jshi610

[jshi610]

Guest Lectures

HAMID RAHMANIAN:

I was so excited when I saw his pop out book, as that’s kind of the thing that I want to do most recently. Just see how beautiful the format is, and how well those illustrations are handed in a three dimensional form. It has so many details hidden in each page that’s like an endless treasure. I always like seeing pop out books, but really few can reach this level. I’ll say that it is the thing which I love the most of the whole lecture.

His working methods are also interesting. I remember one scene that he actually showed how he removed the male figure sleeping aside the female and refined it solely as her dreaming. That’s so meaningful in more ways than one, even I don’t know if the artist did that so intention ally, but as a female who can sort understand the females’ social position or rank in his culture, I’m actually moved by his act. It’s also a good example to me to show that how artists can trigger the social innovation by artworks. What makes it even better is that it’s even a pure traditional literature work. That’s almost mind blowing. I really don’t value my traditional background that much, and I think that’s one reason why I’m feeling lost- cause then I have no where to come from. Seeing him doing this act is really inspiring.

I also really appreciate his effort of digging into all these wonderful and rich cultural illustrations that he had. I think his culture has such a elegant heritage or advantage for thousand years, that it should be put out aloud. Also I can’t image the workflows that he had for the book, but I think it can’t be done unless someone really treasures it, interested in it and has a good faith in it. In short, he’s having all virtues of making good art works.

Cultural background is such a sensitive thing. I remember that the chairperson said to my friend, who did surreal paintings and came from China like I do, that she can’t never do real surreal paintings because she was never born in the environment that is required to understand surrealism. I’ll hold my opinion for that, but his words recalled from time to time. It’s definitely not about surrealism only; but it yet feels like people will be trapped with what they born with forever. That’s almost like high/low born bloodlines, and I hated that a lot. However, realities are telling the same story of them being right. As a result, after the first excitement over the artist’s work, old questions came back.

MIRANDA JAVID:

I really like her lecture. Just put aside of her work for a moment, she’s really good at expressing her self and her artworks. I think it is an important part of art too: there aren’t many good artists out there with their work hidden, while there are equally many bad artists living fancy lives. All that somehow depends on if the artist can talk, because sometimes it’s more than just let the artwork speaks itself. In that case, I think Javid did a really successful part as the role.

Coming back to her artworks, I think I prefer them more than other ones. It might be the fact that they are like animations and illustrations with so many detailed touches. To me linework is interesting, but they are hard to control, as sometimes it’s easy to just put too many lines in one composition and makes the whole picture nasty. Javid’s works have this perfect balance though, and it definitely took long time to do them. In this case, I think they look like carefully executed graphics designs.

For the animation part, somehow it looks a bit ‘cute’ to me. This cuteness, to me, is linked with a passion for daily life, as she mentioned that using the sidewalk as the studio. I think it’s more often showed in freshman animations; and when I looked at their graduation works years later, it becomes more mature and sort lost that somehow. It’s like beginner’s luck; everyone wants to keep it. Javid’s animation theme is not cute or lightweighted; : but this sad humor still came out.

For the rest part, I like how it has some clues to show who the artist are, but not too much. Sometimes it’s just tired to watch topics involved with equal rights jumping out of the blue. It’s becoming a business more than anything else now, and it’s very dangerous.

What’s more, graphically this animation is a nice one. It has this direct impression of animation, and it went straight beyond that. To me it also surprised me how she put all these to work. Her style keeps the same even the formats are different; it doesn’t affect the artist’s character at all.

In short, I think it’s my favourite one overall; her works are good, and she can talk as a professional artist. For that part, I’m even kind of envy to some extend.

HSIN-CHEN HUANG:

From the lecture, he works in large-scale interaction, performing, mechanical apparatus, algorithmic computations and video installations. Apart from cultural contents, Huang also shows a deep understanding of art(aesthetic), humanity, technology, design, engineer and digital entertainment. Also one thing especially interested me is that Huang had also been an art director in computer game industry in the past. It feels like Huang gained his knowledge and resources in various aspects, and after years had put them together to form his own way of art output.

