Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Rafaël Rozendaal

Rafaël Rozendaal
Born 1980, Dutch-Brazilian, lives and works everywhere.

Rafaël Rozendaal is a visual artist who uses the internet as his canvas.

His artistic practice consists of websites, installations, drawings, writings and lectures. Spread out over a vast network of domain names, he attracts a large online audience of over 15 million visits per year.

His work researches the screen as a pictorial space, reverse engineering reality into condensed bits, in a space somewhere between animated cartoons and paintings. His installations involve moving light and reflections, taking online works and transforming them into spatial experiences.

"The idea is that you believe that you make something. Some people think the work is sort of a puzzle, and you have to pass the work and get to the meaning. The work is the meaning and the meaning is the work. It's as big as you want to make it." -R.R.

"I work on my computer so I can work anywhere. Tropical areas are usually cheaper."

BYOB: Bring Your Own Beamer

"Everything is cool. Let's just make chaos. It's just like a thrift store. Just bring your own mess and choose what you like. If anyone wants to do BYOB they can do it." -R.R.

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Website Projects

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I love his websites! They're so much fun and not so serious in the way that Art can be sometimes. Some of them are just so aesthetically beautiful. He uses vibrant and bold colors that awaken a part of your senses.

Monday, April 23, 2012

Lesson: Emotion Through Sound

I chose to explore my second potential lesson:

Objective: Through recording a sound they hear in their daily lives and depicting a memory or event that relates to it personally, using an audio recording device, students will learn that the sounds of their everyday can be experienced in different ways when put into other contexts.

My Sound Clip: Nightmare

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About My Process

I used two sound clips I hear in my everyday. The first clip was of the water faucet running and the second was of my footsteps. It was really good to try out this lesson because I realized more closely the restraints and freedoms it would give students. In reflection, I know my motivational dialogue and association need to be refined in a way that will guide students imaginative and creatively.

The memory or event I chose from my personal experiences, was a series of dreams that I've had since my adolescences. I've dreamt many times about finding myself in mysterious places where I'm running from something. I don't ever quite know where I'm going and I'm running from different things all the time. In these dreams, I often feel anxious, scared, nervous, and excited all at the same time. I wake up with my heart beating as if I were running. I still remember specific moments in the dreams vividly.

I combined the faucet running sound with the steps. The faucet sound clip had a crescendo effect that created a climatic sensibility. I felt it evoked similar emotions as those I've felt throughout events in the dream. I really liked the relationship of the rhythm of the steps and the faucet sound, and the way they emerged together creating a suspensful stage.

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Class Discussion: Sound

Ideas we discussed in New Media class that stood out to me:

Visuals are local. Sounds are global.

Visual Culture Vs. Sonic Culture

Sound is something that puts us in our place. It's a force. Something that we can't always choose to tune out like we turn away from visuals.

Think about the concept of listening.

When we listen, we are simultaneously thinking about other things. Other thoughts roam through our minds and we are constantly multitasking. It's difficult to tune out the noise of our own thoughts and to just simply listen. I think it's especially difficult for us living in a city such as New York where we're juggling different things is a constant in our lives.

Talking about types of communication, there is the visual and auditory. I don't think we think about the auditory form of communication as much as the visual. Possibly because we're here in an art education program, and in a generation where the visual culture is blowing up.

"Sound helps us to connect better to our feelings."

What does it mean to really listen?

What does it look and feel like when you tune yourself out and really listen to someone else.

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Silence can be healing.

Richard shared with us a story of when he was living in Austria by the trains. It took some time away from it all, being immersed into silence for these sounds to be accepted into his everyday.

The Absence of bodily noise; healing can come from the presence of sound.

Sound can be also seen and considered as a type of pollution.

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Websites to help with sound projects:

www.myfavoritesounds.org

www.nch.com

www.soundcloud.com

www.opsound.com

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"People who speak in their main language can get lazy.

You can only translate what you are certain of."

- R. Jochum

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Sound in the Classroom

Reflection:
I am not really quite sure how I feel about using sound as a material. The concept is so unfamiliar to me since I've never tried it and haven't seen much of it as an artist myself. The first step for me would be educating myself of the range that is out there within sound art. I can go about starting a sequence lesson with sound art as the main material. I can go about the umbrella theme in different ways:

1. I could start by introducing some sound artists that may spark interest to the students as a start, to expose them to it as a form of art as much as I can. I imagine the culture and atmosphere of every class to be different. I would carefully need to arrange what kinds of artists would best suit them to motivate accordingly.

