Blog #14

This post focuses on New Media Art pages 80-94. The last leg of the book shows artist that take unique stances on software, they use it in a way that is often not intended or they do something unique with it. Anne Marie Scheliner, Joan Leandre, and Brody Condon Created Velvet Strike, a mod to the game Counterstrike, which itself is a mod for the game Half Life. Counterstrike puts players into two teams, terrorists and counter terrorists and has them complete objectives to thwart the other side. It creates a statement not only on the nature of war, but the nature of the game. It brings the real life ramifications into the game. It allows players to stage protests in the game. The idea of a game using war to create a means of fun makes an interesting statement on society, Velvet Strike brings the parts of war that are never seen in the game, creating deep points on the nature of games in our society. Alexi Shulgin claims to have created a cyberpunk band, which really just comprises of him and his computer. He creates digital versions of popular songs which sound as though they are being played through an old nintendo cartridge. It makes interesting statements on the idea of musical authenticity. Is it the same song when being played in that way? The idea is one that exists all over the creative industry, is digitally remastering Star Wars destroying its authenticity, or is it just improving the film? This debate has gone on for as long as people have been changing pre-existent art. Cornelia Sollfrank created Female Extension a program that created accounts on various email providers and sent them into a contest. The accounts created were all female which meant that the majority of the applicants were females, which led to only males winning the contest. The piece unearths a bit of sexism that existed unseen by everyone involved.
I feel that all of these pieces portray artist using technology in unique ways. The idea that technology is created for one single purpose, but can also be used in such unique ways to create art show a new view on originality. I think when most people think of computers they see very narrow things, a device that allows for very limited things which exists under many constraints. But in truth the computer can and will do anything and everything the user asks, given the right instructions. I think it is an interesting thing to see an artist using a piece of software meant to fulfill a specific task in another way entirely. It is as though they are working within those constraints to create something totally unintended, which only goes to show the nature creativity has taken on in the digital age.

Blog # 13

In pages 64-80 Of New Media Art, the focus seems to shift mostly to work done on the web, in browser sort of things, that focus more on fooling the user than presenting themselves as art. Mouchette.org for example is a website that tells the user it was created by a 13 year old girl who claims to be an artist. It challenges the ideas on what art is, claiming that if one claims to be an artist and says what they do is art that is all they need. The website has various surveys which certain answers trigger delayed email that after a certain amount of time sends the user an email with suggestive language. To this day no one knows who Mouchette actually is, it just goes to show how the internet creates an environment in which anonymity is very easily kept. Radioqualia is a group whose exhibition was to create a speech emulator to read the 4,141,432 lines of code that built the linux operating system. It was broadcast over the radio wave for 590 days, purposefully creating a work of art that was simply too long for anyone to take in. Shredder is a program created by Mark Napier, its purpose is to show the user the underlying code of any given website, breaking down the aesthetically pleasing facade of all websites. Instead of being pleasing to the eye all websites can be broken down into ugly and unappealing code. Radical Softwar Group's Carnivore takes information from email and instead of stealing information it uses bits of that information as the groundwork for pieces of art.

This section of the book I believe serves to show how artists can use mainstream technology to create scenarios which are deceiving to the viewer. The internet creates a haven in which anyone can pose as anyone else, a forty year old man can claim to be a thirteen year old girl. Artists likewise can use their work to explore the ideas of anonymity creating pieces that ask the user to interpret whats real and whats fake. The idea that an artist can create something to deceive the user is a powerful tool that can be used to make any number of powerful points.

