Flesh and Metal: Reconfiguring the Mindbody in Virtual Environments

There were a couple of things in this reading that I really found interesting and actually kind of think myself. One thing that N. Katherine Hayles says is that "the body is an abstract concept that is always culturally constructed." I found this so interesting, because for me I always thought a body was simply a body. The idea that the body is "culturally constructed" is a really amazing view point, in my opinion. In my women studies course that I took last year we had a segment where we discussed how the "ideal" image of women have changed. It has gone from women being incredibly thin, to women having curves. Today it seems that women are supposed to look like Barbie dolls, super thin, big chested with a large bum. I would have to say that these "ideals" were definitely "culturally constructed" just as N. Katherine Hayles was saying in her essay.

Self Portrait

These are the images that I incorporated into my final self portrait. I tried to take photos of things that aren't just my face. Like type to represent my love for graphic design, Polaroids to represent photography, St. Louis skyline to show my love for the city, and a simple strawberry to show that I like food. I combined everything around and on my face to create the final self portrait.

The final self portrait:

Systems Aesthetics

I think a lot of this reading is relevant today. There were little comments here and there throughout the reading that I honestly didn't understand, but I feel like the gist that I did get still relates today. Through out the article there were little phrases that stood out to me more than others. For example, I liked the sentence:

"The specific function of modern didactic art has been to show that art does not reside in material entities, but in relations between people and between people and the components of their environment." 

I felt like this was incredibly relevant in art today. Artists are constantly trying to find ways to connect to the viewer and have them view things differently and not focus on the materials used or if it necessarily "looks good." Along with that I really liked this passage:

"Thus any situation, either in or outside the context of art, may be designed and judged as a system. Inasmuch as a system may contain people, ideas, messages, atmospheric conditions, power sources, and so on, a system is, to quote the systems biologist, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, a "complex of components in interaction," comprised of material, energy, and information in various degrees of organization. In evaluating systems the artist is perspectives considering goals, boundaries, structure, input, output, and related activity inside and outside the system. Where the object almost always has a fixed shape and boundaries, the consistency of a system may be altered in time and space, its behavior determined both by external conditions and its mechanisms of control."

It's a long paragraph/passage but I felt that it hit a lot of things we've been discussing in class lately. We've been talking a lot about systems and that's exactly what this is talking about. I especially liked the last part where it talks about how the object is almost always set and stone, but the system itself isn't always consistent. It all depends on what happens outside of the system that changes it. I felt like it really related to our chance project. With that project we created a system that had a set object, but because of the "chance" part of the project the outcome was inconsistent due to external conditions.

Overall, what I got out of this reading (from what I understood), I really liked it. I thought it was interesting that a lot of the views they had in the 60's were the same as they are today. Not all of the views are the same, but some of them are.

Research Presentation

I used the website: Stephen Wilson: Intersections of Art/Science/Technology/Culture to discover the artists for this research project. Three artists that I found really interesting were Rinotchild, Camile Utterback and Scott Sona Snibbe. All three of these artists create art that has to do with motion of some sort. 

Rinotchild created a piece called "Laughing Swing." It's a swing that has a speaker embedded in it that creates laughter as you swing. The higher you swing the more intense the laughter becomes. The "Laughing Swing" is designed to be a stress reliever by making you laugh while you swing. It's an interesting cycle between laughing and swinging. I found this project incredibly unique and joyful. It just made me happy watching the videos on the artist's website. 

Website: http://www.michalri.net/laughingswing/

Camile Utterback created a piece titled "Text Rain." This project is exactly what it sounds like, text rain. It's a video of falling text that people can interact with. You are able to catch, toss, and drop the text as it falls from the screen. The text happens to be a poem about bodies and language. If you catch enough letters it will begin to spell out words or phrases from the poem. I thought this installation was really cool in the sense that you can interact with words and text. It was just really interesting and caught my attention. 

Website: http://www.siggraph.org/artdesign/gallery/S00/interactive/thumbnail21.html

Scott Sona Snibbe also created a video installation but on a much bigger scale in comparison to Camile Utterback. He installed his piece in the LAX Airport titled "Transit." It's a unique silhouette video of people walking in an airport that randomly begin to break into dance. Eventually a man walks across the long stretch of screens and stops the dancing and everyone continues walking. At one point there is a lady in red that dances that really contrasts with the other silhouettes of people. What I loved most about this installation is that the different dancers are unique to represent the different people and styles of dance in LA. You can tell there was a lot of thought and planning that went into this project in the way that it incorporates the airport and the different dancers to represent the location of the installation. The "Transit" piece was by far my favorite. 

Website: http://www.snibbe.com/

More on Scott Sona Snibbe 

• Digital Artist/Entrepreneur 
• Work includes: Apps, videos, and interactive installations
• Work incorporated into: Concerts, the Olympics, museums, airports, etc. 
• Worked with: Philip Glass, Beck, and James Cameron
• Awards: Webby and Ars Electronica & grants from the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation
• CEO at Eyegroove
• Teaching/Research positions at: NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematics, The San Francisco Art Institute, California Institute of the Arts, and U.C. Berkeley

He says that his purpose of his work is to "bring meaning and joy to people's lives."

Chance & Indeterminacy

For this project I chose to create a digital color grid. I randomly selected html color codes using a color website. From there I printed the list of colors I chose and cut them into slips of paper and placed them in a cup that my roommate then blindly drew out of. I recorded the color codes in the order that she drew them so that I could create the grid.

In order to find the exact color on InDesign to create the grid I used this website to convert the html color code to CMYK color code. From there I simply placed the color into a 10x10 grid I made. The end result was, of course, incredibly random but also really cool.

The planning and organizing for the project was a lot of work, but the end result made it worth it. It ended up becoming a pretty cool design.

People's Interests

Brainstorming

Tracking/Mapping ideas:

- Paths walked on a daily basis
- Phone tracking; different apps used daily
- Internet browsing
- Recycling
- *People's interests; show how people are connected through their mutual interests
- Sticky notes; collect all the lists, doodles, ect. that I create on sticky notes daily


People's interests

- Make a type of "web" to show the relations (similar to Marc Lombardi)
- Use an icon of the interest for representation
- People used: friends, friends-friends, family


Interests

- Nature (hiking, fishing, being outdoors, trees, plants...)
- Fitness
- Greek
- TV
- Major
- Photography
- School/College
- Color
....

Sentences on Conceptual Art

Sentences on Conceptual Art

These sentences that were written in the 1960's still relate today, in my opinion. Sentence #3, "Irrational judgements lead to new experience," related to me personally. Every once in a while I will make a decision that may not be considered "good", but I end up having a really interesting experience because of it. Also, sentence #25, "The artist may not necessarily understand his own art. His perception is neither better nor worse than that of others," relates to me personally as well. I might make a piece of art and people might ask the basic questions of "why did you make this" and I don't always have the answer. I believe there is no right or wrong way to perceive art. Art is very personal, or can be. So it could mean one thing to the artist and something completely different to the viewer. I think this concept will continue forever only because everything views things differently. If we viewed everything the same the world would be an incredibly boring place. Overall, I think all of these sentences are still relevant today in one way or another. Some maybe more than others, but the idea is still there.