During the lecture Huang’s works all showed a cross of art and technology. He also mentioned his(and his viewers’) relationship with society. Eastern Asia always has this controversial and complicated relationship of individual with family/society/’bigger part’; these together with the historical period of recent 50 years, although Huang came from Taiwan and his country shared a different path with Mainland China, have become something that specifically will bring resonance to Mandarin speakers.

Huang also used new technology as a way to share his personal past with new media, and explore the public and private aspects of open source technology. He connected old personal items of him and his family members, and added interactive new media features which could only be viewed in a specific device/environment. This is the combination of the hole exhibition- both the space inside the art work, and the ‘blank’ gallery space outside the gallery work. It also shows the importance of how to construct an exhibition- every space matters.

Huang’s work involved traditional objects, architectures and peoples deeply. There is always debate about whether artists should treasure their born backgrounds- especially when every traditional background share the same or different disadvantages that can be poisonous or harmful to freewill and creativity- two of the most important things to art. What Huang did is that, while showing the good side of traditional beauty,  he wasn’t afraid of showing the urgly side at the same time- but in a very poetic and elegant way. People are expected of art work being ‘beautiful’, then it is art work’s this characteristic which granted the obscure aesthetics when art depicts controversial topics.

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Artist Statement:

v1.5:

From the moment people are born, the journey to death has already begun. As an illustrator, digital artist, film director and visual narrative artist, my style is often described as complicated and meticulous, and I would like to let it be a leading element of all my work. (I work on digital color illustrations, black and white pencil for decorative works and some short experimental micro films.) The fear of being “normal” haunted me, and in turn it became my main motivation when I made my works. In short, I would like to make works that will last, not only in timescale, but also in …..

v1.8:

I describe myself as an illustrator, digital artist, film director and visual narrative artist.As my style is often described as complicated and meticulous, I would like to let it be a leading element of all my work. Since human life is short and unstable, it’s the fact that from the moment one is born, the journey to death has already begun. I want to catch this shifting affright and distress of walking into a destined end, and project the shadow of that into my work such as colored digital landscape illustrations, black and white pencil decorative works, and experimental micro films.

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Digital Art reading (extra week)

While speaking of multiple kinds of manipulation and a seamless combination off art forms, one thing comes to my mind is the dangerous trend of digital artisans’ work rather than digital artists’ work. It is also happening in some ways; just look at concept art for film and games. It’s true that, for example, when we view “The Art of …(a blockbuster title)’, there are some marvelous masterpieces; but there are some, or evermore, cut-and-paste semi finished illustrations which are only guides and suggestions for the next step. Therefore, this easy to manipulate feature can lead digital art to a cheap and rough state; because a ‘work’ can be so easily produced in no times.

For simulated forms of reality, it is only fair to say that digital art will just go further and further. Even before digital era people had already started the process of creating reality; for example, those fairy photos. Digital tools just gave this imaginary reality powerful wings to fly. Now with the development of visual reality, it is time to bring the question about what is reality. If one day, at some point, VR technology can fully replicated every single feature human experienced in life-visual, sound, temperature and touch- and even created more than current technology will be able to offer- then why is it not reality? I think with the development of digital art, the use of the word ‘ reality’ need to be carefully redefined, and use with caution. As the word that was mentioned in the reading, ‘reconstruction’, how and where did this ‘re-‘ come from will become a more and more curious question.

Looking at early digital art works also has a strange feeling of their roughness that was not intentionally made by artists but was limited with the technology of that time. It reminds me of early Gothic paintings of Saint Maria and baby Jesus. Clearly at that point, it is something different than cave painting; artists were trying to paint them like real human. However we all know the results; when looking at them in a historical aspect, they are respectful; however, one cannot help to laugh at baby Jesus’ face which looks like a sad middle aged man. Hundreds of years later, will digital arts of that time look at our work with the same fling in teeth? One noticeable thing is that how fast did digital art methods developed over the past 50 years- we have already started laughing at early funky works. It seems like every digital artists of every era thinks that he/she has already achieved the best time of digital arts, and refuses to make any possible assumption for tomorrow. Because the possibility is way to huge- computers are not something that can be fully depicted by human, both art and scientifically speaking.

