scrapbook20

I found this Smarties wrapper near a trash can outside of the Campus Center. It caught my eye because of the fact it was laying next to the trash can and not in it. I was also attracted to the colors with which it was adorned. And I thought back to the last time I had enjoyed a Smartie. It is a classic childhood treat. Colorful and sweet, they were attractive to little children. This candy was given out to little kids on halloween or were bought inline at the grocery store. Everyone knows what Smarties are and can appreciate the treat. I do not see the wrapper as art because it does not invoke any sort of feeling upon seeing it. We only know what to associate with the wrapper and that is the delicious treats inside. I feel art has to have a deeper meaning or invoke some sort of feeling inside oneself.

scrapbook19

This straw wrapper was laying, intact, in the grass down by the waterfront. The white color of the wrapper stood out against the vibrant green grass. It was still straight and not ripped except for the ends where someone had pushed the straw out. It caught my attention because it looked like there still might be a straw in it. Upon further investigation I realized it was just the wrapper. Straws have found their ways into our everyday life. Everytime you go to a fastfood restaurant, your drink comes with a plastic straw. We are used to see wrappers strewn across the environment and it doesnt even phase some people. This wrapper is not art to me because no one created the wrapper with passion or put their soul into creating it. It was made by a machine just like all the other ones.

scrapbook18

I found this candy wrapper in the grass off the path near the bell tower. It caught my eye because of its bright color. After I investigated it further i realized it had another language on the wrapper. I am unsure of the language but it looked really cool. I don't even know what kind of candy it is because I cannot understand the wrapper. I thought this was probably the coolest thing I have found for the scrapbook portion of my blog yet. It is a foreign candy wrapper and you don't see many of those around. It shows how other cultures are present in our American culture as a whole. I don't find this wrapper as art because even though it is unique for being on this campus there are still thousands if not millions of those wrappers out there somewhere. There is nothing unique this wrapper at all.

scrapbook17

I found this metal C hook on the path as I was walking to class in Goodpaster. It caught my eye because it was laying in some sand and stood out in front of the light color. I started to wander where it had come from and what was missing this piece. I wondered how it had broken off or if someone had just discarded it. Metal pieces like this are everywhere. They are apart of many appliances and other every day ammenities that we use regularly. Metal can be bended and shifted in many ways therefore making it useful to create strong things. I don't see this C hook as a work of art because I still believe for something to be art it has to be unique but there are many other hooks exactly like this one out in the world.

scrapbook16

I found this flower near the patch of dandilions I had mention in an earlier post. It caught my eye because it was near the dandilions but not apart of the same patch. Its white color contrasted to the bright yellow of the dandilions. There was a patch of these little white flowers huddled together no more than a yard away from the dandilions. It made me chuckle because the way they were apart from eachother made me think of the way people tend to stick to their own group of friends and never venture out to meet new people. The white flowers stuck with the white flowers and the yellow flowers stuck with the yellow flowers. It just made it interesting so see these two groups amidst the green grass. I feel it is not art because again the flowers just happened to grow in that spot and happened to be that color. There was no one who came up and planted them right next to eachother.

scrapbook15

I found this odd looking woodchunk in my hallway in Dorchester. It stood out because obviously it had no business being in the hallway. It was a brown mass against a white floor and was easy to notice. it almost reminded me of a walnut shell but I think it is a piece of mulch. This piece may not have been significant to anything but it is funny to think of how the shape of something can draw your attention. We see wood all the time but if it is carved into something or is just naturally bent in some wierd way it attracts our gaze. This piece was in a peculiar shape for wood but the fact it was indoors is really what got me too take interest in it. I kept thinking how it had gotten there and who or what may have put it there. I don't consider it art because I feel it just happened to end up like that and there was no real concious effort to create it.

