system is likewise to the idea of HTTP in which websites are registered into an internal system that can be read from many different places. Additionally, the Librarians almost act as servers who power the gaining and searching of knowledge in the library and therefore the World Wide Web. Drawing from both readings it is apparent that both ideas contain much potential delivering, in theory, a universe of knowledge but both, at the time in which the articles were written, can improve upon the way in which this information is delivered and applied to be used more effectively.
News Audio 1
"The Last Newspaper: Artist in Conversation Sarah Charlesworth, Aleksandra Mir, and Nate Lowman" NOTES FIRST
Sarah Charlesworth “Representation and role of photography in contemporary culture… how it in newspaper forms our perspective of history” how photography functions to orient us to events”
-looked at photographs of male authority figures: always war and male power figure iconography
-looked at photo in context of every paper it was published across the world.
-each piece had a different problem (like scientific experiment)
Sarah: how the perspective is so different depending on the publication; nyt more national-there’s such an intense contradiction of values
-the infographic boxed (ie soldiers died) (how we connect to real world events)
-the editor is the artist of the newspaper
Aleksandra Mir: New room interactive and studio
-she made all the drawings in outline and then hire people to color in ( admit has certain quality and they cycled people out for different qualities.
-”newsprint ages and this one is now yellow and then something beautiful in the nostalgia and it has a life span”
-trump drawings from front page every time
-did a lot of research to find categories
-did the time span of her time in new york: 1986-2000 when new york had more small town nature before 9/11
-photocopied every tabloid paper
- “poetry of the headlines”
-Aleksandra: rhythm of the newspaper, the headlines; “creates its own logic” always there
Nate Lowman
- Black and white and read all over
-save newspaper categories
-painting per week to react to previous weeks
-cut images or things and paint and impose
-group of images with guys with beards (after 9/11) john walker win ; nobody had long hair and beard
-why are preserving it? Its an idea “newspaper is like sculpture” the art is like the afterlife bc text is dead
-newspaper: 24 hours change; internet: immediate
-follows the changes made
-got parts of newspaper that gets people in “ugly animals”
-collages
-images in newspaper want to paint (newspaper an archive); point out things that might be interesting
Notes from All Artists
The show curator -sarah
Newspaper: “quiet public spheres” quiet people can relate (more common self of community of what is going on)
-utopian view of debate and discourse
-”understanding the problematic power structures encoded”
-how artist reacted to either (Strong public media critics) (can be subjective instead of objective)
“Citizen journalism”
-follow the weather: as a category and research all the papers
-role of the artist: when you remove the text from the image, what the new intention is
-sarah: how we can use art to conceptualize with real life coverage
-subject and sympathies invisible
-want to paint the suffering: guy
-reinterpretation of things
-ask more questions of other things”
-destructure the ideas
Exhibition Response 1
"Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art" Response
Unexpected Growth by Tamiko Thiel
In the augmented reality work, Unexpected Growth, by Tamiko Thiel provides a semi-immersive experience into recontextualizing how we view our ocean in the now and the future. The piece heavily relies on virtually drawn three dimensional form to create a “parallel reality” within the iPad’s in which the work resides. These forms are forks, spoons, rubber ducks, bottles and other everyday plastic objects but are put together to resemble aquatic life, specifically coral. Additionally, when viewing this work and these forms early in the day, the objects were vibrantly colored in pinks, yellows, and greens against the blue ocean, but according to the wall caption, as more humans view this piece, the objects begin to fade to white symbolic of their death resultant of human cause coral bleaching.
The original intent of this work was to highlight the ways in which humans affect the environment around them and what the possible repercussions could be. Through using common plastics disguised as coral, Thiel demands for the general public viewing his piece to reconsider their actions for a cleaner world tomorrow and to avoid this dystopian future. This is important in our current global situation as evidence of human influence begin to pollute every corner of the globe. It has enticed problems such as coral bleaching exhibited in this piece later in the day, and other issues such as plastic pollution in our waters and climate change.
What interests me about this piece is its interactive nature as it tries to portray a very possible future within our current reality (as the buildings of New York City are seen behind the coral). Additionally, the use of bright colors, and otherwise harmless objects is an interesting pull of the viewer in to what is initially perceived as an innocent virtual reality project but in fact has a threatening message.
Baby feat. Ikaria by Ian Cheng
In the second piece, Baby feat. Ikaria, artist Ian Cheng uses artificial intelligence to put three separate bots into conversation. The conversations are played out loud with a single voice and much of the strings of words are incoherent. The installation is a body length vertical screen that features a white background and gray and black virtual three dimensional forms, with occasional smaller yellow and red forms, moving to construct various geometric various and then periodically collapsing representative of debris. The movements of construction and falling are rapid and the objects shadows a follow the appropriate objects in the three dimensional space.
