Project 3: Experimental Video Triptychs

The three clips of the triptychs from the left to the right:


      My triptychs video is an appreciation of water. Water is one of the main element for a life to begin. I placed a tiny river in the middle part as the emphasis of my theme. However, I made a mistake that I tried to record the river video too fast. When I did the editing to lower the speed, it lacked enough frames so it didn't play very fluently. The two side videos both contain various animal clips, which I tried to express the strong connections between water and lives. This may be hardly noticeable, but all the clips I picked had water appeared somewhere inside them. It was shown either visually or aurally. Furthermore, since water comes from nature, I kept all the sounds of the video for showing my appreciation. I wanted the audience to be able to feel the natural beauty from my video.

Reading Assignment 2: Society of the Spectacle

The contemporary culture and society in America are mainly under the control of capitalism. For me, capitalism is overemphasizing the use of money in these recent years. Money, and amount of products an individual has owned, now becomes a measurement to judge his/her life quality and achievement. Living in the system of capitalism also tells us that more money gains more power to control the “spectacles”.

Guy Debord, one of the famous participants in the Situationists movement, believed that everyday life is connected with spectacles. As capitalism has became a part of our society so far, this system is taking over the spectacles (mass media,  advertisements, entertainment… etc.), furthermore, limiting people’s creativity of art to their everyday life. To fight against the modern capitalism, the Situationists applied a technique called détournement. Personally, I think détournement is a very effective way to transmit the message to the audience. My thought is similar with Zack Malitz’s explanation about why détournement works well in his article, Détournement or Culture Jamming. Because people are sensitive with the familiar things around them, changing and mocking a cultural image can more easily bring up public attention and trigger audience to think about the related issue.

Another method I want to talk about is Identity Correction. Its goal is to force the target to face its problem by embarrassing it. This is also a powerful way; however, it can cause some unexpected side effect. A perfect example is the Yes Men and their impersonation to Dow Chemical. They successfully humiliated the company; yet they might hurt the victims’ families again even though they did not show any related clips in their documentary film.

The action of Situationists helps us to rethink any issue existing in our modern society, and it encourages everyone to participate. But people should be award of possible negative consequences when practicing with the Situationists movement. Certainly, the Yes Man did a great job on embarrassing Dow Chemical, but I wouldn’t think the people that had suffered from the disaster enjoyed or appreciated what they did.

Project 2: Performing for the Camera

 
      My video is related to the concepts of unnecessary and abundance. I think many people pay too much attention on material life. We often buy plenty of stuff that might be unnecessary or we already have the similar one, like shoes, purses, clothes...etc. I'm not saying we should live with as less material as possible. But when a person has over ten bags and he/she still tries to buy more, or keeps purchasing the latest model of a smartphone then replace the old one even thought it still works perfectly well...these are the problems I wants to talk about in my video.

Project 2: Performance Score

        I performed this score which was made by my classmate Mason Furr. I played the score from the left first, went through the right-upper part, then moved down and kept going to the edge of right side. Every straight line I performed it by the ruler. The hollow circles were presented by the tick tok sound and the tiny dots were the pile bottle.

        And this is my music score for my another classmate Marina Thomassian. Her instrument was a flute, which reminded me wind. So I drew the background lines by lines to make it looks like the flow of wind. I drew leaves in various colors and sizes to present the pitch or volume of the flute. Because I wanted to let the performer decide how to play my score, there is not really a clear way to tell where to start or how to perform the leaves.

Reading Assignment 1: Dada Manifestos

The two Dada manifestos that would be compared were written by Hugo Ball and Tristan Tzara. In Ball’s manifestos, the Dada spirit was emphasized in language. Ball used a unique, or to be more clear, a very individual writing style. He tried to take his manifestos as an example of how Dada worked in our society. On the other hand, Tzara had defined Dada further and has more related it into art.

According to Tzara’s manifestos, Dada is nothing. Dada rejects the meaning of every thing and expresses the concept of pointless. When speaking about “Art”, Dada is also known as an anti-art movement, denying the general idea which applied in most art works – aesthetic. It was been mentioned by Tzara in his manifestos, “a work of art should not be beauty in itself, for beauty is dead”. As the first paragraph has introduced, the difference of the two Dada manifestos is Ball involved Dada in literature. However, talking in the similar way about how Tzara opposed aesthetic, Ball brought out a question that how word itself has replaced by its meaning and why can’t we create our own words. In conclusion, two manifestos explained about Dada by discussing aesthetic should not represent artwork itself, and the definition should not replace word as well.

In my opinion of the two manifestos, I agree the aesthetic should not always connect to artwork, or even become the work itself. As the sense of beauty varies from person to person, a piece of artwork can receive any kind of critique such as if it is “beautiful” or it is considered as art. However, I disagree what Ball said about word and its meaning. Words were created to express any specific meaning. They are the agent of meanings. That is, words are not replaced by meanings because without meaning itself, word just exists as a meaningless symbol.

Project 1: Artist Instrument

        I used my sheet music stand as the backbone of my instrument. It could create three different sounds. The pile bottle made a maraca-like sound by snapping the rubber bands. I tied two rubber bands on it; the thicker could made louder sound and the thiner one had lighter sound. I put a bookmark made by iron wire into the can so it had the tik tok sound when it swung back and forth. I thought the ruler with shower curtain hooks made the coolest sound from my instrument, especially when it was connected with mic, which made the sound more like a bunch of dishes were been breaking.

Project 1: Appropriation

        The project is a collage. It was done by the pictures of a book which I got it for free from a donation box and the painting purchased from a thrift store. The message of my work is just showing how generations change human lifestyle and the society. At the left and right side of the bottom I used two different building images to contrast the way people lived in the past and present. Also, the old people at the back and the two children in the front brought out the meaning of generation. The original painting was an ocean painting. To me, ocean is the primary place that creates most of the lives on Earth. Therefore, I think it's a good representation to show the concepts of life, changing (evolution), and generation.

        These are the photos that I put my work back to another thrift store. I had stayed in the store for a while just to see what might happen to my collage. Sadly, I saw a guy bought some paintings but not mine. It still stayed on the shelf when I left the store.

        If you are interested in what the tiny letters I put on mean, you can keep reading it. Just for fun, I made two ciphers to someone who would buy my collage. The numbers on the fan are just a simple substitution cipher, replacing letters by numbers based on alphabetical order. It is used as a key to solve the second one, which is a Vigenere cipher. Those crazy letters are the cipher text.

So...this is the message I really said to the buyer: [please highlight to see]

3-15-12-12-1-7-5 = COLLAGE

VVLSKYJQFMFYORIWE = THANKSFORBUYINGIT