J. Erin Kelley

2009-12-10T11:38:00.000-08:00

Personal World Map by Roxana Torre

2009-12-10T10:38:00.001-08:00

http://www.personalworldmap.org/

The growth and expansion of multiple news outlets and accesibility of the Internet sometimes fools us into believing the world is "shrinking," that we have legitimate access to information and knowledge from around the world. Roxana Torre's personal world map is a reminder of the legitimate restraints placed on an individual's worldview by the realities of time, space and monetary constraints. The work is an interactive map, where the world is distorted around a chosen "center" to fit the "traveler's" time and budget contraints. That information is compared with legitimate flight data to create a personal world map which displays just how much of the planet the user actually has physical access to.

Jenny Holzer

2009-12-10T10:36:00.000-08:00

Jenny Holzer creates text-based artworks, often displaying them by means of projection on structural exteriors around the world. In addition, she has created interesting LED displays to present her series of politically charged adages and expressions.

Her best-known work, Truisms, consists of a series of statements, at once political and provocative. Often the phrases presented, while provocative, appear to be simple, almost common sense, however the presentation itself might bring about deeper thought about the nature of what exactly we think we know. Holzer has displayed these phrases in various ways, including projection, street posters, websites and large-scale LED billboards. Her works have been printed on T-shirts and posters, and carved into stone benches and cast as bronze plaques.

A User’s Guide to Détournement -- Guy Debord & Gil Wolman

2009-12-10T10:26:00.000-08:00

Another attempt to strictly define art as a concept and set boundaries for the work of others. Debord and Wolman may try hard to maintain that they are defying such definitions, but suggesting that previous works and styles are "out-of-date," and therefore no longer hold any merit, is just as elitest as the suggestion that classical art is somehow a more legitimate artform by virtue of its acceptance by establishment propagandists.

Just create something, anything.

If you say it is art, then it is art.

Other people don't have to like it; other people don't have to agree.

But this need to generalize the drawing of strict definitions for what is and what is not acceptable as a work of "art" is ridiculous.

Project #3: Subvertisement

2009-11-19T14:46:00.000-08:00

My subvertisement of an ad for Chiquita bananas is based on the original posted below it.

Grafik Dynamo

2009-10-21T19:58:00.001-07:00

by Kate Armstrong and Michael Tippit

http://www.turbulence.org/Works/dynamo/

Grafik Dynamo consists of three frames of equal size, arranged similar to a comic strip. A series of images -- usually photos -- randomly appear in each of the panels, refreshing to bring new graphics every few seconds. Above the pictures, a randomly selected speech balloon containing a short statement or exclamation often appears. In addition, the panels have white retangular overlays across the bottom in which various short sentences or action statements often appear. Unlike the messages in the balloons, which appear to be random snippets of legitimate conversation, these short sentences are somewhat similar to the narration often found in comic books. The result is a constantly generating graphic novel of sorts.

One's mind searches to create a narrative to fit the random series of images and captions. It is amazing how often the pictures and words work together to create potential stories, both comic and tragic. At the least, Grafik Dynamo is an entertaining diversion. At best, it provides an interesting comment on the random quality of modern communication and artistic expression.

WiFi-SM Feel The Pain

2009-10-21T19:57:00.002-07:00

“WiFi-SM is an Internet connected wireless device that you can fix on any part of your body. It automatically detects the information from approximately 4,500 news sources worldwide updated continuously and analyses them looking for specific keywords such as death, kill, murder, torture, rape, war, virus etc.
Each time the text of the news contains one of these keywords, your WiFi-SM device is activated through the WiFi network and provides you with an electric impulse. This impulse is calibrated so that you can feel a certain amount of pain, but is completely safe.”

