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SARAH RODIGARI’s INPUT -> Week 12 (Oct 19)

Sarah’s potential insights into conceptual discussion: Through the act of playing the game what do I learn or discover? Could just be the name of someone else. Conversational Qs supplementary. How do they play? How many? Together? Team building is usually around an idea. Politics.. Topic building in these games.

Stakes = winning = want to participate. What’s in it for them? Beyond that they have to out of academic respect.

Lolly bribe. Too niche? I mean, when I described it to other groups they were sold on the chance just to have the experience without any tangible thing in it for them (see below).

Sarah expressed concerns that our plans lacked structure, and the way I explained them to her didn’t fit her expectation, “That’s not a work” was pretty hard hitting.  She also expressed concern over the concept, that there should be some sort of conversation or dialogue inspired by the event or piece.

We need to reshape our event and concept so it’s more structured, and has clearer outcomes.

FROM -> A pop-up in-class flash event: Minute-To-Win-It style party games geared towards stimulating the bonding of the collaborative classroom environment in a more exciting, fun and relational way reflective to that of a youth group or corporate team building exercise.

TO -> Examining the concept of time, stress, and their relation to collaboration, creativity, fun and motivation.

TALKING TO GROUPS/SHARING WORK IDEAS

Talked to the group exploring Korean Valentines (14th of every month) and the Body Politics/branding group.

Both really enjoyed our concept and initial examples and wanted to participate in our idea of an all inclusive performative working event/example of adults playing childrens’s party games, or team building.

Directed Research:

Alan Kaprow and ‘The Happening’

Couldn’t find a lot of information that felt relevant to our initial work, concept, or what we wanted to achieve. I.e. informality and smaller scale interaction/collaboration

However, a google image search for, “happening kaprow”, expanded our conceptual understanding of the artistic style event. Audience members were included mostly to watch or engage with the work from within the work itself, and be present while the work ‘happened’ around them. We wanted the audience to BE the work, be EMBODIED in the work, and create a more positive  bonding experience.

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=happenings+kaprow&rlz=1C5CHFA_enAU718AU720&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjnwZnJvqHeAhXFdt4KHYqWBUEQ_AUIDigB&biw=1154&bih=765

http://www.superweirdsubstance.com/allan-kaprow-happenings-new-york-scene/

An excerpt from Allan Kaprow’s writings, describing a “kaleidoscopic sampling of some of their great moments” and “their purpose and place in art” of “decided impact��� but with “no beginning, middle or end”.

Relational Aesthetics

http://www.art-agenda.com/reviews/the-great-acceleration-art-in-the-anthropocene/  exemplifies some clear examples of relational aesthetics, but didn’t really explain why. We think they were to do with ergonomics, or the interaction between body and sculpture but struggled to apply them.

Opavivará, Formosa Decelerator, 2014.

Other examples of interactive work driven by people’s contribution over time.

http://candychang.com/ Candy Chang creates a lot of installation based, fill-in-the-blank style work. We wanted our subjects/audience members to be more in the moment participatory, united together in a chaotic compression  under limited time instead of extended time so we could engage with the class in our allotted 10 minutes.

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RESEARCH

CONCEPTUAL EXPLORATION/Brainstorm:

Time + Stress

Corporate + Stress

Adulthood + Childhood -> Stress vs. wonder

Exploring how the limits of deadlines affect us.

Passage of time - One Year vs. One Month vs.  the closely observable One Minute.

Exploring stress culture and moderation

Relationship between adult stresses and childhood wonder

Subverting games and icons of stress relief under a time limitation to induce stress.

Stress can be a force for positive motivation, however is corrupt?

Multicultural lens or inter-cultural exploration of stress.

Japan - good work ethic, asleep at work/overworked.

Australia - hates stress, fights for laid back, flexible hours, ‘slackers’.

Singapore - hot climate, social expectation to wear business attire, uphold professional image, stressful, leads to dehydration and decreased productivity. Casual clothing days.

Art/University student pressure - Will we ever make it? Success stories “I dropped out of Harvard and now I’m RICH” What about those who failed? Or about those who finished their degrees and did nothing with them?