Visualization is also an interesting thing. I still think that digital art is the best way to explain science- the first picture of the black hole just simply can never be finished by traditional art, for the accuracies of science. The progress of putting datas to images itself is amazing. Even now, it is fair to say that many digital artists don’t have a clue of how they made their work- How does the computer works? How does photoshop works? Which computer screen should I buy? What’s color correcting and dose that even matters?…Digital art doesn’t require us to be sufficient with tools- unlike traditional methods. It has a chance in it- sometimes computers did the unexpected better job than what was intended to be.

The final thing is about the texture, or how ‘real’ digital art looks like traditional work. While some digital art keeps its digital cleanliness, some of them deliberately added traditional features- for example, the texture of papers. This mixture of digital and traditional always bring a strange feeling. Even ‘print on which kind of paper’ can count that in. It feels like digital art itself is a by-product: if it should be viewed physically on paper/ 3D printed sculptures/ projectors, then why the myth of making them so far away (both in content and in processing) from ‘reality’? People still think digital art as a cheating way. It seems like we don’t need to buy paper, color tubes, or any ‘physical’ art materials. We only need to click on screens. Of course that is not true at all; but most of them won’t hear the background story. It’s not only about what artists want; it is about what, other than artists, will think. 

[jshi610]

Anti-Apathy Project Iteration 01

For this project my start point is this meme on twitter; As the protest in Hong Kong has gone for weeks now, in mainland China media and social networks referred protesters(mainly young people and students) as ‘trash youth of HK’. They also used the word of ‘true man of China’ as a comparison to praise the hardworking and compliance youth in mainland China.

In return, protesters in HK made this meme: when facing political injustice,  ‘trash youth of HK’ choose to go on street and protest for their own rights; meanwhile, ‘true man of China’ choose to kneel in front of governmental agencies and put banners saying’Master Xi save us’, whom should be the source of their misfortune- political injustice.

Also, this picture got banned on Chinese Social Media too- which wasn’t making sense as this is a picture of Nazi Germany. What’s more interesting to me is that the man circled in this picture was actually being ‘apathy’ about the political atmosphere around him, in some ways.

https://twitter.com/newyorkluo/status/1180977988021739520?s=20

Finally is this video. The question for me is, did the person whom took the video should be accused of being apathy? He or she took the video, put it online, but he or she didn’t stop the thing from happening. This kind of thing is way too common and way to usual in China everyday so basically no one will say anything now.

My sketch then for this project will be like this one- one ‘common folk’ will be pinned on the wall and left a dark blood pattern merges with faces/broken banners; in the bottom part will be people looking at him, a few will stand up but more of them will kneel down. There will also be a beam of light coming from the left to indicate some important part for the composition design. Also I would like to intentionally create this religious like compositions as religion problem is part of the political problems too.

It can happen to anyone of us.

-leadership

-alternative sight

-authority 

-different perspective test

-different angle

-emory douglas

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Cut & Paste ​Iteration 02

-lesbian to some extreme: commercial(lgbtq proud month)/fashion(young people claim they are ‘bi’)/pornography;

-looking through a frosted glass; sth we would like to hide;

-glass: a humiliating way to say that someone is gay/lesbian;

-Holga camera, film didn’t come out; scratch; shattered glass;

-merged the soviet poster thing;

-Christmas store products, gift box of calendar.

-this sort of horrible gift boxes with porns; inviting viewers to join; actresses spent more time looking at the camera; aimed at male audiences, creating a atmosphere of ‘sth is missing’

[jshi610]

Critical Essay- Vibeke Sorensen

Being a professor and Chair of the School of Art, Design, and Media at Nanyang Technological University (NTU),an artist and composer, Vibeke Sorensen works in experimental new media including digital multimedia and animation, stereography, interactive architectural installation, and networked visual music performance. As she succeed in these areas, many of her works have been published and exhibited worldwide, including in books, galleries, museums, conferences, performances, film festivals, on cable and broadcast television, and the internet.