Blog #12

This blog concerns the book New Media Art by Mark Tribe focusing on pages 42-64. The section outlines various digital artists work from mostly the mid to late nineties, the time of the dotcom boom, which certainly has had an incredible effect on the art done at this times. A piece by Mary Flanagan called domestic was done in 2003, it used a video game engine called unreal, a game that focuses on online play in which players control a character first person and attempt to kill other players. Her take on the game was to subvert expectation, she turned the game into more or less the sims in unreal, a house making sim that uses things like text to suggest inner turmoil instead of out. Jennifer and Kevin McCoy used an array of cameras to remake a scene from Evil Dead 2, they used the cameras in such a way that when filming the scene they turn on at different intervals effectively creating a unique shoot for every take. Dial tones by Golan Levin examined not only the newer cultural norm of cellphone etiquette bur also mirrored the work of John Cage and his use of everyday noises in his music. A piece by Rafael Lozano placed spotlights throughout Mexico City and allowed users to move the cameras via the internet. Ken Goldberg examined internet hoax and the way the internet is able to present a falsified scenario very simply. He set up a small garden and told gardeners around the world they could tend to it, begging the question, is this actually happening, or just some hoax.
Many of these pieces took advantage of the Internets upheaval into mainstream society, it was no longer something whose purpose was shrouded in mystery but rather a device which was primarily for selling goods. It still shocks me that many artists were able to do art such as this on their own, it to me subverts the idea that artists are people who paint or make sculptures. To me it seems that as an artist you either do fine arts or you work as a digital artist for an organization which wants to make money. These digital artists working on their own with computers surprises me in a few ways. I suppose its just the idea that if you know about computers you become hired by some company because they will pay for your services as opposed to creating a living on your own, it to me is a unique happening of our times.

Blog #11

This blog entry will be on Art 21's segment on Cindy Sherman. The episode was entitled "Transformation" it focused on artists whose art seeks to change their identity in some way. Cindy Sherman's approach was to take on a character played by herself but in no way modeled after her. She dresses in the role of this character and takes photographs against some sort of appropriate background. Her work throughout the years has seen her taking on the identity of well thought out characters, people that fill some role in their made up lives. She creates a back story for these people, gives them motives and ideas, in a way she creates their lives and fills their role as herself in their clothing. She seeks to take her entire identity out of this character and instead become them. Many times her characters are over exaggerated and even hokey from societies standard. She creates characters that in a way are hard to believe exist in the world today, but have believable ideas behind them. Some times the over exaggeration adds to the overall composition.
    The idea of creating yourself as another person is a rather intriguing concept. Cindy Sherman's ideas are to create a character whose ideals and life are far removed from Cindy's own, but they are all played by her. Cindy's pictures seek to show this person not as her but as that person, but she always uses herself as a model, which is where the conception lies. She is creating these characters that are only ever portrayed by herself but never as herself, she seeks to remove herself completely from these people, but she always plays their part. I find the idea an interesting take on the ideas of identity, the amount of trouble one has to go through to become another person with a life separate from one's own self. The idea that she wants to show a character that is in no way related to her and should not be seen as her, but are always shown with her body creates and interesting point on the nature of the individual in our society.