Scrapbook14

I found this helicopter leaf on the path when I was walking back to my dorm. It caught my eye because I haven't seen many of them especially this late into spring. Its odd shape makes it stand out from a lot of the regular shapes. I used to love helicopter leaves because they would fall from the trees spinning round and round. It was fun to run around and try to catch them. I think its neat that nature gave the seed a way of getting to the ground without falling hard. Everyone knows what a helicopter leaf is and even though the older people may not be too interested they still remember a time when they used to romp around chasing these leaves. I don't consider it art because it there was no artistic thought put into it. It is just the way the plant adapted to survive. There is no medium for which us to see it as art.

scrapbook13

I plucked this dandilion from a patch outside of the library. It caught my eye because having gone all winter without any color on the ground made my eyes awfully sensitive to even a hint of a bright color. So seeing a patch of them overwhelmed my senses. Its bright yellow petals seem to cheer people up when they come across some. Dandilions are apart of everyones lives even if for only a couple months at a time. Many people battle with dandilions from taking over their yard in the summer months but yet they are welcomed after winter because then we know summer is just around the corner. We learn about dandilions from the time we can walk and they seem to always be there. I don't see dandilions by themselves as art. Yes, they are good looking but there is nothing artistic about them. It is a weed and weeds don't exactly have a good wrap. If a person is to paint a dandilion or take some dandilions and arrange them in some artistic way then I would consider them art.

scrapbook12

This fork was found outside of the campus center sitting by itself on a table. It was weird to see this fork outside because usually when we come in contact with forks it is in some type of dining hall setting or kitchen. The peculiarity of seeing a fork sitting outside by itself is what really grabbed my attention. Its shiny metallic gleam glints with sunlight so you can't help but look at it. This item is such a huge part of our society. We use it everyday and do not think twice about it. The only reason I did a double take was the fact the fork was not where we usually see them. I feel the fork is not art because it was produced out of necessity and there are millions of other ones out there that are exactly the same. It is unlike paintings where no two paintings are the same. It has no uniqueness to it besides its location.

scrapbook11

I found this stick of gum by the back doors Montgomery Hall It was laying on the ground still in its wrapper. It caught my attention due to the bright colored wrapper that stood out on the dull brick pattern. It made me wonder why there would have been a perfectly preserved piece of gum lying on the ground short of someone dropping it. It is just something bright that seems out of place. We regard gum as something that can keep our breathe smelling fresh or for people who need an oral fixation. It is something that we have taken from nature and artifically changed to make it more appealing to the population. Gum is such a huge part of our culture that it is not suprising to see wrappers everywhere. The only thing that got me was the fact there was still a piece of gum in it.

Bonnie Veblen's SMP

Bonnie Veblen's SMP was very deep to say the least. I was able to feel her passion for her work and she helped the audience understand her motivation for the types of work she did. She explained how she used to be afraid of painting and how she just stuck to certain things because she was comfortable with them. She has stepped out of her comfort zone and really seems to be taking off with her paintings. Her landscape paintings concentrate more on keeping your view in one place as opposed to wandering off into the distance. It makes for and interesting way of looking at a landscape. It was cool to see how she challenged herself with her work. She didn't just settle for her first piece but reworked it and reworked it some more. I also found it interesting how she changed her styles back and forth until she really settled on one. She even changed scales to see which ones worked better for the message she was trying to portray. All in all I felt it was an eye-opening experience.

Artist 11

Paul Kaiser and Shelley Eshkar created a work that is called Pedestrian. The onlookers is looking down at a crowd of people as if hundreds of feet in the sky. The miniature people walk around in different directions and even open up umbrellas if there is rain. The way Kaiser and Eshkar are able to arrange these movements is by putting movement suits on eight people and recording the way the human body reacts and the way it moves. The project explores how people act in crowds, whether the movement of the crowd effects the movement of the individual and so on. I found this project to be very peculiar because I have never thought to look at something like this in such a way as to find patterns. I think it is neat how they use the suits because it is the same process as many of my favorite video games are made.