Christopher Bruno's project, 'WiFi-SM,' advertises a fictional WiFi-enabled, wearable patch that gives the wearer a powerful jolt of electricity whenever any one of up to 4,500 news sources around the world produce selected keywords. Providing wearers with a shock allows them to 'feel' global pain, thus becoming more in touch with the world around them and assuaging any personal guilt they may theoretically feel at their own lack of legitimate feeling for the tragedies of their fellow man. Participants may to personalize the experience with the so-called "P2P (Pain-to-Pain) technology" which lets them set individual keywords and pain threshholds.

Bruno's "ad" highlights the pretense of modern existence and raises legitimate questions about desensitization in an era of advanced technology. With so much information available to us, people have to make choices about what they wish to view and read. Is it just human nature to avoid the negative? After all, we're all busy and it is easier to just play another round of Bejeweled than to give significant thought to the suffering of unknown people on the other side of the world. Yeah, and it is easier to just write a check once a year and send it off to some faceless charity than it is to seriously examine the state of the world and determine what actions might be taken to better it.

Lovekatie.com

2009-10-21T19:57:00.001-07:00

By Katie Bush

http://www.lovekatie.com/27.html

Lovekatie.com opens with a colorful image of what appears to be computer circuits, but upon closer examination could also be a representative map image of any suburb. Move the mouse around and areas of the picture pulsate, while a small box implores "connect with me." Click on one of the pulsing areas a pop-up opens in which the viewer is shown a series of short scenes, presumably fairly everyday occurences, from the lives of surburbanites. The events portrayed range from banal (doing laundry) to a bit bizarre (a red alligator repeatedly, yet harmlessly, attacks the leg of a baby drinking a bottle). Two on screen characters, just outside the frame of action, silently stand motionless and watch these events unfold.

The work is much like suburban life: generally benign but tinged with an everpresent sense of isolation. It speaks not only to society in general, but to our increasingly mediated forms of communication. The analogy between computer circuits and a suburban environment is apt. Increasingly, people turn to the Internet in search of human connection, but how much can we mediate reality and without losing the part that is real?

Ungravitational

2009-10-21T18:38:00.000-07:00

By Olga Panades Massanet

http://olga.imiant.org.uk/

There is a fine line between mounting a campaign based on legitimate political dissent and demonstrating a heretofore unknown level of paranoia-induced madness. If Olga Panades Massanet has not crossed that line, she is certainly dancing on it...naked...while howling at the full moon.

Beginning with authentic concerns regarding the societal effects of the surveillance state, Massanet's work veers into the realm of utter absurdity when she posts signs warning of vomiting cameras and spreads goo on the sidewalks beneath their watchful lenses.

"Cameras vomit for excess of data. Excess of data produces slime, malformations, transmutation of matter. Beyond a threshold there is a qualitative jump. Video files turn cellular, creatures begin to form and cameras start to puke. The fear they generate is transmuted. Cameras are poisoned," she explains. Ummm, no.

Additional photographs, of a series of fish lanced through with colorful pencils and "invading" toy parachuetters hanging about the city, acheive little more in the way of making any coherent point regarding the intrusive nature of an ever watchful authoritarian state. With her fake vomit, dead fish and toy parachuetters, Massanet trivializes an extraordinarily consequential argument. Constant surveillance creates a poisonous atmosphere of tension and fear -- an atmosphere government agents feed upon to further the ever-expanding power of the body politic. However, the seemingly psychotic ramblings of individuals who position themselves on the fringes of societal norms only serve to facilitate the ease with which officials manage to marganilize dissent.

The Internet Speaks -- or so they say

2009-10-20T08:51:00.000-07:00

The Internet Speaks

by Richard Wright

The Internet Speaks is described as "a database of randomly selected images exploring the nature of the web without text." The project allows viewers to flip through a series of hundreds (thousands?) of randomly chosen images from the Internet, which appear in original size on a black background without comment or context.

Without context does the Internet speak at all? The Internet Speaks creates a conundrum.

Without language, what does this technology say about its users? As humans we are trained to seek context and attempt to create a cohesive narrative for every image or s

eries of images we see. As one peruses the series of disjointed images everything imagineable seems to appear, from family photographs to cartoons to warning labels to advertise

ments to still shots from films, it is natural to attempt to create context.

