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Research Journal #4
Donald Judd - 100 Boxes
FORM: One hundred aluminum boxes in a room, each with a slightly different design.
CONTENT: The boxes are meant to inform the space and create interesting visuals with the light from the sun reflecting off of all the faces of the boxes.
PROCESS: Boxes were created using mill aluminum and fitted together with extreme precision
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Research Journal #3
Richard Serra - Torqued Spiral (Open Left Closed Right)
FORM: A giant spiral of metal.
CONTENT: The work is meant to emphasize the beauty of the material and the process. It is meant to overwhelm the viewer with scale and get them lost inside it.
PROCESS: Giant sheets of weathering steel were welded together in a spiral shape.
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Research Journal #2
Andy Goldsworth - Strangler Cairn
http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/c64f889cc400a04ab6002ea81c0c3c36
FORM: An egg-shaped pile of rocks with a seed inside.
CONTENT: Eventually the seed inside the rocks will grow and overtake the work. It is meant to show how gentle and violent nature can be. It also caused a lot of controversy since many of the locals didn’t appreciate spending $700,000 in tax money for a pile of rocks.
PROCESS: Granite was shipped in from a nearby quarry and stacked into the shape of an egg. A seed was planted inside.
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Research Journal #1
Robert Smithson - Spiral Jetty
FORM: Mud, water, rocks, salt, microorganisms, shellfish in a spiral
CONTENT: Smithson created a piece of land for an artistic purpose. In theory, it should last much longer than himself or any of the people viewing it.
PROCESS: A large amount of dirt and rock was bulldozed into the Great Salt Lake in a spiral.
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Project 4 Post-critique Response
I agreed with a lot of the feedback I got, even though most of it was about my printing process. I’ll be sure to use the printing center at Ford next time. Adding more detail and using the actual blueprinting process to create the images would definitely be an improvement. Higher resolution or larger text would have also helped make it look more polished and bring the level of craft up substantially. I might want to re-print these at a later date since this particular place means a lot to me, but for now spending $150 on it enough for me.
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Project 4 progress
I took a bunch of screenshots of my minecraft house for reference.
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Intent Statement
I am going to make a blueprint of a house I made in Minecraft that I spent a large amount of time in with my friends. The blueprint will include a separate image for each floor of the house, and it will be printed from the LFP in the EMU library. The resulting prints will be hung on the wall in Sherzer.
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Post-Critique Response
I think my project went very well. There were many points within the topic of my identity that I wanted to discuss, and I think after some explanation they came across. A few suggestions for my piece sought for more information about the underlying process that was generating the image, and I can agree with that sentiment. I will certainly continue to improve it and make it more understandable without me in the room. During the process, I learned a bit about p5.js for displaying shapes in a browser, and a bit about fingerprints and the different types of fingerprints.
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Project 1 Update
People don’t want to post on my website. feelsbadman
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Intent Statement
FORM: Framed print of a generated image.
PROCESS: I will simulated annealing to create an image that meets particular criteria that define a “good” image. These criteria will be defined by me, and will be based on my physical characteristics, as well as what qualities I like in a picture.
CONTENT: This is a representation of my dual identity as a programmer and an artist. The image will represent me, and the kind of art that I strive to produce.
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Reading Response
I thought the reading touched on a lot of interesting aspects of time. Like how different cultures view the passage of time. Some cultures view it as a straight line that you can never go backwards on. Other cultures see it as a cycle that loops back on itself and never ends. The different emotions linked to time like nostalgia are something I’ve never really thought of before, but make sense to me now. Unfortunately I don’t have much to say about the works described in the article. The high contrast black and white really make it hard to focus on the details of the works and make them look kinda bad. Regardless, I will certainly be considering some of the methods to describe time in the reading, like the native American masks that reveal other masks underneath. I think non-western views of time are very interesting, and may find their way into future works of mine.
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Podcast Responses
Story 1: Monkeys
I thought the discussion was very interesting. I’ve always liked to think of where exactly a person’s most basic “self” is. I always liked to think of slowly taking a person apart, and picking out which part is “Joe” and which parts are “Joe’s ___”. One of the guests said that the self is located where the neurons fire. It’s interesting to think of a person being a system rather than a concrete object, and it’s slightly frightening to think that I physically don’t exist. There are a lot of thought experiments that this idea would make interesting discussions with, like the idea of the teleporter, or storing people’s minds in computers, and I think this idea makes a lot of sense. But at the same time, I’m pretty attached to my body, and I know that without it, I wouldn’t exist. Although, if there happens to be an identical system of currents somewhere else in the universe, maybe I would exist.
Story 2: Change
I’ve seen talks and documentaries about significant changes in personality before. They give a message that contradicts the first one - that we are bound to our bodies, and that when our bodies change, we change as well. I’ve known quite a few people who, over time, have become a completely different person just due to changes in their personality. I know a few people who have undergone a sex change operation and now prefer to go by a different name. I think the idea of the self is really hard to pin down, and this story shows that notion perfectly. What we think is unquestionably “me” could change at an instant, and “I” could be completely destroyed without a moment’s notice.