Artist 10

John Klima created glasbead which is a three-dimensional interface with allows for twenty people to make music simultaneously. The music is made from stems that emerge from the center of the orb. These stems can be slung around using the computer's mouse and when they are knocked into each other they make a sound. Volume and pitch is controlled by using purple rings surrounding the stems. I found Klima's work to be highly interesting. The orb has a psychedelic look to it and the idea of being able to make your own music by swingin the stems around is pretty neat. I feel like a person cannot create good music without having an idea of how to play it. So I feel his project has a limited audience.

Artist 9

Mendi and Keith Obadike created a game to explore the relationship between race and color. The games tells a story of two people whose color and race are unknown the reader/player. The game is meant to show how people react to race and how people view the color of a person. The game shows no bias due to the fact the Obadike's do not reveal the characters colors and race. I was drawn to this artists work because I feel the way people are still viewed today is through what color or race they are. Because of what has been recently going on there has been a lot of prejudice towards Middle Eastern people and I feel that it is not right to judge someone like that because of their ethnicity. I feel the message the Obadike's are trying to portray is one that should be shared with anyone so that they can understand the values it can instill.

Artist 8

Natalie Jeremijenko is a new media artist who created the project "a-tree" which is an digital tree on the desktop of a computer. The tree grows in correlation to the carbon dioxide levels in the surrounding area which is read by a meter in the computer. This "a-tree" is meant to be a way to get the point across to many people how our world is being effected by our society. It is a way for a person to really see the effect we are having on the environment. She also has a printer virus that prints out a circle piece of a stump when the printer has used enough paper to equal that part of a tree. We know the tree is not really alive on the desktop but if it can grow and die, she says, than doesn't that make it real? She tries to bridge the gap in an attempt to get people to understand we must preserve our world.

Artist 7

Auriea Harvey, in February of '00, created an online art project called An Anatomy. It is apart of gallery 9 in the Walker Art Center. An Anatomy is a almost an artificial lifeform that a user interacts with when that person visits the site. The "life form" interacts with the user/users and is ever-changing because of it. She says that she tries to portray the work as one that is collaborated with the use of people across the globe. Everyone is at one place at once and effecting the life form in their own way. What drew me to the work was her idea of time. I have heard time mentioned in a lot of art and I feel that this essence of time is used in all art. Time is what changes the life form and time is also what lets the person get to know the life form. I just think it is cool that something can be effected by so many people therefore being a product of everyone.

Self-Portrait Art Project

I found this project interesting because it showed how people viewed themselves in a subjective and an objective way. It also allowed for other people to interpret the picture as they see fit. I found the objective to be more of a persons look and the subjective to be more of a pathway to seeing someone's personality. These self portraits, I feel, allow  a person to show people what they want about themselves. By this, I mean that a person can choose pictures that may make them look more appealing or they may choose different angles to make them look different. This project really allowed me to see different sides of my classmates I may have never seen.

Scrapbook10

I found this pinecone near the path behind Dorchester. It caught my eye because there weren't many left and I thought about it almost being spring. There are still dead plants and such which bothered me because it is March. I feel like things should be slowly coming back. It didn't seem as decomposed as I thought it would be and I felt it represent how certain things can really keep form even though it was probably laying there for a while. People see pinecones as a nuisance and feel that they are boring, which they are. There is real no value of pinecones except food for squirrels. It is not art at all due to the fact that it is a dead part of a tree. It fell off and will now decompose into the Earth.

Scrapbook9

The object I found is a piece of plastic construction fencing. I found it near Goodpaster where there was previously alot of construction. It was lying in the dirt half in, half out. It caught my eye because of the contrasting color as well as the curiosity I had regarding what type of trash it was. I found it hard to decipher what it was until I pryed it out of the ground. It is supposed to keep people out of construction zones but I don't see how something that soft and weak could handle that job. The orange does provoke a feeling of danger or caution. I don't see it as art due to the fact it was used to fence off a construction site and accidently was ripped and left in the dirt. A person did not put it there in an artistic expression.

