Video Screening

I watched the screening of This Space Available. The movie highlights the movement to the commercial advertising that is taking over our society one billboard at a time. Activists that include many artists fighting back against some of the largest advertising agencies and companies to end the visual pollution that can be seen nearly everywhere we look. From large billboards advertising popular fast food chains to outrageous and extravagant flashing neon signs, the society we live in is filled with this visual pollution, many places more so than others. Times Square in New York City is known for its over the top billboards that light up the sky with their bright lights. While some see them as iconic, many see them as a ploy by the companies to bring in consumers on false and many times illegal advertising. The TSA team physically goes out to to cover up many of the illegal works found in New York City. They do so by painting over posters using white paint in an effort to protest against the illegal advertising. Others hang art over large signs as well. The TSA team identifies the difference between graffiti art and advertising as the profit that the advertisers make in response to their illegal and polluting billboards. Graffiti artists do not receive a profit despite displaying their work illegally, while companies who put out billboards do make a profit. The team also looks into the overall effect of billboards and advertising on the communities.   Not only do they state that the public is distracted by these, but the world is cluttered as a result. These are also affecting the environment. Many times trees are cut down to put up a billboard, and taking up over 60,000 football fields of space in the world they are doing more damage to society than they are benefiting society.
In my eyes advertisements are a waste today. They take up and use resources only to not be noticed or remembered. Never have I used the services or been interested to take the time to look into a company that is advertised on a billboard. Television commercials, which many times serve the same purpose and annoy the public just as much as many billboards do nowadays, have just the same effect. The difference between a television ad and a billboard ad is that usually with television there is memorable moment or statement that resonates with us when we are out shopping or looking for something new, and we refer back to the commercial that caught our eye or was interesting. Billboards do not work this way. With a simple image and a simple statement they don't resonate or make us interested, they simply take up space. 

Artist Lecture

I attended Gail Wrights lecture at the Nevada Museum of Art on May 4, 2012. Wright has been creating art since the early 90's and while she mainly works with living mediums, she has also worked with interactive sculpture, video, prints and electronic sculpture.  At the NMA she presented examples of her work and discussed the process, reasoning and work that went behind them. Most of her work was based off of the fungal group and working with slime molds. What first began as an experimental project where she monitored the slime mold using using three cameras that corresponded to video frames, soon evolved into an in depth analysis that used different colors for each slime mold and 9 video frames. With each project Wright grew more interested in how the slime mold morphed, which ultimately led to more and more projects involving slime mold. She also grew more dedicated and committed to the projects and perfecting them. Wright would adjust the camera every three hours for a period that lasted over two months long. The project not only grew on her, but her surroundings as well, as Wright described finding slime growing in her home, office and even her car. What was most interesting to me was the final slime mold project that Wright worked on using the nine lcd screens and different colored slime mold. This piece was visually appealing and was also aesthetically pleasing. The natural and progressive movement of each slime mold was really brought to life when combined as a larger unit, and monitored for a long period of time. The video stream created by molds truly shows the growth and possibilities that something we usually take for granted is capable of doing. 

Avatars

Here is my real life avatar, and my fun creative avatar. The real life avatar can explain itself, as it is a replica of myself, specifically in the facial features. The fun avatar was created on the idea of breaking free from the norm. I created and added a tattoo, as well as fun hair and a fun outfit. I also added on a quad because that has always been something I wished to try out one day. My fun avatar allowed me to explore my wild side. 

Nova Jiang and Heather Dewey-Hagborg

          Today there are many new artists out in the world. When looking for ones to research I decided to find artists whose work-exemplified qualities that I found appealing. One of the main things that attract me to art today is its influence and effect on society. After recently participating in crowd sourcing projects and also creating one for Digital Media, art work that involves the audience as a participant has been catching my interest more and more. From the Eyebeam Art and Technology Centers web page I found two specific artists that attracted based on their use of participants in their artwork. These artists are Nova Jiang and Heather Dewey-Hagborg. Nova Jiang was a fellow at Eyebeam in the fall and spring of 2011, while Heather Dewey-Hagborg is currently a resident at Eyebeam. While both of these artists involve their participants they work within different subject matters and concepts, making their works completely different and diverse in many ways.