Story 3: Little People
This story was about how there are some things in your brain that aren’t you. They act by themselves and can do strange things that even person attached to them can’t predict. The story of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde came from this. I thought it was a strange thing to think about. I always thought of my brain as the one thing that was truly me. To think that my brain also has a mind of its own is a little spooky, and a little intriguing. I think after this third story I would especially like to reiterate that the idea of the self is hard to identify. I don’t think people have really figured out what the self is, and I’m not totally sure they will in my lifetime either.
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Who Am I?
My Name is Richard Michael Kalvaitis. I was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and I have lived there, New Hampshire, Michigan, and very briefly in California during an age that I don’t remember (or so I’m told). I’m a middle-class straight white male from the suburbs of the midwest, and I identify as a middlle-class straight white male from the suburbs of the midwest. I have made art, I have made programs, I have made games, and I have made music. I wouldn’t necessarily call myself an artist or a programmer or a game designer or a musician. You can’t just be all of those things at the same time. Don’t be silly.
I work as a research assistant at Eastern Michigan University. We are developing a framework for detecting false injection attacks on Smart Meters. I am also working on a video game with a friend of mine about magic spellcasters where players can build their own spells by mixing mechanics together on the fly. The story needs fleshing out, but we settled on a world where magic is mundane, so a magician goes searching for “real magic.” I’m also working on a functioning quadcopter made out of cardboard and cheap electronics from the internet. I have no artistic or musical side projects at the moment, though I would like to learn how to improvise ambient music for use in Dungeons and Dragons (hey, it’s fun - judge me for something else.)
I have problems with self-confidence and seek validation from others. I laugh and joke all the time but secretly I hate myself. I waste a lot of my time playing video games. My favorites are Minecraft, Spec Ops: The Line, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, and Undertale deserves to be on this list too, even though I hate associating myself with the community of people who tell everyone they love Undertale. I have to admit, it is a very good game. I play League of Legends even though I don’t really like it anymore. It’s something to do with my friends. I also play Oldschool Runescape. I got level 99 magic just the other day. I’m both proud and ashamed.
I’m 23 years old, and I live with my parents. I worked at a restaurant for four and a half years before I had enough money to pay for college and leave the foodservice industry - hopefully forever. I graduate this semester, but that’s on the assumption that I can get everything done on time. There’s a scar on my right foot from a trash bag that had an open can of pizza sauce in it. It was really gross.
My greatest accomplishment is my (almost complete) degree in Computer Science. I struggled for what seemed like much longer than everyone else learning the basics. I worked as a tutor for low-level classes in the Computer Science department, and as a lab assistant in COSC 211 here at EMU. I was mentioned positively several times in the course evaluations. I used to play in a Greek band. I pretended to be Greek and played the drums for money.
My favorite color is #0000FF. My favorite food is heavily Americanized sushi. I’m a virgo, and I think astrology is bullshit. I’m pretty OK at a few things. I’ve made several attempts at being an artist.
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Research Journal 5
Tanya Habjouqa - cp_IMG_6944_flat_2.psd
Form: Picture of a woman seated n a bench.
Process: Photography/basic Photoshop touchup.
Content: This piece is about what it means to be a woman in Gaza. In Gaza, women have limited freedoms, and this scene is of a small every day pleasure taken by this person in particular - resting on a bench between college classes. It shows that Gaza isn’t quite as radically anti-woman as mainstream media would let on - she is taking college classes on her own - but it also shows that there are still some serious problems with how women are treated in that area of the world. This image sort of implies that this short rest is the highlight of her day, and that her personal freedoms don’t extend much farther than this.
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Research Journal 4
Lucas Schurkamp - Cinnamon Taoist Crunch
Form: A mannequin wearing a mask made out of Cinnamon Toast Crunch®
Process: The cereal pieces appear to be glued to an underlying mask and tied to the mannequin.
Content: This work shows that “you are what you eat” but also makes an interesting statement on the “masks” we wear in our every day lives, like a sugary outer crust to hide whatever real thoughts are underneath. It shows that for some, their positive exterior may simply be a thick facade, and that the facades we use may be hiding our real inner beauty.
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Progress 5
Starting to see some less appropriate stuff come out, but very little activity overall. I think its time to start posting this on some more public places to get some more hits.
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Research Journal 3
Richard Prince - Untitled
Form: Pencil drawing of a Marlboro advertisement next to a magazine ad.
Process: He drew a picture of an ad on a piece of paper, ripped an ad out of a magazine, and mounted them both on the wall in the same frame.
Content: This piece is meant to show the constructed nature of American masculinity. The idea of a “real man” in America is largely created by advertisers and media in an attempt to sell people things. It brings to mind all the other commercials that prey on men’s fragile sexual identities like Ford trucks, Coke Zero’s “it’s not for women” campaign, and of course, cigarettes.
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