URL for Animation

Here is the URL link to my Dogg Nights Animation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhoWtqQSokU

Conclusion: A Whole New Mind

The final chapter of the book A Whole New Mind really made the greatest impact on me. As I continue with my education and try to find myself as an artist in my community, the biggest struggle for me is if my work is conveying its meaning. Without meaning there really is no substance to anything. People really tend to push the importance of spirituality, not necessarily religiousness, but spirituality and happiness aside. So much of today's culture is driven by money and business. People forget the importance of being aware of ones own happiness and having the peace of mind that comes from spirituality also help as far as being successful at business. Having ones life more centered and being more focused on being healthy both physically and mentally strengthens personality, I think, to the point of relieving the stress. Forgetting to relax every once and a while and having a laugh and not being completely serious all day helps me in keeping my focused and keeping my mind at ease. As an artist, if I pushed happiness aside I'm not sure that I would have anything to work from. Sure some may say that a lot of artists dwell on depression and working out their feelings through expression. However, I cant see how myself as an artist could continue on being an artists without finding happiness in doing what I do. Meaning is the nucleus artistic expression as well as it for many other activities, businesses, or parts of life. Finding meaning in our everyday doings should be a goal of all of us. In order to continue on in life and be successful and happy we must have meaning. In order to continue on as an artist, I must have meaning in doing what I do, in expressing myself.

Cyber Arts Festival

In choosing an exhibition to go see as part of the Boston Cyberarts Festival, the exhibition by Denise Marika stood out most to me. Her exhibition entitled Orpheus and Eurydice includes photographic prints from video projections. The description from the cyberarts festival website reads...

"Orpheus' world, our world, is torn by chaos, war and violence while the underworld Eurydice inhabits is structured, peaceful and allows her artistic freedom of expression. She chooses to stay, he seeks to bring her back, their struggle caught in this moment."

The artist, Denise Marika, is Boston based and works mainly with site specific video projections and multi-media installations which she uses to embed a moving image into a physical structure. The main subject she uses is her own body which she uses to record activities or personal rituals dealing with issues such as control, power, and vulnerability. Her video work concentrates on the nude form or a the figure(s) repeatedly performing a task. It is essentials sculptures determining filmed actions.

When I first walked into the Howard Yezerski Gallery, where Orpheus and Eurydice was being exhibited, I couldn't even see the work. After looking around and finally asking someone she pointed me to a back room where 3 large digital photographs hung on the wall amidst cardboard boxes and a filing cabinet. I was shocked at the conditions at which they chose to exhibit the work and I am sorry to say that it definitely took away from my experience. I had done a little research and had seen some thumbnails of the work and was anticipating seeing it for myself. The quality, in my opinion, wasn't much better than what I had already seen through a computer screen. I took my boyfriend, whose also an artist, along with me to give his insight into what he thought of the exhibition.

Q. What did you think of the exhibition space?
A. The boxes laying around and the filing cabinet in the same room, on top of the extremely confined space really created a kind of feeling of being somewhere you were not supposed to be. I felt like I had accidentally walked into the back supply room of an office and had to leave before someone saw me. I'm not sure that even without the boxes and filing cabinets the room was large enough to accurately display the work.

Q. Do you think the exhibition space took away from the viewing experience, from the actual work?
A. Definitely. The condition in which you were viewing were extremely distracting. I had a hard time really focusing in on what I was to be looking at. The room was cramped, and the yet it had these large photographs on the wall kind of bombarding you, yet your not particularly drawn to them. I think this is so because of the space created around them.

Q. Putting the location aside and concentrating on the actual work, can you see the connection of how this is new media?
A. Not being completely familiar with new media and what it totally is, I think I can still make the connection here. Using the video projection of moving images onto concrete objects seems like a new idea, and a new technique to me. To me, new media uses the advances in technology to enhance the artistic experience. I think she is definitely do that here. Maybe not in the actual exhibition that we viewed because those were photographs from an actual installation instead of the installation taking place in front of me.

