Dearest Alyson...

My story is called "Mid-Day Reminiscence"

That's all.

Recreation of a piece

Original Photograph (by Jeff Busby):

Video Recreation:

Alex Bag

Born in New York city, Alex Bag is a female video artist. In her videos she always acts out an ironic situation. She uses irony as her trademark. Another trademark of hers is to adopt doll personaes and create paradoies in the doll world. She also uses pop culture vernacular in the dialogue in her videos.

The costumes and outfits in Alex Bag's peices are enough to make you laugh. The pieces as a whole are humorous and the dialouge makes you laugh at the piece as well as yourself. The only problem I have with her work is how hard it is to find! It was extremely difficult to find a tiny biography on Alex Bag and finding examples of her pieces were just as frustrating.

Vito Acconci

Unlike the artists we've researched, Vito works mainly in landscaping, architecture, and installations. He was an immigrant who started working as a poet. He later became a video artist and a performance artist using his body as the subjeect of his photographs and films. Most recently, Vito takes over public spaces and makes them into his works of art. He invites viewers in by activiating machinery around them. Some of his works of art involve pornographic subjects being shouted over a loud speaker to passersby. I won't talk about those pieces... Vito also spent time teaching in many colleges around the country.

I find it hard to respect the work of a man who lays under a bridge, masturbating, and shouting out who pleasures him to that very person as they pass by. His sculptures are very interesting and well-crafted and I think his work is public spaces is brilliant. I love what he does when he takes over a public space without telling anyone he's going to do so and he makes the space his work of art by covering it in a material, etc. I try hard to overlook the masturbating piece, but it's hard to ignore that fact and I think that makes me look at his other pieces with a different, frustrated angle.

Paul Pfeiffer

Paul Pfeiffer was born in Honolulu but was raised in the Philippines. Very into technology, Pfeiffer uses computers to edit his videos, photography, and even his sculptures. For a lot of his videos, he will take footage from sporting events such as boxing, basketball, and hockey, and will digitally remove the players from the game and place them in different settings to create a new piece of art. Pfeiffer plays these pieces on mini LCD screens which forces the viewer to concentrate on the piece and really use their imagination. Some of Paul's pieces use computer-generated scenes that recreate Hollywood's most famous horror films such as "the Exrocist" and "Poltergeist."

The reason Paul's work really keeps me interested is because it makes you think about man's transformation and new dependency on technology. Years ago, we weren't like this, but as man has progressed we're become more and more dependent on the technologies available. I believe this is what Paul's work is trying to point out, and that's why it interests me.

Flipbooks Uno y Dos.

Sound:

A story from Einstein's Dreams:

Flash animation, Man vs Technology.

Man vs. Technology

Pipilotti Rist

Although her real name is Elizabeth, she adopted the nickname Pipilotti. Pipilotti Rist studied illustration, photography, and communication arts but she is most well-known for her video art pieces. In her video pieces, which she shoots in super 8, she focuses on sensitive issues such as gender and sexuality. She is a conceptual artist but her video pieces emit a happiness and brightness.

The fact that in her biography Rist wrote "Her favorite number is 54" made me love her right off the bat. I watched the video "I'm not the girl who misses much," and was kind of in shock. She dances around with her breasts exposed and singing in some random high pitched fast forwarded voice. I don't even know what to think of it. Her work is interesting and definately keeps you watching.

Bill Viola

Bill Viola is considered a pioneer in video art. He loves doing huge video installations to capture the viewer in picture as well as sound. Viola recieved his BA in experimental studios and proceeded to study in Italy for a while. Violoa's video projects stand out because of their directness and simplicity. He explores a lot of human activities in his pieces such as birth and death. He is also a writer whose writtings have been published worlwide. Viola also experiments with many different religions in his life as well as his pieces. These religions include Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and Christian mysticism.

Bill Viola's videos and photographs are pretty incredible. They are mind-blowing. The contrast in the dark colors and the vibrant colors in most of his pieces work really well together. His pieces are moving and dramatic. Some of them are so powerful in a very odd sense such as "Dillusion" and "Purification" but I love them all the same.

Matthew Barney

Although Matthew Barney works in sculpture, video, animation, photography, installations, drawing, and performance art, Barney considers himself a sculptor. Barney studied at Yale... planning to major in medicine, but fell in love with the arts. He also worked as a model. His best-known work is a film series called The Cremaster Cycle. Barney has done many interesting performances pieces such as one entitled, Drawing Restraint 13: The Instrument of Surrender in which Barney dressed up like General MacArthur and walked the plank into a giant vat of petroleum jelly. Odd? Well... yeah.

To be honest, a lot of Matthew Barney's work really freaks me out. He dresses up for many of his pieces as this strange, red-headed, big-nosed, crazy hair-styled character and poses eccentrically. All his performance art pieces are extremly odd actually. Whether he has hugely extended fingernails or he's making out in petroleum jelly... it's just plain weird.

Learning Flash

Playing around in flash.

Other Flash Websites

Website One:

A stick figure in an intense battle with the flash toolbar-- this flash website was by far my favorite. I've seen this site many times before, but every time I watch it, I am amazed all over again. Not only is it an amazing idea carried out perfectly, it's funny and entertaining. And now that we all know how to use flash, we watch it with a different mindset. Watching it now makes us all think about how many layers that would take! How many keyframes with only slight movement variations it would take to make something this complex. This website is truly incredible. Check it out.

Website Two:

This website is really creative. It's basically shot in many different locations and shows these locations throughout the day. You first choose the location you'd like to see and then dial yourself around a clock to see the location throughout the day. You may go as fast or as slow as you like, allowing you to just capture the sense of the area, or to take it in slowly. The idea behind the website is simple, yet very effective. The shots are very controlled and very clear making it easy to understand. Check it out.

Website Three:

This website is similar to the one I just wrote about above. Here, you follow this woman through the process of her day. You can go in order, or choose hour by hour. Either way, you watch the sun come up, her alarm go off, she wakes up, and then... she goes along with her day. We follow her around the house, see her read the newspaper in the morning, look at some pieces of art, and come home that night. Although similar to the other website I wrote about, I don't like this one as much, but I still find it interesting. Check it out.

Oh the pennies.

Rachel and Cody's Penny Project:

Shows time over different photo sequences with our found object (a penny.)

Here's the set up from class:

Here are the "official" photos, taken at the VCU Graphics Lab:

what is time?

Time studio is a class in which we artistically measure an elapse of time. But when you think about it... what is time? How do you measure something that is different to everyone and basically undefinable?

You could begin by traveling the typical route and defining time with seconds, minutes, and hours. You could then go on to days, weeks, months, years, decades, and centuries. But is that really what time is? Is it a date on a calendar... or a location of the Earth in orbit? Or is time something simpler? Or more complex?

Do you measure time with a watch? A cell phone clock, a sundial, an hourglass perhaps? Or do you measure it with the number of cups of coffee you've drank so far? Do you measure it with the number of classes you've attended or the number of diapers your child has been through? Is time measured by the number of books on your bookshelf or by the number of movies you've watched? Could time be measured by the number of times you walked your child to the bus stop? Or is it the number of miles on your car? Is time measured by the amount of boyfriends you've had or by the number of photos you have on your hard drive? Is time measured with concrete details of your life... or is time measured by something as simple as looking into the eyes of a loved one... and recalling the millions of memories you share with them?

What is time? It's up to you.

PS- props to this guy for the image

birth of the blog

Here it is. Welcome! Read about all my exciting news.