Portfolio

Here is my artist portfolio

Machu Picchu Resort

Here is my final website :)

SMP Presentations

I went to both Amy and Tom's SMP presentations. I thought they were both really well done and put together. You could see the great quantity of research and work that went into them that would have primarily have been lost if you had just been viewing the artwork, especially with Amy's. When looking at Amy's artwork you just see a pretty basic run of the mill children's book, but after hearing her presentation you can start to see how she work through her basic ideas and decisions to come up with a book that was both fun and educational. Amy did a lot of research on phonics and how to best help children how to read. She then applied this knowledge to her children's book creating an colorful and fun filled learning adventure of "Where's that Bear?".
Tom on the other hand was talking about how photography can be used to celebrate life. Throughout his comical presentation he delves into this idea of the frozen moment in time that one is able to capture through photography and how through doing that without setting up the shot is actually capturing certain glimpse and moments in life.

Dance Show

I went to the St Mary's Dance Club's Dance Show a few weeks ago. It was actually for the most part really well done even though it did seem to go on for longer then necessary. It was amazing how well some of the dances were choreographed, especially when knowing that they had each been choreographed by a fellow student. Of course some were better then others and there were a few in between that were just down right bad, but those tended to get outweighed by the large quantity of really good dances. I'll have to say that my favorite dances were the more cultural ones such as the belly-dancing and the salsa dancing. I think the belly-dancing could have been slightly more interesting, but the costumes were very colorful and pretty. The one main complaint I had about the dance show was that it was really long, and that would generally be fine and all, but they would have to incorporate a bigger range of dances. It got to a point that while the music was different and the choreography was tailored to match the song, the basic style was still the same, and this went on for about 6 or 7 dances. So personally I think they should have gone back and maybe picked out two or three of the best ones and just cut down on time or incorporated a few more different dances, but I guess they probably just wanted to give everyone a chance to participate and create their own dances.

Website

...here is my progressing website...

Web Plans

The Mandrake

I went to the performance of "The Mandrake" last Thursday night, and while apparently they were having technical problems with the lights it was pretty visually interesting. The set was full of bright and vibrant colors as if you were at a carnival or in a circus tent, and they had this overlapping theme of the mask. I think the concept of the mask had its negative and positive aspects. The masks made it easy to vary the actors ages and stage personalities. But at the same time the masks covered up the actors expressions, and with a straight forward plot line, like the one found in "The Mandrake", it is the actors visual expressions and gesturing that make the play visually interesting. Especially because it seemed like they were going for a simplicity in the set common to the plays preformed in Niccolo Machiavelli's time. While I think there were ways the director could have made the play a little more visually interesting, the play did bring together a slap-stick comedy full of laughs and good humored smiles.

Homework...

Word list:

Resort
Machu Picchu
Tourist
relaxation
tropics
pool
flashy colors
lavish environment
large
populated
bright lights
commercial
plastic
fake
fun
hassel free
active

web site...

first site

Web sites...

Here are the web sites I found.

I was thinking I might turn this Machu Picchu site into a Machu Picchu tourist resort site. So rather then having all the old Incan ruins there would be a large resort on top of them kind of poking fun at this whole idea of resort travel packages and how it really takes away from the true travel experiencing. I was thinking about using Machu Picchu since its in such a remote location and putting something like a tourist resort in there, especially on the site, would really take away from the true nature of the setting.

Here is an other Machu Picchu site.

...and here is an other one, but this one I don't really like as much.

These web sites are tourism sites for Argentina and Peru... I was really looking for one on Bolivia, but I couldn't find any good ones. So I though I might take one of these and model a site for Bolivia off of one of them.

Here's a resort website for reference...

Internet History Reading and Oil Standard

I have a hard time at associating the Oil Standard project as a form of actual web art. I guess I see art as more of a creative creation process, and while the Oil Standards project is a creative and interesting way of spreading this information about oil it doesn't really play into this idea of demonstrating a creative process unique to the artist and their creations. Art also tends to create a unique experience for the viewer, the Oil Standards project only seems to be a creative way of spreading already existing information. But I'll admit that is pretty cool in the way it transforms all the different prices on the web and then links us to different articles on the use of oil and the oil industry.

