Ildar was a visiting artist who came to University of Nevada, Reno to provide a small workshop. This art workshop had a combination use of technology and media. The camera that was used was a special camera that could take 360 degree shot by having a fish bowl effect. Ildar's use of media in the public and engages with non-art audiences. He also runs a school for young people, along side his art. At this school he teaches the basics of electronics through media art projects.
With the use of these specially design Virtual Reality glasses called Wearality Sky he help us see what it was like in a VR world. He showed us some examples of video work on YouTube called Global Friendship workshop #1. In this video you are surrounded by a virtual world, one made from imagination. The colors, shapes, characters, etc are abstract and the story seems to be open-end with no real finalization. But the video is colorful and very playful. Almost like a child's TV show.
In the work shop we were task with creating a virtual world in a box. The boxes we created had this branding "Demand Global Friendship" which was created via laser sketch. The edges of the boxes where cut out with lasers, so we had to tape together the box and at the base floor the box was a cut out for the camera. After we got the box assembled we create a world with figures, shapes, paint, characters, etc. After a few hours and a lot of moving each piece little by little/ stop and go motion film, we create a video. We tried not to have a real story line for this video. We wanted it to be a bit more on the ambiguous side. It was a lot hard to produce this kind of video where the process was stop and go motion because you would move each character, shapes, colors, etc. a small amount. But the end result was a cool video.
The artists I have chosen for my final presentation are
Wafaa Bilal "Domestic Tension 2007" and Antoinette Lafarge
"World of World 2009".
Wafaa
Bilal is an Iraq American artist who was a former Professor at School of the
Art Institute of Chicago and is currently an associate professor at Tisch
School of the Arts at New York University. His most famous art work is
Domestic Tension 2007. Which was a performance piece where he live in this
gallery for a month and had a paintball gun controlled by people remotely
online. The paintball was directed to him and he was shot at multiple times throughout
the month. This will be the art piece I will be discussing for my final.
Antoinette
is a Professor of Digital Media at UC Irvine and her interest are the virtual
world. Such as online gaming and peoples interaction with this world. Her
interest to this world started with make-believe and fiction and then expanded
to include the internet avatars and impersonations. She has created works that
is a mixture of mix-reality performance and installations.
In
the piece for Domestic Tension 2007 Wafaa Bilal's performance was a long and
arduous. Watching the video from his performance there were a few technical
difficulties at the beginning that they had to address in order for the online
server to work with the paintball gun. They had an issue about getting the
paint ball gun to be accurate and shoot when the person online wanted it to
shoot. This was described during the YouTube video "paintball project day
1". When they got the technical issues resolved the next item that gave
him problems was the time that people would actually be active on this project.
He said that the most activity they got was during the time from 12am to 4 am
as describe on "paintball project day 4". Wafaa explains that during
the day it was pretty quiet and he had not a lot real interaction with the
paintball gun because he thinks that people are having lunch, dinner, or they
were just busy doing everyday task that needed to be done.
Wafaa
explains it was interesting to be in that mode where they were in constant
threat of being shot at, even while having dinner. Not only having that pending
threat having a visitor there while having dinner was interesting. While they
were having dinner during "paintball project day 4" they did not get
hit.
The reason to the color yellow for the paintball's was an homage to support the troops. Yellow is the color that we see to on bumper stickers that depicts a yellow ribbon and the statement that says Support The Troops. Very interesting considering the fact that through this performance, he got a sense of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from the constant bombardment of the paintball gun going off and the pending threat of getting shot.
Bilal also talks about his father and brother who died. His brother was killed by American Airplane that had an air to ground missile hit in their home town of Kufa. His father later died from grief for the lost of his son as stated on Art Asia Pacific article. A tragic loss for Bilal and Domestic Tension 2007 helped with his grieving process in a sense.
In
this gallery space he had a bed, computer and a plastic guard that would
protect him from the paintball gun if he needed it. He would also use the
plexiglass to protect his visitors when he had them over. He also describes
that the gallery would be so full of paintball debris because people would
constantly try to shoot him. Keeping the paintball gun stock and keeping the gallery
somewhat clean was a pretty big task.