 Unlike some other digital artists, Sorensen’s works always have a connection between art and science and/or art-engineering interactions. Many of her works developed new and creative media technologies to help scientific education and programs, such as some NASA space missions. As a new and novel crossing area, her works also tend to call attention to realistic human issues, and show how art can improve society and scientific issues. 

 Coming to her works themselves, at the first glimpse, her works are magnificent and colorful, such as a huge physical pieces called “Illuminations” (2013), which is a large scale illuminated folding screen, an interactive visual-music installation incorporating plant biofeedback, ubiquitous computing, and electro-acoustic music that Sorensen composed. With the vivid changing color and the overwhelming size, this piece had the standard characteristics to be expected as digital art pieces in galleries. Her digital works are huge too, in format speaking- such as the “Mood of the Planet” (2015), a kinetic light-sound sculpture using global, real-time Big Data. Sorensen likes to visualize these invisible essential data about aspects in global lives/environments and outputs them into visual video/graphic/audio parts, which then creates a readable and intuitive result for the audiences. 

 These visualize or auditory results also had shown Sorensen’s personal aesthetics. Apart from these examples listed above, the other work Sorensen showed in the lecture- an unfinished work of the calendar music could suggest that. Sorensen used her way to process the sounds, had their origins for the calendar, to be so beautiful and so sad. This output has the character of passing time and swifting life, and could call the memories of listeners to recall almost at once too many past things popped out. It is not a finished work; it is still under processing. The melody has  many raw or rough parts, makes people wonder what other raw sources of her works would be. Still, I would like to see it as a finished form-maybe with more music-like melody, or maybe with some of the beautiful visual graphics that we have seen in Sorensen’s other video works.

 For even now, digital arts can have very different meanings to most people than those people/artist who works in this area. As digital arts are thought to have connections with world building- most of all, fantasy world building, they are always connected with conceptual art for films/games. As most people still have bias over sci-fi or fantasy arts, the word ‘digital arts’ cannot escape this bias over another bias. What Sorensen shows is that, how digital arts can be the one and even effective media for scientific artwork. With its timeliness, appropriateness and suitability advantage for science, digital arts can relatively quickly and accurately output complicated data that its original form will be very difficult to organize, if not viewed by experts. However, humans tend to trust things that they can confirm with their own eyes and hears. 

 As a result, digital arts are the only ways for us to understand the way how the world works, to some extent. Just as ancient Greeks hand drew the way they thought how Sun and Moon orbits, today we are using digital arts to draw how we think Stars orbits. It will never be a guaranteed right or true answer, but this is the way how humans understand the world. 

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My reason for choosing this one is somehow simply: it’s at the Met Breuer. As I was an illustration student, I used to go to the Met and Met Breuer a lot, but not for modern art. There’s a slight but important difference between those modern art works in the Met and in MOMA. To use a not-so-appropriate comparison, people don’t go to CVS and buy phone- they go to Best Buy.

There is something that is very feminine about Mrinalini Mukherjee’s works. They are very soft, but have their own majesty. Textiles and knots as symbols are so attached to female- especially those in Asia. They are also symbols of Asia, so there’s a combination answers of ‘who’s the artist’ almost jumping directly on the desk. Those textiles, so rich in form and color, also gave me a very warm, if not too overwhelmingly warm feeling. For example, when I was looking at Rundra, I felt like I was looking at a fat woman’s body. That is, before I read the title of this piece and realized that she’s the India divine of storm and violence(and later became Shiva, a much more known name for India divine. 

As a result, my expectation was totally wrong. For a while I was questioned myself, as I also saw those pieces next to Rundra like female figures. However, their title suggested that I’m not that far from the track(keywords such as spring, bird and goddess). It’s also interesting that how often do these words associated with female. These soft status are heavy. Presenting together, they were like deformed monsters in the room. There are also many suspicious or dubious small shape parts in these status that looked like female reproductive organs, and I'm not sure if they are intended or not. Overall, they looked like they were silently melting mountains. 