This project fits into the Sterling reading because it plays right into this idea of the anarchy of the Internet. In this situation an individual is using the Internet to bring awareness to this idea of oil consumption and how oil is being used in the world today by playing on off of the prices already floating around online. I'm pretty sure the people that originally placed those prices online had no idea that they would one day be used to make a statement about the oil industry.

Postcards

Postcard 1

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angles only,
Where an Eidonlon, named Night,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule--
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of Space-- out of Time.


Postcard 2

There the traveller meets aghast
Sheeted memories of the Past --
Shrouded forms that start and sigh
As they pass the wanderer by --
White-robed forms of friends long given,
In agony, to the Earth-- and Heaven.


Postcard 3

By the lakes that thus outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead, --
Their sad waters, sad and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily, --
By the mountains -- near the river
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,--

And thus the sad Soul that here passes
Beholds it but through darkened glasses.



Dream-Land by Edgar Allan Poe

SMP Critics

Rhina- Rhina's work was a sculpture built out of multiple sized rectangles which worked together to created a space or almost grid-like area around them. She used the color red to highlight and accentuate these rectangles and draw the viewer in. One of the main points brought up during her critic was on the directional lines within the piece. There was this whole discussion about how the lines draw you in, but then they don't extend back outwards and don't allow a continuity. A lot was discussed about how Stella and some other artist who's name starts with M, and my minds completely blanking on it for the moment, was meant to influence her work and in what ways.

Ashley- Ashley's work consisted of three distinct works that didn't share much in common aesthetically or in form, but where connected through subject matter. The most extensive of her works was her button collection. There was a brief discussion about how her paper shadow-boxes didn't really work well towards accentuating the work, and how the work itself came from her memory or imagination in terms of the type and form of the buttons showing up. One of her other pieces that didn't seemed to be as problematic as the other two was her spoons piece. This piece seemed pretty straight forward and within context. Her oil can piece though brought out a whole other set of issues since the size of the piece didn't really play into our associations with oil cans and initially the piece was mistaken for a muffin try, which it happened to be made of, and a collection of hangers.

Tom- Tom's work seem to undergo the least amount of critiquing. There was some discussion on whether or not he should enlarge his photo book or if he should leave it in its smaller size. The rhythm and spacing of his images within the book was also discussed. There were some places where the subject matter of the photos drew the viewer in more so then others and this effected the pace of the whole overall book.

Vanessa- Vanessa had her fox thing going on, but rather then depicting her foxes in her usual hunting scenes she uses the character of a fox to poke fun at Cosmo. and context by which it is viewed by girls and women alike in today's society. To do this she uses her fox character as someone that takes the messages of Cosmo. all to seriously, and ends up following Cosmo.'s four tips to success, or whatever. In the end all this tips backfire on the fox just in time for fox to receive the next edition of Cosmo. and make all the same mistakes over again.

Postcard Plan

So for my postcards I have decided I'm going to be doing a series of three postcards, each of which will be connected to a verse from Edgar Allen Poe's poem Dream-Land. I decided on Dream-Land because it is a poem about a dream-like landscape that reminded me a lot of a creepy version of Historic St Mary's City. With this in mind, I decided that I was going to create a series of postcards that take the form of a dream-like journey between the St Mary's landscape at the time of Caecilius Calvert and Anne Arundel and the St Mary's Landscape today. In order to do this I'm going to take pictures of the current St Mary's landscape and overlap them and change them to come up with a different landscape that is reminiscent of the one we are familiar with but that at the same time is completely different and almost unfathomable in it placing in time and context. Into these landscapes I will incorporate and scan images from both the past and the present, interacting in surreal like ways.

Here are the sketches of my initial plans, unfortunatly my roommate's scanner does not really like pencil, but the basic idea is still there.

Photoshop Contest

The Dressing Room

Burroughs' Cut-ups

These readings introduce the different methods known to be used in the cut-up techniques of the surrealists. The process of the cut-up method is described as the cutting up and rearranging of old prose into new poems. The key debate in the first reading was whether our not it is acceptable to use computer software in the rearranging of prose, and how much this method is reflective of the subconscious. The other reading just gave us some basic information behind the process of the cut-up method. Overall I think the reuse and rearranging of words as a form of creating new poetry and ideas is a good one, but I still think in order for this method to work it must be consciously done by an individual in order for it to reach it true potential and creative merit. I'm still kind of unclear of the exact role William Burroughs played in this whole endeavor?

