10/20 Blog Entry

For this blog i found a project by Steven Shearer with the name Improved Geometric Mechanotherapy Cell for Harmonic Alignment of Movements and Relations. This project started by the artist observing that a jungle gym was made out of pvc pipe. The artist says that "I liked the idea that this utopian object was constructed out of plumbing material and maybe it is now the plumber taking on the role of the social-engineer." He took this idea and design and then exaggerated from it to create a small scale model of inter winding pipes and an endless maze of copper. He will create a finished version of this that is nine square feet. Also in this large construction of pipes he will install speakers that play low vibrations. This will draw the viewer in and get them to interact with the object. The artist states that "I like the idea of a sculpture that tries to turn people's bodies into instruments." This makes this artwork very unique.

10/13 Blog Entry

Searching through the entries on the different pages I came across Electronic Poppables by Jie Qi. This was found on the Rhizome website. This project is a book that resembles the old pop up books that a lot of children love. Her book however has lights and sounds as well as sensor triggers that create the different interactions of the book. All the triggers and sensors have been built into the pages themselves. There are the original pull tabs and sliding tabs as well as other sensors such as pressure sensors, touch sensors and images you can move to create lights and sounds. This project takes a new spin on the classic pop up. Also all the electrical connections are made using a special paint that has copper alloy in it. this transmits the power from the magnetic batteries and creates the lights and sounds depending on what the reader does.

This book fascinates me because it takes the idea of pop up books that i remember from being a little kid and transforms it into something that seems futuristic. There is one page inparticular that contains a pop up skyline of a city. When the reader moves a boat looking piece on the page up and down, it turns on lights and plays different musical sounds. This page changes depending on the position of the boat in one of three or four positions. Another page contains venus fly traps made from paper that open and close as well as change lighting when the user touches the inside of one of them. This book is an amazing change on the classical pop up and shows a real skill with new ideas of wiring and sensors.

9/29 blog entry

For this blog entry i will write about Copystand: An Autonomous Manufacturing Zone. This project is started by the artist Stephanie Syjuco. This takes place at the Frieze art fair in London. Copystand is a project that takes up a gallery space that is half a workshop, and half a showroom. The artists involved make "copies" of other artworks in the show out of far less valuable materials. After they are produced they are put on the other half of the gallery space and sold for much lower prices than the original. Stephanie's idea behind this was not to make money but to explore how people find value in works and also how works are made and artists voice behind them. The show was a success in that it gathered many peoples attention and made them ask questions.

This project is very interesting to me for the fact of how it explores and presents artistic voice. By presenting half of the gallery space as a workshop it shows how the different artists, including Stephenie Syjuco, create these representations of other artworks. It also gives the artists a chance to put in their own twists to the pieces and their own style. Also by selling the pieces in the space right next to this workshop it gives the viewers and buyers a chance to see how the works are not actual copies. Some may say that these are just cheap knockoffs that Stephanie is using to make some money, a scam if you will. However this is not the point of Copystand. The point is to show people, artists and non artists alike, that everyone has their own style even if it is a copy of somthing else.

9/22 Blog entry

Clicking on the Turbulence link on Flawedart.net i found an article called Lifetracing. This article deals with how identity changes online compared to the real world. Due to the ever changing updates and reworkings of websites everyone is required to keep up by changing their own information. This article talks about personal homepages, blogs, and the social networking sites that are most popular today. Blogs and the new twitter fad has people changing what they say and write more and more often. Through all these social networking sites people have their own separate identities. Sometimes however these identities may be seen differently than how we attempt to present them. As said in this article we see identity as a performance, or act. but "If we see identity as a performative act then how can we perform our identity online?" Therefore this article questions how real our personalities and identities can be. If somebody Googles us or uses some other search engine to try to find out about how we are in person before they meet us and finds something that changes their opinion how true would it actually be? Also since today blogs and facebook statuses are so popular and changing constantly how true is the identity we portray?

9/15 blog entry

For this blog entry i am going to discuss the work/concept called The Symbolic Efficiency of The Frame. This work is found on the Networked Performance link from the Flawedart.net website. This work, as described on the website, tries to explore "how we perceive reality and relate to our history." Slavoj Zizek states that ”Is this not a pure case of the symbolic efficiency of the frame as such? A barren zone is given a fantasmatic status, elevated into a spectacle, solely by being enframed. Nothing substantially changes here – it is merely that, viewed through the frame, reality turns into its own appearance.” He is saying that something we see everyday can be brought to our attention or made to seem a lot more important than the object or scene actually is. also mentioned in the explanation of this project is that the frame of something is not only physical, but mostly a mental tool to help, or hurt our perception of the world and society.
This "frame" can be seen as not only something that can take an everyday scene and make it meaningful, but also something that can mentally be another way to see the same situation. The "frames" that are talked about here may be just a way to see something in a different context. Depending on the context of the situation somebody is in they can have their mindset of the situation changed. An example of this would be if somebody you just met seemed like a good friend, however there was a "frame" put around them from others who say that they are a really horrible person. This would change how you think about the person even if it is only slightly.

