On the topic of what Frieze is:
Frieze discusses a number of aspects of contemporary art. It is published eight times a year and is formulated by artists, curators, and writers.
In Frieze Magazine, the viewer can look at current art, events, reports of art and speculations, and is not limited to visual art, but also music. This magazine is an all around art tool to the public. This is one of the reasons I picked this magazine; its direction seems to be various. It is looking at a number of different works, but is not limited to interviews or a set number of journalists and authors.
Unfortunately, some of the articles like, “The book of dreams” were not available to a non-subscribers, but I WILL NOT BE DISCOURAGED!!!!
The article in the October issue that caught my attention is by Jennifer Allen, “Unsung Heroes.” This article talked about a secret life, a secret life that I would love to live, that the Gallery Assistant undertakes while in that position. Secret life as in the sometimes-enormous undertaking they have to endure by themselves that will never be revealed to the public eye. Allen references something that you might have asked yourself in an exhibit, “How did they get this in here?” The answer lies in the Gallery assistant, Allen has been observing and prying at people in this position over years and has written about her findings.
Her findings were various and varied from “killing mosquitoes” to “trying to figure out if the ceiling will hold the weight of a sculpture.” Other aspects of the assistants can also lead to travel into other countries or accommodating artists or showings.
This article was chosen based on my interested but also stresses the variety of authors that are included in the magazine. Allen is critic living in Berlin. Her article is also part of the variety of articles included in the magazine. There is no reference to specific art, direction, or focus. The article consists of just a thought, a living, continuous dissection of “hero’s.” Of course we may not feel, as a viewer, that this job is heroic at all. But in the same way, that is our thought.
The next article caught my interest with having Cuba in its heading. I recently viewed, “I am Cuba” a film about the perceived utopia Cuba was made to be and the realities of its people. The article is “Tania Bruguera” and is written by Jonathan Griffin. He write about how Tania Bruguera, an installation artist was influenced from where she came from, Cuba. She created many dichotic installations over the years, some about Cuba specifically and others about similar subjects such as Auschwitz. These subjects include the dichotomy of good and evil, light and dark. Influences on crowds by people in power or other aspects that contribute to conformity in groups and how crowds respond to these aspects of pseudo-dictatorship.
Personally I find these installations very interesting because I am studying similar subjects in other classes here at UWM. Her goal is focused and is direct, to bring an understanding to the past in a living sort of way. The people in the installation are not shown the complete image until they have ventured through the work of art. And recently she is focusing on re-enactment of her own installations by other people. I see this as a hands on approach to show that a person can conform to environments they believe despicable. An example of this would be putting a member of the audience in the shoes of a Nazi German that is executing prisoners of war. Do you think you could do it, do you think you could justify your choice, and finally do you think you could understand far better the emotions that might have been involved in such a real life decision. As an artist she addresses these issues.
This article shows that there are also many serious parts of this magazine. The online magazine consists of a front, middle, and back section as in a tangible print. I would imagine that the middle consists of current issues and has a more serious tone, but I will discover this as my research continues within Frieze.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Act React, looking at interaction on both a concious and unconscious levels!
ACT !!!!!!!! React
Act-react. The idea of being able impact authored work has fascinated me for a long time. Video games were the first interaction I consciously made on a piece of authored work.
You may be wondering what I mean by consciously. George Fitfield’s article Act/React dealt with personal interaction across several mediums of art across many decades. He starts this discussion by referring to the interaction of the viewer on a two-dimensional painting. Fitfield described this in his article, “The artist operates like a medieval God, creating a deterministic world in which the receiver’s route is ordained.”
Back to my point on consciousness, looking at a painting and following the “ordained” path is unconscious. You may not know what the path is, which can lead to different interpretations of a work, or there may be multiple paths to take in understanding an authored work. These paths can be brought into consciousness when they are talked about with another person or in a group, but in a personal individualistic environment, at a young age, many aspects of viewing art were driven by personal thoughts and perception; not by knowing that a artist was striving for a specific reason or other conscious technicalities.
