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In progress work for assignment 4

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Assignment 4 Artist Statement

For this assignment I have six sets of images. I have glitched all of the pictures of man made objects and left the pictures of natural objects and landscapes alone. This is meant to represent how Covid has affected mankind and "glitched" our world as we know it, but that  nature is largely unaffected and stable. This is meant to represent how nature is constant and will always be there even when our lives seem like they are a mess. The glitches were left without color to give a dark tone to them in comparison to the pictures of nature which, unaffected by the “Glitch” that is Covid, retained their color. I went for a glitch effect that is dizzying to add to the fact that this time is so confusing.

Artist Statement

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In progress work for artist presentation

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Yutaka Sho Presentation

The presentation was started off by Professor Dangelo introducing the guest speaker for the art and architecture series. Our guest speaker was Yutaka Sho, a professor at Syracuse university. Yutaka was given multiple awards recently for her work in architecture. Yutaka bang her talk by talking about the first section of the talk, titled:  Architectural Procsses as Commons: Participatory Construction in Rwanda. Yutaka talked about how the area of operation that they chose for their work was somewhere that couldn’t afford to do the work themselves so they focused on helping. Yutaka and her team wanted to build a common in Rwanda for the people their to use sustainably. Yutaka talked about the idea of governing the commons. She talked about Elinor Ostroms eight ways to govern the commons in a way that is sustainable. “1. clearly defines the contents of the common pool resource and effective exclusion of external un-entitled parties. 2. The appropriation and provision of common resources that are adapted to local conditions. 3. Collective- choice arrangements that allow most resource appropriators to participate in the decision- making process. 4. Effective monitoring by monitors who are part of or accountable to the appropriators. 5. A scale of graduated sanctions for resource appropriators who violate community rules. 6. Mechanisms of conflict resolution that are cheap  and easy access. 7. Self-determination of the community recognized by higher level authorities. 8. In the case of larger common pool resources, organization in the form of multiple layers of nested enterprises, with small local CPR’s a the base level.”

Yutaka talked about how there were difficulties in building their because of geographic barriers as well as expenses. Yutaka explained the ways in which they implemented their plans for the commons and the difficulties they faced. They seeked to educate women in the area to be trained in construction to give them jobs as well as to help in the process. They also asked current workers to use the site as a training site to offer them new skills in return for their help. Yutaka went through the multiple work projects that they created and the buildings that they made and how they made them accessible to everyone by utilizing the surrounding landscape of the buildings. The left over space in the commons was used to produce food. Yutaka said that one of her favorite pieces in the project was the retaining wall that they built so that the soil doesn't get washed out. She described how they did it by creating terraces as a retaining wall and used this technique throughout the project as a cheaper alternative to using concrete walls. They also built a house for the workers and held a vote among them and decide who deserved the house the most.

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Janette Gayle Presentation

The Janette Gayle presentation was a discussion about what Janette called “Dressing for change: the Black political aesthetic in early 20th sentient New York City”. Janette talked about Black Dressmaking and how it played a critical role in black fashion in the Harlem Renaissance. The thesis of Janette’s talk was this: “I argue that dress played a critical role in the early twentieth century black struggle for inclusion in the nation and for the attainment of equal standing. The use of dress to accomplish this work was not new. Beginning in slavery, and continuing into the present, black women have employed forms of sarrorial expression to push back against notions of black degradation and inferiority used to exclude them.” 

Janette talked about how clothing was a “visual marker of blacks social status” and how during slavery blacks typically wore what were called “White plains” which were very basic cheap cotton clothing. Janette talked about how slaves challenged white assumptions and how they started creating their own aesthetic, making clothing with bright colors and refashioned old expensive garments from elites. Janette discussed how Blacks decided to wear this clothing to challenge white supremacy and to make a statement by wearing clothing that was seen as “white”. Janette talked about how this made white elites angry and that laws were passed to prevent African Americans from wearing these nice clothes out in public. The effectiveness of these laws were debatable and Blacks still continued to wear nice clothing in public to make a statement. These dresses created a mix between an african and european aesthetic which was unique at the time.  