Blog #10

In John Berger's documentary "Ways of Seeing" he discusses and criticized the way in which our society sees and understands oil painting and indeed art in general. He looks at the history of oil painting and how it was seen then and how that perception has changed. He starts off by talking about the advent of the camera, the use of a camera to frame a composition, and to guide a narrative along a prescribed and controlled. He then shares with us the ability of today's technology to show us things in a manner unique to human society. When a painting was made it existed in the place that was its intended housing. Often times paintings were part of a particular room or building, in their original frame and place, they were to give the viewer a certain feeling about them. In today's society we can look up these pictures at our leisure at a computer, meaning that painting has been brought into our own space, we view it in terms of our own lives. This is a way in which a painting's meaning is open to a unique interpretation from anyone. When a camera shows us a painting in its entirety we can't observe the details, it in effect means nothing to us, when the camera begins to zoom in to outline certain details, we only see what it wants to show us, in effect changing the way a painting can be interpreted. It can show a landscape, the way people dressed, or a narrative. He said the same is true of viewing a painting set to music, he reasoned music is more subtle and can change the way we see art without us knowing it. To further punctuate his point he shows a painting to children who have no information about the painting, even without knowing the particular artist was a homosexual, they were able to point out the femininity he gave his figures, the purposeful ambiguity that showed in the genders. He went on to discuss the use of the female nude in a painting, he described a female nude not as a naked person, but as an object that is meant to symbolize something, not a person depicted as not wearing clothes, but a metaphor who's perceived "clothes" are their nude body. The way in which many commissioners of art choose to view their women, more as possessions than people and how these views have carried largely into our society. He ended the documentary with the obvious parallels of the traditions of oil paint and advertising. He pointed out the obvious parallels to draw out the glowing differences. When an oil painting was commissioned, and artist was paid a sum of money by a wealthy person to show his possessions and portray his way of life. It showed him his own greatness and adorned his space with narrative of the waking life he led from day to day. He then showed these ideas as they were portrayed in advertising. The large difference being that advertisements were attempts at persuading those who did not have the things shown. These advertisements show the product as a means by which to transform their lives, to give them this ideal life. It was a way of making people feel more wealthy for spending their money on a product when in reality they were less wealthy because they spent money on that product. He then linked the obvious traditions of oil painting and these ads. Sometimes elements of oil paintings were added to advertising and sometimes the painting itself was inserted into and advertisement to convey a sense of wealth, luxury, and sophistication. These ads could then be placed in such a way, or "framed" by the camera into a proper context that strengthened their message.

I found the documentary extremely informative well thought out. I appreciated the insight Berger gave to this history of oil paint and how it was made and how we have come to view it. He urged people watching to be skeptical of everything, even himself and his documentary, that we need to properly perceive the world around us to really see the value of something. While there were moments of the film that seemed in a sense hokey, and quintessentially British if I may be so plain. The ideas in the documentary were outlined through extensive research and great observation. The history of art has played a huge role in our day to day lives, and the traditions held by oil painting have held up in some ways but drastically changed in others. I feel that this documentary outlined an important line of thinking and encouraged perception in a way that causes one to not only think about the subjects of oil paint and our society, but about how we should see things as a whole.

Blog #9

The article Ecological Realism by Andre Gorz focuses on the relationship of mankind with the environment. Gorz takes a very negative view on societies current outlook on the world, pointing out that industrial growth has had very noticeable and devastating changes on the environment around us. He points out that even with no industrial growth we are still using up finite resources, and in our present state of very rapid growth, we will begin to run out of resources perhaps within the lifetimes of our children. Gorz is very adamant in making his points seem very dire, that the extinction of the human race is only a matter of years away. He is a firm believer in reduction of resources, and a lessening of our co dependence on finite materials. Ecological realism, he states is exactly how it sounds, the reality that we are running out of the things that make our societies work, and furthermore are polluting our planet to the point that extinction is becoming more and more of an inevitability should we fail to change our ways.

While I agree with the core of Gorz argument, I believe he may have been somewhat harsh. Reading his article I was struck with what I perceived as a touch of fear mongering, this I take point against. As much as I believe that we as a species need to change in order to create a better planet, I don't believe the way to change people is through fear. We know that terrorism is bad, but wasn't the U.S. governments policy of spreading fear to scare the American people into war wrong as well? I believe what people need is not another fear campaign but a rational, reasonable, and possibly most importantly, unbiased explanation of how things are and what we need to do to change. I think that this is the best way to get any point across, if you believe in something, it only causes a panic to get people to see things your way through fear. Instead, inform them as an equal and explain the state that we are in and tell them what their options are, any sane minded individual would see the importance of preserving our planet in order to not only preserve our survival, but also our the survival of our children.