            Nova Jiang has received her master’s degree from the Design Media Art Department at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her works has been exhibited at festivals, galleries and museums all around the world. The locations range from the 01SJ Biennial in San Jose; the Sundance film festival in Park City, Utah; Sonar in Barcelona, Spain; Glow in Santa Monica, California; the Japan Media Art Festival in Tokyo, Japan; The Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; The Milan Public Design Festival in Milan Italy and many others. She has also received grants and fellowships for her work.  Nova Jiang has received a Skowhegan Fellowship and an Eyebeam Fellowship. In addition, she has been awarded a Black Rock Arts Foundation Grant and a Sculpture Space Grant.

            The work Nova Jiang produces engages with the evolving definition of public space. The idea behind this comes from fostering a sense of community through the work. This in turn creates situations that allow people to related to each other in unexpected ways. Furthermore, individuals are then becoming curious about their surroundings and the people that are in them. Nova does not necessarily ask fellow artists or specific strangers to be collaborators, but instead she has strangers be the collaborators in her artwork. The artwork that Nova has produced range from gallery installations to public participation works. The most recent works include Creatomatic and Ideogenetic Machine. Creatomatic is software designed to accelerate the imagination and prompt inventions. Ideogenetic Machine is an interactive installation. This involves portraits of participants that are generated into a comic book that is created live using custom software. The images are capturing using a camera and a database of drawings. These create narratives based on news and events.

            While all of Nova Jiang’s art was intriguing to me, there were two specific pieces of work that stood out to me. The first of which is Moon Theater. This installation was exhibited in 2008 at the Glow Festival in Santa Monica, California. Not only was it an installation, but also, it was an interactive shadow play installation that involved the 200,000 people who attended the festival. Nova Jiang and fellow artist Michael Kontopoulos created this piece to create an opportunity for communication and expression amongst members of the large crowd. The moon serves as the screen, or backdrop, and the members of the crowd are the performers, despite being complete strangers. In her description of the work, Nova Jiang explains that the moon as a unifying element to the crowd, because it stands as a symbol to the members of the crowd. The moon is something that each and every one of them can recognize.

            The second piece of Nova Jiang’s work that caught my interest was her project entitled Alternate Endings. The project was first created in 2009 at the Milan Design Festival in Milan, Italy. Nova Jiang and four costume designers teamed up to replicate the clothes worn by visitors of the festival. Each day a different bright colored fabric was used to replicate the clothes in both cut and style. After the items were replicated they were given to the participants as a gift for them to wear. They could choose to wear it while socializing with each other or walk the streets of Milan. On the last day of the festival everyone who participated was invited back with their new clothes to attend a party with the rest of the participants. Through this project Nova Jiang and her team explored the concepts of social exchange and using art as a gift. They also investigated the process of how group and individual identities are created, and how they were affected in response to the project.

            Many of Nova Jiang’s works involve the audience directly and make them participants in the installation or project. Others are interactive where the audience can take part in her work by doing something not as extreme, such as make them visually interactive to the audience. Nonetheless, Nova Jiang focuses on involving the crowd of viewers in her projects, which makes them apart of the work and the process that it is made. I personally find myself extremely interested in works of art that I allow me to contribute, such as crowd sourcing, or even works of art that have an interactive aspect. According to CSMonitor.com and their January 14, 2011 article, Crowdsourcing: The art of a crowd, “The impulse to work collectively is not new…The ‘60’s avant-garde was very interesting in eliminating the boundaries between artist and audience.” This also shows that it is not rare to find someone like myself who is interested in being involved in a work of art.

