Lecture Reviews

Paho Mann Scatter and Heap

Paho’s view for his art was of humans in a massed produced world. He took pictures of his own personal belongings and made a mass grid of everything that he owned. He also began to take photos of the junk drawers of people he knew and eventually random strangers in order to get a feeling to the person’s personality and character just from looking at their various junk drawers.
I can understand where he’s coming from with trying to catch one’s personality from just the junk drawers that they have in their houses, yet I am still skeptical on how he does it. He posted ads on Kraig’s List asking for those strangers to allow him to take photos of their drawers. When doing this, the people are essentially being warned ahead of time that of an event that they can alter. People can clean their junk drawers for fear that they will look like slobs once Paho took the pictures. In that sense the junk drawer is no longer a junk drawer because it has become organized and neat. I feel that he could have done a more candid method, not breaking into people’s houses, but just another way.
He also took many photos of different Circle K buildings, both previous stores that were closed and remodeled as different businesses and of the few last standing Circle K stores. For this he traveled around the country and took his photos from the same general position in order to compare the businesses with one another.
I enjoyed these photos more than his previous works because to me it seemed like he took a lot more time and effort for it. Traveling throughout the country and locating old and current Circle K’s and marking them on a map, taking pictures and comparing them, it has a nice travel through time feeling. Showing that nothing lasts forever and things always change.

Mark Tribe Performance Mediation and the Public Sphere

Mark Tribe’s works were first created without purpose and after he creates his piece, then he tires to find where in what category his artwork falls into and the theories that come from it.
For his first piece he showed how he, along with other artists, collaborated with many people to organize a college’s parking lot into a palate of colors. They guided cars throughout the college to their proper parking lots, i.e. blues cars with blues, red cars with red, etc. They were told not to worry if a few cars went into the wrong parking lots and to just let them be. The end result was an entire color wheel that could only bee seen from the sky.
I was very impressed with the piece. I thought it was very beautiful and it was a perfect example to show how when many work together so much can get done. It shows seamless collaboration and participation that I did not think was possible. It really gave his presentation a good start, however I did not know that I would be disappointed down the line.
For his later projects he had actors reenact famous speeches with a crowd watches. It was supposed to give a feel for what it was like to be at those speeches when they first came out, a step back in time one could say. However I felt like how he did it was a little bit too easily. I wish that he could have reconstructed more of the speeches, such as people holding up signs, having false guards, or even requiring the speakers to wear formal suits. I wanted to be impressed with the speeches, but unfortunately I was not. Truthfully it made me wish that I could have had the knowledge just to leave the presentation when Tribe had me feeling impressed from his first work.

Exhibition: Scatter and Heap

Scatter and Heap Exhibition

An exhibition where the junk of man literally became the art to see. It featured the works of photographer Paho Mann and of sculptor Lauren DiCioccio. The exhibition itself was their way of portraying how junk in the modern age had become so bad that it has fused itself with society, essentially becoming something of the norm where if we did not see junk of some sort, be it trash or useless knickknacks, it would be considered abnormal.
The works of Paho Mann were various photos of junk drawers that showed the mass waste creation that we create even in our own homes. It basically shows that we have become pack rats, refusing to throw anything away for fear that when we do, we will need whatever was thrown out as soon as it is in the trash. However, to me this seemed a little too easy to do. Just take a few pictures of random junk drawers and you are done. I just wish there were more than only about 12 pictures of junk drawers shown. Like a massive collection of junk drawers that filled the wall from end to end, that would have been intimidating.
Lauren DiCioccio’s works were fabric and sewn replicas of junk. Items like crushed water jugs, bottles, cans, etc were recreated with fabric and make to look like the trash she was portraying. I did not notice that the items were made of fabric in the beginning and only found out until I really looked closely. I really enjoyed looking at the pieces, it scratched my curiosity of how she made them and I thought that the sculptures were just beautiful.
Nice exhibitions from both sides, not my favorite subject but still it was nice to see work that tried to be different.

Final Project

Desert Snow



As winter comes so does the snow and even the powerful heat of the desert cannot escape the white blanket that covers everything in sight. With snow also comes silence, from the chirping birds to the mighty mountain wind. All is quieted.

The Reno mountains and shots of Virginia City were used. I used my own Canon HD cameral and tripod for the shots. Rather than sagebrush and sand, I wanted to show a side of Nevada that few think of when they think of the state. I personally fell in love with the mountains when I first moved here and I still love them. I enjoyed myself and hope to continue this type of art for the future.

Big Screen Project

For this project I decided to use the nature around where I live and place a human who appears and vanishes throughout it. The meaning of the film is that humans are now everywhere within the earth, so much so that nothing is really considered pure nature anymore. You can always find a piece of trash or signs that a human was around.

Triptych

We had to create a triptych and I decided to use my characters Rosie and Enza again, however this time I introduce a new character, Darwin, Rosie's godfather.  It took hours, even an all-nighter, with a ton of adjusting to make the transitions look remotely smooth.  Absolutely painful, but I loved every minute making it.

A photo of how the installation looked like on the wall in the gallery.

--VMS

Video Creations

This time we had to create two videos using the same music we created for the last project.

The first was again an intentional creation, so I decided to create an animation.

Rosie and Enza:



The second was again random and even more confusing than the last.  I have a drawer full of old bandanas and a few masks.  I gathered them up and spread them all out on my bed.  Then I went down the list of my contacts and called them as I went.  When they answered the call I would ask a one worded question like blue?, or camo?, and death?  If they answered "What?" it was a no, however if they answered anything else, such as "who," "excuse me," or the like it was a yes.  From the list of five items that were chosen I would put them on my face in the order that they were picked.  Then I created another list of effects in Adobe After Effects and went through the same process, which chose the filters for each item that I would put on.

Faces:

Sounds Mix

We took the fives sounds we created and meshed them together into two, one-minute songs.

Intentional, where I mixed the song however I wanted:



Random, this one was a bit more confusing.  I have a cat, and he loves to go outside.  Whenever he cried to go outside I would check the time on the clock, whatever the minutes were, I would count down a list of the effects in Garageband and chose the one it fell on.  The song was split in three parts in order to allow for more effects.



--Max

Five Sounds

We had to make five sounds, each lasting a minute.  Click on the links below to see what each is like.

Brella



Voice



Cut Cassette



Vinyl



Sound Self Portrait



--VMS

Homemade Instrument and the Sound it Makes

A small instrument that I have created using an old umbrella and other materials.

The "instrument" used.  While it did not make what one would call music, the noises were expressions of my inner-self

This instrument that I have constructed is a direct mirror of my preferences and personality.  The umbrella represents how I usually shield myself from trying new things, or giving them a chance before judging them.  It also shows that I do not believe in most superstitions, such as opening an umbrella under a roof is bad luck.  The coil wrapped around the inside of the umbrella’s metal workings represent the tangled mess within my psyche, as I am still trying to find out who I am and what my style of art is.  The small brush-like device represents reason that tries to clean out my defensive ways, yet the harder I brush the more bristles break off.  The small flower in the middle of it all represents the hope that I have for my future.  It is also my safe haven as it represents the love I have for the outdoors as whenever I need to clear my head I always take a walk out in a trail and I come back happier than I left.

Greetings to All!

I hope you will all have a wonderful time as I post more items here.  For now the blog will be mostly about my sound/image class, but soon I hope to post more items concerning to art, animation, and graphic design.

Let the adventure start!

--VMS