Why do we make art?

Hello Intermedia I Class,

I'll keep our blog live in case you want to continue to post things. I found this interview (about 4 minutes long) with Jeannette Winterson that seems fitting to our wrapping up of the semester. (She is a British author and her novels are quite fantastic.)

http://www.jeanettewinterson.com/assets/mp3/2_art.mp3

so cool

vulgar but cool!

Hot Air

http://www.stumbleupon.com/s/#214xrr/www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH6xCT2aTSo/

Between from Via Grafik on Vimeo.

Open House Project: Work-in-progress Pictures

open house materials

I can bring a staple gun and staples, and fishing line( i have a ton of it):)

Open House Idea-iMovie

Hello Class,

What do you all think about using iMovie instead of Final Cut Pro to do the animations?

iMovie works similarly (drag and drop the images, then export as a Quicktime movie). It is also something that most people will have access to on their home computers, so if teaching visitors/participants how to do this is part of our mission, then teaching through iMovie allows people to apply their new animation skills to a program they are more likely to have access to.

Also, I checked with Andy Evans, our super computer tech for the building, and he said we could wheel out the jumbo tv/computer from the printmaking department-- so, we could do the editing on this computer and then project through a laptop connected to a projector.

We can talk more about it in class!

See you Thursday!

Open House Items

Hey Class!
Here is a list of supplies we will be needing for the Open House. When you have one of the items please post which item you have to the blog so everyone can get an idea of the supplies that are still needed. Thanks!
1. a lot of cardboard
2. duck tape/ staple gun (if have one)
3. Spray paint/ or other paint
4. Fishing line/ or types of string
5. Blue tarp for back drop
6. long rods
7. box cutter knife
8. Pictures of favorite Mario scenes
9. anything else people can think of!!

Intermedia Open House

As a class, we first discussed creating miniature 3D models for an audience-interactive stop animation (Gumby style), but then decided to do a life-size set. Suggestions included creating a cheesy set out of cardboard in which the participants could act out their stop animation. Plans also included setting up a station where a few of us from class help upload photos and put them into Final Cut. The rough stop animations will then be projected for the participants to see. For this project we still need to figure out some specifics: ideas for the set, props, the title of the project, the number of cameras (at least three) and the layout/functionality of the "workshop" room. It might also help to create more interesting stop animations if we look up stop animation techniques.

(YouTube has some cool examples tambien http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJzU3NjDikY)

Project #3 (finally)

For this project I chose to hang a variety of newspapers on the walls and allow viewers to paint yellow over anything they considered negative. I wanted the viewer to think critically about the stories that are published in daily newspapers. Specifically: why do you think this article was published? And why are the majority of headline news stories negative?

How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect

How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect [not that I endorse needing a reason to be absurd]

By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: October 6, 2009. NYT.
When things don’t add up, the mind goes into high gear.

In addition to assorted bad breaks and pleasant surprises, opportunities and insults, life serves up the occasional pink unicorn. The three-dollar bill; the nun with a beard; the sentence, to borrow from the Lewis Carroll poem, that gyres and gimbles in the wabe.

An experience, in short, that violates all logic and expectation. The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote that such anomalies produced a profound “sensation of the absurd,” and he wasn’t the only one who took them seriously. Freud, in an essay called “The Uncanny,” traced the sensation to a fear of death, of castration or of “something that ought to have remained hidden but has come to light.”....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/health/06mind.html

Project #4- SOUND

Each student (or pair of students) is to make, create, and or perform a project inspired, influenced by SOUND.

The piece can be in a variety of styles or any combination of them: ambient (no beginning or end), documentary, narrative, radio essay, musical, experimental, etc.

The sound can also be in any style or combination: found sound (recorded from different environments), recorded instruments, voice and song, voice-over, noise music, etc. You may work collaboratively with one other person on this assignment, if you like. If you elect to do a piece of sound art as described above, it should be between 3-5 minutes long.

In addition to the above, you must include a 200-250-word statement (typed) about the piece. If this were exhibited in a gallery, this would function as wall text. The written component should be a well thought out and cover the thoughts that inform your piece. Projects without text will not be accepted. Projects can be posted to the Blog or dropped in my "Public" folder on the Intermedia Server.

Something out of nothing

I Didn't Think Dead Animals Could Fly! (New Artist)

Hey everyone!

