Concentrated Chaos

I chose to focus on the human body and emotions. I am facinated by the emotional capacity human beings have and how much they can effect us so I decided to zone in on a specific idea that happened to plesant. Every person has memories of when they were children. We all have at LEAST one happy memory, but most people won't ever think to ask you about them nor will they see them plain as day on ones sleeve. Memories are embedded into us and in the process I used it focused not particularly on the outside appearance of the person in front of the camera but more the images within the person. The home videos are underneath the black screen which hides our memories much like everyday life. I simply wished to convey a happiness and fondness of childhood and memories to give a warm feeling. When making the video I decided to look back at my home videos and childhood memories. I noticed some things about myself and my family that I never knew. It was a pleasant experience which I hope to share

Research Post: Yang Fudong

Yang Fudong was born in 1971 in Beijing and now lives and works in Shanghai. Most of his films are in black and white. Yang developed an interest in photography and film while going to school for painting. One of his most famous recent works is titled "Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest". His works are often filled with psychological questions. Yang prefers to shoot in film, as opposed to digital video, as he believes that film retains a strong sense of the artist’s touch, which digital videos often lack.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhswOlqbPUU
http://www.shanghartgallery.com/galleryarchive/videoWorks.htm

Research Artist: System D-128

System D-128 was born Brian Korlofsky in New York City. He is a muti media artists with works in music video, video art, new media, and film. He is a producer, director, ,and editor. He began by saving content using a vcr when he was younger. He archives material and uses it for for audio and video mixes and as source material for sample-based productions, installations, and visual backdrops for touring artists. He has worked with artists such as Wu Tang, Red Man and Method Man, Daft Punk, and a Tribe Called Quest. He has also merged into a political realm with his associated media piece "Silverback Mountain Kings".

http://vimeo.com/systemd128
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM0wohdetsE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnrviaHi2Mc

Body Movement

Artist Statement:
My piece is a performance piece using image processing technique.
With my piece I want to show the body movement as an art form
as well as convey a message of personal space. I wanted to show the
limits of personal space and our movement with in it. No matter where
one goes his personal space stays with him.

Research Post: Cory Archangel

Cory Archangel (May 25, 1978) is a multi-media artist based in Boston, NY. Music, video, performance work, drawing, Photoshop manipulation, web based work, and video game cartridge circuit bending make up the bulk of his work which explores the relationships between culture and technology. Almost all of his work  incorporates appropriated footage, such as Sweet 16, in which Cory took the intro lick to Guns n' Roses "Sweet Child o' Mine" and phased it to itself for sixteen minutes.  The resulting music, which is accompanied by footage of GNR playing the song, is a beautiful video who's music weaves in and out of itself, and creates an entirely unique sound which still manages to be reminiscent of the original.




Cory's web-based work is also very thought inspiring, commenting on popular culture and the informative and commercialist properties of the internet.  One such web-based work, "Punk Rock 101," has Curt Cobain's suicide note posted on a website with Google ads spaced intermittently throughout.  Cory's intention was to take a piece of musical history and basically consumerize it, and the end result is a rather chilling and I feel intentionally heartless take on one man's rejection of his current life.

http://www.coryarcangel.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Cory-Arcangel-kurt_clean.jpg

I was most interested in Cory's video game manipulation pieces, where he takes classic NES videogame cartridges and reprograms them.  His video Super Mario Movie is a fifteen minute look in the world of a video game character that is deteriorating due to program corruption.  I love how Cory Archangel essentially humanizes these fictional characters by destroying their world, causing us to feel empathy towards them.

For more of Cory Archangel's work, you can go to http://www.coryarcangel.com/things-i-made/

Adapt

Nearly every specie on the planet has adapted to its environment. We humans choose to adapt our environment to suit us. This had led to the state of the world that we are witnessing today. We now have reached a point where we are being forced to adapt to the changing environment to keep our lifestyle relatively as we have become accustomed to.

Ruptured Waters

Artist Statement after the break

Learning by touch

Artist Statement
    I wanted to add another piece to my collection similiar to my Hand Obstructions piece.  In this, I applied the loop theory, using the same shots over and over again to show the repetiveness of touching used in the process of learning.
    In this piece, I wanted to convey the idea of one of the important jobs of the hands, touching.  Not only as humans do we use our hands to feel (textures, hot, cold, ect.) touching objects usually convey sound as well.  This is the learning process that I wanted to convey in this piece.