On
the "paintball project day 6" Wafaa change the springs on the
paintball gun which made it even more lethal. The walls were actually dented in
or cracked. This day he states that he is getting little sleep and also started
a conversation with his online viewers to stop violence. Also to shed awareness
of military aggression for the Iraqi people. The media also came down to visit
him at his gallery to get interviews with him. Just as a note he was not in the
gallery space all day, but he spent as much time as he could there, especially
during peak hours.
At
this point Wafaa states that the paintball gun requires a lot of maintenance
because it had been fired so many times. So he had to get it fixed. Also along
with the paintball gun breaking the plexiglass that was used to protect Wafaa
broke as well too. So they had to turn off the gun and fix the plexiglass.
Other things that started to go wrong was the amount of people trying to use
his site to get control of the gun. There was so many people trying to use the
site or the gun would get overwhelmed so they had to update bandwidth on the
website so it could keep up with the amount of people login on. Along with the
technical difficulties he thought about the loss of his father and brother. He
explained that it made him very emotional and also explained that it was weird
to think that the paintball gun was his company during this time. He explains
that when the gun when down he had more time to think about his loss because he
didn't have to worry about his safety.
Wafaa's
site became very famous that paintball gun would shoot 20,000 paint balls with
in less than 24 hours. Along with that problem is buying more paint balls. He
spend his money to buy the paint balls and maxed out his credit cards. He had
to borrow money from his friends to help pay for this project. Other items that
started to break down where the walls and items he had around the gallery space
like the infamous lamp, tables, etc. And much more important than that Wafaa's
health started to degrade as well too; this was about day 20. He
explained that it could be because of not changing the venue, not getting
enough sun light, not getting enough exercise and not being able to get fresh
air.
There
was a discussion that happened and this discussion was for Wafaa's benefit.
There was a group of people that dedicated their time to move the gun away from
Wafaa. Which would keep him safe from getting shot. People would move the gun
last minute so Wafaa wouldn't get shot or they would keep the gun from moving
by moving it in a different direction so it is not pointed towards him. Wafaa's
project got so famous that he would constantly have to fill the gun.
On
day 30 the paintball gun was going off every second. Wafaa's actually extended
his gallery a day extra for the people who doubted he could do 30 days and also
as a thank you for all the support from people. The community Wafaa manage to
bring together was outstanding. The amount of support he got from people and
the food/items they would bring him was nice. In my conclusion his project
opened the idea of peace not violence. Also, open the conversation to talk
about our issues out in the open. He stated that art is there to educate and
inform people which I think he did a great job with his piece Domestic Tension.
Antoinette
Lafarge is an artist and her works is in mixed reality performance and projects
that is in conjunction of visual art and fiction. An example would be here work
"World of World (2009)". This will be the art work I will be
discussing. World of World is about the video game World of Warcraft with is an
online role playing game that became popular around 2004. This video game is an
online generated world where you can create an avatar/character in which you
can use to interact with this world. You can do online quest, follow a story line,
join guilds to become part of a collaborative group to achieve certain goals
like destroying certain creatures, monsters, so you can collect the rewards
from them.
She
states that these types of online worlds or even worlds we create in our minds
by reading or our imagination has an actuality. In my translations of her
explanation is that these imaginary spaces can have real life effects on how we
feel, interact with other people, our perspective of certain things, etc. Just
talking about the video game WOW is something you can do in the real world and
talking about the experiences you had in the online world just an example. To
elaborate on this I’ll give you an example. Say you go on a quest to find a
certain treasure and you achieve that goal; from there you go to a WOW
convention and talk to people who did that same quest and you share your
experience; she is posing the question what would be the difference if you did
a hunting trip to hunt for deer and then you go to a Hunting Convention to
share your experience with other hunters. It is a very interesting concept.
Other than the obvious that hunting is hard and you are actually in the real
world. But also in WOW that experience could be hard to achieve that goal as
well. But no the less is it a real life experience and has affected the
individual in a certain way. Obviously, the World of Warcraft is a fictional
world and hunting a deer is certainly an unusual comparison but my thoughts are
that she is stating that the experience is the important part of this piece.
Your personal experience with the video game or personal experience after you
have achieve whatever it maybe, being finishing a certain quest, etc.
She
states in a video presentation about her work that we spend so much time looking
at the back of the characters head, she poses the question "what if the
roles were reversed and it was the avatar that was the real person looking into
the player through a window?" It is a perspective that is very intriguing
because you would just see a person sitting there. Also, when you log out of
the game your character just stays in the world, but your character will remain
standing there till you move your avatar again. It was just interesting to me
to think that the avatar would just be looking at someone sitting on a couch
for the most part. In a section of the art pieces she has the avatar looking at
the player doing everyday tasks or activities.