Blog #8

The Persuaders is a documentary about the recent history and the current state of the advertising industry. It chronicles the methods and realities of advertising in America, it looks out where it came from and where it is now. Much of the film is concerned in following a new start up company called Song, a new age sort of airline. It follows the companies thoughts on their image and shows the steps that they take to get their brand known. The film also takes a look at the current state advertising in the U.S. It views how the trends have changed in the time when advertisements were just that, simple practical advertisements. It eventually transitions into the present day, the film looks at the people who are in advertising, people who would probably much rather have a job in art, and how they use their advertisements as a sort of artistic expression. This of course transitions into the rise of emotion driven advertising, creating a strong emotional bond with their brand. Many of the worlds top advertising companies view people as very emotion driven, one advertising "guru" saw people as 75% emotion and only 25% intellectual, believing that the difference between success was merely a specific choice of words. The film delved into a psychologist turned advertising guru who believed that there was a "code" to tap into what consumers really wanted, incidentally he was the main driving force behind hummer's decision to make bigger vehicles, and even a cheese manufacturers choice of packaging in the states. He believed that certain words held certain memories and associations for everyone and the key to good advertising was to tap into that. It looked at the way advertising looked to trigger key responses in consumers own feelings. It showed another advertising analyst believing the best way to advertise was to look at cults in order to see what makes people so fanatic about certain ideas. The view was that people become passionate about things they love, music, or religion, and use those very same methods to draw people to their product. It looked at Saturn own "Saturn-day" which is an enormous outdoor event that brings people from all over the country. People came to Saturn-day looking for a community with which to bond, they made their product a cultural icon, effectively creating a large "cult" following, a community drawn together by their product. The video looked at agencies who compile peoples personal information and sell it to ad agencies for consumer information, just to know how to create personalized ads for specific people.

My own impression of the film was one of great interest, how one person causes another person to think a certain way, or just to persuade them to purchase a product. It is so deeply rooted in the psychology behind a group of people, an in depth look at the personality and the mannerisms of potential consumers. The end of the film even seemed to nod to this sort of "personalized" advertising as a great positive thing that put power in the hands of the consumer. I'm afraid that I strongly disagree, the fact that people privacy is being so easily cast aside to make them spend money on products that they in all likely hood don't need. This so called power is turning people more and more into lifeless wallets pouring money out on extravagant items that they have no business purchasing. I do find it fascinating how it is that we work as a society, but I'm also constantly unnerved by the views taken by this advertising, that people are essentially emotional idiots. The idea that creating a cult around your product is a good idea is something very alien to me. In my own experience capitalism is a necessary evil, a way of life with great potential for good that caters to peoples true nature while refusing to believe in fanciful ideals. Its a system where the individual has a large amount of power, where they can sculpt their own lives, but its also one prone to predatory attitudes, where one individual can simply step across others heads in order to make a few more dollars. I think that the idea of invading someone's privacy to make money is fundamentally wrong.

Blog #7

This weeks topic focuses on New Media Art, a book authored by Mark Tribe. It is an in depth look at the history of what is known as new media, which is an umbrella term under which all digital art, computer graphics, and computer animation fall into. The book outlines the history and early definition of the art form from how it was developed to how it exists today. The beginnings of New Media art begin almost as long as the computer has been in the hands of the public, but the ideas had been forming for decades before that. In the book Marcel Duchamp's Fountain is cited as an important precursor to the movement. Indeed New Media arts were truly formed out of an in the wake of the contemporary art movement of the twentieth century. The close ties between the two are seen even today predominantly in the field of graphic arts, the use of montage and text were really established and realized long before computers were a part of them. Any time an artist uses digital media to create a piece of art it falls into the category of new media, but new media arts are their own discipline independent but still branching from the contemporary art movement, the book discusses this bond as well as citing important pieces and going into the very beginning of the new media arts movement as it is today, that is, the use of computers to produce digital media.

The book is a rather fascinating look at not only the history of new media, but an intriguing look at the state of the movement today. The formation and independence of the movement are all interesting stories in an of themselves. It is very important to know the back story of ones chosen profession and the establishment of that profession is almost as interesting as the state that its in today. It is important to have a strong background in the history of new media in order to advance the state its in presently, otherwise one has no bearing on their own work or the work around them.