Q. Do you think this artist created the war-like struggle she was going for?
A. I think she definitely did, I can sense the hostility in the work.

Q. What do you think helped to convey that?
A. The blurriness of the figures, the color, the sense of the struggle in the pose. The tension in the pose is what really created that atmosphere. The way in which it was displayed here, photo print outs of stills, doesn't seem like the best way to view her work. I would really like to see the actual installations in progress.

In conclusion, unfortunately the surroundings of the piece took away greatly from my experience there. I was under the impression from the blurb on the cyberarts site that I would be seeing a video installation. I was disappointed to see that it was only stills from that on display. However, the stills that were shown were very powerful on their own. I could still get the emotion intended for the viewer from her work just from viewing the stills. I can only imagine the emotion seeing the actual installation would evoke. I was happy to go out and experience first hand new media at work in my community. It was exciting and inspiring as an artists to see the work new media artist gaining recognition in my own community. I anticipate participating for years to come in experiencing artists at work in my own surroundings.



Some websites of interest:

http://www.denisemarika.com/

An interesting article about one of her works:
http://www.bigredandshiny.com/cgi-bin/retrieve.pl?issue=issue41§ion=article&article=A_CONVERSATION_WITH_13132753

Animation process

I have spent the past 2 weeks completely the pain staking process of drawing each movement of my character in order to convey movement on the screen. I spent this weekend in the animation studio filming my animation and converting it to begin editing. In the process of filming everything went smoothly. It wasn't until I converted it to a quick time file that it sped up my frames per second. My second disappointment was that the quality when it converted to a quick time wasn't as crisp as it was in frame thief. I maintained the resolution told to us and checked before I converted but for some reason these changes happened. Hopefully I can resolve some of these issues in editing so that I wont have to re shoot the only film over again. I'm excited to see what everyone else's animations look like!

Chapter 8 A whole new mind: Play

I recently saw a piece on the news about a laugh group and literally laughed at the idea of it being that necessary to laugh everyday. After reading this chapter and trying myself to laugh more I can attest that the results are true. The older we get the more we push the idea of play to the side. I had heard about the use of Lego's in offices in order to get people thinking more creatively and kinda always thought that if I was put in that position I would think it was a joke. The more I thought about it, the more I realized how important it is for us as adults to maintain that youthful quality in play. Thinking back to my imagination as a child, I can remember all of the stories and characters I can up with while playing. This led me to believe, why can't this be translated now in our "adult" work. My resistance to giving up the idea of having fun while at work as once again led me down a more creative path. Using play in our everyday life seems like a necessity now. I think we as professionals should be less serious and more playful in our everyday life. Not only should our daily checklist of necessities be sleep, eat, and the usual things, but I believe that play should be added as well. Maintaining a playful attitude throughout some part of our life can most definitely reduce the stress that has taken over most people. Bringing this into the workplace would be a major stress reliever and I think reacquaint people with the idea of why they are doing what they are doing int he first place again. This is something that I think gets lost in the hustle of everyday life and everyday business.

A Whole New Mind Chapter 7 Empathy

This chapter further proved to me the importance of empathy in everyday life, especially in the work place. Often time throughout my educational career I have been told to keep my emotions on the back burner and to get the work done. This is good advice in staying focused, but I never fully believed that it was necessary to leave all emotion behind in completely assignment. I guess that may be why I chose an expressive path to go down. I cant believe that the importance of empathy in health care wasn't recognized earlier. I would consider being empathetic to be a major quality needed by all physicians. I strongly believe that be attuned to the emotions of those around us can only strengthen the bond between human interaction, and in the case of the workplace, strengthen the team-like structure that is necessary to be successful. People react when someone is being nice to them, a cold reaction is not going to receive well. It seems like common sense to me, but I have found more and more that people seriously lack this quality. Hopefully with more and more research noting its importance, more people will make the effort attune themselves to being more empathetic.