Other works of Mrinalini Mukherjee are in different materials. Compared to the knot work, in my opinion they didn’t suggested the character of the artist that much. However, there was still this consistency in all her works. Consistency is also an interesting aspect. It’s not just like ‘having your own style’ or something like that; I think consistency is the final stage of an artist, which shows that by this time he/she had completed the inner philosophic system for personal creation/ working and living. These relatively small works had a commercial look. It’s just like those huge Medieval religious paintings we saw in museums and galleries. The huge ones are usually not for personal use- they were meant to be in the church or some holy places. However those small ones were popular among families(rich families though). They liked to put small sized Holy Mother and Baby Jesus in their rooms. Mrinalini Mukherjee’s smaller works shared the same feeling.

Which also brought the next question- does the artist really capable of making art works in two different thinking methods, that is, those for gallery/museum/exhibition and for sales as small duplicate commercial products? I always thought that there’s no way they can be done both at the same time-lifetime, that is. Just like graphic designers and illustrators are two different ‘creatures’. One can be a good designer and an OK illustrators, but one can’t be both. Their modes of thinking are way too different that little common ground could be found. However, here are Mukherjee’s works. Perfect consistency, and very different feelings in ways. 

Overall, I like this show very much. There was this slightly close but yet far away familiar connection, of female, of eastern and of a distant world. Still, I think this is a show that different viewers, with different background stories, will develop their different thoughts and theories. In my opinion, that is the most successful show that one artist can present.

[jshi610]

Reading response week 2

1. 9.5 Theses on Art and Class

In my opinion, I think good art work could never get away from politics. It’s not something that everyone can get away as a human; and it’s not something that avoiding it will make it easier to look.

When there are movements in the streets, for example the situation in Hong Kong right now, related art works are more sensitive to timeliness and accuracy. Specific events happened in the street can be quickly transferred to related art works and put on social media as an effective propaganda. In this case, I think the ‘quality’ of the art work might not be so important; because art works against time. Seldom is a quick art work a good art work; but in some situations, especially when it is related to news and politics, quickness is a very important feature.

This second line that I would like to mention is also crucial. Artists have a characteristic of Narcissism; as a matter of fact it’s nothing bad at all, because making art works and putting one’s own thoughts in front of the world requires Narcissism to some extend. However, when related to ‘big things’ such as politics, some of them might go too far.

This made me think of another example. Not long ago, Kyoto Animation, a beloved Japanese animation studio went through a tragic arson attack. Many stuff members were killed, and many animation art works were destroyed in fire. Shortly after that, on Chinese social media, someone drew a short manga depicting the victims ‘lost their lives because they were trying to save the art works’. This manga got widely spread in no times, followed by huge controversies- because it was not true, as Kyoto Animation clarified at that time. Many people accused the artist of trying to gain attention for herself over other’s tragedy, and the final result was that the artist deleted that post.

There were something typical in this thing. First of all, from aesthetic angle, the manga was badly made. The proportion of human bodies were badly drawn; the lines were awkward; and the artist put too much deliberate make-you-cry features in it. It almost will make people laugh, if not cry in awkward.

However, this manga did got widely spread and made more people know about this tragedy- people outside the Japanese animation lovers. Even the controversial and debate part is, potentially, made people pay more attention to the studio itself and donated more money because they were ‘disgusted by the artist’s selfish to try to get more followers from this tragedy’. 

The ending is also not a good thing in my opinion. Yes, it was a bad art work; but people shouldn’t have the right to call the artist murder and anti-human, and used this to make her deleted that post. It’s just not right. Art should have no boundaries; but still, when involved with politics situations, people are naturally more strict about it, because behind the black and white manga figures, there were once lived humans.

That’s also one point. Due to the barrier of time, space, language and ideology, human just can’t connect with each other in merely words. However, art work is different. They are lines, shapes and colors. You don’t need a MFA to read the pictures; and you don’t need to understand Cantonese to see that one young protester girl lost one of her eyes by the violent police. Suddenly the barrier disappears. However, then the art works served as a mean to the end, not as a finally product. It’s more like people searched the background story after they saw the art works; and they need the background story to complete the art work. Art work once again become a by-product, just as they did in Medieval times to religion. Is that what we want then?