IF you love it, do it! But once your passion becomes your job ___ It’s work. And work is hard.

http://artpulsemagazine.com/institutional-stress-when-bureaucracy-replaces-art

http://contemporaryartmagazine.net/the-link-between-stress-relief-and-art-in-the-workplace/

TO RESEARCH: Contemporary works involving party games, teamwork or food incentives. Play.

FOUND: corporate parties, youth camps, children’s parties > complementary to our concept, but not explicitly artistically engaged.

E.g. Enterprises like http://mindgallery.com.au/ -> An Australian group that facilitates team building activities through collaborative art making with people who are not typically regular ‘artists’ or trained artistic practitioners to foster unity in the workplace.

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mandalaaaaa

<a href="https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/floral-background-design_915767.htm">Designed by Visnezh</a>

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THERE’S NOTHING HERE.

I mean, there is, but I have not met the criteria for the assessment.

There is no - Concept Statement

No final work.

Just 1 experiment.            (although I guess that’s a final)

Some research, that was NOT practice led, beyond the Hand/Ecology poster from my first assessment.

No excuses.

It’s just not there ;-;

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Remnants of work: Where I wanted to go.

The focus of my experimental works is to discover or create a representation for the Ecology of the human body. Particular to this focus was the idea of the nervous system. 

EXPERIMENT IDEAS

Fractal Generation - reflect biological systems in a digital and mathematically perfect format.

Fractal Animated/video projection - immerse, wrap or enclose the body in a space in 

Lichtenberg Figures. Print. Wood? Etc. Nature interfering with body. nervous/electrical pattern.

(last resort) Water colour nervous system - paint and blow, let water and paper generate a connected system of rivulets.

Don’t Think - give a performer a simple task, shout at them new tasks, see if they get confused or deviate from the task. Sensory overload and intimidation. Recorded or in-class performance. Then play a recording of parental disdain or discipline. - necessary to learn from mistakes, and critique them, but can we condemn someone for them. Justice? 

CONCEPTUAL IDEAS

Aspects of global ecology perhaps too big to grapple with or understand. Go small. Go personal. Relatable. Mass. The Human Body. How we identify as a species. What makes us fundamentally the same. Just with variation (e.g. genetic anomalies, systems adapted to different environments or body shapes).

Ecological interrelation and connections. - Between physical body and mental state. Which has the most influence? There is an imbalance of power and a discord. 

Can we improve either of these faculties or are we destined to remain in decline? Or are we all perfect just the way we are?

Our hormones, sustaining nutrition and many physical imbalances may be attributed to mental state and vice versa. Eg. Depression: clinical/chronic is the physical manipulating the mental. Whereas we can be trained to have a higher pain tolerance through mental fortitude and examples of experience.

The separation of Mental and Physical/Bodily aspects of the human grows stronger. Many issues arise from this. Do we need to reconnect to our ecology or is this move positive, given the failure and degeneration of the body? Where is our identity, if both are liable to failure? Fluid identity and acceptance is great, but if there’s nothing to ground us, then dissociation becomes more common.

Issues of pyschological/physical dissonance or limitation e.g. gender, disability etc. Sacrificing scientific understanding of the body or 'fact' for a ‘greater' or perceived final/whole experience based on attaining/reconciling mental conceptions and feelings, both your own, and also requiring others to support you.

Personal: I read a brief scientific study on the development of the adolescent brain and remember reading articles in school. What really stuck with me, was how the prefrontal cortex: responsible for immediate actions and processes, and the remainder of the brain: including long term memory and decision making, would develop almost separately to each other. The fullness of neural pathways most have as a rational or 'functional' adult, notably association and interpreting and selecting consequential paths or choices don't exist. There's a disconnect. As we grow and learn consequences and we continue forging neural pathways.  I think about this a lot, because there are many events I recall as a child or a teen, where I made a stupid decision, and got in trouble for it. Visceral experiences that stay with you.  I felt powerless over my own body and decisions, but had to deal with the consequences. And rightfully so!

“I don’t know what I was thinking” - A preface or suffix to stories we tell.

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I’ve not a nervous system. I’m a nervous system.

@art-of-risa (via art-of-risa)

A cultural quote or joke that has permeated anxiety culture.

An example of the mental claim and process overtaking, determining and overpowering the physical.

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This journey has taught me a lot. I have a far greater respect for the biology of the body, the brain and the nervous system after my experience. The grieving process that followed the separation was like a book you read through, chapter by chapter.