Blog #6

This weeks topic is on the subject of the Kuleshov Effect. A form of montage in film making that uses juxtaposed images to suggest emotion onto an otherwise emotionless actors face. The effect was developed by early 20th century Russian film maker Lev Kuleshov. The idea behind the effect is to show an actor or actress close up in front of the camera with a completely emotionless expression on their face. The camera then cuts to things like a bowl of soup or a dead body, due to the "mash up" of these images the human brain then fills in the gaps, the bowl of soup makes one believe the actor must be hungry, or the dead body must mean the actor is experiencing great sorrow. In fact when shown to audiences they actually felt the actor was displaying a different face and emotion for every different image shown. The effect plays on the basic human need to make sense of sensory input, this natural correlation plays directly into the technique. The short film explaining the effect seems indeed to be poking fun at the nature of human psychology, using a sort of humor to outline their points. The actress watching the actor and seeing it cut to a number of images causes her to humorously fall in love with the actor, possibly satirizing some contemporary films use of superficial metaphors to convey a "deep" message. In the end they even refer to her love for him as a love of montage itself.

I think the technique is an interesting innovation of early film making, a play on human psychology that can be used to convey a point or message. It seems that it is an easily over used or indeed improperly used technique that can seem contrived and pointless, but used wisely and responsibly can be a powerful film making device. The nature of the human brain is really what allows Hollywood to exist, the conveyance of a message with images is something that people have been doing for much longer than there has been film, and indeed the invention of the film camera has been a huge leap in man's potential to convey those images, and if done responsibly can further the artistic creativity and narrative abilities of any individual film.

Blog #5

The document The Declaration of Sentiments was written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1848 was written in support of women's writes in the United States. The title is borrowed from the famous Declaration of Independence, it is in my opinion used as a social critique of the document. Thomas Jefferson wrote his declaration in 1776 but his sentiments were much older than that. His words were partially borrowed from the philosopher John Locke, who first said that men were created equal, and deserved certain inalienable rights. Several generations later America had won its was for independence and was a free country, but there were still a few inconsistencies with their governing. America was indeed a free country by many standards but for all of the talk of righteousness and equality, women were still not allowed to vote, in fact not too much had changed for them, they were seen still as caretakers for the family, meant to clean and raise children, they were almost second class citizens. This document by some accounts was the first big step towards women's suffrage in the U.S. It came at a pivotal time in the history of the nation, it had been many years since America had won its freedom but it still seemed to overlook many of its own ideas. There was still slavery and women were not yet allowed to vote. This movement reminded that in order to stand behind lofty ideas of freedom and rights, America had to walk the walk instead of just talking the talk.


This document obviously marks a very important step in the slow and arduous fight for universal suffrage, it was not until the 20th century that women even had the right to vote and even longer still until it was guaranteed for African Americans. We as a nation have to remember the past as it was and remember the truths that we stand behind, instead of just using them as a crutch. Our nation is founded on the idea that everyone is equal, and yet it took much more than a century for us to actually adopt many of those inalienable freedoms. In this time of acceptance we must remember that we are in fact a free nation of reason and must seek everyday to uphold those reasons past petty things like ignorance, it is our responsibilities as citizens of the free world to uphold those freedoms in hopes that some day, everyone will enjoy those inalienable rights that we as humans are entitled to.