Antoinette
also states the people who play the game WOW live vicariously through their
characters. It is interesting point of view and gives a great perspective to
think about it from the avatars point of view. Her art work "World of
World (2009)" points out an interesting perspective of our interactions
with this video game and how it affects the game players psyche.
In
comparison the two artist had a vision of the message they wanted to present to
the world. They both seem to have a sense of community. Each artist talked
about this in their work, there is a sense of cooperation toward an end goal.
Whether be it an online community or in reality. Their art work seem to thrive
in that community environment.
In
contrast the performances were done in a different way. They were both
performance art. Wafaa used himself as the subject matter where as Antoinette
used a persona. Her avatar (Malbec) was the subject matter for her work. She
also created a persona for her game player called The Player. Antoinette dives
into the mind of the player and actual people who play WOW. She dives into the
effects of WOW in reality. Even though it is a fictional game, but has real
life emotional and physical effects.
In Wafaa’s performance it is his real life
emotional state. His emotional state from not getting enough sleep, thinking
about the loss of his father and brother are real emotions that he dives into
during his live performance.
Antoinette seems to have separated herself
from her avatar. The Avatar and The Player seem to have their own reality. The
have their own persona and Antoinette just watches them from her reality. She
is simply the outside observer to this online world that she has create. This
is parallel to how most players are in the real world, in the sense that real world
players share this in common with Antoinette. The fact that they just see this
video game world as an outside observer is an intriguing insight to the human condition.
In this video the topic of discussion is about what is going on with the world. It started with the year 1975 between to cities, New York City and Damascus. On this year they set up a new committee to run the cities finance and 8 of them were bankers. The banks want to control the city. The financial institutions took power from the politicians and started to implement new rules. This new institution started laying off people, teachers, policemen, fireman. Certain people that lived in the city and stuck it out just tried their best to live through this time.
Donald Trump play a role in New York. He realized that this was no money in buying housing for people but he saw that there was other ways to make money by buying up old buildings. With these building he was promising to turn them into luxury hotels. In my interpretation this would allow people to move back into New York and bring back the money into this city. He also had to negotiate the biggest tax break in New York's history. It was worth $160 million dollars. The city agreed and the banks started to loan him money. Donald Trump paid nothing while the city was transforming into a city for the rich.
While in Damascus in the same year there was two powerful men who were butting heads. These two men were Henry Kissinger, U.S. Secretary of State and Hafez Al-Assad who was President of Syria. There was fear that these two countries would destroy each other with nuclear weapons. Henry believed that history has always been a struggle of people, nations, groups for power. But also believe that this struggle can be controlled and unit all people. Kissinger wanted to keep the middle east separated so it would keep them in a check and balance system. Al-Assad found about this and was enraged by it. All he wanted was revenge. During this time people we in a state of depression or no real expectation of the future. The term Hyper Normalization explained, the people had to fake and play along with everything that was going on, knowing the the economy was crap. "The fakeness was hyper normal" they state in the video.
When the new president of the United States came into term Ronald Reagan, it was a new way of looking at things. A bright future for men. But there was a war waged in Sabra. President Reagan had to react to this massacre. He sent Marines as a peace keeping force. But this just made things worst. The idea of sacrificing yourself/suicide to destroy many enemies while you do it was introduce to the middle east. The idea of suicide bombers were introduced into the middle east. This was a way they attack Americans. It is interesting to think that suicide was not in the Kuran but they found a loop hole. This loop hole tricked people into using themselves as human bombs.
Cyber space generation was introduce and the banks used it to a line themselves with other banks. LSD was a drug that people used during this time and people thought this drug was a way to open their minds to get away from the real world. This new idea of cyber space was similar to the movie "The Matrix" being able to go into a cyber world and act freely in that world. Colonel Gaddafi was blamed for the attacks that happened but there was no real attempts by Colonel Gaddafi to deny that he did these attacks. They then started to fear him because of the possibility of a nuclear attack. After the tension, America attack Libya to get Gaddafi. My many children were kill in this attempt to get Gaddafi.
