Artist Blog #6: Cory Arcangel, Super Mario Clouds

Cory Arcangel's Super Mario Clouds has been considered a form of new media art through techniques of animation and game art.  Mark Tribe points out how computer programmers who have been self-taught are making music and art with consumer technologies such as video game cartridges.  With Arcangel's Super Mario Clouds, he took a program chip from the classic Nintendo game Super Mario Brothers and replaced with a new one that he programmed, which erased everything in the game context except the clouds.  In the end, the clouds become animated, going across a blue sky.  I thought this type of new media art was interesting because of the process in creating it by taking an original context of Super Mario Brothers, which was one of favorite games while growing up in the 90s, and creating a new context of the original game.  

Artist Blog #5: Information Art

Information art is an emerging field of electronic art that involves computer science, information technology, and more classical forms of art such as performance art, visual art, conceptual art, and new media art.  It also includes interaction with computers to generate art based on large amount of data that has been processed.  Information art can be created through photographs, census data, video clips, digital painting, and personal expressions.  This kind of new media art relates to Mark Napier's Shredder because both of them use computer data to create an artist content that has meaning.   It also struck an interest to me through the interaction between computers and visual information to generate a new kind of art form.  

Artist Blog #4: Visual Poetry

Visual poetry is art in which the visual arrangement of text, imagery, and symbols convey the meaning of a poem.  It is sometimes referred as concrete poetry.  Visual poetry incorporates text, but the text's primarily has a visual function.  This type of visual art coincides with digital poetry, which involves electronic literature through the use of computers.  I consider visual poetry a form of new media art because it relates back to Dadaism art.  Since Dada art involves both text and imagery in a comical way, visual poetry is using the same technique, but in a more educational and literature meaning.  

Artist Blog #3: Generative Art

Generative art is art that has been generated, composed, or constructed in an algorithmic manner through the use of systems defined by computer software algorithms, or similar mathematical, mechanical, or randomized process. (Wikipedia)  This method of making art is one of the disciplines of New Media Art in many ways: it is a form of art being made through the use of a computer (computer art); a lot of randomness of images, text, and color is involved; and it opens up this idea of bringing in all different academic fields such as math and science.  This image from the Computer Arts website was designed in Flash.  It generates the randomness of color themes and shapes divided into six squares.  Most of the circles are cut off at the edge and they overlap each other.  I chose this image because of its randomness and use of different colors both bright and dark as well as its difference in tone.  It also reminds me of some the work done by artists from Mark Tribe's book New Media Art such as Mark Napier through the overlapping of objects.  

"Picasso, Who Let His Imagination Run From Art to Language"- NY Times

Here is an article from the NY Times about an exhibition at Yale University Art Gallery called "Picasso and the Allure of Language".  It chronicles the influence of language on the artist and how Picasso incorporated it into his artwork.  This article relates back to the use of text in new media art such as graffiti.  Enjoy it!  

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/nyregion/connecticut/08artsct.html?ref=design

Artist Blog #2: Mark Napier- "Shredder 1.0"

"My works are not objects, but interfaces.  The users become collaborators in the artwork, upsetting the conventions of ownership and authority.  By interacting with the work, the visitors shape the piece, causing it to change and evolve, often in unpredictable ways.  The user is an integral part of the design." (Mark Napier's artist statement).  In his Shredder 1.0, Napier is attempting to have the viewer experience behind the scenes look at a website's code, deconstructing it, and revealing a collage full of colorful text and images.  

In his artist statement, Napier believes that he is not creating objects, but interfaces.  The viewers are creating the objects by typing in a web address and allowing the Shredder to create an entirely disarray of text and images of the website.  Tribe points out how Shredder 1.0 "demonstrates a refined awareness of color and shape."  When looking at a website that has been shredded, you can see many shapes of different sizes as well as its text and code all together in different layers.  

Among the fragmented text and code of a web page, we can link the its shapes and color to abstract expressionism paintings.  Abstract expressionists focused on a painting's flatness rather than on specific details.  With Shredder 1.0, Napier is focusing on technological information about the Internet, from complex coding to simple imaging.   

