Frankenrecord

I cut up three different record and glued them together. I decided to use Jimi Hendrix, Van Halen, and Motley Crue because the are some of my favorite bands. As much as it hurt to me cut them up i did it for the sake of ART! They were fully playable. even though they stayed playing the say lines over and over again. No problem though because it sounded amazing.

BOYB Video

I thought it would be comical if i found Christmas music that wasn't generally played at home relaxing. Most people when they sit in front of fireplaces, its to relax, they generally put in some nice Beach Boy's version of Christmas songs or maybe some Nat King Col. but they would never in a million of year put in some screamo, heavy rock music. Well everyone but me.

Artist and Songs used:
Amarna Reign - Black Christmas
Corroosion & Living Corpse - Silent Night VS Last Christmas
Sirens & Sailors - Deck the Halls
Cunthunt 777 - Christmas Anthem
I Declare War - Rudolph the red Nosed Reindeer
We butter the Bread with Butter - Christmas Song
Motionless in White - Santa's Pissed
Killwhitneydead - Jingle Hell
Hope for Tomorrow - A very Metalcore Christmas
I, the Breather - God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
August Burns Red - God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

Seuss-aphone

The Seuss-aphone was created out of copper piping and pieces of two different chandeliers. It had a motor that spins the record around allowing the pointed copper ends to touch the surface and carry the sound through the tubes out the top. The curvy form of the piece gives it a Dr. Seuss feel, hence the name: Seuss-aphone.

Project done my Sam and I.

Audio Tour: Remember the Book

This tour was suppose to touch upon the differences between books and their movie counter part. I've always had a strong feelings regarding books that have been made into movies. I believe that the book is always better. You don't get the same personal experience with a movie that you do with a book. For this project I took famous books that were converted to movies and read from them. The passing music you hear in it is from their movie counter part.

A Day in Minecraft

Project was meant to be in a Triptych style. In my project I wanted to use machinema. I decide on Minecraft based on the fact that it was such an open world game and the imagery so beautiful. This video is a small glimpse of exactly what one could do in Minecraft. Its also the telling of life. You are born or in this case loaded into the game, then you go on with life and eventually die.

Sounds

These are the sounds I collected for my next project. Its me typing out the lyrics to each sound to the tune of the song. I thought the idea was nifty and went with it!

Mixer Project: A Day at the River

My idea behind this project was to take a story and tell it from different perspectives. In these videos I had my friends retell our day at the river. The idea was with different perspectives all playing at one time you would get the whole story and not just bits and pieces. The over all image would be complete!

This is the link to the actual project!

Second life!

The Journey begins!!~

My face!

Might I say this was one of the most difficult things Ive had to do. It looked like a piece of cake to begin with but you have to not only stretch but blend also. It was a pain in the butt but i tried the best i could. all in all i think it came out pretty decent. I did have some problem putting it on my avatar. i had white spaces left but i think i cleared them all up. the only thing i couldn't figure out how to do was fix the white around the eyes.

Next is virtual me!:

I found this really awesome Bulbasuar T-Shirt. Just wanted to show people. Its the anatomy of Bulbasuar!!!! >< 

(Nerdy me is showing through)

Next is my fantasy me!:

She is my favorite. I was going for a more of a sorceress feel to her and i think  pulled it off quite well. The item that i made are the orbs surrounding her. I thought it was a nifty idea. It took me awhile to get the hang of build mode but i pulled it off!

I forgot to take a picture of the building process but under objects the orbs i made are labeled as 'This is it'

This was quite an enjoyable project. besides the mishaps and complications i ran into I'm glad we got to do this!

3D!!! oh snaps....

This 3D project was a killer project. i loved trying to figure out how to make the cylinder type objects. i had tons of problems making this though. the big one was to make it all very straight without bends in the beads. it didnt turn out as i would have liked it but overall i think its pretty kool. another problem i ran into was trying to make the wire look like a wire. i couldn't find a way to make it a bit more 3D like. Coloring is slightly off but over all i think it came out pretty ok.

