Generative process

Beautifying garbage

I post a photo onto instagram of a pile of garbage that I beautified asking for other people to beautify a pile of garbage, take a photo post it on their instagram and tag me in it. This project uses a generative process because I do not know what I will get by other peoples postings.

4 Instagram photos of piles of garbage arranged in a way that appears to have beautified an existing pile of trash. One appears to be a yellow flower growing out of a garbage can, another is a brown garbage can with an arrangement of newspaper, plastic and empty cans. Another is a pile of plastic with a small radish sitting on top, and the other is a pile of various garbage against a backdrop of a city.

One possible content could be that the artist is thinking about how much trash we consume and throw out on an everyday basis.

Another content could be the artist is encouraging others to look at things differently. To see beauty in the everyday.

 

 

Chaotic Peace

https://vimeo.com/178746456 

 

Subject vs content

A 22 second video of a still shot of chaos in Times Square New York juxtaposed with the sounds of Indian chanting. There are tons of people flooding the streets and cabs sitting in traffic, you can barely see the streets. Amongst the people and cabs are bright lights and billboards, traffic lights and street signs. As the camera pans up you notice multiple Do Not Enter Signs. The Indian chanting is sung in sanskrit.

One possible content could be that although there is chaos there is still a way to live in peace amongst it.

Another possible content is that although we live in a world that has constant distractions, we have the ability to only see what we want to see, making this chaotic world a lot less over stimulating.

Chitta Vritti

https://vimeo.com/178511358 

 

Chitta Vritti is a 59 second clip of chaotic movement juxtaposed with peaceful silence and steadiness. The first few seconds are of someone closing a door over and over again, it then cuts to someone picking up a phone and hanging it up over and over again and then goes to a longer clip of a girl wearing all white in a park spending time feeling feathers that are attached to a nearby bicycle. Towards the end of the clip the video interacts with nature leaving a sense of peace, the complete opposite of the beginning of the video.

One possible content is that the artist is trying to emphasize the duality of our mind when we are overwhelmed and going too fast pushing through life and the difference we can feel when we stop to take in each moment.

Another possible content could be that the artist is trying to explain the difference one actually feels when watching fast movements vs. slow movements so that they can start to notice that feeling and become aware of it so that they can change it once they notice themselves overwhelmed in their own life.

New media movement video

Subject vs. content

A 35 second video that moves quickly from one action movement to another that seems to be part of everyday life. Actions range from pumping gas to walking up a mountain to washing and drying hands in a public restroom.

One possible content could be that the artist is bringing awareness to everyday mundane movements and actions we might not pay attention to within our daily routines as a way of bringing people to present moment awareness.

Another possible content could be showing that if we don’t pay attention to every movement our day and therefore our lives speed up so fast that we miss it.

 

 

Artist Report Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Katherine Moriwaki

Artist Report

Your Artist is jonah brucker-cohen and katherine moriwaki

On your word press blog, and here below please paste 5 artworks in jpeg or video URL format. Please put the title, date and medium below each image

1.

“Umbrella.Net” 2004 new media

2.

“America’s got no talent” 2014 data visualization artwork

3.

“Colorbots” 2011

4.

“R.I.P Banf Center” 2011

5.

“Scrapyard Workshops” Ongoing, Interactive media

Please share a statement from an art historian, critic or journalist about your artist:

UMBRELLA.NET featured in:
Tribe, Mark, Jana, Reena., Art in the Age of Digital Communication, New Media Art, Taschen, USA, 2006.

Although Brucker-Cohen and Moriwaki’s interest in network topology stems largely from their extensive technological training (both received Ph.D.s in Engineering at Trinity College in Dublin), they use umbrellas primarily for aesthetic reasons. As they write on the project’s Web site: “We believe these transitory networks can add surprise and beauty to our currently fixed communication channels.”

This work exemplifies the kind of collaborative effort that is common in New Media art, which often requires a team of technological specialists, similar to a film crew. Brucker-Cohen and Moriwaki worked with a software architect, an electrical engineer, an industrial designer, and a hardware engineer. While UMBRELLA.net originated in an engineering context, its conceptual charm and spectacular quality indicate the artistic intentions of its makers. The absurd nature of the umbrella’s enhanced functionality seems to poke fun at the increasing ubiquity of digital technology in the early 2000s, from robotic vacuum cleaners to microwave ovens that utilize live Web data to determine cooking times.

Please choose only ONE of the 5 pieces above and write a Subject Vs Content statement about the work here:

“Umbrella.Net”

Umbrella.net is an image of seven people carrying opened umbrellas. Five people are close enough together that their umbrellas seem to create cohesiveness. This is represented by a blue glow over the five umbrellas and a dotted arch linking one to the other. The other two people, standing further from the five, are also carrying umbrellas; their umbrellas are shown with a red glow, without arches connecting them to another.

One possible content could be that the artist was interested in exploring randomness pattern forms that are visually expressed (like opening an umbrella).