9/8 blog

this blog follows one of the works by the artist Alen Bigalow. The work i am discussing is called What They Said (While We Were Sleeping). This was found on the website Turbulence.org along with many of his other works. The interactive video starts off as a screen with different radio channels you can tune to. Each channel deals with a different subject, freedom of speach, privacy, violence and more. Within each channel there are fast flashing pictures that go along with flashing text that lets you read a sentence about one of these subjects. This piece is very interesting to me for the fact that it catches your attention by using an interactive set up, like most of his other works, and deals with the irony of situations we are very familiar with yet do not think about deeply. The first view you get on this "TV" is of the freedom of speech. The text that flashes is Freedom Of Speech Is Not Free. This could represent how much we are censored in today's society. through TV or just in general what we can and cannot say in public. The second screen says Privacy Is A Public Trust. This line is very true when you think about it. Privacy is only protected by laws we have established in our government. However it is a trust that the people around us wont invade our privacy. The third screen says We Must Limit Our Rights To Preserve Them. This is like saying without setting laws and regulations on our rights there would only be chaos and unruly behavior. Next is We Must Kill To Stop The Killing. Meaning that we have to fight to stop the fighting or start wars to stop larger wars. After this there is Poverty is a Detour on the Road to Wealth. Alot of people have to go through tough times financially to be able to make money. Especially with the economy of today alot of people loose their jobs and fall into debt. A lot never come out of poverty while some come out even better than before. Next is Ask Questions Only When There Are No Answers. This is more on a philosophical level than the other channels are. It could mean that we should think more about how things are or why something is without an answer. The second to last channel is Play Not to Excess but to Ease the Path to Work. This is saying basically how it is read. One should not "play" all the time but only play enough to ease the mind to finish the job that needs to be done. Lastly there is We Must Register Our Identities to Keep Them Safe. If we do not have our identities registered or known, then somebody could become us, without any trouble at all and keep using our identity for things like robberies and spending of our money. Overall this work makes one think about what we have today and how ironic some of the things we do are.

10/6 blog entry

For this Blog entry i am going to discuss the In A Dark Wood work from the website Furtherfield.org. This Project is a video game based around the little red riding hood story. However this game takes the story through a horrific tale of six girls from the ages of nine to nineteen. The game starts in a red room where the player chooses one of these girls to take to grandmothers house. The player is told to stay on the path, but that is no fun for anybody. Throughout the story one can wander from the path finding random objects in the woods that the character will or will not interact with. Some of these objects include decrepid chairs, flowers, teddy bears with two heads, a burnt car, and more. As the character finds and interacts with these objects cut scenes take place with flashing pictures, sounds and lines of text that show hints to things that may have happened in the past of the character. When the player reaches the end of this path they find that they are at grandmothers house. However there is something very eerie about this place. Depending on how much the player has explored and found objects with his character there will be rooms open with creepy images, or scenes. The last door, that is grandmothers room opens to reveal a cutscene of a girl with her "wolf" and a creepy scene of somehow that the girl died. The player is then transported back to the original room with the girls to choose from, however there is less and less girls to choose as the game goes on...

This game has some possible motives behind the work put into it. The girls can represent different life styles or choices that a person can make, or just different types of people. There are a range of girls from innocent young girl to goth, and all the way up to the 19 year old mother-like figure. When you are told to stay on the path on the way to grandmothers house it is like saying that you should do what people expect you to. Or otherwise follow the social norm. By leaving the path you make your own choices and ultimately affect your own ending. as you search in this endless forest you can interact with separate things, but not everything. In the game this is tempting as it adds to the story at the end. All of the different interactions could represent irresistible temptations in life, also making it so that not all the girls can interact with all the objects, it represents different interests and ideas behind the girls lifestyles. As your character interacts with these things more and more the story becomes more creepy as though you add depth to the bad things she has done or her bad choices. At the end of the game when you finally reach grandmothers house the player may enter many of the rooms. However these rooms you can enter depend on how extensively the player has explored the forest. These rooms may represent a looking back over the life the characters have lived, or the "path" they have taken in getting where they are now. Finally the character reaches their end in the last room, and the player has a chance to start over... unlike the character they have brought to their fate.