Artist Blog #1: "Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany (1919)

What drew my attention to this particular image by Hannah Hoch, a German Dada artist, was its many images of men, women, words, and working machines colliding into one single political and moral issue: equality.  After doing a little research on the artist, I discovered that this image was a source of inspiration for the Women's Rights Movement of the 1920s.  The image combines men and women as equals in the world.  It also speaks out for equal rights for women through the images of wheels, representing the factories and mills.  In my opinion, Hoch is visually saying that work should be divided equally among men and women.  Women should also be educated equally among men as well.  In the image, I notice a couple of men's faces that have serious look on them, expressing their critical and educational thinking.  

In his introduction to New Media Art, Mark Tribe points out how "Dada artists began to experiment with radically new artistic practices and ideas that resurfaced in various forms and references throughout the twentieth century."  Hoch's image ties into this idea of expressing political and moral issues in a radical way using both images and text.  

To me, this image links to the pop art that emerged during the 2008 Presidential Election.  During that time, many artists were coming out with their own depiction of what the election meant to them.  It was very popular with Obama and still is after the election.   Each artwork contained specific issues concerning Americans such as the economy, education, the war in Iraq, healthcare, civil rights, etc.  Other artworks contained Obama himself as well as his messages of his campaign, "Hope" and "Change".  All of these artworks were a source of inspiration to the American people to get out and vote and become part of a big movement just as Hoch's image was an inspiration for women's rights in the 1920s.   

"Celebrating Animation"- NY Times

Here is an interesting article in the NY Times called "Celebrating Animation". It is a review on an exhibition opening called "It All Started Here", which is a combination of screenings, lectures, workshops, and an exhibition at the Arts Exchange in White Plains. Presented by the Westchester Arts Council, it revisits the history of early animation. Animated characters such as Betty Boop and Spider-man are in this exhibit as well. Enjoy it!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/nyregion/westchester/11artswe.html?_r=1&ref=design

Placing Color

The three artists: Brett Baker, Kayla Mohammadi, and Carrie Patterson all do a tremendous and impressive job in expressing the world both public and intimate through color.  Carrie Patterson's work on experience in space and time relates to how I myself express and experience space through photography as well as 3D animation and modeling.  While reading her artist statement about the work, I was impressed on her process of turning a detailed space into a more abstract one.  During her small talk, she clarifies the relationship of each color to the detailed space.  In her 18 ft. St. Francis Xavier painting, each color is divided into sections relating to the separate sections of the church and its surrounding space.  In all, she is investigating the meaning behind experience space both public and intimate.  

In a quote from Vittorio Colaizzi's essay on Placing Color, he simplifies Kayla Mohammadi's work: "Mohammadi is more interested in enclosure and opening than strict measurement, so while her lines and planes hang together in a loose coalition, each seems capabale of defection." (pg. 9)  One of her paintings, Brown and Red Interior Space, expresses her way of using lines both thick and thin in her work.  When looking at this painting, you can see how each line looks unbalanced and ready to fall apart, especially the dark red line hanging from the second red line.  Another one of her paintings, Here and Now, expresses her interests in open space.  To me, this painting looks three dimensional through the visualization of a foreground, middle, and background.  When looking at this painting, you are being pulled into this open space and wondering what it is you are going to find there.  In her artist statement, she mentions how she was exposed to color and bright bold shapes as a child and how it inspired to paint.  I believe that her set of paintings expresses childhood memories through her use of color and bright bold shapes.  

Brett Baker's painting process in his work seemed interesting because of how he made several layers of paint overtime.  You can see that he has done this through the thickness of each painting.  Baker's work and interest are the opposite of Mohammadi's work: he examines intimate spaces.  You can see and feel this kind of intimacy in his paintings through scale.  In his artist statement, he explores painting as a place of reflection and interaction between the viewer and the painting itself.  I believe that his set of paintings accomplish this exploration because I feel a sense of intimate interaction between myself and the painting itself since I am confined to this small space and painting.