Björk on grief, Iceland Magazine (2016)

An exploration of understanding our biology. It’s OUR OWN SYSTEM, OUR OWN BODY, surely nothing is as personal, or we know more about than our own body. But we designate that task to scientists and doctors, when we all have the potential to do that ourselves.

The separation etc.

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Complex, and unique! They all have different functions.

Neurons - Anatomy Overview

Going to be covering nerves and synapses this week so here’s a recap!

Soma (cell body) contains the nucleus which produces RNA to support cell functions, + organelles surrounding the nucleus which are mostly made of up endoplasmic reticulum. Supports and maintains the functioning of the neuron.

Dendrites - cellular extensions with many branches ‘dendritic tree’. majority of input occurs via the dendritic spine. The sum of all excitatory (neuron fires) or inhibitory (prevents firing) signals determines whether the neuron fires or not. If firing the action potential is transmitted down the axon.

Axon - fine, cable-like projection that can extend thousands of times the diameter of the soma in length. The axon carries nerve signals away from the soma (and also carries some types of information back to it). Can undergo branching - communication with target cells. 

Axon hillock - where the axon emerges from the soma. the part of the neuron that has the greatest density of voltage-dependent sodium channels - therefore the most easily excited part of the neuron and the spike initiation zone for the axon - most negative action potential threshold. Can also receive input from other neurons.

Axon terminal where neurotransmitters are released into the synaptic cleft to signal the next neuron

Myelin sheath

Myelin is a fatty material that wraps around axons and increases the speed of electrical transmission between neurons. It is broken up by nodes of Ranvier, between which electrical impulses jump. Myelin is produced by schwann cells in the PNS and oligodendrocytes in the CNS.

Classes of neurons

Sensory neurons bring information into the CNS so it can be processed.

Motor neurons get information from other neurons and convey commands to  muscles, organs and glands.

Interneurons,found only in the CNS, connect one neuron to another. 

Types of neuron

Multipolar neurons have one axon and many dendritic branches. These carry signals from the central nervous system to other parts of the body eg muscles and glands.

Unipolar neurons are also known as sensory neurons. They have one axon and one dendrite with branches. Pass signals from the outside of the body, such as touch, along to the central nervous system.

Bipolar neurons have one axon and one dendrite branch. They pass signals from one neuron to the next inside the central nervous system.

Pyramidal neurons have one axon and two main dendrite branches. These cells pass signals inside the brain and tell the muscles to move.

Purkinje neurons are found in the cerebellum, controlling balance, coordination, and timing of actions. They have one axon and a dense and complicated dendrite arrangement.

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The limitations of the power of invisibility.

The reality is there are always circulatory systems walking through the kitchen, you just can’t see them. Most people don’t think about them. Nobody wants to feel their own organs sliding around inside of them. We feel it, but it’s selective/involuntary attention and exclusion. We drown it out.

- There’s so much going on in our own bodies,  but we choose not to listen to them. Not to fully appreciate them. Take care of them. We trust them to perform involuntarily.

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I should probably document my main inspiration :////

The beauty and horror of the nervous system - visceral, unusual to see on its own.

A lot of performs on a cellular level, but what we can extract has a form of fractal architecture, branches etc. 

Dissection of Nervous System, History of the Homoeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1898

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PASSWORD: 5162214 Experiment 1 - Fractal Generation Video: Created in XaoS with Quicktime

Fun, but don’t have the capacity for what I want to do; explore more personalised patterns, have more involvement in as a creator, particularly Biologically influenced patterns.

Felt very machinated and mathematical, like I didn’t have any control over the output, I was just stumbling through a bunch of predicted outcomes. I wanted that autonomy as a creator. This disconnect seemed reminiscent of the concept of disconnect between body and mind. It also expanded upon the relationship between creator and the creation.

Images: Created in JWildfire

JWildfire provided a lot more control, but I faced rendering/image size issues. Which meant it would be difficult to create prints or quality projections with them as per ideal. Unlike XaoS, JWildfire starts with existing images and re-sources them. I also struggled through interfaces that went deep into the mathematical beyond the hands on sliders and triangular controls. But it was beautiful! I still feel very lost in the generation of this art, like it was beyond my artistic control, and understanding. Which is in itself a concept?! But I feel constrained by the concept of ecology, wanting to best represent it. I want to continue practice-led research and experimentation but I fear I’ll waste time if it forces me to completely reconsider my concept.