Healing and Patch Tools

Dada... Johannes Baargeld

The Dada artist I chose to write about was Johannes Baargeld... In the two examples of his work shown he has use the techniques of photomontage and collage in his work Ordinäre Klitterung: Kubischer Transvestit vor einem vermeintlichen Scheideweg and overpainting in his work Le Roi rouge.

Ordinäre Klitterung: Kubischer Transvestit vor einem vermeintlichen Scheideweg

In this work Baargeld cuts up different photographs to form a photomontage. In this process Baargeld also uses the typical techniques that form a collage, not all of his images are photographs, in fact many of them are paper clippings like you would find in most regular collages.

Le Roi rouge


This work uses mostly just the technique of overpainting since he is painting or drawing over and incorporating different aspects of the original piece or scrap and creating a new work of art. He also uses a slight bit of typography, but that is some what over shadowed by the drawing aspects of the work.

Audio Journey Project

Here it is... Languages, my journey audio.

This three minute audio clip is designed as a quick journey through my childhood starting out from my birth and running up until I was about 15. There are two different components in this piece that work together to recreate the first 15 years of my life.
One of these components is the on going narrative of my life that I have bouncing around between the background and the foreground of my piece. This narrative quickly summarizes some of the most important and memorable experiences of my life; the birth of my brother, moving from country to country, helping name my sister, and similar occurrences.
The narrative aspect of this piece consists of two different levels; that of the basic matter of fact narrative that just gives us an overview of my childhood, plain, simple, and straight to the point and an overlapping of comments and details that a reflective of the basic narrative.
The narrative was also done in Spanish, the language that dominated most of my childhood, with an underlying of English that for the most is covered up by the Spanish. Much like how English was always in the background of my childhood, but never a really prevalent thing.
The other component of this recounting of my childhood is the layering of various noises that remind me of specific moments or periods of my childhood. Each of this sounds triggers a memory or an experience that has a more of an emotional tie to my childhood then the matter of face and basic principles highlighted in the narrative. These sounds consist of air planes flying overhead, gun shots, an open air market, and the rain forest.

Sounds Accridited:
Freesounds Project
Rain By sazman (http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/usersViewSingle.php?id=5726)
061224-chongnangnyi-market1(edit).wav (http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/samplesViewSingle.php?id=28250)

Plane By FreqMan (http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/usersViewSingle.php?id=92661)
weirdplane.wav (http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/samplesViewSingle.php?id=24272)

Gun Shots By WIM (http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/usersViewSingle.php?id=22241)
gunshots.wav (http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/samplesViewSingle.php?id=26141)

Birds By genghis attenborough (http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/usersViewSingle.php?id=205108)
Boat trip edt.wav (http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/samplesViewSingle.php?id=28107)

Market By jenaber27 (http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/usersViewSingle.php?id=111582)
interlochen-06_thunder1.aiff (http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/samplesViewSingle.php?id=30619)

Janet Cardiff

I had head of Janet Cardiff’s work before, and the one thing everyone seemed to describe it as was spooky, now I can see why. Her use of the three-level spatial structure fooled your mind into hearing and believing in noises that were not even there. I was not even on one of her guided walks, and there were some points where I didn’t know if what I was listening to was real or just a part of the audio piece. She uses the three-level spatial structure as almost three different levels on which to disorient you. On one of the levels you can hear Cardiff’s voice guiding you, and your mind initially focuses in on this level as the level on which she is sending you different sounds, the fake level, but as she adds sound to the background and foreground you realize that you can no longer distinguish from what is real and what is just sounds she is feeding to your mind. Some of her comments I found extremely wired and I couldn’t place them, but I imagine that is one of the things you would pickup and understand better if you were on the actual walk.