In the 1980s people started to report UFO's and that the government was conducting secret experimental weapons. People later realized that the government was using certain individuals to think that their were aliens. The government staged these UFO sightings to cover up what they were really doing. The went as far as planning fake secret government documentation and having an individual finding it, making it look like they where hiding it. The government want to control what worlds perception of what where in the skies. They wanted to control what the public thought was real.
There was a computer that was programmed to be a therapist. This AI would reflect back the problem in a form of a question. This made people feel good about themselves. The computer was call Eliza. The battle that happened in Iraq was also mentioned. Around 2003 was when they started to use suicide bombing again to spread fear. It would seem that there is always turmoil around the world and there are sometimes answers to the problem but mostly there are no real answers. People react to the problems, meaning their is a event that happens, for example a suicide bomber kills lots people and people react to that.
In conclusion my thoughts about this video is that is seems to he a historical depiction of major events that has happened around the world. The major events from 1975 to recent events was talked about in this video and depicted in a very dream like way, almost as if it was not real, I will use the word Hyper Normalization is a good way to explain this video. It seems fake but all this turmoil is very real.
My chosen works that I will be presenting on is The Human Face by Laurie Anderson. It is a video about the human face and our everyday interaction with peoples faces. This is our main way of communication is by facial expressions, eye contact, attraction to the opposite sex, etc. I will talk about Laurie Anderson's this video (The Human Face) and the different subjects that it will cover about the human face.
The Human Face
Laurie talks about an experience she had with a friend. They
were waiting for her friend’s new boyfriend. Her friend was describing him to
Laurie and she began to imagine up a Greek god like man in her mind. But when
he arrived Laurie was disappointed in what she saw. Her friend had built him up
so much that she was astounded how ordinary he was. But she then begins to talk
about what makes us attracted to another person. She also posed the question “why
are we attracted to a certain individual?” She dives into the features of the
face and the little things about our features of the face that makes us wanted
or not wanted to others. The human face is very important to our daily lives.
This is the way we communicate with our people. You have to look at another person
to communicate with them. The way we present ourselves to the world ultimately
starts at the face. How men shave their faces, how women put make up on or not
put make up on, what type of sun glasses we were, weather you have a beard,
lipstick, etc. All these are factors to consider and how important it is to
people on how they present themselves to the world. In more recent times,
selfies are now a very common thing. People taking hundreds of pictures just to
get the one picture that makes them look presentable to the world. Then they
post it on a social media outlet. It is very interesting to think that this is
a way that some people communicate with other people.
Laurie talks about Plato and his theory about the golden
mean. Plato formulated a law which suggest that there was a set rule of how
your face was supposed to look. This was a set of fixed geometric and mathematic
rules that suggest that beauty and excellence was because of correct proportions.
Also that geometry and numbers seems to be the key in harmony. Stating that if
you can achieve this you can have a very desirable face and close to
perfection.
She also talks about the term “face value”. She explains how
face value means to value our face. We use it to sell or buy. We even use faces
on our currency. There was also a part of the video where she talks about Thai
women. They make a video where they smile and send it in to the company in
hopes to get a western man to marry them. A statement in the video describes the
most important thing is that the eyes are large compared to the face and a high
forehead.
On Laurie Anderson YouTube video it showed a live performance with interpreted dance, music from a live band. This live performance was like going to a concert to see a band or singers perform. In the background there was a screen that projected images as the live performance was happening. The images complemented the music and the performers. There was a scene that was very reminiscent of Kabuki. With the use of projected images it almost had a story line to it. Most of Laurie Anderson's work has no real story line and is ambiguous. I guess in my mind I always look for the plot of the show. Kabuki in the other hand is very traditional and has a story line.
In part of the video the musicians use traditional instruments like a guitar and use objects like a fork, drum sticks, thongs for food to strum the instrument to make a unique sound. I found it very interesting to hear the end result. The stage performance was like shifting from one chapter of a play to the next. It was very interesting to see Laurie Anderson mix of music, live performance from dancers, video installations/projections, etc. It was great to see that this mixer could be an art form.
In the reading she discussed many things. One of the main points that stuck with me was how she compared the President to our father or mother. She explain that our mother or father gave us guidance for life and its challenges. Well, it is the same with the President of the United States. We seek guidance from him. It is a very interested comparison but it is not without it flaws. One thing I can point out when we get old enough we tend think for ourselves, no longer needing as much guidance as we did when we were children, same with the President. I don't think we should take in all the word he has to say. Personally, I take bits and pieces that will work for me and use them to my advantage. Then incorporate my own thoughts in to what I take from my mother. It is an interesting perspective.
