Leo Villareal

On April 20, I went to the Nevada Museum of Art with my Digital Media Class. During out visit, we got the unique opportunity to see the Leo Villareal exhibition. Using light, it was a medium that I must admit that I wasn't completely familiar with. However, it made my visit to the museum a completely mind blowing and inspirational one!

Leo Villareal got his inspiration for using light at Burning Man. His first time attending the event, he saw all sorts of different artists doing what they do best, and was motivated to find his own artistic self. He set up a series of lights so that he wouldn't get lost in the Black Rock Desert at night, as the lights were visible for miles from his camp
Site. It is there that, according to the museum, Villareal got inspired to use his artistic ability towards light up pieces.

The first few pieces in the exhibit, being the oldest, were by far the most basic. One that I thought was rather interesting was "Sunburst," a 2002 piece featuring 2-3 red lights at a time interacting within a circular space. The way that the lights moved was reminiscent of a pong game, but the color was undeniably hypnotizing as the lights raced across the circle.

(pictures coming soon)

Next, I viewed a piece that looked rather like a large blue snowflake. The snowflake was made out of circles, and it was a teal color. The piece was definitely showing growth from sunburst in the scale. There were more lights and slightly more intricate designs and patterns in which they lit up. The lights would flash on for a second and then dim out at different times in each circle. The piece was called Metatron (2002).

Chasin rainbows was a piece using led lights inside of a large tube, giving the lights freedom to be seen from inside. The way they lit up the pipe was mesmerizing. The best way to describe it would be to say it was like glowsticks on crack. The lights shifted and made patterns across what almost looked like a screen of pipes, and seemingly created a picture. It display was stunning with it's stay of pinks, yellows and whites. "6 column" played with this idea too, but separated the pipes more, and turned them vertical.

Villareal's large scale pieces were absolutely mind-blowing! "Ananecer" presented a massive screen of color, playing with pinks and yellows dancingbehind a blurry plexiglass wall. It was almost as if looking through a blurry window at a city on the other side. It was fascinating to Stare at for a little while.

Next, "Diamond Sea" (2007) used LED's flashing across a large mirrored wall. They worked together to form an image that looked like ripples on water. It was amazing to see the way the lights almost danced across the wall, becoming the "sea" that the title assumes.

"Big Bang" from 2008 was my favorite piece. It was round, similar to "Sunburst", but it was much more complex. The lights dance around the center, hundreds at a time, with an array of colors that hadn't been displayed by any of the other pieces.

The lights that Villareal plays with get more and more complex as time goes on. Different algorithms are being used for each piece, and it makes me excited and almost anxious to see what he comes out with next. I will definitely be following Villareal's career from here on out.

Final Writing Assignment

    There is a new age of artists among us.  No longer is society subject to the ages of canvas and paper acting as primary places to find art in the art society.  Artists are exploring. They are expanding.   They are using the technological inventions of the last 50 years as their art.  Video, audio and robotics are replacing paints and pencils as art works go further and further outside of the box of what people would have considered art 100 years ago.  As more and more of these artists contribute the ideas, the possibilities of artistic expression grow more and more.  The world is heading into the age of digital media.
    There are many forms of digital media out there.  Some artists prefer to use video, whereas other artists would rather use light to create sculptures.  There is a special form of digital art which takes almost every aspect of the medium into consideration.  That form is robotics.  Everyone has gone to Disneyland, or somewhere similar, and has seen the robots in the rides.  They enhance the experience, and create life in characters that, otherwise, would not be possible in a convincing way.  Robots create artificial life.  They simulate real motion.  In a way, they perfect motion, by ridding themselves of every bit of motion that is not fundamental to their purpose.  There are two artists in particular that bring robotics to life like no others can, showcasing their vast range of robotic experimentation to audiences all around the world:  Ken Feingold and Stelarc.
    Stelarc is a peculiar but fascinating artist who pushes the boundaries of robotics in each of his pieces.  He has a belief in using robotics to “explore alternate, intimate and involuntary interfaces with the body.”  His piece, “Walking Head Robot (2006),” explores this balance from almost an outside perspective, as it interacts with other things.  The piece is fundamentally a spider-like robot.  It has 6 legs that allow it to move around a gallery space in which it is placed.  It’s relative size is small, being only 2 meters in diameter.  Placed on top of its legs is an LCD screen with a computer generated human head that moves within the screen, as the screen moves from side to side.  The human head itself gives an immense sense of life to the sculpture, as humans can easily relate to something else with a human head.  A scanner in front of the LCD screen continuously scans the room in front of it to detect the presence of movement or people.  When it detects something, it begins to move, thus interacting with people that it comes in contact with.  It has pre-choreographed moves, making it still very controlled, but no less fascinating to watch.  It makes a lot of sound while moving around, which may or may not have been Stelarc’s purpose, as it gives the voiceless head a certain voice of its own without saying a word (Stelarc).