What it means to be a ‘political artist’? Is it just like a title of ‘oil painter’ or ‘digital painter’? Should it be like that? What’s people’s opinion about ‘political artist’ versus ‘quiet countryside landscape artist’? Should there even be a title called ‘political artist’?

When I was little my family already told me to stay away from politics. After that certain year in Chinese history, who were university students at that time became parents, and they certainly didn’t want they children died like once their classmates. My family told me to do technical or scientific jobs as they stayed as far as from politics. Instead I choose art; but still, there are so many times that I’m not sure if it is safe to bring one political issue up on the desk. That is, including call myself ‘want to become a political artist’.

It is one thing to stand on the shore and watch people sinking in the river, and it is another thing to be the people sinking in the river.  The thing is, I don’t think there are such things as ‘few political movements in evidence’.  Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it not exist. In those so-called third world countries everyday political movements are everywhere. They might not adapted in a familiar form to first world countries’ residences, and they might even have the chance to get known to the world before they’ve already been put out by the authorities. So this is an aspect I would like to point out.

And that is just painfully true. There are some fundamentally contrast part between art and politics; they need each other but also try to kill each other in the same way. 

I like the word ‘political aesthetic’ because it made itself sound like a real issue. No, there’s no such thing; everything artist do, think and make is political; we might just not realized that how a small changes in politics may have lethal affects to art world. We are living in a too comfortable situation that make us forget what once it was like. See German in WWII, see Soviet Union and see China now; again, just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it not exist. We are all on the thin ice now and always, like it or not.

2. Comment section of CNN's Photo section

I must admit that, as a Chinese student, I’m not unfamiliar with the feelings and expressions used in those negative comments. Just changing a few words and those comments might even have a nationalism(or in this case should I say regionalism) feeling hidden behind.

The reason why her work upsets them is simply: those people were assuming themselves on a higher or advantage ground than ‘everyday Appalachians’. Two comments actually mentioned that:’...what's SO horrible about all of these people that you're ashamed to be associated with them...' and ‘Not all of us are backwards hicks.’. For example, when talking about the bad influences(they won't bring jobs to this region) of businesses and industries when they saw 'crap like this', Mindy Miller had already firmly believed that all those people in the photos shouldn’t have the right to have a job. This is elitism; by separating themselves from the ‘general public’, they find themselves worthy and above the average. I don’t blame them for that. This is like a human instinct; when visiting the museum, there are ‘serious art lovers’ and ‘visitors’; when eating in a restaurant, there are 'Gourmet' and 'hungry beast'; human need to divide themselves into groups and start the conflict, otherwise they will have to face the fact that all of us are tiny, worthless and boring creatures compared to the universe.

The second sentence I found myself familiar is ‘Where are they? I haven't seen them.’. No matter whether you see them or not, those people will be there. Living in modern days people always assume they will see enough to conclude that they’ve seen the world- but no. I’ve lived in NY for 5 years now but I only visited Flushing twice; even in my hometown there are so many countryside areas that belongs to my city Nanjing, but I, as born and raised in Nanjing, never heard their names. Back to the CNN photos, it’s only 359 comments; and how many people are there in Appalachia? When facing controversial topics posting on the Internet, sometimes people forget that of all those people involved directly to the problem, only a few ‘top’(both in educational and economical) of them have the condition to type on the Internet. Thinking of the hobos’ issue- how many hobos will be able to check a phone or laptop 24/7 and see what people’s about? Having not seen them can’t serve as a strong argument without further information- if Mindy Miller is an expert Appalachia researcher who traveled through all the parts and met everyone in there- which is hardly possible even if he or she really is an Appalachia expert- then this ‘haven’t seen them’ might be a sufficient argument.

The next line will be '...there are backwards people living in these hills, but there are also extremely intelligent people, ..., who live here.'. It’s funny how Mindy Miller’s comment really is a good represent for those upsetting people, since I didn't find any other one more suitable for picked up and shown as an example. Backwards people can also be musicians, artists and civil right leaders. Asians and blacks(seriously, ‘blacks’?That’s word he or she is using to praise them? I’m glad Asians aren’t ‘yellows’) can, or just say were thought as backwards people during periods American history. I do understand what this line is about, but that was a terrible way of expressing it. In this case, Mindy Miller shared the same aspect he or she hated with Stacy Kranitz- no matter what they were trying to say, they made their ‘audience’ misunderstood terribly. 