At this young age, somewhere between five and ten, video games was an art form that I could have an effect on. Not only was this a conscious effect on that environment, but also the effect changed the picture as a whole. Both forms of art though, paintings and video games, still had a path that led you to final interpretation or conclusion.
The difference in viewing a painting is that we are making an unconscious inferences onto the meaning just by looking at the medium, and in video games we are moving into a conscious direction, but also has no meaning in a single frame or still. Both forms are subject to incomplete or distorted meanings similarly, you could give up on the finding the true meaning of abstract painting or just put down the controller.
Further, in age and perception of our world, we could come to make conscious inference on a piece of art. Whether this be empirical personal interaction, or group discussion were we are verbalizing our reactions to a medium and thus growing in realizing the multiple paths of the author or possibly the singular path of the author.
This brings me to another point that Fitfield made of interaction and the evolution of interactive pieces of art. The second part of the quote above is the way we interact with interactive mediums, “In interactive art, the artist can give the visitor free will, freedom to explore a world of the artists imagination, and to find (or miss) all the wonders that might lie within it.”
Along with many video games and many of the interactive art in Fitfield’s article stilled followed a path or multiple paths. Pressing buttons to direct a film will always end in the same way(s). Fitfield was right in saying that interacting within an interactive medium will put the viewer in the authors world, but until recently this has been limited by both our imaginations and our technology.
This, finally, has brought me to our recent interactions with some of the most recent pieces of interactive art. Interaction was based, in the past, on using a controller or interacting with an object to manipulate the medium. With past interactive art and the furthering of technology artists are able to imagine a world with an endless number of possibilities.
Take for example the 1999 piece by Daniel Rozin, The Wooden Mirror. A person or an object is placed in front of hundreds of wooden spheres and is reflected by those spheres. This is another conscious interaction, we need to think about what is going on to experience this piece, a single frame of the work by itself will not bring any meaning to it. These conscious inferences are infinite and thus can create an infinite number of possibilities of what can be reflected, limited by each viewer’s imagination. The one thing that remains the same is what is projected. We are now switching the roles of author and viewer, the viewer become the artist. Though we are still in the author’s imaginary world, we create the image both to accompanying viewers, and ourselves but also take an image with us as we leave. In this case of interactive art we are the controller that has its own buttons that are pressed, one may start jumping around while another may just stand there.
Another piece is part of the evolution of interactive art though technology and imagination is Camille Utterback’s work with painting through body interaction. Once again we see the infinite possibilities in being a author within a thee author’s world. This time it can be more personal like a video game, a single person can create the infinite possibilities. As like recent work in video games, a mechanic is being manipulated by the viewer and thus creates the final image or conclusion. One of the aspects of focus by recent video games is multiple plots, paths, and conclusions that could be created by the player. Games have been created that lead you to be able to explore every environment in the first minutes of starting the game. You can skip parts of the story, you can complete it at your own pace, you can align yourself with good or evil and thus changing the final outcome, and many recent games have combined many of these aspects or focused on a single “ground breaking” creation. Like Camille’s art piece, we are involving much more when we interact with these new forms of art. Not only are we consciously identifying the mechanics of these mediums we look for how we can manipulate it to our own ends.
Act-react. The idea of being able impact authored work has fascinated me for a long time. Video games were the first interaction I consciously made on a piece of authored work.
You may be wondering what I mean by consciously. George Fitfield’s article Act/React dealt with personal interaction across several mediums of art across many decades. He starts this discussion by referring to the interaction of the viewer on a two-dimensional painting. Fitfield described this in his article, “The artist operates like a medieval God, creating a deterministic world in which the receiver’s route is ordained.”
Back to my point on consciousness, looking at a painting and following the “ordained” path is unconscious. You may not know what the path is, which can lead to different interpretations of a work, or there may be multiple paths to take in understanding an authored work. These paths can be brought into consciousness when they are talked about with another person or in a group, but in a personal individualistic environment, at a young age, many aspects of viewing art were driven by personal thoughts and perception; not by knowing that a artist was striving for a specific reason or other conscious technicalities.