Blog #4

In the article The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism by Johnathan Lethem a series of questions are imposed in the subject of the arts, or rather on the copying of the arts. Throughout the article Lethem asks questions about the nature of plagiarism, in a society where the word "sue" and "copyright" are everyday words, what does it mean to us when art is "stolen." He mentions that Thomas Jefferson saw copyright law as a necessary evil, something that was more in place to advance the progress of the arts. It is impossible to truly define what is stealing and what isn't, he mentions Bob Dylan's ideas about appropriation, or the borrowing of someone's ideas and implementing them somewhere else. Is this stealing? Its pretty impossible to draw a clear cut line, does someone's influence on you and your use of their ideas in your own creations count as theft? In a capitalist society where art is viewed as a commodity and where money makes everything happen, copyright is in place to protect one's intellectual property, or rather to make sure that you are paid handsomely when someone takes a few to many liberties with it. Lethem poses the question "is that right?" Well there is no real answer, our society is the way it is and that's pretty much final. But where is it that we draw the line. He mentions a music historians conversation with Muddy Waters, Waters sings him a song that he wrote, describes when he wrote it and why. The historian notices similarities to a song written by the extremely influential blues man Robert Johnson and asks Waters if he knows anything about the song. To his surprise Waters recounts that he heard the song by Johnson from his own teacher, he recounted his own personal conception of the song while at the same time acknowledging the source of influence, there was no concept of stealing, it was simply part of the creative process. Finally what I found a very interesting addition to the paper is at the end Lethem broke down every paragraph of his paper and revealed the sources of his sentences, the whole time he had been making references to all sorts of creative media, whether the reader picked up on it or not, and cited every one from movies to books to quotations. I found this the strongest part of the article, a cementing of the idea that our society is made of its past and indeed its influences.
My own impression of the article is on of fascination, its something that I have thought of many times myself. We are built on our influences, nearly everything we do is in some way drawn from something that we have taken in at some point. In fact I would maintain that the things that we collectively experience in that exact combination is what makes each of us individuals, an individual formed out of other people's ideas. Indeed it seems that no one example of art contains no reference to something that came before, whether the artist is aware of it or not. Our idea of aesthetics comes just as much from our evolution as it does our personal ideas of what looks or sounds good, which just ties back to the things that we have seen. I found the article very informing and well through out and indeed readily added to my own thoughts on the nature of plagiarism and influence.

Blog #3

The article "Art in the Age of Digital Distribution" is an in depth look at the future of new media art in the aftermath of digital society. It pays very close attention to the doc com boom, in that it was a time when society began to take the internet into mainstream focus, in turn art had to adapt. With so much focus put into advertising on the internet art had to change, where much of the advertising art was still analog and the most complicated technology required was a printing press, art had to become purely digital. It discusses the impact that the pop art movement had on today's digital artists and the aesthetics that digital art began to take on. how many of the artists today had no affiliation to a company, whereas most digital art is generated through a large corporation for advertising, many artists choose to use technology for their own personal art. In the article it is discussed that many forms of conceptual art rose in the eighties, meaning that they earned their recognition, but due to its close ties to the internet, new media art was introduced as a mainstream art form. Because there was money to be made by this form of art it was very quickly adopted just because of the vast sums spent on it by companies looking to earn profits on the internet.

This article helped to put into perspective the use of digital art in this society. It helped to place this art form in society instead of simply presenting it as it is. It is extremely important to know the origins of really anything worth knowing. And choosing to become a digital artist in a digital society requires knowing digital arts place in that society. The article discussed the advent of conceptual art in the early nineteen-hundreds and the impact of pieces such as Duchamp's fountain. We are in a time that is still feeling repercussions of the conceptual art movement and its very important to be able to place digital art within those bounds. Because while so much of the art is simply there to sell products, it still has an origin and it still holds a place in art. In other words it has a past and a foreseeable future just like any art movement.