Scrapbook8

I found this starbucks cap near the path by St. John's Pond. It was maybe an inch off of the brick path. It caught my eye because it was face up and stuck in the mud so it was almost level with the rest of the ground. I had to pry it out in order to examine it further. It stood out because it was a metal object in an otherwise natural space. It must have been discarded there when someone had finished their frappucino. It enters into that sphere where you can now find modern commodities everywhere. Starbucks is such a huge part of American culture that it is even found embedded in the dirt in a small campus in the middle of no where. It is definitley not art because it doesn't really take us away from the real world and let our mind wander but instead it probably reminds someone that, "OH! I havent had my coffee yet today."

Scrapbook7

I found this orange peel off of the path between Dorchester and St. John's Pond. It was lying in the grass along with a few other pieces from the same orange. It caught my eye because its vibrant orange color contrasted the greenish brown grass. I picked this particular peel out of the bunch because it still had the tropicana sticker on it. To many people a rind on the ground like that represents the consumption of a fruit. It is directly corrolated with the idea of someone eating orange pieces. Its not art because it was just the natural covering for a delicious fruit. No one artistically put the peel on the orange. It was created by nature to protect the fruit. It deserves our attention for that same reason though. It shows that something can be protective and attractive to the eye at the same time.

Scrapbook6

I found these metal covers over a manhole near the library. They were resting over the hole obviously to cover for the missing manhole cap. One is a turquoise color and one is red. It drew my attention because I saw these color sheets of metal just laying in the grass and I wondered why they were there and how they got there. The fact they are covering a manhole intriqued me because I dont feel they are as safe as a regular manhole cover. The colors and just the shape in general caught my eye. The more I thought about it the more i realized that it made me think about how people are like those covers. Squares trying to cover a circular area. It reminds me we all don't exactly fit the mold society wants us to but we still serve a purpose. I don't really feel it is art because it is just there for protection. It was never meant to really have an artistic meaning to it.

Artist 6

Ken Goldberg is an artist and engineering professor at the University of California, Berkley. He created a robotic arm surrounded by a neatly organized garden. Users can interact with the garden via the internet. They are able to sign in to water or even relocate plants. The lives of the plants depend on the ability of people to log on and care for the plants in a timely fashion. His type of art goes with the idea of letting the viewer interact with the project and tweak it any way they feel fit. People do not know if it is real or fake because all they know of it is through the internet. I feel it is neat to be able to take care of something living even though a person may be thousands of miles away.

Artist 5

Mark Napier is an artist whose works are influenced by his background in painting. Each piece has similar qualities to a painting despite being done on a computer. He uses and interface where a person can type in a URL and the website is jumbled using Napier's design, producing a fragmented image. It also allows a user to be directly involved in the creation of the art work, due to a persons ability to decide what website will be used. I found his work attractive because I have never really thought about what a website looks like before it is all good and done. Just by looking at my screen now, I wonder what it would look like if the text and boxes were jumbled and formed some kind of other image. Napiers work seems to go with the idea of the viewer being able to interact with the work so it can take on different meanings. Not just the meaning the artist wants it to take.

Scrapbook5

This marked door is located under the library overpass along the path. It is viewed by people everyday and sometimes people don't even realize its there. It caught my eye because it had markings all over it. The markings must have come from tape that held flyers up on the door. There are at least one hundred markings on it. Some from the tape and others seem to be scuff marks. What makes the marks even more noticeable is the fact that the door is red so the white marks show up a lot easier. A door usually invokes curiosity in a person because we all want to see what is behind it. The reaction of someone to a scuffed door may keep them from opening it as opposed to a clean door. A clean object will most likely be handled more than a dirty one. This is not art because there is no real meaning behind the marks on the door. The marks were made by accident and are not meant to express anything.