At this young age, somewhere between five and ten, video games was an art form that I could have an effect on. Not only was this a conscious effect on that environment, but also the effect changed the picture as a whole. Both forms of art though, paintings and video games, still had a path that led you to final interpretation or conclusion.
The difference in viewing a painting is that we are making an unconscious inferences onto the meaning just by looking at the medium, and in video games we are moving into a conscious direction, but also has no meaning in a single frame or still. Both forms are subject to incomplete or distorted meanings similarly, you could give up on the finding the true meaning of abstract painting or just put down the controller.
Further, in age and perception of our world, we could come to make conscious inference on a piece of art. Whether this be empirical personal interaction, or group discussion were we are verbalizing our reactions to a medium and thus growing in realizing the multiple paths of the author or possibly the singular path of the author.
This brings me to another point that Fitfield made of interaction and the evolution of interactive pieces of art. The second part of the quote above is the way we interact with interactive mediums, “In interactive art, the artist can give the visitor free will, freedom to explore a world of the artists imagination, and to find (or miss) all the wonders that might lie within it.”
Along with many video games and many of the interactive art in Fitfield’s article stilled followed a path or multiple paths. Pressing buttons to direct a film will always end in the same way(s). Fitfield was right in saying that interacting within an interactive medium will put the viewer in the authors world, but until recently this has been limited by both our imaginations and our technology.
This, finally, has brought me to our recent interactions with some of the most recent pieces of interactive art. Interaction was based, in the past, on using a controller or interacting with an object to manipulate the medium. With past interactive art and the furthering of technology artists are able to imagine a world with an endless number of possibilities.
Take for example the 1999 piece by Daniel Rozin, The Wooden Mirror. A person or an object is placed in front of hundreds of wooden spheres and is reflected by those spheres. This is another conscious interaction, we need to think about what is going on to experience this piece, a single frame of the work by itself will not bring any meaning to it. These conscious inferences are infinite and thus can create an infinite number of possibilities of what can be reflected, limited by each viewer’s imagination. The one thing that remains the same is what is projected. We are now switching the roles of author and viewer, the viewer become the artist. Though we are still in the author’s imaginary world, we create the image both to accompanying viewers, and ourselves but also take an image with us as we leave. In this case of interactive art we are the controller that has its own buttons that are pressed, one may start jumping around while another may just stand there.
Another piece is part of the evolution of interactive art though technology and imagination is Camille Utterback’s work with painting through body interaction. Once again we see the infinite possibilities in being a author within a thee author’s world. This time it can be more personal like a video game, a single person can create the infinite possibilities. As like recent work in video games, a mechanic is being manipulated by the viewer and thus creates the final image or conclusion. One of the aspects of focus by recent video games is multiple plots, paths, and conclusions that could be created by the player. Games have been created that lead you to be able to explore every environment in the first minutes of starting the game. You can skip parts of the story, you can complete it at your own pace, you can align yourself with good or evil and thus changing the final outcome, and many recent games have combined many of these aspects or focused on a single “ground breaking” creation. Like Camille’s art piece, we are involving much more when we interact with these new forms of art. Not only are we consciously identifying the mechanics of these mediums we look for how we can manipulate it to our own ends.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Film Report #1 (blogger)
Images of watchtowers flooded my mind; it was like I was entering through the “Death Gate” once again. Memories of the place where millions died were vivid in my mind; Auschwitz crept into my vision like a bad dream. What I saw when I watched The Bear Garden will be different from what the person sitting next to me saw, and even more different than the person next to him. What I believe Duchamp is saying in the quote at the top of the page is that everyone is different in his or her interpretations when coming into contact with a “creative act.”