Finally, my personal thoughts over those photos is they are technically and aesthetically nicely finished. However I still understand those upset comments and I think Stacy Kranitz indeed had something to do with them- her title, her ways of describing it, and the platform she chose to display it. If that was intentional, and she was prepared and accepted the consequences, them they are successful samples of art.  I think art doesn't and don't have any restrictions, but the maker has to bear the responsibility and risk of her own work.

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Reading response week 1

1. F is for Fake

The film is made in both artistically and meticulously way. Although it is cutting and pasting, it requires more focus on each frame- losing attention in one will cause a totally lost in the next. 

True and fake, yes and no are mixed within a lot of rapid changing montage, and the director himself clearly didn't come to the camera for guiding or explaining- he will just make things seem more confused. I think somehow it showed a new trend of documentary film- this kind of technical is widely used right now in editorial work, but documentary is supposed to be ‘true’ and objective. Yet how many truths human once believed were false? Does the final answer for them made the products in the process, such as paintings or books, worthless?

A few sentences catches my attention during the film. The first one will be ‘this world is not a world to make believes’. The reason why I picked it up is: it sounds so postmodernism. Postmodernism art works have the feature that, instead of artist telling viewers everything, viewers need to help the artist complete the whole thing. This film has the same feature. It’s viewers’ imaginations for Elmyr de Hory, Clifford Irving and Picasso helped this ‘copying and pasting’ of existing materials turns into an experimental new film. The format is consist with blurry video quality, feelings from early this era and all those ‘antique’ small details. For example, the girl watching part is clearly something made out of intentional. However, it is such a common way used in normal documentaries that we hardly questioned about it until now. Once there were news about BBC’s natural documentaries used faked videos, but aren’t they beautiful? Disney’s documentary of Chinese animals used footage of different individual animals but to tell the story of one imaginary snow leopard mother(because they give her a name). It’s all fake.

Then it comes to the next line :’...it's whether it's a good fake or a bad fake.’. To me this idea is simple. I’m actually thinking about Miao Ming and her chinternetplus. To be honest, I don’t like this work. The first reason is, she had this perfect topic but she only touched the surface. The mystery behind counterfeit ideology that have special Chinese characteristic is so deep that diving from any point can get you to that, but not as a thoughtful artistic conclusion. I’ll just leave it here for that, because the second reason is the one involving good or bad fake: it doesn’t look like a finished project. Aesthetically, it’s not good. When I use the word aesthetically I didn’t mean that the work should be beautiful, but it should make a unique system runs only for itself.  A good fake is Elmyr’s fake; it’s close enough to the original in both the format and the quality; and it has such a legendary aftermath. It is also Orson Welles’s good fake; he faked those footage together and forged a new film. In this case, I like the title ‘true faker’ that was used in the film. The word itself may be against instinct; but as long as it can make sense, then it is a meaningful prize.

I still don’t like the idea about ‘fake is as good as a real one, the more the better’. However, I don’t want to make ‘fake’ work doesn’t mean that I don’t want to appreciate ‘fake’ work. No, there is something philosophically and aesthetically very beautiful about it; and I do appreciate this film, along with other materials we have discussed now during this class, to help me see that.

2. The Counter Feats of Elaine Sturtevant (1924-2014)

I have to admit that this essay is so complicated to understand that even till now I’m still not sure if I understand it correctly. It seems to me that I can only make fragments of comment over specific words(maybe not even what the author tried to say in using them in the article). 

One thing I found amazing about this article is that it offers such a detailed and solid theoretical explain to Sturtevant's and all appropriation works. No matter whether readers will agree with some controversial opinions(basically every small title) or not, this is a successful essay in building and arguing with a consistent and self-contained theory. It reminds me how critics, or introducers will affect one’s opinion on the artists. 