Animation II

I was surprised to see how easy it is to capture your image with the camera and put it on the computer. I pretty certain that I will still with traditional paper animation for my project as I already have an idea, but I still tried out different techniques. So far I have experimented with paint and the illusion of water. I have been thinking about possibly incorporating one of those elements into my animation on top of what I chose as my main technique. I am excited to see what happens next and get to work.

Chapter 6 Symphony

A Whole New Mind Chapter 6 Symphony

I found the information in this chapter to be very correct in today's society. None of the information here was new to me. I think coming from a background in art makes these things more apparent. We are trained and naturally creative, this is why we are here. For me, the idea of looking at the big picture and crossing boundaries are second nature when it comes to art making. It is a crucial tool in my existence as an artist. It's about time it be a crucial tool for everyone. Thinking outside the box, crossing into other domains, looking at the big picture are all tools that can be used in succeeding in your task as well as making it more interesting in the end. It is unbelievable how quickly someone can be trained to look the correct way, as in the case of the author and his 5 day art class. It is so simple and so easy and so basic yet people still don't recognize its importance to everyone. Hopefully as time goes forward and technology and the role of art in society changes, this will become second nature to everyone. I think a change like that could make a big difference for society in the long run.

Animation -storyboarding

After going over storyboarding in class and creating one with my group, I am excited to see how everything turns out in the end. I'm going into this process with absolutely no prior knowledge of any kind of computer animation besides what we learned in class last week. It has been somewhat of a challenge for me in drawing my animation out, to think in terms of what needs to be drawn in order to translate the movement. So far this has been the only hurdle for me. I'm anticipating being introduced to Frametheif this week and see how exactly everything comes together.

Chapter 5 STORY

I found Chapter 5 of A Whole New Mind to be so interesting. I can completely understand what is meant by we don't learn logic, we learn stories. Recounting back on how well I understood things being taught to me in grade school, I can remember how it was the stories that my teacher told in conjunction to what was being taught that really stuck with. I can barely remember anything that was ever taught to me in math, but I can remember the stories that were told in my other classes and the topics being taught. I strongly believe that storytelling is a crucial aspect in learning. It is the glue that sticks whats being taught in the mind. I can also relate storytelling in the visual arts. For me, when remembering paintings I've studied in the past, the ones that had stories that went along with them are the ones that stand out the strongest in my mind. It is clear just how important storytelling is in all areas of our lives. I felt that the section in the chapter on the affects of storytelling in business was right on. I know that when I compare products on the shelf, I will always pick the one that has a better reason for me to give that company my money. So many of today's merchandise comes with a story of the background of the company, or the beginnings of a new design. I think that most people can agree that when given the opportunity to buy something of charitable profit we always take it. Storytelling doesn't just stop at the products produced by companies, but also is also inhibited by the employees. I think its great that business people are taking the importance of storytelling more seriously now. I firmly believe that the more something is relate able to a person, the more willing they are to believe in it. In the case of a business person, the more successful they will be in the end

Chapter 4: Design

In chapter 4 of A Whole New Mind the focus was on how important design really is in our everyday lives. The most interesting part of this chapter for me was reading about CHAD. I wish had had the opportunity in entering high school to attend a focused art oriented high school. These kids have been given the tools they need from a young age to become the well developed artists that they always had inside them. I think so many kids have the talent but not the environment or the encouragement that they need to thrive and because of that they end up pushing their talent aside and pursuing other things. Schools like CHAD, I think, give kids the encouragement that they need at that age. It gives them the knowledge and the understanding that art is not for weirdos or for the outcasts of the class. So much of our future is becoming more and more art oriented the more we progress. When I go to the store to buy something, I obviously pick the one that appeals to me the most out of the groups of items that I am looking to buy. I thought about design purely in this sense. Now, from reading this I have a new perspective of what design actually is and means to the everyday consumer. The part about the toaster really made me think just how much design in everyday items is important. It is so true how we literally use the toaster for 2 min everyday and the rest of the time it just sits there. If and object is going to sit out on your counter all, then it should be appealing. The car you buy is an branch of your personality depending on the design you choose. The type of kitchenware you buy also reflects your personality. So much of design these days is who we are as people. You can learn a lot about someones personality just by looking at what type of items they buy. With so many varieties of literally every type of tool, item, object, etc. available these days, its so easy to reflect you personality with what you buy. People always say you are what you eat. In reading this chapter I learned that you are what you buy in a way.