2. I can have students listen to sound art, immerse them into the art without giving a framework about it. We can discuss and dialogue about their experience in hearing it. I imagine this to be interesting to hear. I would call this lesson 'First Impressions'.

Potential Lesson Ideas:
Material: Sounds

1. Objective: Through editing a sound that reflects a theme of something they feel strongly about, using an audio recorder, students will learn that sound can be used to represent a variety of feelings.

2. Objective: Through recording a sound they hear in their daily lives and depicting a memory or event that relates to it personally, using an audio recording device, students will learn that the sounds of their everyday can be experienced in different ways when put into other contexts.

Ryan Leslie

I'm not sure what the difference is between a sound artist and a musician. Don't they both make music with sound to make art?

Regardless, this is one of my favorite music producers.

Kitundu

Sound Artist: Kitundu is a sound/visual artist, graphic designer, composer and instrument builder. He uses an interdisciplinary approach to develop compositions-installations-instruments that blur the boundaries between media. He has constructed elemental turntables that rely on wood, water, fire and earthquakes for their power and pitch. Kitundu is the creator of a family of Phonoharps, beautifully crafted multi-stringed instruments made from record players. He strives to reconnect the technology of new music to fundamental principles from the natural world.

Marina Rosenfeld

Sound Artist : Marina Rosenfeld is an artist based in New York. Her hybrid visual-musical works have been at the forefront of the redefinition of musical practice within the field of contemporary art since the ’90s. Her performances, sound installations and objects, including lenticular photographs produced in tandem with vinyl LP compositions, and custom loudspeakers deployed in public and often monumental spaces, have worked to recast social and sculptural relations as musical, blurring the line demarcating the improvised or incidental from the composed.

Marina Rosenfeld -- leading her infamous electric-guitar ensemble, the Sheer Frost Orchestra

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

My Remix

This was my original video from youtube.

In college, I watched a lot of dance clips for inspiration when choreographing for my dance team. I often wondered what different moves would look like moved to different songs. This video remix project allowed for me to try one out. I had lots of fun with it....I think you'll be able to tell. Hope you enjoy!!! :D

Monday, April 9, 2012

Video Projects in the Classroom

I'd like to incorporate videos in the classroom connecting to what they're interested in. I would think of a list of projects high school students can incorporate using video as a tool. This would be an example of one of them:

1. What are is an issue that teenagers face? How do you feel about this issue? Portray your perspective on this issue through a video clip. How do you want to represent this issue? What images, visuals, or audio would you want to help get your ideas across?

I would want these projects to be focused on what is important to students and help relate to things that they are experiencing. Creating a video of any sort takes much analysis and orchestrating different things. I think it would be a great tool for students to think deeply about certain topics or to explore in depth about anything they are concerned with.

A

Ken Allen Studio

As a class, we visited the Ken Allen Studio located in Brooklyn. It was really interesting to hear about the different processes that a printing studio goes through from start to finish. As an art student, I was always at the other end as a customer/client requesting prints of my projects. It was nice to hear about the different paper in association to the images being printed. It was informative and felt it would be essential to keep in mind for future printing of my work. Throughout Ken's talks, I kept thinking printing is very relative and depends on many factors. According to the customer/client, it can be a real tedious process for the printing studio. Everything comes into play and must be thought out: the paper quality, the image, the relationship of image to specific paper, the aesthetic desired by the artist or photographer, etc. Catering to artists must be very difficult especially if they are very particular.

Ken also touched upon important photography techniques to improve image quality accordingly. I've learned the functions so many times but when it comes down to it at the moment, it's hard to stop, make everyone wait, and change around the functions. I guess it depends on what kind of photos you're taking. If it's for your art, I'm sure you would have the time. I'm not much of a photographer so I usually take pictures to capture the moment. From what Ken discussed, I can see the processes of photography almost as baking a cake. Everything must be set from the start, and once it goes in the oven it's only a reflection of the ingredients put in and amount of time baked according to the heat. I see photo's going through quite a similar process. One must be very thoughtful in setting each function according to the environment, and also in playing with settings on any photo editor before printing. It's nice to be reminded of these processes although I am not a photographer myself. I'm afraid it may be because I'm too impatient to be thoughtful of all these factors that come into play.