While I was visiting Poland I took a tour of the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp. While talking about those images in The Bear Garden, I not only experienced memories of the camp but of other parts of my trip in Poland also. Based on my experiences I saw several different aspects of the film past what was presented, I added personal insight and meaning to the creation. In this way I was completing an aspect of the film to get a more vivid picture.
The variety of images in this film was calling for the audience to fill in the gaps, whether they were faded images of people who we completed in our minds or to decipher a stopped image for the brief second we had. I imagined a bear getting attacked by a dog, I watched for frames that I could associate that image to. The group of people standing around and looking at something together was one of the images I thought was very similar to what I was thinking about. People letting their dog attack an un-armed bear is definitely a spectacle I would be watching along with the gang.
Not every image was crystal clear to the viewers and could create a need of more information. Paul Chan’s Film Baghdad in No Particular Order was a mesh of several different real life documentations in Baghdad. Here, our way of completing the images we saw was available through a different medium, the Internet. Paul’s website gave the viewer the option to further our experience by reading some of the backgrounds of the people in his film and other related topics (in no particular order).
Of course, this is contingent if the viewer wants to complete more of the image past on what he or she saw originally. We can stick with the interpretation based on our previous experiences in the world or seek more knowledge. This can be obtained through several mediums, from Paul’s website to asking questions in class or discussion. This newfound information can change the view in which we view aspects of the film. I didn’t know the towers in The Bear Garden were part of Auschwitz until it was brought up in class discussion, thus adding to my experience. Similarly, I deciphered 5:10 to Dreamland and Valse Triste differently after I had the idea of a sexual orientation of the film. I tried to flesh out the instances where it did seem to be specific to a sex.
Duchamp’s quote at the top of the first page brings something important into light. We cannot complete the image without adding to the act presented. Combining our experiences and interpretations opens up further understanding in our views. One person may think the film we just saw in class was worthy of applause and another student may think its worthy of a sarcastic addition to it, both valid responses in their own right. It is how our experiences interact with what we watch that create the final cut of the films we view.
While I was visiting Poland I took a tour of the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp. While talking about those images in The Bear Garden, I not only experienced memories of the camp but of other parts of my trip in Poland also. Based on my experiences I saw several different aspects of the film past what was presented, I added personal insight and meaning to the creation. In this way I was completing an aspect of the film to get a more vivid picture.
The variety of images in this film was calling for the audience to fill in the gaps, whether they were faded images of people who we completed in our minds or to decipher a stopped image for the brief second we had. I imagined a bear getting attacked by a dog, I watched for frames that I could associate that image to. The group of people standing around and looking at something together was one of the images I thought was very similar to what I was thinking about. People letting their dog attack an un-armed bear is definitely a spectacle I would be watching along with the gang.
Not every image was crystal clear to the viewers and could create a need of more information. Paul Chan’s Film Baghdad in No Particular Order was a mesh of several different real life documentations in Baghdad. Here, our way of completing the images we saw was available through a different medium, the Internet. Paul’s website gave the viewer the option to further our experience by reading some of the backgrounds of the people in his film and other related topics (in no particular order).
Of course, this is contingent if the viewer wants to complete more of the image past on what he or she saw originally. We can stick with the interpretation based on our previous experiences in the world or seek more knowledge. This can be obtained through several mediums, from Paul’s website to asking questions in class or discussion. This newfound information can change the view in which we view aspects of the film. I didn’t know the towers in The Bear Garden were part of Auschwitz until it was brought up in class discussion, thus adding to my experience. Similarly, I deciphered 5:10 to Dreamland and Valse Triste differently after I had the idea of a sexual orientation of the film. I tried to flesh out the instances where it did seem to be specific to a sex.
Duchamp’s quote at the top of the first page brings something important into light. We cannot complete the image without adding to the act presented. Combining our experiences and interpretations opens up further understanding in our views. One person may think the film we just saw in class was worthy of applause and another student may think its worthy of a sarcastic addition to it, both valid responses in their own right. It is how our experiences interact with what we watch that create the final cut of the films we view.
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