Performance Art is a multimedia art form originating in the 1970s in which performance is the dominant mode of expression.

Performance art may incorporate such elements as:
instrumental or electronic music
song
dance
television
film
sculpture
spoken dialougue
storytelling

Performance art can be any situation that involves four basic elements: time, space, the performer's body and a relationship between performer and audience.

Where it Began:
The roots of this art lie in early 20th-century modernist experiments with mixed media, particularly in Dada performances. Some even go as far back as saying it began in the Renaissance when artists began putting on public performances.The direct antecedent of performance art, however, can be found in the happenings of the late 1950s and the 1960s. Among the most obvious differences between the two is that the later movement tends to be much less spontaneous in nature than the earlier and that happenings were almost always created by visual artists, whereas performance artists generally have more varied backgrounds, many in theater, writing, or dance. Primarily an avant-garde form, performance art is often emotional and topical, frequently dealing with political and personal matters and with issues such as race, class, and feminism. Probably the best-known contemporary American performance artist is Laurie Anderson. (The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-05.)

The above image is of performance artist Laurie Anderson during one of her latest performances entitles The End of the Moon.This piece combines music and stoies in an intimate setting.

Ravi Jain
Born 1971 in Stockholm Sweden
Received M.F.A 2001 from MassArt in Studio for Interrelated Media
Lives and Works in Boston

Transportation Pioneering:

"In the fall of 1999, I began seeking out opportunities to be the first to use new transportation systems, such as high-speed trains and bridges. It was only in the spring of 2000 that I realized that this “transportation pioneering” was the basis for a body of work.

Following the realization, I began assuming different personalities for each new adventure. Drawn from literary and historical sources, these personae celebrate the romance of explorations past.

In Janurary 2003, we pioneered the new tunnel connecting the Mass Pike (1-90) with the Ted Williams Tunnel. We closed that year by being the final vehicle to soar over downtown Boston on the I-93 elevated highway." (http://ravijain.org/pioneering.html)

Summary:
It is directed by the artist Ravi Jain. It is a performance piece about "three transportation pioneers" on the first ride of a high speed Amtrak Train. It is humorous, because they dress up like astronauts and wear race car helmets when they aboard the train. Everyone looks at them like they are strange, and don't share the same enthusiasm for the journey like they do. They appear on all the local news stations, and proudly talk of their heroic journey.

Is This Art?

Yes. It falls under the categories of Performance Art, New Media Art, and Conceptual Art.

What is Performance Art?
Performance Art It is live, and has no rules or boundaries. It is art if the artist intended on it being art. Actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time constitute the work. It is a way of taking art directly to the public, without bringing it to a museum or gallery. It is often documented.

How does it fall under category of New Media Art and Conceptual Art?
It is New Media Art because it is being filmed. It is Conceptual Art because of the idea and meaning behind the journey.

What do you interpret is the meaning of this performance?
I interpret it to make a statement about the lack of excitement society has over new technological advances compared to those of the past. He used the media to sound his voice, knowing that it his information would be available to everyone.

Do you think because he used sarcasm and humor in his message, that it looses its importance? Is it harder to take performance pieces more seriously if they incorporate humor and sarcasm than if they didn't use those things or used them to a lesser degree?

How is this different from most performance pieces which occur in front of a live audience?

Do you think that this performance is more about people experiencing his piece/message and less about his own documentation?