I was going through the wonderful website of stumbleupon.com and came across the work by Claire Morgan and thought I would share. She is an artist that uses materials that many probably would think of using such as, fishing to hang fruit flies, or taxidermied animals, and even strawberries. Her installations are beautiful and you all should CHECK IT OUT!

here's the website:

http://www.claire-morgan.co.uk/index.htm

Project 3

Verlyn Klinkenborg on Silence...

From the New York Times

September 21, 2008

EDITORIAL NOTEBOOK

Two Silences

By VERLYN KLINKENBORG

For the past week, I’ve been staying in northern Finland, just south of the Arctic Circle and a few kilometers shy of the restricted zone that marks the Russian border. This is the boreal forest, a place of almost surreal silence this time of year, when most of the birds have already migrated.

The first night I was here I stood in the middle of a bridge over a broad, slow-moving river that flows into Russia. It was dusk, a clear night, and I had come out to listen to nothing. There was no wind in the trees, not even the slightest breeze. The river below me was silent, and for the half-hour I stood there I heard not a sound.

I found myself checking, again and again, to see whether I had gone deaf. I popped my ears. I scuffed a shoe. I tossed a rock into an eddy along the river’s edge. I tapped the guard-rail with a knuckle. There was nothing wrong with my hearing. The human ear is not really meant for straining, and yet I was straining to hear. The silence felt more like an unnatural muffling of my senses than the porous stillness of the natural world, of which I was a part.

The next week I spent in and out of the forest, listening with my eyes, so to speak, and not my ears. It has been a cold, wet summer in Finland, a season filled with the sound of rain falling through the spruces and pines. All of the Finns I met grimaced when they talked about it, as if the summer had tasted like cold, weak coffee. But the past week has been dry, and every night there has been frost. The leaves are turning fast. A fog hangs above the river in the mornings, which only deepens the illusion of silence.

I say illusion because on my last night here, I went back to the bridge, again under a clear sky. There are long shadows even at midday this time of year, and dusk is still reluctant to give way to real darkness. As I stood there, I heard the faint, but quite audible roar of the rapids a half-mile downstream and around a great bend. Why had I not heard it that first night? The answer, I suppose, is that I was too busy not hearing the things I’m used to hearing, including the great roar that underlies the city’s quietest moments. It had taken a week to empty my ears, to expect to hear nothing and to find in that nothing something to hear after all.

How do you make a kleenex dance? You put a lil boogie in it.

About Luke and his artistic work...

Read this from Luke's Web site:

BIOGRAPHY

"lucky dragons" means any recorded or performed or installed or packaged or shared or suggested or imagined pieces made by Luke Fischbeck, Sarah Rara, and/or any sometimes collaborators who claim the name.

the name "lucky dragons" is borrowed from a japanese fishing boat caught in the fallout of hydrogen bomb test at bikini atoll in the 1950's. the crew stricken ill, and the boat itself contaminated, the "lucky dragon" became a crystalizing symbol for the previously diffuse worldwide anti-nuclear sentiment. eventually the boat was painted black, renamed the "dark falcon", and put into reuse as a fishing vessel, until it was retired and disposed of on the man-made trash island "dream island", where it remains today.

lucky dragons are about the birthing of new and temporary creatures--equal-power situations in which audience members cooperate amongst themselves, building up fragile networks held together by such light things as skin contact, unfamiliar language, temporary logic, the spirit of celebration, and things that work but you don't know why. There have been hundreds of these simple yet shifting and unpredictable instances--with audiences ranging from the intense intimacy of one person to the public spectacle of thousands of people. At the heart of it all is playing together--building up social collectivities, re-engaging the wonder and impossibility of technological presence. It sounds--and looks--like simple and ancient patterns coming together and falling apart in a sincere attempt to let wires and screens and words become clear and crystal.

they keep a busy schedule of performances and visits and festivals and workshops and things, in the present, and in the past: the 2008 Whitney Biennial, NY's PS1, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Philadelphia Institute for Contemporary Art, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Frankfurt's Schirn Kunsthalle, Los Angeles' The Smell, NY's The Kitchen, The Smithsonian Institute's Hirshorn Museum, Cooper Union, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, etc. Lucky dragons live in Los Angeles California and have recorded 19 albums which are all available for downloading.

lucky dragons' sister projects include "sumi ink club"--a weekly collaborative drawing society, and "glaciers of nice"--a small press and internet community.

today's influences: nikki de st phalle, joan didion, CoBrA group, crass, hieronymous bosch, thomas jefferson, tina turner, allan kaprow, joan jonas, bruce nauman, mayan codices, ivor cutler, jacques ranciere, helio oiticica, lygia clark, giorgio agamben, pauline oliveros, terry riley, plastic people of the universe.

