Art21

The Art21 videos were very intriguing to me; it was definitely cool to have the artists give their perspectives and reasoning behind their works. It was nice being able to identify with a lot of the things that the artists said.

Vija Celmins-
I was impressed by the approach Celmins takes to her art. Rather than just painting a painting, she builds a painting. Instead of using symbols, she says she lets images just flow through her life. Her description of how images can hold memories really stuck with me as well. That images can hold memories is not exactly a secret, but something about the way she said it really impressed me. As for her actual art, I thought that the painting of the stars was really cool and had a lot of depth to it. I also loved the ocean images, partially because of her story behind them about her going to the ocean every day in hopes of something amazing appearing.

Elizabeth Murray-
I think I was able to identify most with the things that Murray said. Her description of an artist being like a safe breaker seems so accurate to me. Sometimes you need to really wait for something to work. You need to keep trying new combinations in order to find that right one. Her description of how she can love a piece of her art one day and hate it the next morning I think is something that any artist can identify with. This also ties in with how she said how you can't always be on straight path with art, how sometimes the road has curves in it and even other times you get off the road completely was somehow comforting to hear. All artists go through rough times. I also really liked her claim that painting is physical. I just think the idea of someones whole body going into a work of art is really awesome and I really want to start getting more physical with my art, rather than just sitting behind a computer.

Ann Hamilton-
Ann Hamilton's art was really interesting to me. Her project in the house with the fuchsia powder running down the walls was something that really struck me. I also thought that the pinhole camera that she put in her mouth is such a fascinating yet simple concept. The project she said up in the abandoned warehouse was also really cool.

Bruce Nauman-
Some of Nauman's works didn't really grab me, but I did find some of his projects very cool. The bleachers that didn't seem to serve any purpose grabbed my attention. The stairway through the field was also interesting. I like his statement that the stairway's "intention" is what makes it art. Another thing that struck me was one of the first things he said. It was something along the lines of that he doesn't have a large audience in mind when he creates his works, he thinks more along the lines of what he might show a certain person. I like this approach because it's impossible to please everybody all the all time and it seems like if you are creating a piece of art with the intention of satisfying as many people as possible that you may also have to sacrifice your vision of the artwork you intend to create.

Matthew Barney-
It was somewhat difficult for me to really grasp Barney's work, I think because he works with film and there were only a few clips shown so I couldn't really find the "essence" of whatever he was trying to express. The Cremaster series seems interesting enough, and I was impressed by the level of thought and detail that seems to go into his work. I think it was his father that saidwhen Barney has goal he will find a way to make it work. It should seem obvious to most people that if you have a goal, you should do what it takes to achieve it, but I don't think this is put to practice nearly as much as it should be. There have been a few projects that I can remember seeing so vividly in my head, but that I never managed to complete because I thought that they might be too difficult or too much work.

"Reading Images"

The project we did today in class was very cool. I really enjoyed trying to delve deeper into the meaning of the images and trying to find a connection between them all. Even though it was somewhat difficult for me to draw conclusions about my group's images, it was fun to do and I think that I will get better at this sort thing with practice. Hearing the other groups' interpretations of their own image sets was also very interesting and really made me think about the images and change my perspective. Not only was reading the images exciting, but just the images themselves were quite interesting.

Alexei Shulgin

Alexei Shulgin has taken an interesting approach to music with his so-called "cyberpunk rock band," 386 DX. One who might happen to wander into one of his shows would probably be pretty surprised by the experience. Alexei, armed with a computer keyboard connected to a 386 DX processor running MIDI software on Windows 3.1, would take the stage and perform computer generated MIDI replications of popular songs along with a visualization of the song projected onto the screen behind him.

Alexei's music sounds like a combination of old video game music paired with one of those text-to-speech programs. It is an interesting listening experience, but I can't imagine that many people would ever say "man, I could really rock out to some Alexei Shulgin." It seems that he takes a lighthearted approach to his performances, perhaps poking fun at the over-serious state of modern music. It is very cool that he does all this with a computer running on 4 Mb of RAM and 40Mb of hard drive space. Watching his performances should make us question our perspective of how we view music and what we consider music and, less specifically, art in general. It is interesting to note that in the video below, he is wearing a shirt that says "NOT AN ARTIST."


His work reminds of an artist that I enjoy listening to every once in a while called "8 Bit Weapon," which use a Commodore 64, Nintendo equipment, and some other simple synthesizers to make a really interesting combination of old video game sounds and modern music. While 8 bit weapon may use slightly more sophisticated equipment, they have created some really cool music. They have a few albums available for free download on their page that I linked to above, and also have a few songs available to stream on their myspace page.

What intrigues me most about these tpes of artists is that, while their "creations" may not be as accessible as more conventional standards of art and music, they show that it is definitely possible to break away from the norm and create something new and unique.






(http://www.easylife.org/386dx/386dx-in-2001.mpg if the embedded video won't play.)

pi

3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419
716939937510582097494459230781640620
89982803482534211706798