The 1st “Flame” I created I liked because it was a clear pattern relevant to neurological and circulatory function. Reminded me of bronchioles, the tiny arm hole swiss cheese air capillary things in our lungs perform most of the dense respiratory work, they harvest the oxygen from the air and feed it to our bloodstream. They sustain a vital life source, and perform involuntarily. Mucous-y colour. Also reminiscent of the receptive ends of neurons and electrical cells. They pass and share vital information, near-instantly. Also reflective of genetic strands of code and biological imagery.

I created to reflect the scary or edgy side of our microscopic functions. Reminds me of the Dermis, our skin, the flakiness or more sharp and intimidating and red like it’s foreign, visceral, or even scales. We receive a lot of information through our sense of touch, and the subtler senses built in to our skin, like pain, thermoreceptors, proprio-sense, sensititvities that we drown out unless there is something urgent or out of the ordinary as determined by our nervous system.

3 was a more free experiment that I liked the depth of and how it played with light, but I noticed a connection between “I’ve not a nervous system, I am a nervous system”, and my friend who is undergoing therapy for her social anxiety, which involves her hyper-awareness and sensory overload through over-observing visual and physical tension in a space. Things become out of focus, and in some cases may be more beautiful or heightened, but it’s a bizarre appreciation.

I wanted to try Mandelbulb3D, the free software that has contributed to works like these: https://vimeo.com/juliushorsthuis but my computer couldn’t handle it and I wasn’t excited enough to remember to see if I could load it from a USB onto a Uni Lab Computer.

I could honestly waste hours making these up and manipulating and generating these, but the nagging thought that they’ve been generated before seems to ruin the fun and the value of my time.

Why Fractals?

There is a lot of beauty in seemingly endless expansions of connections and formations. But there’s a method to the madness, scientific limitations and inferences as to the causes of certain patterns and natural connections. Our minds and bodies are constantly forming thousands of connections and performing tonnes of functions, while also stopping others or perhaps forgetting to make room for more immediate issues. We’ve built computer systems after ourselves. There is nature in their logic and function, but also an uncanny mathematical perfection or complete halt in error.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/mathematics/fractals-in-nature

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https://vimeo.com/287551264

VIDEO PASSWORD - ADAD1002 

Challenging Nam June Paik’s idea that you cannot record the now. In small groups

Mini projectors (ASUS) are great! not super powerful though, they require a dark environment/lights off, and I should have increased the brightness

Used Facebook messenger video call (low quality) to explore different perspectives, latency, and experiencing the ‘now’ (digitised and with latency).

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Assessment 1 - Final Poster

Art and design often explore relationships between humans and non-humans, the environment and ecology. How can contemporary art and design propose new possibilities for imagining the ‘human’ and the environment? 

The concept of classification underlies the way in which humans relate to the environment. An innate desire to understand and make sense of the world around us is reflected in the human tendency to organise the elements of our surroundings into familiar groups. This is exemplified in the scientific branch of taxonomy, which deals with the highly specific classification of all organisms. For example under the broadest category all animals belong to the kingdom animalia, but they are then further divided and assigned to progressively specific sub-groups based on common traits, leading to millions of different recognised species. In my poster I have explored this notion of taxonomic classification by representing a number of different animals and then identifying each one by their scientific species name as well as their common name. Importantly, I chose to use natural materials to depict these animals, sorting through leaves, sticks, coal etc. to find natural, ready-made sculptures that resembled these different species. This demonstrates the way in which the very event of looking at an object involves a process of organisation and categorisation; while in reality the object may just be a lump of coal, we perceive and classify it in terms of familiar and recognisable images, hence it appears as a representation of an animal. Two of my main influences for this work were Zoe Sadokierski and Fiona Hall - after looking at their works I became intrigued by the way in which we organise and represent the world around us. Overall, my poster reflects the notion that humans are constantly trying to understand what they see by looking at things through the lens of the familiar - all objects and elements of our surroundings are classified (either consciously or subconsciously) into established and often universally understood groups. 