Blog #2

The work on Alexander Apostol explores many of the aspects or modern day urban society. The images displayed in his exhibition In Lieu of Modernity show various rundown buildings which the windows were digitally removed. The work shows the ideas of isolation and and lost expectations. The ideas of our advanced society creating things to improve our way of life that just end up falling into disrepair and become landmarks of our poorer sectors, monuments to modern depression and frustration. The work of Chris Sauter on the other hand explores very much the same ideas but with a focus on a different sort of subject matter. Where Alexander Apostol focuses on covering up what's real with an illusion, we know only through our own intuition that somethings wrong, because something that we expect to be there is missing. Instead of creating a sense of illusion Chris Sauter shows us what is missing by use of negative space. His pieces Arena and Museum show the viewer what is missing from the exhibit, creating holes in the viewers field of vision, silhouettes as it were. The piece the Presence of Absence by Peter Horvath is a video exhibition that worked on a computers browser to show a series of short, vague video clips. The viewer moves their cursor around the image of a face to show the videos, which are only a few seconds in length and show vague and often static laden. They show things like a clock, or a man sitting alone in the dark. A point is obviously being made about the nature of isolation, pointed out through cryptic metaphors and darkly lit scenes which accentuate the shadow and thus hiding things from the viewer, the presence of absence.

I enjoyed all three of there pieces, I believe that Alaxander Apostol made the strongest point with his piece, The use of such strong social metaphors helps to strengthen his points and ideas. Removing something that we expect to be there through our own experience. It makes a strong point about the isolation and poverty created by our society. The buildings look foreboding enough in their present condition, but with the removal of the windows creates a sense that something isn't right. The effect of the piece speaks to nature of our society, the hope created by the construction of a modern building and the inevitable abandonment, the destruction of a once bright dream. The frustrations of the poor become illuminated by the piece and I believe the relative simplicity makes it a very successful work of art. Chris Sauter with his very intricate and hansom looking pieces shows the very effective use of negative space. His approach on this piece is the intentional leaving out of information, instead of covering up as Alexander Apostol does, he shows the hole that he left in the creation of the piece. The incompleteness of the section of wall raises many intriguing questions which while possibly not as heart felt as Apostol's work, shows what is perhaps a deeper and more calculated meaning. The video piece by Peter Horvath appears to be the most cryptic of all. Using a more mysterious and minimalistic approach, choosing instead to focus on what is not shown that what is. The nature of the videos while never explained expects the viewer to develop conclusions themselves by using a very open ended approach. The Piece is a conversation with the viewer in this way, about the nature of isolation and the meaning of absence. The dreary dimly lit scenes allow the viewer to fill them with whatever they themselves bring with them as opposed to spoon feeding a narration, the use of interactivity allows the viewer to be more connected with the work and creates a more immersive atmosphere which strengthens the open-endedness of the metaphors presented.    

Blog #1: Charles Coen Interview

In the interview with Charles Coen many of the artist's ideas and techniques were analyzed. For example the series called "Buff" was brought up a number of times and observed for its artistic ideas. The idea of using silhouettes posed in provocative ways to create a disconnect between figure and negative space, indeed the figure and negative space were one in the same for most of the series. Another subject of discussion was the series focused on time, in which silhouettes were placed instead of actual figures. The series focuses on subjects such as time and isolation. The artists talked about the idea of interactivity and how the use of hollow methods of "interactivity" in exhibits only acts to isolate the viewers further from the artwork.

What I got out of the interview was a greater understanding of the ways contemporary artists use deep seated themes and ideas in subtle ways in their pieces. In forms that can be perceived as minimalistic or even chaotic can be very focused on the very faithful portrayal of a very specific theme. The idea of disconnecting the viewer from a piece in order to make statements on the nature of time and isolation become very effectively communicated with the use of focused imagery. The thing that I will take away most is the treatment of negative space in the "Buff" collection.  I've always been fascinated with the idea of negative space and the use of cropping in the picture plane. The idea of using the frame and cropping to show the viewer the most honest idea of what you want them to see. The idea of negative space as the figure or focal point of a piece of art is a rather interesting idea, it very bluntly calls the viewers attention to the use of negative space, and seems to pose several questions about the way negative space is created in art. He is literally sculpting a piece of art around the negative space created by the silhouette, and using such a strong provocative image makes for even stronger messages.