Scrapbook4

I found this area of a missing brick on the back steps of Dorch. It is to the very right on the top step. It caught my eye as well as my foot. Something is supposed to be there and logic would tell the person a brick would be the ideal choice. As I was walking up the steps I realized something was out of place. I am not sure what happened to the brick that once filled that vacancy. Bricks tend to be a symbol of strength. A person might say, "that person is built like a brick" or they might tell a goalie that they are a "brick wall." But when a brick is missing it feels like the integrity of the object of which it was apart of is compromised. I feel it is not art because there was no real artistic intention. The brick probably broke loose from being old and having to withstand the elements. It just naturally happened or someone might have helped it along in the process. 

Scrapbook3

I found this popsicle stick near the bell tower. It was lying in the grass not more than 5 feet from one of the pillars. It drew my attention because it seemed out of place. I caught it lying there out of the corner of my eye. Someone had enjoyed the treat that had been impaled on this object and discarded it without a second thought. It was just simply lying in the grass near trees whose form it had taken at one point in time. It is a symbol for simple pleasures. Written on the popsicle is the phrase "Delicious Memories" which seems to imply a person remember how tasty the treat was and how it made them feel. When a person sees a popsicle stick they are bound to think back to the last time they had a popsicle or an ice cream and I feel that has to entail only good things. Its not art because it is used for a specific purpose, that purpose being to keep your hands from having melted ice cream or fruit-flavored ice all over your hands. It is a favorite commodity for elementary school teachers in aiding with art projects. 

Scrapbook2

I found this footprint outside of the library. It was on the side of the library near St. John's pond right near the wall. There was some soft sand there from the recent rain and someone must have stepped in it. What drew my attention to it was the fact that it was something man made in an area of grass and sand that was natural. It stood out from the otherwise smooth land. It also made me wonder who was walking there? Why were they walking there? Footprints, I feel like, are regarded as something that is only temporary. Usually you see footprints at the beach and they are more profound by the waters edge. They are there and suddenly gone as a wave goes rushing over them. The footprint I found is out of reach of such waves but I am sure it will disappear with the next rain. It made me think of how all of us are like footprints in the world today. Here for a moment, some more fleeting than others, and gone until another footprint takes its place. I feel it is not art because there was real no artistic purpose put forth in its creation. Someone just so happened step in that exact place.

Artist 4

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer was born in Mexico and his one main art project took place in Mexico City's Zocalo, the world's third largest urban square. In his workVectorial Elevation he used searchlights that when activated could be seen for a twenty mile radius. He included thousands of people who contributed to the spectacle via a website he created. These people were able to create their own meanings for the art project as well as interact with it. Lozano-Hemmer felt that the lights provided a way for people to express themselves in a way that could easily be changed from one thing to the next. The fact he used spot lights especially drew me to his work because from my home I can see the spotlights in Annapolis dancing through the air. It gives the viewer a feeling of awe as one sees the lights gliding through the air. The lights provide an almost unearthly kind of way to express a persons thoughts or feelings.

Artist 3

Mary Flanagan is a New Media artist who uses first person shooter games to send a message to a select audience. One of her most famous art pieces is domestic which uses the game Unreal Tournament, a first person shooter game, and turns it into a way to create a "home-like environment for the exploration of childhood memories and feelings." She uses photographs and text to portray her message to the people playing it. Her style of art forces people to really think about the messages instead of just going through the game with no real purpose. I am attracted to her work because I have played many first person shooter games and never saw anything that really made me think of certain memories. She uses a feminist way of going about these otherwise male dominated games and intertwines certain features that draw many girls to her work. She tries to make the games more personal and Flanagan tries to bring some sort of social value to the games. Flanagan's purpose is to take people away from the violence and put them in a position where the player is actually thinking about what he is doing.