Choices- The River Of Time

Artist Statement:
A choice. What does it mean to make a decision? What is the difference between a decision and a choice? Henry Smith in this article: “Fact, Definition, and Choice” talks about living your life as a pattern that’s already laid out. Each choice is the first step to a ripple effect based off each decision. Life already comes with a set of blueprints. Our “cause” and “effect” factors. When one action is made, it usually has a guaranteed outcome. But what about the choices that aren’t so black and white? The simple day to day actions. Waking up, returning that missed call, to cook breakfast or not to cook? Caroline Miles Hill refers to choice as a
problem. She starts off by talking about the fact that making decisions isn’t always an easy thing to do. No decision is disconnected. Where does choice begin? Decisions are choices turned into actions. So is a thought a decision? Does the action change the confirmation? And if it’s as easy and changing a thought, how does that affect the rest?

To stop and think about the part time plays in decision-making the articles are endless. If you were to take every action into consideration and think about all the other choices that were possible and not taken, how much different would the outcome be? “In order to find an approximate answer to the question, what conscious motives will influence a choice between two things differing slightly?” A line taken from Caroline’s study on “Choice”. We are inadvertently shaping our own timeline flow. It’s almost pointless to think about all the other routes through time we could’ve taken, but at the same time, how much different would things have been? It was very difficult to find anything on parallel universe. However in my own concepts of time and choice and very intrigued to explore the parallels of these parallels.

Visually, my plan is to take this concept of choice and visually represent the pathways through life each decision can take you. What would this “problem of choice” look like? And how could time and space illuminate each choice? Our choices are like reagent and time like a reactant. Visually, this reaction and it’s consequences will be illuminated through some form of illustration.

Chaos

In this video piece ' Chaos ', I wanted the viewer to find the underlying connection between time and chaos. The timer, clock, and watch in the piece represent 'time' of course. Time is a controlled system that doesn't diverge from its path or pattern. There are always 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and 24 hours in a day, etc. The tied up man in the video represents chaos. And chaos is being held back or held down by the system of time. If our world didn't have a system to tell the time of day or day of the year, then our world would most likely be more chaotic than it is now. Over a period of time, what the video does diverges from what it would have done. I like to call it 'chaotic progression'. The piece changes, progresses, or matures throughout the video. By the timer eventually coming to an end and seeing the man's face, the viewer gets to see chaotic progression. One of the elements of the video is periodic behavior, which is the system going into a loop. I'm essentially controlling the behavior of the video, rendering it ordered chaos. Aspects of chaos show up everywhere around the world, from the currents of the ocean and the flow of blood through fractal blood vessels to the branches of trees and the effects of turbulence. There is no way of avoiding chaos. We live in a chaotic world. But time helps keep chaos from destroying our chaotic world.

Beauty Forgotten

I created Beauty Forgotten to signify advertising. Magazines create images of women as satisfied and cheerful. I believe advertising creates a world that does not exist. The advertising world has an effect on women who base their self-esteem on their appearance--their shape, clothing and skin. Advertising uses women as a tool to attract them into improving their appearance, which creates a fake identity. Beauty Forgotten stops exposing women to advertising by ripping ads out of magazines. Women are not allowed to look at the ads anymore and it stops women from feeling negative about the way they look.

Demolitiomage

I created this video with the purpose of tapping into the cathartic properties inherent in the act of destruction. Knocking down towers of blocks, shredding paper, smashing crockery; all of these acts feel good.  I believe that we rejoice in the act of destruction because by doing so, we break apart pre-created patterns which have been thrust upon us, and in turn create patterns unique to both the destroyer and the present situation.  In essence, destruction gives us creative power.  Take the thrown coffee mug seen in the video for example.  Prior to its destruction, it was a mug.  I found it in my basement, and that's about it.  I had absolutely no creative control over what the mug looked like (ugly), the noises it made (none), and its intended purpose (to drink coffee/tea/etc out of it).  The second that mug hit my driveway, it transformed itself into a floral explosion of abstract shapes and sounds that I created all by myself.  This video is not only a homage to destruction, it is itself an example of the unique and occasionally beautiful results one achieves from destroying.  Oh, and the text in the movie is Tibetan for "Impermanence."  I wanted to destroy some text images, and what better word to use?