           
When it comes to Heather Dewey-Hagborg, her work is not quite as focused on involving the viewers, but nonetheless she incorporates them within her work in a unique way. Heather Dewey-Hagborg received her Bachelors in Arts from Bennington College and her Masters from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Her work has been shown internationally at solo and group exhibitions, performances and events. She is also the recipient of countless grants and awards.While she currently teaches as an adjunct Professor of Art and Technology at New York University, she is still working as an information artist. Dewey-Hagborg is interest in exploring art as research tool and using it for public inquiry. Her work questions the perceptions of human nature, technology and even the environment. Furthermore, her work investigates the connection between art and life.

            Much of Heather Dewey-Hagborg’s work is in collaboration with Future Archaeology. This collaborative group consists of Brooklyn-based artists who explore the cybernetic nature of ecosystem. Dewey-Hagborg’s projects are based off of the ideas of sound, robotics, learning and conceptual. The two that interested me the most were based off of the ideas of learning and conceptual.

The first piece of Heather Dewey-Hagborg’s that I was interested in is entitled Stranger Visions. In this piece Dewey-Hagborg collects genetic material from public places that people leave behind, most of the time without even noticing. Dewey-Hagborg focuses on genetic determinism and the potential for a culture based off of genetic surveillance. Dewey-Hagborg’s second piece that caught my interest is Spurious Memories. In this piece Dewey-Hagborg is creating creativity by constructing electronic structures that are inspired by biological forms. Software creates new facial images that embody the knowledge of the machine being used; each code is unique and as the process continues the machine interprets new and ambiguous stimuli in different ways. By enabling the creative capacity of machines Dewey-Hagborg is examining how human beings come up with ideas that are new, and consequently how these can be transferred to machines.

Heather Dewey-Hagborg does not explicitly involve the participants in her work as Nova Jiang does; nonetheless, her audience serves as her main source of material. While Dewey-Hagborg uses strangers as a source to produce her work, most of the time unknowingly, Jiang physically brings in the viewer as a participant or collaborative unit to the work. However, I can relate to the work of both of these artists, and I can also see similarities in their work despite the differences. Both artists make the audience the basis of their work. They are aware that the audience wants to view the work and that many members of the audience want to do more than simply view the work, and instead be able to be involved in the work and even participate. As I viewed Nova Jiang’s work I felt an instant attachment and desire to participate in it as well. At the same time, when I viewed Heather Dewey-Hagborg’s work I felt a desire to participate in many of hers as well, but I also was interested in how I could relate to the work that she was presenting.

Nova Jiang and Heather Dewey-Hagborg are both excellent artists who are involving their audiences in their works and breaking the borders between viewing art and creating art. These Jiang and Dewey-Hagborg are allowing their viewers to become participants and even take on the role of being the artist. They are changing the world of art and expanding their audiences are, all by simply allowing them to be involved.

Links:

http://www.eyebeam.org/people/nova-jiang

http://www.novajiang.com/

http://deweyhagborg.com/

http://www.eyebeam.org/people/heather-dewey-hagborg

presentation links

http://deweyhagborg.com/

http://www.eyebeam.org/people/nova-jiang

http://www.novajiang.com/

Crowdsourcing participation documentation

Here are screenshots of the crowd sourcing projects that I participated in by submitting photos via email. 

Crowd sourcing Production

Crowd sourcing involves people all around the world. What draws me to participate in a crowd sourcing  project is the goal and the purpose. For my crowd sourcing project production I chose to create a place where the nearest and dearest in our society can be recognized: senior citizens, also known as old people or the elderly. Recently having lost my grandfather I have both a sad and happy feeling when I see the elderly out and about, and I no longer get frustrated when I drive behind them. WeLoveOldPeople.com is here to show the world how truly wonderful old people are. Whether it is an image that is cute, funny or a tribute to a loved ones memory, photos accompanied by a caption or blurb about the image are welcomed into the gallery following their appearance on the senior spotlight. This is not only a way for those who are delighted by old people to be able to capture and share remarkable moments, but as an opportunity for myself to allow the memory of those who have passed living on.