Another form of content could be that the artist was interested in exploring the idea of energy and how we are all connected. expressing visually that ideas, energy and vibes travel from person to person.

Floraborg Subject vs Content

 The “Indaplant/ Floraborg”sculpture is about two feet wide by three feet high, made up of a green, leafy house plant and computer parts, which is programmed top actually move on its own. The house plant sits within a robotic triangular device consisting of three electronic flatscreen computer monitor devices. The plant/robot sits on top of three plastic blue wheels, two in the front and one in the back. The sculpture is programmed to direct itself  to move towards sunlight and water when it is in need, making the plant self-sufficient and giving it the ability to maintain its own wants and needs without the help of humans.

 

One possible content would be that the artist is expressing the future of plants and how they will live in the world. No longer needing or depending on human life forms to survive. Right now we would never think of plants as walking and taking care of themselves but it may be well in our future.

 

Another possible content could have stemmed from an idea of merging together technology and organic life forms to create a new type of species. 

Jun kaneko

Jun kaneko is a Japanese ceramic artist. His works in clay explore the effects of repeated abstract surface motifs.He produced a large Dango series of ceramic pieces resembling vases without openings. (Dango means “dumpling” or “closed form” in Japanese.) His prolific roster of diverse work appears in numerous international solo and group exhibitions annually. Kaneko’s technique involves the use of masking tape and colored slips, which he uses to covers free-standing ceramic forms and wall-hung pieces with graphic motifs and markings.

 

 

3 large scaled standing vessel sculptures and 5 small small floor sculptures are arranged specially within in a large room where the white floor has been painted with black stripes. Each sculpture has a pattern that is accented in black with a colored background.

One possibility of what the artist could have been conveying is his Buddhist views. When you look at all of these patterns at once you can’t help but begin to dissolve into the universe.

Another possibly could be that he is referring to death. Showing that we  don’t have to follow suit in the traditional tombstones when we die we can live a colorful life after death.

 

 

This is not a painting

 

 

Rivercubes

Bob Johnson from Pittsburgh, PA creates Rivercubes. Rivercubes are “cubes” of compressed objects and materials found in rivers. The cubes are developed from a strategy he likes to call ATM or Artful Trash Management. The Rivercubes are rescued trash that raise awareness around the way that we discard our trash, so often it ends up in rivers and lakes and in turn is hurting our environment, the animals, and eventually us as humans. He gathers materials from the rivers and lakes and compresses them into cubes to create sculptures.

 

 

“multi modal transport”Car unibody section, shopping carts, bicycles, etc.

“Wheel Cube” 38 tire rims collected from the Pittsburgh Pool

“Girty’s Run Harvest”

“Garden Cube”

Subject vs. content

“multi modal transport”

A sculpture assembled from various found objects including a shopping cart, car hood, and a bicycle. The objects are compressed together and take on their own shape. It appears as if wires and branches are holding together the objects in the sculpture.

One possibility of what the artist was thinking was to raise awareness around how we as humans disregard items and usually do not think twice about where they go and what happens to them. Hoping to encourage people to be more mindful as to what they buy, and what they throw away and how they go about it.

Another possibility is that the artist is interested in taking something that is considered ugly and making it beautiful.

Nadav Assor

Nadav Assor creates videos, installations, performances, and objects. His work relates to cities, meditative concepts and technology. He was born in the US and grew up in Israel. Nadav collabortes with many artists and uses sound throughout his work. All of his projects are ongoing.

https://vimeo.com/3635609 

Real time greenscreen rig, prepared construction material plates, industrial shelving, custom software, multiple projectors. Each piece is highly site-sensitive, as a different “tunnel” is constructed according to the materials and contexts present at the location of the performance.

http://www.nadassor.net/2009/09/strip-north-spaulding-avenue/

Nadav rode his bicycle for 12 miles on a Chicago street crossing 7 neighborhoods scanning the street-scape with a side-mounted video camera. He then created an installation presenting a fragmented video panorama, constructed of consecutive moving frames from that single traveling shot, spatially laid out next to each other so that each slice shows a moment a few seconds behind that of it’s neighbor.

http://www.nadassor.net/2008/01/razor-2008/

“Razor” is a part of his ongoing investigation into the application of sculptural, semi-violent though miniaturized gestures, to live video, generated from his own body.

 

Subject vs content:

Tunneling

a video is projected onto the wall showing several layers of materials through what appears to be a hole that has been carefully ripped apart. The artist is ripping the materials apart in real time while the video is being projected onto the wall. Layer after layer the artist tears each apart to conceal what is underneath. Sound is also layered throughout the piece, which is what seems to be general household sounds. You can see the artists hands moving throughout the layers. Each layer is an industrial material and the viewer feels like the artist may be breaking through materials in a wall.

One reason the artist may have made this piece is to show how materials can be considered interesting in and of themselves, things we look at everyday and disregard as normal can be looked at differently.

Another meaning behind the piece could be that we are always trying to uncover something but we are often so distracted by everything around us (the sounds) that it is hard to stay focused on uncovering who we really are.