Oh sure, I recognize that it's Monte Python, right? I know that film. But who are these runners? What is their story? How does their story change when the next picture is a still shot of an apparently drunken middle-aged man balancing on a set of chairs and promising "inventive gelatin shots for creative imbibers?" When was that put out? This is worse than looking at a stranger's vacation photos. Oh look, now I am looking at a stranger's vacation photos. That water is beautiful. Where is that? Try as you might, it is impossible to flip through the images without at least attempting to find some deeper meaning. The Internet may be attempting to speak but what is it saying?

Random images, much like the technology from which they are drawn, become meaningless without contextual and societal clues. Wright's work draws the viewer into an attempt to find deeper meaning, not only within the images themselves, but in the greater disjointed Internet world. Millions of people create new web content everyday: some of it crucially important, some of it fabulously silly. In no time at all we have become nearly totally dependent on the electronic world to help us do our jobs, communicate with friends, learn about the world, and make decisions small and large. Wright reminds us that without the context of a human narrative, the technology we are left with is hollow and without any meaning. The Internet may speak, but can humans truly interpret what it is saying?

The Princess Series by roxanne wolanczyk

2009-09-29T13:20:00.000-07:00

The Princess Series is a group of animated autobiographical shorts produced by artist roxanne wolanczyk. The work centers on the life of a modern day princess, trying to find happiness by escaping an oppressive corporate structure.

Wolanczyk's graphic-style drawings are clean and inviting, and the individual frame style of delivery is equivalent to an almost under-stylized graphic novel, with the exception that pages are turned for the viewer and the text is delivered via narration. The story is both relatable and engaging. It presents a seemingly honest personal account of the struggle between the external forces of capitalism and an internal desire to pursue a more complete and creative life. However after viewing a few pieces, the observer may start to view the plots as excessively self-serving and self-indulgent on the part of the artist.

AVT 280 Project #1

2009-09-22T09:43:00.000-07:00

This first series deals with the political and academic atmosphere on the campus of George Mason during the current economic crisis.

Sometimes it seems this is how the administration views the students:

This is how the students often view George Mason:

Is this the role of students on campus, to be an economic driving force behind a budget over-loaded with vanity construction?

The second series concerns the roles of individuals within the family structure. Family dynamics can create a situation in which one or two individuals dominate the entire dynamic, leaving others feeling voiceless and robbed of their own identity.

Arteroids by Jim Andrews

2009-09-15T09:03:00.000-07:00

"The battle of poetry against itself and the forces of dullness."
http://vispo.com/arteroids/arteroids.htm

Jim Andrews "Arteroids" is packaged as a video game in which the player shoots a series of falling, swirling words, letters and place fillers.The player is put in a position of trying to piece together a narrative out of the words as the fall, while struggling to translate a series of sounds, from guttural grunts to high pitched whines, which seem to almost mean something but never quite amount to anything. At times, the game is frustrating. Control of this alternate reality is tenuous at best. The player drives his/her weaponry around the board using arrows on the keyboard, but the arrows do not respond as one might expect; up does not mean up, down does not mean down. But in some ways, that frustration drives the game even further. You can hardly help wanting to find the endgame, the point to all this madness.

Andrews himself said, in an essay on the matter, "arteroids is about cracking language open." Literally and figuratively, it breaks the essential elements of communication down to their most basic substance and demonstrates both the inherent meaninglessness of symbols without context and the natural desire of the human mind derive meaning from all forms of communication. Are the symbols really meaningless or if one looks hard enough can it just be pieced together?

Ultimately, the disjointed poetry always loses its battle against the forces of dullness. But for me the game raises an interesting issue about art and all forms of communication in the computer age. As we become increasingly dependent on the Internet to supply our means of connection, we seem to become less connected to the tangible world. Is it possible that we could go to far? That eventually traditional forms of art, of communication, will become not only obsolete, but meaningless?