Modern art and artists have the dangerous trend of being regarded as products of elitism. It’s not a new thing to be honest- art always has an elitism side, the question is whether it is intentional or not. In Sturtevant's case, her point is about thinking rather than seeing. At the same time, she wanted viewers to look at them again and anew. A simple starting point, but easily to be underestimated. This article itself is somehow showing the power of looking again; just take a look at some of the most powerful sentences:

If culture then is a vast process of appropriation, we might go on to say that mass culture is the process of (massively) appropriating appropriations. 

The image, as we argued in the introduction, is permanently engaged in this practice of intericonicity, engaged with images of the past, images of its own gestation, but also images in its future. 

Artists copy, artists appropriate, culture appropriates, mass culture appropriates appropriations... massively.

the French writer is here relating the impulse to seek another image behind every image to a scene concealed within the human subject, a scene invisible to that subject as it is the scene in which the subject itself was conceived. 

Does the writer just try to make up numbers of words? I don’t think so. In repeating the important keywords from time to time, it will unconsciously leave a deep impression that the reader won’t be able to forget for at least the next few days, if not from now on(depending on whether he or she likes this kind of work or not). 

One last thing is that it is interesting how the writer describes culture culture appropriates in 1.3. It’s so calm and neutral. That’s the way many things should be described as; it’s not as if some specific things are targeted, but all things are targeted. Trying to claim that something is the only victim just won’t help the conversation at all.

[jshi610]

Appropriation Artist: Anne Collier

Anne Collier is an American visual artist who use disassembled materials from mass media

and pop culture(such as record covers, magazines, calendars, vintage books, posters and other ephemera) from 1960s-1980s; That is,  using appropriated photographic images to "... uncouples the machinery of appropriation so that her found images seem weightless, holding their obvious meaning in abeyance."¹

Collier used a manual 4-by-5-inch camera and chemical processing and printing to make her works. With this approach, she combined existing still-life photographic materials in the past rather than nowadays to arrange meticulous compositions and examine the meanings and cultural value in photographic images.

Not only is Collier’s works are responses to an earlier generation’s visual culture, but she also added new and urgent matter of this era to them. The essence and meaning of photography, consumerism, feminism, self-identity, power and gender problems could found their psychological associations in Collier’s works, which the artist herself didn’t give much personal expression but to leave viewers with endless interpretation. By using appropriation, Collier examined the mechanisms of photography, as "Photography, since its very beginning, has been self-refiexive, with photos and cameras themselves becoming subject matter for further forays into imagemaking."² 

Recalling historical aspects while appropriating and commodifying culture and gender photography, Collier made her unique retrospective to the past to a profound prophecy for now and the future.

¹: Brian Dillon, Frieze art magazine

²: Images of Images: Notes on Anne Collier's and Kotama Bouabane's photo practices., Bronstein, Nora, Afterimage. Jan/Feb2017, Vol. 44 Issue 4, p2-5. 4p

References:

1. Images of Images: Notes on Anne Collier's and Kotama Bouabane's photo practices., Bronstein, Nora, Afterimage. Jan/Feb2017, Vol. 44 Issue 4, p2-5. 4p

2.https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/27/arts/design/anne-collier.html

3.https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2012/newphotography/anne-collier/

4. Museum of contemporary art: Anne Collier, MacMillan, Kyle, Art in America. March 2015, Vol. 103 Issue 3, p162, 1 p.

5. Anne Collier., Aperture; Spring2019, Issue 234, p8-8, 1/2p, 1 Color Photograph

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Plan for work presenting next week

Format: PPT

1. Present the finish work.

2. Quick background infos: how is this work related to my past educational background.

2. Explain the finish work- what is it about; It’s a digital work, and which softwares were used in the process; How it can represent my conceptual, technical and aesthetic concerns.

3. Show the progress: drafts, references, original photo reference, and where did the idea comes from

4. Small thoughts(related to the work) on matte painting, conceptual art for game/film design and using excisting material; why I did that in the past and why I switched to a different approch now.

5. About future: how is this work related what I would like to do in the upcoming 2 years as MFA DDA student.

6.Conclusion.