Janette talked about how “aesthetic politics were an important aspect of forging the american republic” and how dress was central to the fashioning of an american national identity. Janette said that creating their own form of dress was a national american identity that was unique.

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For my assignment I decided to tell the story of how this semester has gone in my fraternity. Since we can’t have anyone over or have any parties it gets pretty lonely around the house compared to how it used to be. So for my collage I decided to take pictures of our living room and edit my friends from the house into the living room to make it look as though there is a party going on since we can’t have any parties. I decided to collage the pictures of the room to create one big distorted room as well as mixing to pictures of my friends to give a distorted look to a picture that is meant to represent a confusing time.

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Working on glitches in class

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Glitch

The reading: Compression Aesthetics: Glitch From the Avant-Garde to Kanye West By Carolyn Kane, gives insight onto the use of technical noise in art. Kane starts the article by talking about how in modern times technical noise is seen as a bad thing because of how technologically advanced we have become and noise or glitches is seen as a flaw. Kane talks about how we can turn what we see as a flaw into art. The use of glitch in modern art was seen by Kane as “disrupting convention and expectation”. Kane explains that the history of modern art can be seen as “construed as a glitch and compression of Enlightenment epistemology”. She explains how modern art is created by thinking out of the box and not following the constraints of the old renaissance based perspective that focused on perfection. This modern art looks at imperfection itself as art. Kane brings up an example of this in Andy Warhol’s piece which used glitches in film for an artistic purpose and it was revolutionary at the time. Warhol purposefully allowed light to expose film in between frames and set the stage for full stop effects. A technique that ended up being adopted by other film makers for dramatic use. This is an example of how what was seen as a glitch at the time was used for a specific purpose and ended up being used for practical reasons. I have seen glitch used in many of todays music videos to create interesting aesthetics and themes for the videos. There is also glitch in the music itself, with many electronic music makers using sounds that sound as if there is a glitch in the music and doing it on purpose for music.  Glitch has been used for comedic reasons in advertisements that I have seen but not as much for an artistic purpose.  

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Assignment reflection #4

I believe that Glitch design is a very real trend in art and pop culture. The article shows glitch being used in art to display an edgy futuristic aesthetic. The article talks about how glitch has been used in many horror movies to present an uneasy feeling and I myself have seen this in horror movies. I have noticed glitch being used a lot in music videos to give the video a very psychedelic vibe. What I thought was very interesting about the article was the comparison between glitch designs and the pixel like rug, I have a rug just like that in my house and always thought that the design was interesting and its interesting that those rugs are what seemed to predict glitch movement. An interesting example from the article is the picture of the football player, the glitch design gives the picture a modern feel when the picture of the player was from the early 1900’s long before computer glitches were a thing.  I also found it interesting how the article compares glitch art to counter culture because glitch art goes away from the idea of “Perfect art”. 

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This collage is supposed to point out the construction workers who created the city and what it took to make the city, the microscope and magnifying glass come out of a cemetery as a tribute to the workers who lost their lives building the city

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Assignment #3 reflection

The article about Lorna Simpson titled How artist Lorna Simpson makes new meaning from old materials by Ellie Jean Goodman discusses Simpsons work displaying things that might not make sense to a viewer who doesn’t have much context. One of the most prominent works of art in the article is the picture of the Iceberg, to the normal person looking at an iceberg might not make much sense but if given the context, he iceberg is meant to represent time moving slowly and how black americans are facing a struggle that isn’t going away. SImpsons work typically turns something normal and gives it more meaning. That is something we are looking to do in the collage assignment, taking pictures of things important to use but that others might not understand. The Heartfield documentary shows us how we can use collages to make a statement. Heartfield used his work in protest of German Nationalism, this shows us that we can use photomontage in a way to tell a story, in the case of the assignment to tell a story about ourselves.

