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