Artist 2

Alexei Shulgin is an internet artist from Moscow. He uses an old computer harddrive with a keyboard to recreate versions of popular songs. He has recreated "California Dreaming" as well as "Smells like Teen Spirit," by Nirvana. I find his work personally interesting because I enjoy different types of music and his take on music is unique. It does not sound very appealing to the ears but just the thought of how he is doing that makes it awesome. He is performing a song with his "computer" that took four band members to do. Granted it doesn't sound as good. He felt art was a performative practice therefore he created his art so that it could be shared in this way. His work seems to prove that art can be performed and undestood at the same time.

Analysis of Collages

The three pictures presented all have similar aspects. Each depicts extremes that is easy for the onlooker to gather. The three pictures have the ability to express different meanings but when a viewer has them in a row it makes it easier to hone in on one specific idea. A similar part of each picture can be found in at least two of the three pictures, such as the pictures of rich businessmen. The pictures of the rich business men help connect the other content in the picture but in the third one there are no businessmen at all. The collage does not seem to fit. Each picture conveys its own meaning but when it is view in proximity to the other collages the viewer can draw from it the universal meaning.
The first collage is made up of two extremes. One extreme is the very rich and the second is the very poor. This collage seems to represent inequality with the poor and the rich both shown in one picture. One can grasp from the faces of the cartoon characters that greed is also trying to be depicted. They have snarling, devious faces and are holding money bags while the poor people on the other side of the collage have faces filled with sadness and despair. The collage seems to show the imbalance there is in the world today. The huge corporations are greedily hoarding money even when there are poor people right outside their establishment. The collage is split in half with the rich on one side and the poor on the other with a picture of a planet and the word help in the middle. The poor are asking for help but the rich just don’t seem to hear them.
The second collage seems to represent balance, or lack thereof. Each picture entails some kind of object teetering to one side as if it were off-balance. There are two scales and each has an object that when looked at forms an idea of wealth. The gold coins and the rich businessmen seem to play on the content in the first collage but in a different way. This collage seems to express more of the gap between the rich and poor by showing the imbalance in the literal way.
The third collage does not seem to fit with the other ones. Only one picture within the collage seems in place with the other two collages; the picture of the scale. I am finding it hard to draw conclusions about the meaning behind the pictures and the way they are put together. The smog and the polar bear and the world on a matchstick seem to point in the direction of global warming. It does not seem to have any ties with poor or rich people but instead nature. Even the scale does not look to be similar to the other ones in collage two. The scale in this collage seems to hint at equality between trash and our world. It could mean we are slowly tipping the scale so that pollution is slowly going to take over our planet. Yet there is no link between this collage and the two before it. The first two seem to represent inequality or imbalance but the last one seems to show that our world is slowly fading due to our polluting habits.

After Life

I found this movie entertaining. It was interesting to see different people's lives and how they felt about them. The fact the people had to pick their favorite memory and they would only be able to remember that seems awesome. It would make the after life so nice. I couldn't imagine having to pick my favorite memory from my life time. There are so many memories that I would want to be stuck with. The way they relive their memories seems neat but I just don't see how it could be like the real thing. The people who work at the "facility" could be considered artists in the way they analyze the memories and find the right things to help the person relive it. All of the people in the movie seemed to be happy with the way their memories are reenacted. To me it seems that these memories could be portrayed in so many different ways down to the smallest detail but they seem to be just right the way the people recreate it.

20 Lines

This project at first seemed silly just drawing all these lines. But as I drew the different lines it felt liberating to go with the brush wherever i pleased. The lines were just regular marks on a paper but each one invoked its own special emotion. The soft, circular lines made me feel relaxed but the hard zig zag lines made me feel rambunctious. I liked this project because there was no technique that needed to be used, it was only my eyes, my hand, and my mind.