A

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

The Daily Keemo

Looking to the Summer

Monday, March 26, 2012

Text Rain

Camille Utterback & Romy Achituv 1999

Text Rain is an interactive installation in which participants use the familiar instrument of their bodies, to do what seems magical—to lift and play with falling letters that do not really exist. In the Text Rain installation participants stand or move in front of a large projection screen. On the screen they see a mirrored video projection of themselves in black and white, combined with a color animation of falling letters. Like rain or snow, the letters appears to land on participants’ heads and arms. The letters respond to the participants’ motions and can be caught, lifted, and then let fall again. The falling text will ‘land’ on anything darker than a certain threshold, and ‘fall’ whenever that obstacle is removed. If a participant accumulates enough letters along their outstretched arms, or along the silhouette of any dark object, they can sometimes catch an entire word, or even a phrase. The falling letters are not random, but form lines of a poem about bodies and language. ‘Reading’ the phrases in the Text Rain installation becomes a physical as well as a cerebral endeavor.

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I like the artists' unconventional way of portraying a poem and having it be an interactive piece with the audience. I think it's beautiful the way it plays with movement and the delicacy of the falling of text.

Urban Projection Mapping

Urban Projection Mapping is the art of creating video displays that make buildings come alive in light, color and motion. Armed with powerful technology, a handful of enterprising video artists create vivid, visually arresting video displays that are projected on urban architecture. These videos tell stories, form abstract imagery and in some cases, sell products.

The building is manipulated by a pair of hands that sink into its structure and rearrange its facade in a stunning, grid-style fashion. The display was awarded a Silver Lion at the Cannes Advertising Festival in 2009.

Resultant permeability of the solid facade uncovers different interpretations of conception, geometry and aesthetics expressed through graphics and movement. A situation of reflexivity evolves - describing the constitution and spacious perception of this location by means of the building itself.

555 KUBIK

Production: urbanscreen.com
Art Direction: Daniel Rossa
Technical Director: Thorsten Bauer
3D-Design: David Starmann
Sound Design: Jonas Wiese
Realized with mxwendler.net mediaserver

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I love this piece because it is such a dynamic public display of pushing boundaries and a presentation of transforming an ordinary building into a grand piece of art. The concept of "How it would be if a house was dreaming" was also interesting to think about. It was just amazing how the artists really worked with the buildings' specific qualities to create a totally integrated video projection that was as convincing.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Angki Purbandono

Angki Purbandono, Indonesia’s most prominent artist specializing in scanography – the process of producing artistic digital images by means of an ordinary flat-bed image scanner – has now taken his scan-art to the realms of noodles.

Placing noodles directly onto the scanner’s glass is like setting up a mini stage where the artist plays the stage director. Such a thought comes to mind as one looks at the works currently on show at the Garis ArtSpace. Entering the space, one is first struck by images of elegant dragons seemingly playing with noodles. In the Western tradition, dragons are often thought of as awful monsters, but in the Chinese tradition, they carry with them the meaning of luck and welfare. The dragons in his scan-art, he says, are descendants of the Chinese Golden Dragon, raised in Europe.

He lets them dance, with the noodle(s) falling into place playfully.

Liz Atkin

Liz Atkin is a visual artist based in London. With a background in theatre and dance, physicality underpins her creative practice. Skin is her primary source for corporeal art. both as metaphorical membrane and physical boundary. Her work centres on a multilayered exploration of the possibilities of marking, extending and transforming the skin so as to question the limits of the body and the potentials for communication across and within the porous textures of light and surfaces. This personal investigation explores body focused repetitive behavior resulting in a sometimes violent rendering of the body in order to condense it to matter for resculpting.

Black & White Tea

I chose to use tea bags as my first scanography project. I've used teabags in previous projects before but in a very different way using a digital camera. What attracts me about tea bags are its delicate qualities. In such a small pouch there are fine entities that have abilities to transform a body of water. It has a source of power that is catalyzed by the touch of liquid. I see them as small things with large capabilities.

I explored the use of composition with three tea bags on the flatbed. I played around with the way they lay and position themselves. I think they make beautiful images as they interplay with the intensity of light.