Science and Art

Question 1
Bodies Exhibition

                                                                       Question Two

extreme closeup of human eye

chromosomes

MRI of cranium

MRI of brain

extreme closeup of the pupil...!

microorganisms of your body

PET scan of body

bacteria of the body

Reaction to Michelle's piece.

I really enjoyed how Michelle connected the readings of this week with the relevent topic of Steve Jobs and the Iphone. In her image, Steve is only on the brink of being erased by his own creations, and her image is probably the perfect representation for 2012 . However, I yearned to see this idea pushed. I decided to advance the image ahead a few years, when Steve Jobs is no longer mentioned along with the Iphone, and the glitch completely takes over the iconic photo that we have seen time and time again on the New York's Best Seller list. A man truly lost in his own creation.

And I wanted to note, that while making this image it definately felt like the authenticity still lied with  Michelle's original response. It felt like I was not making my own image, but just a reproduction, a slightly different representation of her own.

Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

 

Crystal Miller
"Destruction by Appropriation I & II"
Can you name the above reproductions of famous art pieces? And ask yourself, “at what point does reproduction lend itself to the complete murder of the original?”

Walter Benjamin’s article deals heavily with the issue of reproduction in today’s society. Benjamin suggests that with reproductions, value and importance are then looked upon with scrutiny. He suggests that the new is “criticized with aversion”. The issue of reproducibility can weave itself through a personal series of prints, to the subject of appropriation. To appropriate an image, one has to use its “likeness”, representation, or reproduction. In order to do so, the “aura” (Benjamin) of the image is then destroyed as it is put into an artist’s new context. The reproduction, and all of its connotations, is then used in order to translate the new artist’s new meaning. However, all the value to the former is lost. This is what I am exploring in my images. Digital media, such as photoshop, has swiftly inserted an ease of manipulation that, in the same click of a button, doesn't even reveal the evidence of the hand. The two famous art pieces that are depicted above are easily available for reproduction in our society. The imagery is open to be violated by another’s hand. At what point is the “aura” of the original completely lost? Or, can its fragments alone keep it alive? If these above images are seen as graffiti stickers strewn across New York City, would it then de-value the original (not literally, but in a sense)... since it then outwardly exaggerates how it was so easily violated, detroyed..and now has lost its esteemed limitations to only the art bourgeois?




Images: Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, Shepard Fairey's Obama Hope  poster

Field of Gaze

..and installation art!

Jonathan Borofsky

While reading this week's assignments, Sturken and Cartwright’s chapter considering “Spectatorship, Power, and Knowledge,” as well as Mulvey’s essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” I was intrigued by the idea of field of gaze, and the unconscious processes that are unknowingly experienced within. I have always been intrigued by how installation art can have the ability to take you outside of yourself, outside of your notions on reality, beliefs, and bodily container. For a brief moment, common sense is put on pause and everything revolves around this “new world” that you’re being exposed to. With it comes a narrative that provides new notions on reality, belief, and common sense.

Olaf Bruening

Nils Nova

In installation art, we are given images (at times text/sound/video) in order to interpret this “new world”, or in referencing the pictorial turn, “read” the artist’s implied meaning. While considering this all, what we are not aware of are these mentioned unconscious processes Sturken, Cartwright, and Mulvey express. In installation, there is a large field of gaze that the spectator can easily step into. “Large” here does not refer to size, but a multi-faceted psychological space where we are placed within a field of meaning production, in which we are only one fragment. This production of meaning is formed through recognition, mimesis, taste & aesthetics, cultural
background (basically, chapter 2).
 

Film theorist Jean-Louis Baudry explains the field of gaze that is entered through the cinema (parallels can be drawn here from cinema to installation). The change in atmosphere, “the darkened theatre and conditions of watching a mirror-like screen invite the viewer to regress to a childlike state.” He goes on to describe the viewer’s temporary loss of ego as they identify with figures on screen. Mulvey expresses the repressive state that the viewer experiences in the cinema, as they are positioned underneath a massively brilliant screen and forced to look up to the figures throughout the movie experience.
 