Growing Up Online

Before "facebook" and "myspace" I feel social networking was different in that people used to meet up at a certain spot after school or on the weekends. (i.e. a burger joint). It then seemed to shift to the phone, where everyone is tieing up the phones with three way and call waiting. I feel the big start in the change of social networking was Instant Messenger. I remember my mom asking me, "do you call anyone anymore?," because everyone would always get on IM after school and just like that school life spilled over into home life.
If I were to describe facebook to a friend who has never seen it, I would tell him it is basically a place where people can stay in contact with their friends and share interesting links and really just stay in tune with all the gossip. It keeps people in the loop on whats going on and its also a place for people to let out different feelings. For example a person might put as their status, "I'm so tired from work today." Do people care? Probably not but people just do it to put their feelings out there to someone.
I've explained it to my parents before and I only mentioned that it helped you stay in touch with your friends since most of our friends are spread out over the country due to college.
I think it would be a lost cause trying to explain it to my grandparents. I would basically tell them it was a newer way of talking to your friends than having to call everyone. It makes it easier to talk to more people at once. I would basically say the same thing to a teenager in the 1950's because they ARE our grandparents.
The facebook page I looked at reveals all of the persons interests, photos of the person, and what other people are saying to this person. You can get a view of what the person is like through what they put down and how other people talk to them. The fact the person has a self-taken picture made me want to look at their profile cause I think it is stupid to take a picture of yourself and put it up. I would not want to friend or message this person because they seem, in my opinion like an idiot. They dont seem like the kind of person I would associate with. I want to know if this person is actually worth knowing.
I feel it does compartmentalize images and the way you broadcast about yourself because it gives you certain spaces to put your interests, photos, and conversations.
I believe that McLuhan is right because on any given page people put what they want you to know about them or they put up pictures that make them look more attractive. People can delete wall postings and news alerts if they don't want people to see them. Facebook is a way that a person can put themself out there and yet lead you to believe they are someone they may really not be.
I felt this documentary was ridiculous. Yes there are dangers online but that is where we need to educate kids and teenagers on safe useage but allow them to keep their privacy. I had feelings of legitimate anger when the mom of one of the kids told all the other parents about things she saw. Frontline blows the internet use by many kids out of proportion picking only the kids who really spend alot of time on it. I do not personally know one person who is online as much as the kids in the documentary. Like I said before, the documentary was ridiculous.

Scrapbook 1

I found this empty matchbook out back of Montgomery Hall. It was sitting open on the ground, obviously because someone was done with it and decided to liter. It caught my eye because it was dark out and its white cover stood out against the brick. This matchbook is an example of an everyday commodity that people use. It was probably used to light cigarettes which, sadly, is a major part of our society today. It has no markings or designs on it. It is rather plain. Usually matchbooks have designs and such on the cover. I feel it is not art because no one made it with the intent for it to channel their feelings or for anyone elses enjoyment. It could be used to produce art but it is just an everyday commodity. No deeper meaning to it.

What is the purpose of Art?

I like the idea of art as a way to escape from dull reality and let your mind go wild for a fleeting moment. Art really expresses emotions that may be hard to express through other ways. Not only does art let a person express themself but it lets others express themselves through enjoying the art. It makes sense when Waldemar Januszczak recounts his visit to the slides at Tate Modern and talks of how everyone was connected with the sheer simple emotion of joy. Art could not be explained better. Looking at art, playing on art, making art all have the same effect on people. It allows their minds to forget about what may be going on in their lives and lets them enjoy a moment of pleasure in what they see. Art, I feel, does have a healing power and it provides a place where everyone is equal. There are not biasts in art. There are so many different colors and shapes all working together to make one unique statement. What is the purpose of Art? It allows for one to loose themself for a moment and slip away in wonderment and awe, away fromt he crazy place that is our world.

Art21 Viewings

Vija Celmins came off as a bit weird when I first watched her section. She was stuck on this one painting and had been for years. It was a painting of space with thousands of little stars. To me, it seemed ridiculous to just paint a black surface with thousands of white dots and on top of that repeat it numerous times. But as I listened to her talk and explain her painting I realized it was an escape for her. She enjoyed it just as much as any of us enjoy our favorite things. Waldemar Januszczak talks about in "What is Art for?," that art is a way people to escape from their dull normal lives. Her space picture does exactly that for her.