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Hoch Summary

I will be summarizing the reading The Photomontages of Hanna Hoch written by Peter Boswell, Maria Makela, Carolyn Lanchner,and Kristin Makholm. The reading discusses the art exhibition in which Hanna Hoch made “Composed solely of photographs and photographic reproductions that Hoch had cut from widely accessible mass-media periodicals, the work was remarkably self-effacing in style” (Page 49). The reading shows us that Hoch’s work wasn’t understood correctly and that her most famous and studied work was an expectation to the trend in Hoch’s work. 

The reading discusses Hanna Hoch’s upbringing and how her past shaped the way she made art. Hoch was born in 1889 in Gotha, her father was a higher up of an insurance company and her mother was a painter. Hoch was said to have lived a very privileged lifestyle, and this contributed to her ability to spend her time painting. According to the reading, her parents wanted her to pursue applied arts rather than the fine arts because that was een as the safer career path at the time. 

According to the reading, Hoch encountered expressionism when she came to Berlin in 1912. Hoch began bringing art expressionist art into her decorative art and combined them to make fabric patterns. Hoch got a job from 1916-1926 on the editorial staff of Ullstein Verlag's handiwork division, using her skills she developed creating art. 

Later on, Hoch began making art that referred to race and gender. Using art as a way to express her beliefs about gender and race expression. I think the Hoch’s work is relevant today and fits the trend in modern art today where race and gender are often the focus.

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Lighting Assignment Photos

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Assignment 2 Reflection

The Jason Lazarus Too Hard to Keep video is a compilation of pictures of people who want to get rid of pictures that are too difficult for them to hold onto, the pictures range from pictures of abuse and wedding pictures. The pictures were put up on a wall by Jason and the piece is meant to show the viewer the human aspect of sorting the pictures along the wall and how it is meant to be very human and not look like a museum. This relates to the Neither Ordinary or Extraordinary assignment because in our assignment we are making a list of important events in our lives that other people may not relate to. In Too Hard to Keep the viewer doesn’t really have any context to the pictures, just like in our assignment people might not understand why it’s important.

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Something and Nothing response

Charlotte Cotton’s, Something and Nothing reading explains how photography can make something that seems ordinary very interesting. Cotton shows pictures of everyday things that artists have used to create remarkable pieces of art. Artists can manipulate everyday objects and photograph them in such a way that can create different meanings for the object as well as orienting them in such a way that makes something that would be boring an interesting thing to look at. One of my favorite examples from the reading was the picture of Wim Wenders Wallin Paris Texas, which is a picture of a wall of a building where the paint was cracking in a way that exposes the original brick structure of the building. The picture is simply just of a wall but it displays a message to the viewer of abandonment and that the wall hasn’t been getting taken care of. It also makes the viewer think of what the building looked like in the past since you can see the original brick structure behind the paint. Richard Wentworth’s work Kings Cross, London, does the same type of thing, Wentworth took a picture of debris from a car and although it is just a picture of an old car door it makes you wonder how it got that way and makes you wonder about the owner of the car and if it was damaged in a car accident. The reading can be inspirational for our next assignment because we can look at photography in a different way and we can try to manipulate everyday objects and settings and give them their own meaning because of the way we photograph them. 

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In progress work for Rephrasing assignment

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Aperture Vision and Justice

The artists in the article showed the ways in which art can be used to take a stand for social issues and that is what we are doing in the rephrasing assignment. In the article “Vison and Justice” it displays pieces of art that make the viewer think about social issues. One of the pieces show a newspaper painted onto a brick wall in Brooklyn that has an article about a boy who was killed, the painting is very moving and shows the boy in his cap and gown from graduation and the headline is “a teenager with promise”. Another example from the article of social issues is a picture of a storefront that has a sign saying “I am an American” the context is that it is an Asian American owned store during World War Two, when Asian Americans were being oppressed because of the fear of Asian powers during the war. For the rephrasing assignment the class is seeking to make a statement about different social issues and thinking of places around campus to display them and get the rest of the HWS community to think about these issues.