performance

performance art is the act of a person or group executing a work of art at a particular place and time. It can involve as many people or as few people as it needs, it is very open ended. A performance piece can span over any given amount of time, or it can be as short as a millisecond. While performance art makes me think of folks like Yoko Ono and other artist of the 60s and 70s, performance art in the west has been formally breaking boundaries since the Dada movement in the early 20th century. With Dada, music and poetry often were at the forefront, but this soon gave way to more adventure. Artists in the mid century began to use performance art to explore sexuality (using meat products and evocative dance) and religion (crucifying dead lambs). I appreciate all of this performance art very much. One artist that is always catching my attention (and I am not alone) is Michelle Gondry. He is well known as a film maker, but he is also a musician. He recently posted a short film on Youtube in which he solves a rubik's cube with two hands that come out of his nostrils. This short movie has a goofy feeling to it, but it was actually very difficult to accomplish.
here is the link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB8XedMowDU

pattern(ugh)

after researching patterns both outdoors and on the internet i found that the thing that is most appealing to me is the ability one image has to take on so many different personalities when rotated and placed next to itself. Repition is also settling to me for some reason, maybe because i know what is coming. Maybe that is why it is exciting when a pattern changes slightly, and boy is it exciting.
I see repeating patterns everywhere. I see patterns i love in textiles, which are often modeled after patterns in nature. I also see pattern in food items i enjoy like ribs or these amazing burgers.

icons

iconography
we see icons we are familiar with everywhere. Icons familiarize people with everything from products to instruction.
I always enjoy this starbucks icon because i associate it with delicious drinks. a good marketing tool other coffee companies could use would be to have a circular green logo to lure people in, and once they realize it is NOT actually a starbucks they are patronizing, they are too dead set on coffee that they don't care. I guess there are lawsuites, though.
I chose to Lincoln as my icon because he is associated with so many things; money, power, assassination, bold leadership, gigantism, ect.
I figured it would be interesting to try to capture all of that in a simple profile.

Lines on the wall

this was a fun experiment. We each chose a paper square out of a cap and tried to re-create the line drawing onto a larger square. Once we had each filled in our squares we mounted them all on the wall together, side by side. The result was an un-uniform pattern that was compleately random and very interesting.
This was an adventure that we took together to try to better understand Sol Lewitt, the american conceptual artist that made a huge ripple in the modern art pond.
The relationships that the squares had between one another suggested a pushing and pulling and a desire to reach a comleate shape. The lines would almost make sense, but there was always a wayward line that threw the eye off track. I also thought the range of gradients in the line drawings were interesting.

preformance

I thought that both girls who exicuted my performance preposal did an above average job. The girls understood the idea and came up with three interesting questions and some really kooky answers. It did not come out exactly how I would of expected, but I suppose that was part of the idea of this assignment. I wish it would have been a bit less inhibited and if I had it to do over, I probably would have come up with something with a bit more movement.

the bride

what strikes me about "the Bride" is it's dimension. It is a two-paneled painting that reads as a narrative.
this painting defies inclination in that most narratives would be read from top to bottom, especially when panels are involved. Comics are read from top to bottom, but the amount of information in the bottom panel and the barren void in the top panel lead my eye first to the bottom panel and then up. Because this is the case, I will start at the bottom, which is natures way.
The Bottom panel is interesting because of the large form in the right hand corner. the propeller like object jutting out at the top of this form is very engaging because it is the largest continuing line that extends all the way out of the canvass. In this panel there is a continuous theme of grouping. the four circular objects on the far right side of the canvass, the triangular objects connected to one another and diving up and down through the axis of the propeller, the three wheels that seem to mechanically turn the propeller's base, the human like forms on the far left side of the canvass...all of these families of objects fall just short of meeting each other. This makes me feel as though I have caught all of these objects in the middle of some life-altering experience. Within seconds everything is going to change drastically. There is definitely an implied movement in this panel.

And on to the top panel. this panel contains far less information then its counterpart, making it feel very desolate to me. Like a wake between waves or a calm after a great battle. the cloud that hangs above the figure on the left hand side of the top panel is almost catroonish. This cloud reminds me very much of a thought or speech bubble from a comic strip. The fact that the three boxes in the cloud are blank makes me think that the overall sentiment of the characters in the painting is one of confusion or bewilderment. It could also be that these empty squares are supposed to portray a somber feeling. The wiry and "broken" look of the character in the left half the panel certainly makes me feel uneasy. He seems to be on his way.