Elizabeth Murray struck me as a person who would put graffitti on the side of a run down building. As we looked deeper into her and her art I realized she basically does graffitti. She goes into it with a rough outline but ends up freelancing it. She never seems to be satisfied with her work always trying to find ways to make it better. She uses shapes and colors that are attractive to the eye and at the same time boggle its onlooker. The shapes she uses seem to be polar opposties of eachother but yet they flow together in a way that makes is beautiful. She talks of how painting is so physical with her. The feel of the paint and the way she can shape and form things to make them flow seem to help her loose herself in her work. Again we see and example of how are just seems to relieve the physcial and mental stress of life.

Ann Hamilton was my favorite artist. The way she used the cameras in the mouth to show us speech, if you will. It was incredible. It makes you think when you are talking to people that I could see this person in a whole other way. Her other work such as the lines being drawn backwards as the image is projected onto white sheets gives almost a calming feeling. It allows for ones mind to kind of disappear in awe. Her art seems so out there but yet she is still a grounded individual. Hamilton's work just seems to be relaxing and is able to just take a persons mind and take it somewhere else for a few moments.

Bruce Nauman's work is a little weird but yet extremely intriguing. He takes everyday chores or occurences and somehow makes them art or at least leads you to see them as art. He talks about how some is accidental and some is planned. He kind of proves that art can be anything. It is just the way it is viewed. What I thought was interesting was when he talks about making sculptures that seem to have no function when tried to use the way one thinks but somehow people always find different ways to use it. For example the stairs that form a W does not serve any really helpful purpose but many people have found different uses for it.

Matthew Barney's work is just straight weird. I do not even know what to think of it. I guess it is art in the way he puts everything together so that it expresses a deeper meaning. He uses many provacative things in his films and there seems to be more to it than is implied. Each action has a distinct way of helping tell the story he is portraying. I dont see it as art in the way that it is relaxing and takes your mind away from reality. It is too much involved for that.

Reading Into Images

The images we looked at in class, to me, showed how many different types of art. There were different facets to each image that made each unique unto itself. The images my group read each had its own idea but yet was similar to the other ones. It was interesting to think that each artist took a car and represented it in the way they saw it, therefore making it different.

The one point I felt was key when we were discussing the pictures was that each picture represented something and that what it symbolized had come to be known through prior knowledge. If someone saw the red, circular sign with a white bar in the middle they would think do not enter, but if a person with no prior knowledge of what the color and the shape mean would not think twice about it. It is intriguing to see what people associate with different pictures and how if an artist does something a certain way it implies a message that should be understood in an image. For example in the picture, "Kerouac wears khakis," the GAP is implying that one should wears its khakis because the great Kerouac is wearing them.

The images we looked at all are unique in their own way but each set had an underlying theme. Sometimes it was obvious and other times one had to look deep.

Artist 1

The artist I chose is Slovenian artist Vuk Cosic. His art attracted me because I too have found myself playing on my calculator making pictures using different combinations of numbers and characters. It is interesting that these symbols can be used as pixels and are able to produce such a creation. These symbols and letters are called ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Exchange). ASCII is the way computers communicate with eachother.

Is it art? I say yes because this man took ordinary numbers and symbols and created pictures that tell a story. when I first saw this picture it reminded me of the Matrix. I pictured the numbers flowing across the screen, but with Cosic they would form a picture or an animation. This kind of art seems tedious and would not be my first choice as an art project but I do find it intriguing that different combinations of symbols and numbers can make such an interesting image.

Here is his website showing some of the films he has done using his net.art technique. It is quite interesting.

sample post

here's a sample post, with an image

link to arcangel's site