Ectoplasm - Lance Winn

I went to Lance Winn’s lecture on ectoplasm, or the tactility and form of art. What really struck me about this lecture was how well he described his process and intent for his artwork. He came up with all these different and crazy ideas and then worked them through for results that he would later build off of and improve on. He just took stuff he was curious about and went for it. At first I was a bit skeptical, I mean I found the lawn ornaments were a bit, well, out there, but as I saw him build up his though process and explore these different areas of art that we usually ignore or take for granted I was sucked in. Some of my favorite pieces of his were the landscapes he built out of his mistakes. He just kept on cutting away at the paper until he found something he was happy with. This idea of just working on a piece of art with no preemptive design or motives is sort of refreshing, you just work on it and work on it until you get to a point were you are comfortable with it. That and I, for one, have in the process of making of my own work encountered several mistakes of my own, that I have had to work around, and for the most part the results that occur from fixing these mistakes invoke creative solutions and usually an unexpected result that on many occasions turns out to be better then the original idea.
Lance Winn’s combination of the 2D and the 3D aspect of art, PBS art tips, and name tracing took simple ideas and applied them in new and creative pieces of art.

Audio Project

Stormy Night
This is my first audio project it's supposed to emulate a stormy night.


The audio pieces I used to create this project belong to these following people:

By pryght one
harp.wav

By gim-audio
Torden og lynild 4.wav

By tnickles
delayedsoftnotes.wav

Journey Audio Project Proposal

My journey audio project will be based off of the idea of journeying through a short period of time. It’ll be based off of the uncomfortable silence found in a room full of people that have nothing to say or relate to each other. The journey aspect of the project will take root in the listeners mind as they journey through the same uncomfortable silence and anxiety the person in the recording is having to deal with. Of course seeing as it is an audio project there will be an underlining of constant sounds throughout the whole piece so while in theory I’m setting up a situation based off of silence there won’t actually be any silence in the recording. The main common thread I will use while emulating this silence will be the ticking of a clock, not only does this make the listener feel like they are journeying through time and progressing onwards it will also help increase the anxiety or unease of sitting in silence. To create the awkwardness of sitting in a room full of people in complete silence I will have a series of background noses that will work to increase the discomfort of the situation; someone shuffling around, some nervous tapping, random periods of annoying whistling, humming, coughing, chewing gum, and a whole bunch of other activities that someone might hear when sitting in a room in silence with several other people. Who knows I might even add in a little snoring. Now that would really be annoying.

Consumed ~Melissa Dean

Melissa Dean’s lecture Consumed dealt with the different aspects of our consumerist economy. Most her works were built off of the different material objects found within the realm of the consumer market, many of them coming from Target catalogs. She would then take the different objects, draw them as contours, and then overlap them to create intricate designs which would then be applied to her works usually through the method of printing.
Of all the works she showed us the ones I thought to be the most interesting were the ones where she took individuals and had them pick out the items that they would like to purchase from a Target catalog. Once everyone had selected their choices she would compile all the objects into a print for every individual as a sort of measurement of that person’s willingness to take part of the consumer economy. The people with the most overlap seemed to be more entrenched in the consumerist life style compared to the people with little overlap. This is probably not an accurate way of measuring individual consumerist natures but it is an interesting idea and way of portraying the individual.
When you think of consumerism it usually comes with a negative undertone, but Dean seems to pickup on consumerism with an almost a nonchalant attitude. She recognizes the consumerism in our culture and instead of building up on the negative aspects of consumerism she seems to just treat it for what it is, a factual part of our society. She sees the drive toward material goods in our culture, yet she also willingly admits to playing into them like everyone else. It’s almost as if she finds it amusing that we are caught in a constant cycle of buying and accumulating material objects. Many that we know we do not need, but insist on getting anyway.

Flute Music

Here is a short flute clip I got off of freesound. It was done by Kerri Lake, a flutist. This small clip is part of one of her original Native American flute pieces. When I first listened to this clip I found it very calm and soothing, but as I continued to listen to it I started to pick up some daunting and almost spooky undertones. While this piece is beautiful and calming it also holds a mystery to it, a mystery that creates a loneliness and melancholy to the music.

Clip Art Project

This is a clip art project I found on Rhyizome. The project pretty much consists of 787 different pieces of clip art that are meshed together into a 1:05 minute segment.

http://oliverlaric.com/787cliparts.htm

"The Eighties and the Birth of DJ Culture: Toward a Formal Collectivism

Here are the links I found in relation to a few of the artists and art movements referanced in the artical.

This first link is to a site on situationists:
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/1956.html

This is a site on Marcel Duchamp:
http://www.understandingduchamp.com

This is the artnet site on Mike Kelley.
http://www.artnet.com/artist/9362/mike-kelley.html

Here is a site about a past Donald Judd exhibition at the Tate Modern:
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/judd/

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