Originals::

Two by Land: Katherine Sandoz and Nicole Donnally

Two by land is a gallery exhibiting Nicole Donnelly and Katherine Sandoz they both have works relating to landscape interpreted differently. Even though there work is different they compliment each other’s quite nicely.

Nicole Donnally had an art style that I can personally relate with. It was just abstract but with a nice touch of splash creativity. Some of her pieces looked as if she had started with the canvas facing one way but then decided to flip it around and works on it that way. Like she had a thought to begin with then decided last minute that she was going to do something different and flip it around. It was quite nice. I also like the dripping paint in some of them. I usually incorporate that into my own artwork so I was happy to see someone else did that as well. What else I also enjoyed was her way with colors. So bright and vibrant!

Katherine Sandoz on the other hand had a very abstract view on landscaped. There were very geometric and simplistic in shape. You got the feel of what she was going for without all the details a lot of people would try to put in. the colors complimented each other very well. It was a simplistic art that looked like it took a lot of time. One of my favorites (I cant remember the name) looked like a boat. It had the while outlines of it but that was all to indicate what it was. The colors used are some of my favorite to pair with, it being blues and pinks. The pinks were located in two heavy spots and two other smaller spots. This breaking the rule of three!

In conclusion both artists are lovely!

Persuasion by Pricilla Varner (Gallery)

What do you think of when you hear the words Happy, Sunny, childhood, yellow, ladybug? None of these words are associated with each other except under the context of me asking you. All these words should ignite happy feelings and thoughts. What do you feel when you see a picture of a grassy field? What Pricilla Varner does is put the two ideas together to make her concentration ‘Persuasion.’ She uses words to persuade the viewer into having certain feelings or thought regarding her photographs. I thought this idea/concept was just dandy. Instead of the viewer coming up with his or her own feelings of the artwork she tells you what to feel. I loved that idea. This had nothing to do with what she was trying to get across, but I interpreted it as kind of the Big Brother idea. Where those in control tell you have to think and feel leaving no room for imagination and self-development. That right there would have been the icing on the cake!

Priscilla Varner plays with the ideas of well…persuasion. In front of each piece is a set of words, so you read the words then look at the photograph. In turn the words you read set the mood and how you end up looking at the photograph. None of the words were related to each other but their association was there. Each word was in a different font setting a different mood for it. Most of the photographs were in black and white. I felt like she did this so that color couldn't change your view or feel of the piece. There was a time in my life where I wanted to study photography mostly that of black and white, so the photos were of more interest to me than anything else. My favorite photo was that of a carousel. Most of it was in focus but there was a blur aspect where the carousel seemed to be moving.

In conclusion this gallery was the bomb. I loved the idea behind it, even though I translated it differently and came up with my own view of it. 

Manovich reading questions!

1. Manovich talks about the differences between the copying process between the digital and the physical. with photos you can have multiple copies with the same quality, and with digital copies the computer slowly compresses the file losing information along the way every time it is copied. Is the copying of the same image worth the integrity and quality of the image?

2. Do you think digital media is interactive?

Project Paper!

Everyone is attracted to different types of art. Some like traditional and other not along those lines, for this project we had to find two artists under the umbrella that constituted as digital media. AS presentations where presented I saw that everyone had a different taste or an attraction for something different. For my project I wanted to stay a long the lines of art pieces having to do with video games or something with that feel. Through my extensive searches I found two artists Jose Ulloa Acosta and Alan Kwan. These two artists captured my attention and for good reasons.