Laurie discussed things that inspire her to create art. One being "really dopey or really daring in other ways, that are just like". In my interpretation she likes to be goofy at times and make fun of the subject matter. No necessarily to embarrass the individual or group but just to be funny. Laurie states "break every other rule." She seems to be rebellious to a point but not to cause mass havoc. Just a bit of mischief which I find quirky and delightful. Another thing she states is "Rule breaking in much more interesting to me than trying to give people messages encoded in music or painting."
Jennifer Garza-Qcuen | Art Lecture | University of Nevada, Reno 2016
In this lecture Jennifer talks about the different countries she has been to. She has been to 7 different countries and I was envious when she said that. Because I would like to travel around the world as well. She also stated that she loves to travel and travels to a place to explore the area. After she re-tells her store about her own experience of the place with photographs of the environment and the people who live there. She talks about the difference between our trajectory vs origin. Another she illustrated was our interaction with travel.
She presented the topic of where are your origins. Is it where you were born, where you live or where you grew up? In America we are full of people who have migrated from different countries and these questions are not easily answered. She illustrates her photos in a a story like fashion, as if she was reading a book.
The medium that she uses are photography of people and landscapes, poems, live performance, she also takes documentary photographs, for example old photos of criminals, and uses them as the art piece. I find these pieces very interesting in the fact that it tells a story. These are pictures of people who have committed a crime. The pictures are abstract and have a beautiful distressed look to them. Visually, striking and in certain pictures you can kind of make out a face of a character. You can definitely tell that time has claimed most of these pictures and they will never be able to recover the original photo. She got these photos from an old jail in Detroit which was just abandoned. She walked into this abandoned building and picked up these photos.
Criminal Abstractions
I asked her a question and it was "What is it that inspires you, to do your art?" She replied with the fact that she loves to travel and just traveling in general. She has a passion to just travel to places and explore the area. When she travels she also tried to get to know that people in that area. She likes to meet new people and learn things about them. She likes to heard their story and she will ask them if it would be okay to use their story for her art. This was one of the ways she got her content. When she was exploring the area she has traveled to she would ask people their story and if they were receptive Jennifer then asked them permission to tell their story in her art.
I really like her approach to getting content for her art. It seems amazingly simple, but I know it has its kinks. Getting to know a person in a genuine sense something we don't do a lot of these days. I really like that about Jennifer Garza-Qcuen work.
In this video clip this cyborg was born with eyes that lack the ability to absorb light. In the video it states that her ability to hear was acute. She could hear well enough. I feel that the artist was trying to state at the beginning that we are born innocent to the facts and untainted by humanity. Meaning that we have not yet been influenced in anyway. We are free of worry and have the outlook of a child at the beginning stage of this cyborg.
This cyborg learn about the world through a computer and provided stimulation and entertainment for it. You would also see the doctor who works on her/cyborg to mold her. On this video the doctor seems to be doing experiments to see how the cyborg will react to different stimulus. In my opinion I think they are try to illustrate that this is how some of us would react to these type of stimulus. Having infected the body by manipulating computer chips to see how we would react. In this case the doctor is working on the cyborg. The doctor is seducing the women into cyborghood. The doctor is using what looks like radio waves to get the women to submit through what looks like mind control or brain washing techniques. The women look like they are drugged as well before they are force fed the information through a computer. It also stated that the images that were fed through the computer were pleasant and entertaining to the woman. Then she was addicted to the computer quickly. Which in reality is actually quite true. People get addicted to computers, smartphones, tv, etc. pretty quickly. It is actually quite scary to think that this can be true. Even the music seem very pleasant and it was almost like a lullaby. There was water trickling down. I think they put that in because water seems to have a calming quality to it. Just like when it rains and you sit there listening to the water hit the roof or the ground. There is something soothing about that. This brings you to a false sense of trust in the situation. So after the doctor gets you into the false sense of trust he starts to work on you again. Bombarding the women's head with radio waves.
The woman amune system suffer because of these test. But at this point she is so addicted to it already she couldn't help herself. Just like someone who it addicted to drugs. It was a downward spiral from there. She had been a witness to the pollution of history and her body surcamed to the inevitable.