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:eyes:

shay u have watered my crops

inspiration 

I like the way Mathilde challenges the body form with nature. Her ‘living’ grass bodies almost says that the body itself isn’t living before she made it of grass 

she has more examples here 

https://www.designboom.com/readers/mathilde-roussel-hanging-living-grass-sculptures/ 

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Post-Presentation Reflection

For no reason other than artist angst with communicating ideas

I opened the poster to the interpretation of the class, wanting to see if it could communicate clearly without text. I myself did not have the most articulate of concepts prepared, despite having carefully thought about it throughout my entire process. I wanted to learn how to better communicate my ideas and artistic intentions because I struggle a lot to understand the audience view, understanding, interpretation and communication of works.

The one way I didn’t want the work to go was evolution. Having understood and been exposed to the philosophical side of ecology as the exploration of a interconnected system through which we can understand the world, evolution seemed like a very basic idea of human ecology. I wanted to celebrate, lament and explore humanity as it stands today, and it’s future potential. In conceptualising so much I felt it was so beneath the work, and it was almost winding to hear comments about it. I think the “hairy” nature of my brush strokes were too fluid and flat, (despite being concentrated on the palm and finger tips which have no follicles and can’t produce hair even on primates) and didn’t express the intricate and somewhat jagged shapes formed by the millions of intricate connections of neurological pathways and neurones, or the vines and roots I wanted to use to reinforce the inexplicable tie between humanity’s choices and the state of it’s world.

But the evolutionary and visceral nature of the work was how most of the class interpreted it. Even with prompting or what I thought were leading questions about the hand’s symbolism, orientation and relation to the string, I internally despaired as the class, though still in awe and contemplation, fixated on the basic ecological concept of evolution, hair, and didn’t seem to contemplate or think much of the huge importance and depth of interpretation the Human Hand can have for us. I was pleasantly surprised, struck and also unnerved by a comment on the finger’s position from a catholic that it was allegedly the way Christ held his hands when he died. I only worked out how to explain the work after receiving feedback, sharing with my table, even though it was half baked and I stumbled a lot, and having them completely change their view of the work and become more in awe was bizarre, but rewarding.

I’m definitely still learning. Do I need to make simpler concepts or simpler depictions? I felt like they were fairly comprehensible/simple, maybe I just couldn’t convey it. Maybe the audience is wrong? But then it seems like in “the real art world” the audience has the final say and interpretation, through the reflection of the world in the art and the artist’s intentions are less than secondary. So why make art to communicate in the first place? Maybe I’ll get conceptual/philosophical art right one day. (propbably the wrong attitude to conceptual art though isn’t it..)

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Assessment 1 - Poster + Statement 

Q: Art and design often explore relationships between humans and non-humans, the environment and ecology. How can contemporary art and design propose new possibilities for imagining the 'human' and the environment’?

(274wds)

Ecology refers to the relationships, interactions, impacts and influence effecting and acting on an interrelated and connected system/environment. Interference explores the loss of connection to ourselves and our purpose as we overload with connections to the world. It’s a call for humanity, particularly post-modern, western culture, to ground itself and reconnect with it’s ecology. A plurality of too much negative or false interference and not enough of the right interference.

I wanted to create or encourage the restoration of a true ecology and a sense of interconnectedness through Interference. I found the synonyms and connective lexicons from the tutorial instrumental. To me Interference embodies them all, including providence, collaboration, parasitic, creative, image, purpose and beyond human.

Hand: Effective symbolism of humanity’s ability. To create, destroy, interact, interfere, mediate.

Hand shape & Orientation: Dynamic archer and guitarist relationship to string as a tool or weapon. Subtly also a finger gun. Interchangeable orientation, however Portrait obscuring emphasis away from forceful and highly directional finger gun whilst maintaining symbolic potential. Points towards the network as a ruling feature, referencing and indicating the potential of higher power that orchestrates or manipulates.

Tone and Texture: B/W - static interference, cohabitation, necessity and interaction between black, white and grey morals and standards. Unifying humanity, the body’s personal systems with nature, it’s symbiotic relationship with space and environment (oxygen, regeneration, sustenance). Emphasis on the reverberation of the nervous system; feelings create and rule the body, affecting it’s impact.

Thread work: Red - Westernised subversion of the “string of fate/destiny”, often confused with romance, lost in translation. What changes can we really make to the whole web of the ecological network?