Stelarc: Walking Head, Robotic Sculpture 2006

    Ken Feingold has a method all his own with robotics, and has made a signature of it in the art community.  His pieces, usually incorporating audio animatronics, tend to interact with each other in a strange way.  His piece, "Self Portrait as the Center of the Universe (1998-2001),” for instance, gives a haunting yet entertaining look into the proposed notion of artificial intelligence, as a head (a likeness of Feingold himself) interacts with a projected head on a screen in front of the robot.  Surrounding Feingold’s double is puppets, eerily staring out into the audience, giving a notion of actual attention towards something other than the interaction between the robot and the screen.  These puppets would later be featured in Feingold’s piece, “Box of Men,” a video installation.  The robotic head, as one would imagine, is Feingold’s literal interpretation of himself: a figure asking questions and seeking the answers.  The head on the screen represents “questions and memories of himself,” as stated on his website.  This side interacts with the physical head in more ways than one.  Fascinatingly, the conversations between the two are completely improvisational.  Using voice recognition technology, the two interact by listening to what the other had to say, and says something else as a response.  The screen behind the image of the head changes as well to project what the physical head is talking about.  In the video example below, the physical head speaks about the desert, and the screen shifts to a picture of the desert that moves with the head (Feingold)

 

documentation clip of "Self Portrait as the Center of the Universe" by Ken Feingold (1998-2001) 

    These two pieces are amazingly similar in many ways.  The obvious way is that they both incorporate robotics to perform.  They both move, as robotics should, but “Walking Robot Head” uses its entire body to move through a physical space.  It can walk different places and even look different places when its head screen turns from side to side.  “Self Portrait” is limited in its movement, and only physically moves its mouth and eyes to interact with the screen.  The screen is filled with motion, as the head floats around its portrait, interacting with the physical head.  Objects on screen move, and the background not only changes its image, but shifts around the screen.
    Both pieces have a voice.  “Self Portrait” has two literal voices of the physical robot and of the head on screen as they talk to each other.  While the voices are the same, they take on their own lives with the figures that “speak” with them.  “Walking Head Robot” does not have so much of a literal voice, as it has a powerful hiss of its mechanics working.  However, with the head floating on the screen, the hiss lends itself quite nicely as the voice of the piece, making viewers more aware of the life inside of the robot.
    Another obvious point to make is that both pieces incorporate a floating head on a screen.  “Self Portrait” has a full color head interacting with the physical head of Feingold’s robot.  “Walking Head Robot” uses a black and white (or black, white and blue) model on its screen to bring out a further connection with the audience.
    On that note, the interaction with an audience is different, whereas “Walking Head Robot” interacts with physical people in the room with it using motion sensors.  “Self Portrait” only interacts with itself, whether an audience is present or not.  The only inkling of awareness that “Self Portrait” offers to its audience is the faces on the puppets around Feingold’s portrait robot, staring out into the crowd blankly.
    One piece is definitely more lifelike than the other.  “Self Portrait” is spooky to be around for many reasons.  One of the dominant reasons could be in the fact that the “lifelike” head of Feingold’s robot is just that: lifelike.  It’s not alive, but it pretends to be.  It talks, blinks, and stares blankly at the screen.  It is this proposes life in the piece that makes it rather foreboding, as the illusion continues with no awareness of what is going on around it.  “Walking Head Robot,” however, is much less real.  Most of it is comprised of bare, naked robotics, out there for anyone to see what it is.  Feingold’s piece was covered to hide its mechanics, but the raw elements of Stelarc’s piece lend a sense of awareness to its artificial construct.  The only thing bringing like to the piece is the head, which is captured within an LCD screen, making it disconnected from reality in the same way that no one would think people on television are really that small inside of a box in their own living room.  It’s not the way the human brain is trained to function.  The creepy factor is still there with the head floating slowly around the screen with a blank, black stare, but it does not give the same aura of the Feingold piece with such obviousness surrounding what it is truly made of.
    Lovejoy would probably categorize these works differently..  She speaks of simulation by saying that “whereas mechanical servants hitherto rendered services which were essentially physical, automations generated by computer science and electronics can now carry out mental operations (Lovejoy 163).”  She differentiated between pieces that seemingly have knowledge to their own existence, and those that don’t.  “Self Portrait” would be the example of a piece that knows its own existence due to the nature of the conversation it has with itself.  Answers aren’t programmed into it, but rather, it speaks based off of the last thing that its other half had to say.  “Walking Head Robot” would count as the “mechanical servant.”  All of its motions are pre-planned and controlled.  Everything it does is physical, and there isn’t much it offers towards simulation, other than the head on the screen simulating itself as a human form.
    Digital medias such as robotics have taken art to whole new heights.  Much more can be expressed through the use of motion, sound, and spectacle that robotics provide in their own way.  Pieces by Feingold and Stelarc prove that, even with their differences, different types of robotics offer different things.  It’s the exploration of these things that contribute such advances in the art field that are so greatly appreciated by all who view it.