Luke Fischbeck and Lucky Dragons

Please peruse Luke's Web site "Hawks and Sparrows" and think of questions you would like to ask him-- about his work, about life as an artist, his artistic influences and development, what he thinks makes "good" or "interesting" art, what his artistic practice is, etc. Come to class with two questions for his Thursday visit.

http://www.hawksandsparrows.org/

John F. Simon Jr. installation on Uiowa campus

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsLUxM__MGQ

This is an interview with John Simon Jr. in his studio.
There is one of his installations on campus in the college of medicine's Medical Education and Biomedical Research Facility (MEBRF).

Here's some stuff.

Pop Up Cardboard Furniture

‘g’ by Jack Strange

This is a really sweet blog all the time but this entry is about Art at Iowa!

So gimmie yo number, and I'll call.

Requested everyone on the Facebook of the interweb. (Colleen, couldn't find ya. Hidden?)

Created a secret group; you'll all be invited. (Correct use of semi-colon? Comment.)

Strobes are like $15. (That danged Wal-Mark. All chip in and get 2 or 3?)

Fun Stuff:

"Bridge"

For video:

http://www.michaelcross.eu/bridge1.html

Here's the numbers for everyone:

Laura Henkle 217.415.6861

Chelsea Miller 214.668.2511

Jeff Cook 319.404.7360

Zhilin (Amy) Ding 319.855.0119

Shannon Hewson 760.214.5629

Cain Baum 773.988.0826

Jeremy Brown 563.468.1504

Nicole Pietrantoni 615.417.1810

Caitlin Carlyle 712.269.7461

Colleen Logue 847.347.4465

Jesse Sinclair 515.681.2140

Cami Marlow 712.520.2599

Project #3... Site Specificity, Installation, Performance, Intervention

Project 3 – Critiques/Due Sept. 29 and Oct. 1

Site Specificity, Installation, Performance and Intervention

For this project, you will create a site-specific work, installation, intervention, or performance work. You can work individually or collaboratively. Below are some ideas and things to consider.

 

Installation

Installation art engages the viewer’s entire sensory experience in four-dimensional space. It dissolves the line between art and life (see Kaprow).  It moves away from viewing art as discreet objects isolated from the environment in which they are encountered.

 

An installation artist uses almost any material and media to create an experience in a particular environment. Oftentimes, installation art is highly site-specific. It is not confined to gallery spaces but can be material intervention in everyday public or private spaces.

 

For this project you will be working individually or collaboratively to make an installation that fundamentally alters the viewer’s experience and perception of a space.

 

Performance Art

Performance art involves the artist and is created in real time. What makes performance art so intermedial in nature is that it is slippery and truly defies most boundaries and definitions that are imposed on it. On one end of the spectrum you can argue that a performance begins and ends in the place and time that the artist says it does. But if you are in a room waiting for a performance to start, isn’t that part of the experience, hence part of the performance too.  And approaching the place of the performance: part of the experience.  Getting ready to go to the performance: part of the experience. So on the other end of the spectrum, you could argue that we all are involved in a lifelong performance, that every social act is essence a performance, that there is no boundary between performance and life.

 

For this project, you will create a performance art piece. When developing your ideas, try to get away from the idea that performance art is a sort of “art-theater”, that is, a “detached, closed arrangement in space-time” in Kaprow’s words. Instead, think of the performance as a way to direct and alter the experience of your audience in real-time. There is no limitation on how you choose to do this. 

Cait's 2nd Project (Finally..)

Art Trip to India through University

Hello All,

Professor Anita Jung (in printmaking) and Susan White (painting) will be leading a three week trip to India during the winter break-- you can earn up to three academic credits and the trip will focus on seeing art and museums. This trip is open to all undergrad and grad art students-- if you are interested please feel free to contact Anita at anita-jung@uiowa.edu or peruse this Web site for more information:

http://www.uiowa.edu/~geog/india/index.shtml

Amy's Project 2

Cain's turkey

Jeff Cook Project 2

Project 2: Creature.

Project #2

Cori Dahl Project 2