As our society begins to transition into a world more and more dependant upon technology and artificial intelligence, this piece intends for its viewers to marvel at the rapidly evolving world while also recognizing its fragility and weaknesses in development. The intended audience of this piece are members of our current society, individuals living in the late 2010’s that are seeing a rapid progression of technology that allows a higher dependence on virtual intelligence. What interests me most about this piece is the lack of bias it holds. While it does allow for its viewers to marvel at its ingenuity and modernity, it also cautions towards a the future landscape we are transitioning towards.
Video of "Baby feat. Ikaria"
Five Words in Green Neon by Joseph Kosuth
The third work of interest from this exhibition was Five Words in Green Neon by artist Joseph Kosuth. The work is a simple neon sign that reads “FIVE WORDS IN GREEN NEON” and illuminates green. The letters themselves are in all capitals and are more illuminated by the neon to appear a more whiter green than the darker green have that reflects off the white wall behind the sign. On either end of the sign, the viewer sees the black cable the powers the neon sign to illuminate.
The original intent was for the general audience to reconsider how we perceive reality. While much of what we perceive is in a parallel reality, whether that be painting, book, or screen, we as a society must recognize what things are at physical face value. Likewise to the second piece, the audience of this piece is intended to be people of our current technologically driven society, but the message is timeless. While the importance is related to our time period as people often blur the lines of physical and virtual reality, the idea that things that we perceive as real, are not tangible and are just renditions of the real thing, has been seen for generation. This is the idea that interests me the most about the piece, it is reminiscent of Réne Magritte’s painting “The Treachery of Images” that featured “This is not a pipe.” It is interesting to see the centuries divide the two artist, yet they portray the same trope in their current medium.
The Larger Narrative
These works, and others of the exhibition relate back to visual culture through an art historical lense as they comment on the aspects of society that are causing a transition of living. Through most of art history, artist have commented on the facets of life that were responsible for altering the way individuals perceive and interact with their environment of that time. Whether that be the physical environment, new innovation, or a revolution of perception, artist have always delivered perspectives to seeing their dynamic society and provide possibilities into the future. For example, the Romantic movement influenced by artist to view nature in a more fantastic rather than grotesque image to preserve the new value in its prisinity. Further, the Coalbrookdale by Night by Philip James de Loutherbourg is a painting that has come to symbolize the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, a time period of rapid mechanical development, similar to our time’s now. While the painting portrays a more developed future, it features a background in flames representative of the dangers of the progressing society, similar to the works in this exhibition. The works in the exhibition Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art, utilize new media parallel to our current evolving society to comment upon the rapid changing in our lifestyles in a similar manner to artist of previous generations.
Color Response
Shades of Blue
The beauty of the color blue lies within its universality. It is simultaneously the color of fantasies and reality. From the evanescent twilight dreamscape to the crispness in the mass-market logos we see everyday. Blue is the only colors that can act more neutrally than even white or black. White almost always has a sterile connotation, or regal high standard to live up to; black is almost always viewed as depressing, morbid, or foreboding. These colors are not free of pre-judgement. But blue is not the same, when someone mentions blue, in general, you will not immediately have a direct emotional response. When someone mentions red, there is an aggressive underlying tone, yellow there is an automatic joyful connotation, green is calming, but blue requires a context for response. It is unassuming. While some do agree that blue is always cooling and relaxing, blue is actually the color of the hottest flame. The hottest of the stars always glow blue. This allows blue to lead in being the ‘blank slate’ color. In fact most of our world is covered in it; oceans makeup 70% of our Earth and reflect the blue of our sky above. Blue is the base of our world.
It is possible that one of the reasons why blue is the universal color is because of the size of its spectrum. Out of all the colors found in a rainbow, blue is the color that has the most sub-colors widely available and used. And most importantly, so many of these sub-colors has its own unique usual context and connotation. On the dark side of the spectrum is navy blue that is used for its prized perceived strength often following national pride. On the lighter side is baby blue that suggests softness and innocence. These two different color perfectly exemplify the diversity in which blue possesses in different contexts.
When color was first introduced into photography, it was controversial because it enabled photographs to be simultaneously too realistic and too fake with the additional dimension it now integrated. The diverse functionality of blue encompasses the entirety of this idea and maybe that is why the first origins of color in photography began with the cyanograph.