Bibleography

1. "Stelarc // Walking Head." Stelarc // Checking for Flash Plugin... Web. 25 Apr. 2011. <http://stelarc.org/?catID=20244>.

2. "Ken Feingold: "Self Portrait as the Center of the Universe" (1998-2001)." Ken Feingold: Recent Works. Web. 26 Apr. 2011. <http://www.kenfeingold.com/SelfL2.html>.

3.  Lovejoy, Margot, and Margot Lovejoy. Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print.

Crowdsourcing participation log

I started off my participation in the crowdsourcing activities on the Johnny Cash Project.  I found the experience so much fun.  It took me a lot of time to complete the pieces, but I felt like they came out so cool looking, and I was really proud of what I was able to do with them!

First, I did a piece of Johnny looking down:

 

Just getting started

 Finished Piece!

Real Photo

Next, I got a piece that was simpler, but more challenging.  I really had to play with the subtle color changes here:

 My piece!!

Real photo

From there, I decided to be a part of the SwarmSketch project!  This one was... interesting to say the least.  I found it fun, but also frustrating because of the lack of control I had on what everyone else posted.  I find more peace with completing pieces on my own.  Here is my submission:

I did his mouth!  (Yes, Haley is a him.  I looked him up on google).

And that was my work with the crowdsourcing activities!

Crowdsourcing

 

Music is such an internationally loved sensation.   Wherever you go, there are different cultures of music, different styles of music, different types of voices, different languages of music.  It is this global drive for musical individualism has given me the idea to bring everyone together through it.  I present - The Global Music Project!  Through this crowdsourcing project, I propose that a system is put together in which music videos are made through video submissions of people singing songs, whether a few seconds at a time, or complete songs.  Through a logarithm, the clips would be spliced together and would switch up to become a different video every time, and a different experience every time visitors come to view the project.

The trick is diversity.  I'm giving an open call out for people of all races, nationalities, and tongues to put their submissions in, and select lyrics that they sing after they submit.  They can sing the lyrics however they want, but it has to be in time with the actual song, so that it doesn't throw off the time.  This will make sure that the submissions are placed perfectly within the course of the song at specific times pre-planned in the song.

Participants can choose which songs they want by clicking on their genre, and from there it would take them to a page with all the songs listed in that genre.  They choose a song and record a video of themselves right then and there.  

I want to make each view an experience to be celebrated, and for people to see the joy and bond that the songs that they know and love gives people all around the world!!

Chapter 5 Questions

1.  The thought of digital simulation being used as art is new, exciting, and to many, a way of the future.  However, what point does the line of reality become blurred, or even dangerously skewed, for the people who are enjoying it?  Could the potential for a perfect simulation of life (even with its imperfections that were described in the chapter) be damaging to a culture that is slowly evolving into a more technologically advanced society?

2.  With sound and art being combined now more than ever, how do you think they have effected each other?  In a world where professional studios can be made in bedrooms for relatively low prices, how has the ability for anyone (from digital artists to music artists) to do anything they want with sound effected the way the average person listens to things like music or audio art pieces?

Youtube Video Mixer

With my video mixer, I wanted to dive into the world around us as we see it.  Youtube is filled with videos that have been so edited and worked with, that the "real world" doesn't shine through as much as I feel it should sometime.  We live in a world where the most "reality" we see out of video is "reality TV," which is just as fake as shows with an actual script.  Sure it's easy to go outside and see the world around you for yourself... however, some people aren't able to see everything they may want to through limitations of their location or body.  Being a traveler, I love seeing things and experiencing places for myself, and I wanted to give the feel that, with this mixer, you were getting the whole world at once, seeing it as close to how it should be seen without actually being able to go out and see it.

I chose this composition because it represents the world.  The colors, the way the videos are set up as a globe, everything.  I wanted it to have a nice rounded feel.

Go crazy with playing the videos in any order. However, mute the bottom left video with the bumper cars and the top video to the far right with the driving, and the video towards the bottom right with the crowd.  The three videos are rather noisy and take away from the rest of the experience.

The link to the video mixer is HERE! :)

Video Reviews.

Shirin Neshat: The Woman Moves

A very moving video, "The Woman Moves" depicts the life on an Iranian woman that feels out of place in her own skin. Her art seems powerful enough to really challenge any thought of comfort in her own life and in the life of many Iranian women. She speaks for not only a nation of people, but a gender in that nation as well. Though her pieces are powerfully depicting of strong divisions, they bring together Iranian women as well at the same time.