Jose Ulloa Acosta is an artist based in Chile.  He earned his Bachelors in art at Pontificia Universidad Catholica de Chile. It’s one of the six catholic universities that Chile has.  He also studied at the Universidad Metropolitana de Ciencas de la Educacion, meaning metropolitan university of sciences for education. And he is now studying at the University of Barcelona for his Masters in production and artistic investigations. The piece that caught my attention from him is called Fabrica la Ruina, meaning created ruin. It was a video installation in his gallery ‘Construir la Ruina.’ which was exhibited July 5 - August 3 in 2010. Essentially the piece is a video of brick blocks shaped as Tetris shapes falling and then breaking upon impact with the floor. The sound that accompanies the piece is the classic Tetris game music. The background is black so your sole focus is on the bricks. The bricks come down in a slow motion kinda like stop action. And a little before impact its normal speed footage of the blocks breaking.

http://www.ulloa-acosta.org/page/video.html [First video on the page]

            Alan Kwan is a media artist and filmmaker that is based in Hong Kong. He had over 10 years of film experience and has won many awards at film festivals including Hong Kong International Film Festival. He is currently working on something called Lifelogging. His current system for his Life logging glasses, which is just a rigged system of a camera in his glasses, is what I focused on. The video he made describing the program Memory palace was just so captivating. It’s a program designed to be a companion piece to the lifelogging glasses. The lifelogging glasses record your daily experiences and at the end of the day you import your ‘memories’ into program Memory Palace. Memory Palace is a virtual world where your video clips take forms of blocks. You can move these blocks around and also cut them into shorter clips. You are able to add different buildings to store your memories in, and you are also able to add decorations. In this virtual world there is a town. Within the town are people who walk around with segments of your memories as their heads. You are not able to edit these clips. This program was quite interesting when I first saw it, yet it raises many questions.

Memory Palace from KwanAlan on Vimeo.

When reading about Jose Acosta’s piece, I found a very inspirational description for it. What he wanted for the viewer to see was not his art but the meaning behind it. What he wanted to convey was the idea that the Tetris blocks are the social influences and essentially memories and things that make you yourself. Just like in Tetris you build up and make the pieces fit. When the blocks are rectangular and destroyed he is trying to say that we are not made up and we don't have to be defined under those things. We don't have to be created by that mold society put on us. I fell in love with his meaning and now knowing what he was trying to convey I wouldn't be able to make my own interpretation of the piece. In Alan Kwan’s program you have the basic idea of just storing memories. What I got out of it was so much more though. The idea that you can remember everything precisely is a bit scary. You not only have the good but you also have the bad. You can log in and relive all those good times, but also remember that with good also comes bad. I find the meaning behind this piece to be grounding, that those memories make you who you are, including the good the bad and the boring. Without those you would be no one but a blank slate.

            In interpreting the two I found many similar and different ideas and concepts behind them. Memories seem to be a big part in both the pieces. Acosta uses his in more of a destructive way, while Kwan views his to be cherished and stored. Memories are the central focus of both od the pieces. There are a lot of differences between the pieces as well. Acosta’s is a video while Kwan’s is essentially and game program. The biggest difference I found in between them are the way the interpreted the concept of  ‘memories.’ While both projects are amazing in there own ways they also have faults with them. I would have wanted Acosta’s piece to be bigger and more in your faces and I would have loves Kwan’s piece to be more out there.

            Walter Benjamin talks about the recreation of art pieces and the aura of the piece. Digital media is kind of a tough one when it comes to reproducing and feeling the aura. Many would say that digital media doesn't have an aura, but it does. The two pieces both have amazing auras. Acosta’s piece has a slightly darker aura while Kwan’s has kind of a happy one. They both make their presence known. On to the next point would any of these be reproducible and still have that same aura? Not at all. They both have something going for them. In Kwan’s case it would be difficult to reproduce suck a unique idea such as the lifelogging idea. On the other hand it would be just as easy to take that same concept and make your own with it.

        In conclusion this two pieces ‘Fabrica la Ruina’ and ‘Memory Palace’ are both unique pieces that caught my attention. There were a lot of wonderful things and a lot of things I did not like about each, but whether I like it or not is none of their concern. You should make art for yourself not for the attention of others.

--I contacted both but no reply so far

http://bilbaoarte.org/?p=1398317&lang=en
http://www.kwanalan.com
http://www.galeriamacchina.cl/construir-la-ruina-jose-ulloa-acosta/
http://www.ulloa-acosta.org/index.html
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm