Self-Assessment -- Final Project

Saint Mary's is a tightly-sealed, if not claustrophobic, campus; the lives its residents entertain while there begin to feel like the entirety of the person's repertoire and then the majority of their identity. As I approached the end of my sophomore year, it struck me that my very recently ended relationship-- the longest relationship I'd ever had, clocking in at 15 months-- had become the epicenter of my life at SMCM, and in following, not far from the epicenter of my life. Before I sound too gushy, I assure you that my case was far from unique. Long-lasting, all-consuming, almost stiflingly-close relationships haunt the campus like our egret haunts our pond--- still, unceasing, and occasionally looking physically stuck in the mud. Long-lovers flock here, and somehow, St. Mary's tends to just keep couples plastered together. And indeed, the repercussions of that stifling closeness made itself clear enough after the breakup: as David and I did the unthinkable as a "set in stone" couple and pulled our egret-legs out of the muck, I realized this entire campus is steeped in memory, both tender and angry. Maybe it always will be. What else is to be expected when such a great chunk of time, one might even say a critical impression period for one's memory of a place, was thoroughly consumed by a first love? When I broke up, I lost a boyfriend, a lover, a confidant, and above all, a best friend. Memories of each of these facets just loom and loom.

In my final project, the GoogleEarth assignment, I focused on these persistent memories; I wanted to make a way to convey the feeling of this permanence after this great loss, this unignorable surrounding of memory to emphasize the importance of the real relationship preceding them. Mainly using SketchUp, I began to create what I titled in my project an "acropolis," an array of monuments mostly in a Greco-Roman style of architecture to place in the literal place a memorable event occurred. (I chose this architecture since I felt it seemed sufficiently out of place, sufficiently stately to give great dignity to the event, great size to stress its magnanimity, and old age since it is, well, out of commission.) I wanted to contrast the flat surface of the photographed map, the unavoidable objective life anyone can be told about and see for himself, with the 3-dimensional, absurdly large, clearly nonexistent monuments to nonverbally describe the feeling of the event. I focused upon making these monuments instead of making too many paths and too many unique placemarkers or overlays (I did these for the sake of experiment and what they could plausibly be worth) since I felt I could convey enough through the creation of the buildings. The designs of the buildings were intended to convey something specific about the feeling of the event and memory; for instance, a place of religious discussion is demarcated by a basilica, one with many many pillars and levels for its complexity and grandiosity. The site of our silly dinner date is marked by an equally-silly looking gazebo (or so I hope). The site marking the traversal between our residents halls has a steep set of stairs only leading from my dorm to his, intending to convey nonverbally that I felt burdened and overactive in the relationship.

I think I achieved clarity in these constructions; they loom satisfactorily over the otherwise flat environment. Each tells only a small amount on its "plaque" about what happened, when, and what it's made of in an objective tone: I did this to stress the metaphor to the site of an ancient city and to stress the inability to tell a very personal story with anything but nonverbal means, so the monument itself may be looked to. There are more things I would have developed giving the time with my project, such as more specific monuments with more readable shape and form, more paths, a better overlay. For the rather simple aim of the memorial project, I satisfied my anticipated plan. The monuments, to me and for my personal memory, reflect what happened, what I felt and what I feel now. For the sake of subjectivity in psychogeography, the map was quite a success.

Art Event -- "How to Tell a War Story"

Earlier this semester, I attended "How to Tell a War Story," a lecture and presentation by Richard Emory Richardson of Perdue University. Richardson shared with us his interest in the representations of war throughout history and up until today, in Western culture and otherwise. His interest, it is clear, springs from his intimate involvement in art and war. Richardson was positioned as a governmentally sanctioned artist in the Vietnam War, meaning that he was sent to the same locations as the troops to document battle and quotidian life in the settings surrounding the battlefields. Richardson's artwork is filed and hidden by the US government, but may one day be on display with work by artists completing a similar job of recording image and event.

Although Richardson's story is compelling, the majority of his presentation focused on artwork outside of his own personal domain. He began with a quote from the novel "The Things They Carried," referring to the idea that a story immortalizes the past, specifically in the realm of war. He introduced us to George Siegel's sculpture intended to commemorate the Vietnam War, portraying Abraham sacrificing Isaac; although the work was rejected as inappropriate by the commissioners, it stands important as a stage-setter for the war portrayals. Although many may be literally and visually suggestive of a traditional idea of battle, many use other imagery and other ideas (like the sacrifice, or even a certain amount of contempt in the comparison) to convey something more honest, more personal, more affected than a "dolce et decorum es" sort of ideal.

He goes on to explore the advent of war photography, and its power of realism in representing the events outside of romanticized notions. He discussed the imagery and impact of photography from the Spanish Civil War, from World War I and II, but most specifically discussed the beginnings with Matthew Brady and William Henry Jackson in the Civil War. He pointed to the differences in degrees of realism the two photographers chose to represent, and how this difference created a rift in their relationship: taking advantage of the camera's ability to represent anything in the world as a still from real life, he took to arranging fallen bodies and firearms to create pleasing compositions; Jackson, a "true realist," criticized him for this.

His focus shifted to portrayals in paintings. This included a more familiar repertoire, such as Picasso's Guernica, Goya's work, and some imagery by Velasquez and Manet. However, the majority of his focus was on more obscure works; this seems appropriate, since he seemed to imply that more publicized and better-known notions of war were often less trustworthy and interesting as the more covert and more personal ones. One of these works was by Henry Moore, an English artist who portrayed the English of WWII who retreated to the underground passageways and tunnels to avoid the blitzkrieg. His portrayals gesturally and expressionistically represented the huddled figures, the distortion in the close quarters, and the fear therein. Richardson also focused on the artwork of veterans, all from the twentieth century, and ways in which they used artmaking as ways to cope with the post-traumatic stress and horrific memories of the world wars, Vietnam and Korean Wars, and so on. One artist, Rick Haines, created mixed media displays with toy soldiers in various poses beneath vases of flowers, attempting to convey the feel that war was similar to child's games. Others used textile art in creating abstract flags, or ceramics to construct shattered bones.

All in all, the presentation was engaging and telling of the historical and contemporary idea of war without frills or badges of honor.

Art Event -- Arth SMP

On May 5th, I attended the SMP presentations in Art History by April Morgan and Erica Maust.

April's presentation was curatorial, an examination of artwork of St. Mary's students past. In her consideration of the artwork, she searched for a trend or change in curriculum that was documented in the history of the college as well as identifiable in the artwork. She stated that there was a tangible shift away from skill focus and towards an emphasis on idea, conceptual development, and diversity of source. This is a similar trend in the liberalization of the college evident throughout the past ~30 years that April examined. Out of all of this work, she selected a relatively small number of pieces that she considered representative of this trend and displayed them in the 3rd floor beanbag lounge in the library. As she mentioned in her presentation, the emphasis in pieces was on portraits and landscapes, but she chose a refreshing array of artwork in addition to this general standby for 2D art-- she included drawings, paintings, and a small amount of sculpture and even a video presentation.

It amazed me that April could base a whole SMP off of artwork only from this school, but I was surprised further that she could find as much as she did to talk about. (I suppose my concept of SMPs is still relatively highfalutin.) I found it interesting, however, that the works she was exhibiting showed a less-than-expected trend towards and not away from realism. Although it is typical that the exploration of further idea over skill and craft would lead to greater and greater nonrepresentationalism, the pieces April chose did not show this trend in the least-- indeed, paintings on a whole became less stylized, less painterly, etc. This begs the viewer to look further at the idea that must be nesting behind these works instead of using identifiability as the cornerstone for the concept of a focus on idea.

Erica Maust's presentation centered around a more cultural approach to art history. In her presentation, she introduced us to UNESCO, a worldwide organization dedicated to designating sites and manmade structures as historically and culturally significant. The designations made by this organization publicly peg these places, most often allowing them to become attractions for outsiders and tourists. Erica was interested in how this affected the culture and memory tied to these sites when they are closely connected to a community. She focused on two small towns and sites in Mexico, Palenque and Calakmul, which both consisted of indigenous populace and an ancient Mayan construction.

The consensus indicates that the inhabitants felt invaded by UNESCO, that they'd been impacted economically and felt personally affronted by the thrusting of their place into the public realm. Erica opened her presentation with an adage in Spanish reading "lo que es de todos, es de nadie," or that which is everyone's is no one's. This sheds interesting light on the idea that one collective people in these places must have over time began calling the ruin near them "theirs," and identifying with it... I hadn't before considered the impact it would make on their personal lives when the site was designated culturally or historically significant and made public. It makes sense that publicizing the site would feel as though the site is metaphysically taken away from the surrounding inhabitants. I find this an interesting study of heritage, its nebulosity, and the factors surrounding it; I also find it interesting that Erica focused her art history project not on what an ancient work of art can do for its contemporary viewers, but what the contemporary people can do to it and those involved with it, its "loved ones."

Artist Focus -- Jason E. Lewis

In his work Nine on The Thought Shop, Jason Lewis presents the viewer with a unique form of narrative. He introduces the viewer with an extensive, to the point introduction, explaining that the images and the text are representations of the artist's life. The viewer is to click and drag to move the images within the grid, which causes the text to shift and the images, in their individual and movable cells, fade and shift to become other images. Lewis states that his ambitions in this project are to bring into focus the idea of a nonlinear life, one marked by "demarcations, shifts in place, shifts in community, shifts in attitude" that act in persistent memory as cornerstones to new "lives," as it were. These important memorial demarcations are well-photographed but enlarged or slightly abstracted images of landscape, faces, maps, objects, trees. As the participant moves through the images like one of those puzzles with the sliding tiles (what ARE those things? do they have a name?), the pictures fade rapidly and randomly into other images. As they are moved, the text in the one empty spot always occurs in the same order. At first, I was hesitant to move in too random of an order, in case I messed up the narrative in the text; however, the more I moved around the image tiles, the more I found that the phrases presented themselves in the same chronological order no matter how I arranged the images.

It's a legitimately interesting idea of memory and reality that Lewis deals with in this project; in presenting the story in the same chronology but the "memory" images in a highly variable combination each time the viewer interacts with it, Lewis confronts the viewer with a very tangible sense of objective memory one can realistically bestow on a listener (the text) and subjective, mutable memory thought accessible only to the thinker (the images). I'm reminded of the Cubists attempts to capture the process of sight in their paintings; the presentation of fractured image, according to some of the writings of Braque and Picasso, were to infer the fact that we take in objects bit by bit, with each bit magnified and specialized in its own way. Although cerebrally, this process makes sense, the Cubist paintings lose a lot of this notion when standing on their own. In a way, Lewis's work achieves a concept of thought and memory process better and more conveyable than the Cubists were able to achieve. I think it's the fact that the temporal dimension was introduced is what sets this work apart in terms of readability; as the story progresses in the set way, the non-negotiable way, the images change, ebb and flow like clouds. It is the fact that we can chart the change, that we ourselves utilize memory to explore this consciousness, that we can understand the dual processes of thought. It is owing mostly to the new media setting that this is really conveyable.

Personally, I like the fact that different arrangements have significantly different emotive messages. When we rearrange the images, the change and form their own gestalt, which has its own emotion and its own message regardless of the repetitive text: some are calm and serene, some seem cold and unfamiliar, others a little intimidating. In this way, I can see why Lewis chose to consider his piece "poetry" in the intro description.

Artist Focus -- Cory Arcangel

DATADIARIEZZZZZ seems to be the most well-known work of Cory Arcangel's, if not his only work of which to speak. The work, according to the introduction page, is the result of Cory's own computer hacking. Somehow, Cory placed the memory of his computer (his computer? our computers?) and plays it back in the form of visual colors and shapes. The viewer can choose the data from a given day in January of a determined year and view all the data left from the actions of the day.

The intro page prides Cory Arcangel's project as a work of art taking little to no effort or rumination. It gladly acknowledges that Cory Arcangel cannot realistically be considered even an artist, web-artist or otherwise. I suppose there's a certain interest in the "phenomenon" that a series of visually appealing nonrepresentational, colorful videos were produced "accidentally" by a non-artist. Perhaps we can file this under the movement of quotidian art, under that ultra-modern and ultra-liberal concept of art as accident, art as incidental, art as almost everything. I suppose some might view Cory's videos and remark upon the visual appeal, even a sort of poetry to the change of colors, shapes, distributions... an emotive response to the flow and the color, as if we're reading something personal from, as the website titles the work, a diary of a non-human. Yes, it would be possible for the viewer to squeeze visual and poetic value out of this sort of work.

I'm conflicted when I view this, however. In the last word of the previous paragraph, I specifically used the term "work;" perhaps we should be asking ourselves as viewers as this piece, this experimental and almost flippant arrangement of html, can honestly be considered the result of labor and care as the term "work" implies. I am troubled when the intro page readily backs the fact that Cory is not an artist in the most familiar and conventional term, but that (in suggestion) his website should be acknowledged as art. 19th century art critic Aurier said that to create art, an undertaking of transcendent nobility, should be to represent “the highest and most truly divine in the world … the only thing existent – the Idea." Like so much other contemporary and modern art, I see no divinity in this work, no great idea, no weighty undertaking. I will consider Datadiaries a web experiment, but I will give it no adjective higher and more respecting than "cool." It is certainly clear that Cory Arcangel is no artist; therefore, I am hard pressed to call his production art.

Artist Focus-- David Crawford

In Crawford's project, Stop Motion Studies, the artist took series of photographs of common people occupying public space. His focus upon the riders in the Tokyo subways was the major stop motion study I watched. In the study, Crawford focuses upon one person or one group of people at one time, then collects approximately 5 or 6 pictures of the subject in a quick succession-- enough to infer motion when placed in order and played forward. Crawford did just that in arranging these similar but subtly different images in an order and allowing the accessed image to play in a loop. Perhaps the images are not ordered, but dispersed and placed alongside one another to appear to be moving in a subtly differentiated but nevertheless repetitive way. In any event, the result is a montage of images that appear to play back the actions of a specific individual or group on the subway over a span of time.

To play back this tiny series of actions on loop, the total series in each case documenting probably less than thirty seconds of action and interaction, gives the illusion that the actions are repetitive over a long span of time. Other stop-action films and photomontages use photos taken over a span of time (such as every minute, every ten minutes, every hour) for an extended period time, then play them back chronologically to allow us to see a grand sort of change and pattern in the larger world. Essentially, stop motion functions to show larger change "in real time," in a way comprehensible in an incredibly reduced period of time. It makes the macroscopic microscopic so we can better understand it. This work of stop-motion, however, shows the movement and the progress of just a moment across an infinite span of time--- herein, it essentially does the opposite of what a typical stop-motion film does, making the microscopic macroscopic.

It seems to me that this is Crawford's genius: he gives us the opportunity to not just indulge in a sort of voyeurism to better understand quotidian people in their natural habitat, but to boil down this experience to one moment and freeze it, allowing us to explore the moment so much more intimately. It's an almost Impressionistic version of the flaneur, exploring a frozen (yet actively moving) moment in a frame to understand the state of their lives, of Paris better. I think the way Crawford lets us explore the multitude of different expressions and actions captured-- humorous, dramatic, serene, and so on.

Artist Focus -- Pac Manhattan

In this collaborative project, a group of young adults organized efforts, costumes and rules to recreate the game of Pac Man in a real life setting. Essentially, one player donned a "pac man" esque costume, then entered the streets of Manhattan to "eat" all the "dots" of a predetermined section of streets and avoid being eaten by the ghosts, who were acted by 4 different players. The players active on the street are not acting of their own volition: they are given direction via walkie-talkie for direction and action by a remote player. This player is able to track the progress of the Pac Man on a gridlike map, seeing where he has gone and where he can go.

In a manner very similar to the game, contact with the ghosts would lose lives/the game, and reaching a certain point would allow the Pac Man to gain the ability to "eat" the ghosts. The act of "eating" things was modified in the real world setting by tagging (ie, a ghost tags Pac Man or vice versa). Instead of eating the "dot" that allows the Pac Man to eat the ghosts, the Pac Man touches the sign at the predetermined intersections on streets. The Pac Man does not exactly "eat" or tag dots as he travels through the street maze, but they are automatically deleted as he travels once over any one of the paths necessary for finishing.

While it is far from rare for me to get excited over a work of art, really interesting or stimulating works have been rather hard to come by at least in my previous experience in the New Media department... However, this work caught my interest and kept it. It was immediately attention-grabbing and clear in the message and motive (breaking the game out of the context of the screen) and actually had a readable sense of humor. All these things make for a rare combination.

But even so, can it really be considered a new media art project? Unlike most of the works discussed in this project, from music to interactive games and narratives, this work does not occur on the internet. The records of its occurrence are on the internet, sure, but the internet is not its natural habitat. The players don't live in the digital realm, either, but literally run around to complete the project. In most ways, I can see how this project would be considered a performance art piece. Let's not forget, however, that the project is wholly dependent on the use of technology in the hand-held screens and communication from player to Pac-Man. Without the communication, the work would be chaotic, slow, and relatively anarchistic... with the role of tracking devices and communicating devices, the work becomes most like the game. Not only is there a game board and moving, interactive pieces, but there is a controller who has omnicient control over the entire grid. This can only really be possible with the role of new media, which most solidly categorizes it as such.