Patterns

making these patterns was super fun! I loved coming up with the idea for the pattern and then cutting and pasting the initial image. I was totally shocked at how many severely different effects I could get just by moving one of my one inch blocks around. The only real difficult problem was sizing, but I think I figured it out!
I wish we could just do this for the rest of the semester.

gestalt

Gestault is translated to mean "unified whole," and it refers to humans' innnate visual perception of things and their tendancy to group things or organize things that they see. This term was coined by German psychologists in the 1920s at the Berlin School. Gestault breaks visual perception down into subcatagories or principals. The principals of Gestalt are:

*SIMILARITY- when objects look similar, people tend to group them together. Similarity's impact is offset by anomally, which is a totally dissimilar object grouped with other obects similar to one another.

*Continuation-This principal refers to an instance where one object is tied to another object or continues through one obect into another object, thus groping them.

*Closure-Closure occurs when an objects defining edges are inferred by objects. The human eye will assume, based on it's visual experiences, that those defining edges are there.

*Proximity-THis is an example of the eye perceiving objects as a group or a whole because of their closeness to one another. If a goup of objects are side by side in a somewhat organized way, they eye will see them as one unit.

*Figure and Ground-this principal refers to a persons tendancy to want to find a background in order to define a figure or object. Once a background or ground is established, it becomes very easy to figure out shapes that group together to form a familliar object.

The Gestalt theory is widely used for therapy tothis day. Gestalt has proven to be a great tool for dealing with autism and other types of behavioral psychotherepy.

gradation

I always enjoy making a value scale. It is always a chllenge. I used a number 2 pencil and was pleased with the results. I would have liked for the darkest value to be more of a true black than the shiny #2 pencil grey that it is, but I will save that for my H pencils. As far as the gradation shape, well, i kind of rushed making the shape in the first place, which left me unsatisfied with it in general. I think it works for the excersize, but design wise, it lacks.

String WorlD

This string excercize was interesting to me for a few different reasons. I was delighted to see how all of the interacting lines created shapes and spaces with so much of their own personalities. Within the room there were landscapes with peaks and ridges and low valleys. There were streams of pink and white and rich pastures of carpet blue. There were giant monsters entangled in wire, thrashing around. For a few brief moments I bore witness to a miniature Rhye or a tiny Narnia, being built in fast forward. Then as all of it slowly came down, and things went back to resembling a classroom, it became clear to me that all things are just lines and shapes anyway.

LINE or shape

these are all shapes.

This wonderful painting

This image is easily described as a series of charectars assembeled in a room.

The horizontal image is separated into two large planes, one a taupe color, and one a rich chestnut. This gives the illusion of space both because of an implied horizon, and because the darker brown is on the bottom. This darker brown adds wieght. In the upper right hand corner of the image there is a smaller vertical rectangle. This smaller rectagle has definate depth. It appears to be a paneless window. Inside this window rectange are three shapes of different color; a red vertical squiggle, a black and white sun, and a feirce black triangle.

Inside of this room ractangle there is every shape one could ever imagine, from spheres to ladder shapes (ascending the entire left edge of the page as it tapers away) to fish fin shapes! Below the window rectangle on the right hand side of the image, there is a blue plane formation that seems to move back into the image.

The real star of this painting is a large white tube that slithers up the front and center of the image with a small stringed instrument shape being held directly above it by a bird headed creature. This white tube image is reflected elswhere in the piece.

This painting seems to focus on bold primary colors for its subjects with easy warm earth tones as a backdrop.


I really enjoy this image for its ability to convey so so so much emotion and also use a color scheme as simple as a summer wind. The subjects themselves can be a little disturbing at times. There are demonic illusions scattered mostly on the left hand side of the page. I automatically think that the artist could be a religous person. I also conclude that this artist must be a musician, and i appreciate that.
It is also interesting to me that most of the straight black lines in the image seem to begin in the upper left hand corner of the image and move toward the bottom right.
This image is a treat to look at.