Marlon Riggs: Tongues United

One never thinks about life outside of their own situations. This is why is was almost an awkward and uncomfortable experience watching this piece about a gay black man and his vision of the world through his experiences. Though some of his works were more lighthearted (the piece about snapping had me laughing pretty hard), the overtones of racial and sexist differences overpowered the themes of the video to become a work that makes it hard to watch his story with anything but guilt for being anything other than a gay black man.

Gary Hill: I Believe it is an Image

Hill was the only artist I watched and truly believed that a real progress was being made. He was very experimental, which I believe is fundamental when dealing with art, and discovering it. I enjoyed watching his trips through sound, light, and motion. It made me question a lot kore about what the art was, rather than having the meaning laid out for ke, which is not enjoyable in art in my opinion.

Analysis:

All three artists had very different directions that they wanted to take with their art. While one wanted to indulge in the arts themselves, the other two had more of an actual stance, and forced it upon their set in a way. Though this worked to show the pain and struggle behind the lives of a gay black man and an Iranian woman, it didn't do much to make me feel too happy about the messages they presented, like there was no hope for their situations. Instead, I found myself attracted to experimentation and carefree art that Hill presented. I guess I'm just a "glass half full" kind if guy at the end of the day.

Semiotics of the Kitchen

Watch the original video by Martha Rosler here: http://www.ubu.com/film/rosler_semiotics.html

This video, as represented by Martha Rolser, gives a contrast to women you would see on the Food Network.  As opposed to refined, elegant, and easy going with kitchen utensils, this piece uses an unorganized, over the top, and at times silly use of kitchen tools to give a not-so-typical rendition of a woman's place on TV or in the kitchen.  Basically, not every woman should act like what they see on television.  Not every woman belongs in the kitchen 24/7.

Chapter 4 Questions

1. As video emerged, women actively began to take their places in the art world with its use. What kind of "fingerprint" did this leave? In other words, how did womens' use of video as art make an impression on art culture, and does it still last today?

2. Video has an interesting place within not only the art world, but the mass culture as well. How do you think the artists' use of cameras has been used and even manipulated to fit in with a mass audience, if at all?

Impaired Judgement

Original Site: http://www.samueladams.com/index.aspx

Alcohol is indeed a legal drug that is effecting people more in a negative sense than in a positive one.  With every sip taken to have a good time, damage is caused to the body and mind.  However, we as a society glamorize it and make it seem like constantly going out partying and drinking and destroying yourself is the cool thing to do.  This page battles that notion in a satirical way, and begs the question... is it worth it?

Question on the Reading

1. Would the reading in general be considered dated at all? Afterall, since it was written, so much technology has been presented besides just television, radio, and the telephone. How would something like the internet be considered in a book such as this?

2. The idea that a "tribe" is created is very visual as far as bringing us together in a constantly shrinking world. Wouldn't it seem ironic, then, that as tribes are created through the destruction of actual face-to-face contact? Wouldn't these "tribes" then be considered tribes of individuals?

Mel Gibson, You Bastard!

http://vimeo.com/19463088

My piece for the Photoshop animation assignment was inspired by actual events... sort of.  Mel Gibson has a problem, and that is that he's insane.  He's not a fan of the Jewish community, and he chews people's heads off on a constant basis.  Therefore, the fact that Adam Sandler, AKA the funniest Jewish man ever, was right in front of him was a little too much for him to handle.  He starts off by killing him with his Mel Gibson shark teeth, which causes the paparazzi to catch the action, making the celebrities on top of them to topple, and the bottle of alcohol to shatter at the bottom.  Vanessa Hudgens gets scared and hides behind Eminem.  Meanwhile, the ladies on the left use the distraction to make a move on playboy Tiger Woods, who is happy to see that Miley Cyrus is right there to give him a smooch.

Not the most historically accurate piece ever, but still representative of the chaos that is Hollywood today.

Questions on the Introduction

1. Sure Benjamin found photos and copies to be worthless in an artistic medium, but can't it still be said that art that can be copied is still art, as long as the original is choreographed and built in a way that is specific to the art itself?

2. Do the advancements in technology directly undermine the idea of artistic expression of the past, such as painting or drawing?  Are they rendered "obsolete" now that there is technologies that can present an artist's message more clearly?

Triptych Montage

American Idols

We have many people we look up to in the media.  But when it comes down to it... just how much can we look up to them?  My project explores a paradigm shift, wherein the best intentions can fall pray to a dark outcome.  In a world where doing anything for attention sells, how far are the ones we look up to willing to go to keep us drawn to them?  Why is it the ones with the most scandal around them that we pay attention to?  What is it about drama that keeps the world revolving around them?  The fact is, stars may start out their careers showcasing their talents, but when the world gets bored of them and begins moving on to the outcasts of the past, the game changes, and good people fall victim to the attention that pays their bills.