Kara Walker

Eva Hess

The field of gaze is of course entered through all forms of artwork, both commercial and fine. However, it seems that installation art seems to cater to the idea of the audience being an integral part of the art piece as well as viewing experience. Some installation art cannot live without an audience, but a painting can live just the same on wall that is left unviewed, collecting dust. This special viewing experience that accommodates the audience is probably the spark of my interest in installation. Although I am a drawing and painting major, I have been sketching out ways to make my art more like an installation. Not to objectify the artwork, but merge the space from which my two dimensional figures live, and from where it is viewed. So far, I have enlarged my figurative work and have been planning pieces where the surface extends out to the viewing space. Unfortunately, I cannot elaborate on this idea more at the time, however suggestions are welcome!

Interpellation

introducing a language you didn't even realize you were fluent in:  images!

W.J.T. Mitchell introduced the term "pictorial turn" to us, Pictorial turn marks a transformation in the humanities. What is different is that the pictorial turn is "post-linguistic," evolving not on the basis of language but of "visuality". In our culture, we are constantly attacked by images, signs, and symbols. We have learned to "read" them as text, and they hold the same significance as their textual equivalents. Although I was somewhat unknowingly aware of this, reading about this topic has solidified it within my scope. I now am aware of this pictorial language that is all around me, and that I am undoubtedly fluent in. Above are some examples.

 

Interpellatation was also a new term this chapter, and I do not know how I haven't encountered it before. The term seeks label the process in which a viewer feels like an image catches their attention or "speaks" to them. Of course not every viewer is going to have the same conversation with the image, and you do not even have to agree with the dominant message of the image in order to be interpellated by it. Advertisements are, of course, prime examples of an image in which interpellation is key.

 

 

“Pictorial turn” has given a new appreciation to the representation of an object as a symbol. It is because our culture’s relatability with symbols that kitsch imagery has found a way to “work” within the fine art realm. Artists found that they could successfully interpellate their viewers with representations of objects that have gained historical significance. One artist who notoriously exploited this idea was Jeff Koons, whose iconic pieces are displayed above.

Hm, I wonder if this is making Clement Greenburg turn over in his grave…

"Looking"

Image courtesy of Maureen Paley, London/Blueprint Magazine, Paul Noble: Art on the Underground

Sturken and Cartwright elaborate on a fact that as a culture we engage in practices of “looking”. As an artist, I feel that I should pay more attention tothis ever-present practice not only as a ritual, but a process. If, as an artist, the process of “looking” is understood, it then becomes easy to control the gaze of a viewer through use of color, value, texture, focal point etc.. Paul Noble disregards any sort of focus in his pieces by eliminating a plane of perspective, therefore forcing the viewer to look and receive the image as a whole before exploring his minute details.



Image by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin/Colors

Sturken and Cartwright also take the time to elaborate on the inherent difference of a photographic based image, which relies on photographic truth to evoke a response in the viewer. As a society, I feel that we are becoming less trusting of photos as a whole since editing software has made itself so readily available. However, the photograph as a medium still holds more real-life credibility than any other media (not including video/performance). It is it’s documentary-style quality that allows society to peer into the lives of others and view stories that were left untold. Contemporary photographers Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin say this about their documentary-style process:

"I think a good place to start is one of the main principles that we have when we go into a place and that is that we produce a piece of media which is in some way acceptable to the people who live in that community. So we produce it bearing in mind that we will send this thing back to them and that they won’ t be exploited and they will feel a sense of pride of having taken part in the project. That informs a lot of the way that how we go about getting into a place and how we behave when we are there in terms of getting access. So for instance, there’ s no hidden agenda. What we do is the first step, talking really practically and logistically, is to send a magazine to the community and they have a look at what we are doing and I think that in that sense they see this is not an attempt at exploiting them or an attempt at making some kind of political or hyped-up exposé . It’ s an attempt at really exploring this community." http://www.vam.ac.uk

 



www.nathandurfee.com

The imageries shown in chapter 1 are successful because they rely on connotative associations that are formulated through the context of our culture. The images are “loaded” with various stories that can be drawn from them (ex: the smiley face). It is evident that there is an understanding by the artist of the dependences of their visual images within our culture.  Many artists, such as Nathan Durfee, rely on a popular symbols to invoke conversation into their art pieces.

Fabian Ciraolo/ www.artistaday.com

People and celebrities can also turn into symbol statuses themselves, as the chapter alluded to with Madonna. One other such example shown here is Dorothy from "Wizard of Oz". The character of Dorothy can be seen here representing multiple ideas from a lost sense of home to a misplaced childhood.