Idea - Permanence

–noun

the condition or quality of being permanent;  perpetual or continued existence.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/permanence

QUOTES

“There is nothing permanent except change.”

-Heraclitus of Ephesus; Greek philosopher, 540-480 BC

“The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear – fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable.  What he wants above everything else is safety.”

-Henry Louis Mencken; Journalist and critic of American life

“The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.”

-Ursula K. LeGuin; American writer

ARTICLE

I found it slightly difficult to find an accurate article about permanence, so I had to compromise.  This article called “The Importance of being Permanent” by Winsor & Newton is about the permanence of color pigment and different types of paint.

“It’s funny to think that the materials we make and use will last so much longer than we will ourselves. Even pigments which we class as moderately durable like Alizarin Crimson will last hundreds of years untinted in oil colour.”

http://www.winsornewton.com/resource-centre/product-articles/the-importance-of-being-permanent/

Winsor & Newton. "The Importance of being Permanent." Winsor & Newton. Winsor &

     Newton, 2010. Web. 31 Mar. 2011.

The idea of something being permanent interests me in the sense that you can never change it, just maybe alter it.  This could be physically, mentally, emotionally, etc., depending on what it is.  For me, with my current project, I hope to alter the presence of the PNP paper negatives that I have of my old family photographs by introducing myself into the same process.  I will enter these scenes and become a part of, and possibly interact with the past.  But, this will be done in the darkroom on photo paper, so really, it's not that permanent.  The actual permanence of the situation will be the etched metal on the floor.

Untitled

From Edoardo Pasero’s series titled “On Permanence”

http://www.edoardopasero.com/projects/on-permanence

Artist - Jerry Uelsmann

http://www.uelsmann.net

GALLERIES

A Gallery for Fine Photography

http://www.agallery.com/

John Cleary Gallery

http://www.johnclearygallery.com/

INTERVIEW

http://jerryuelsmann.wordpress.com/interviews/

BIOGRAPHY

“A pioneer in the art of multilayered imagery, photographer Jerry Uelsmann (born 1934) is best known for his seamlessly grafted composite images in black and white. His photographs combine several negatives to create surreal landscapes that interweave images of trees, rocks, water and human figures in new and unexpected ways.

Jerry Norman Uelsmann was born in Detroit, Michigan on June 11, 1934, the second son of an independent grocer. He attended public schools and was never a particularly diligent student. During his high school years he became interested in photography as a serious vocation. Uelsmann enrolled at the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1953. The strongest early influence on his creative process came from instructors like Minor White and Ralph Hattersley at the Rochester Institute. As Uelsmann put it, the most significant lesson he learned from White was that his camera had the ability not only to record images, but also that "it did have the potential of transcending the initial subject matter." As a teacher, White was concerned less with teaching the technical details of the camera-lens system than he was with using that system to transform what was seen.”

http://www.bookrags.com/biography/jerry-uelsmann/

QUOTES

“There’s a lot of source material once you have the freedom of not having to complete an image at the camera.”

“A lot of times I found that if I thought too much about the image, I’d talk myself out of shooting, or I ended up with a lot of images that I thought were okay, but not quite good enough.”

-From an interview by Chris Maher and Larry Berman, Shutterbug Magazine, September 2007

I am attracted to Jerry Uelsmann’s work for his seamless combination of negatives in the darkroom.  His scenes are very surreal, yet they exist momentarily for the viewer.  He allows different environments, people, and objects to live in a world that doesn’t exist to the naked eye.  I have been attempting to combine PNP paper negatives, combining my old photographs with new ones, allowing myself to interact on paper with the past.  And there is no one better than Jerry Uelsmann to look at for inspiration with this method.

Untitled, 1983

Untitled, 1982

Alpha Tree, 2002

Self-Reflection, 2009

Untitled, 2008

Idea - Interactive Art

“Interactive art is a form of installation-based art that involves the spectator in a way that allows the art to achieve its purpose. Some installations achieve this by letting the observer or visitor "walk" in, on, and around them; Some others ask the artist to become part of the artwork.

Works of this kind of art frequently feature computers and sensors to respond to motion, heat, meteorological changes or other types of input their makers programmed them to respond to. Most examples of virtual Internet art and electronic art are highly interactive. Sometimes, visitors are able to navigate through a hypertext environment; some works accept textual or visual input from outside; sometimes an audience can influence the course of a performance or can even participate in it.

Though some of the earliest examples of interactive art have been dated back to the 1920s, most digital art didn’t make its official entry into the world of art until the late 1990s.  Since this debut, countless museums and venues have been increasingly accommodating digital and interactive art into their productions. This budding genre of art is continuing to grow and evolve in a somewhat rapid manner through Internet social sub-culture in one hand, and large scale urban installations in the other hand.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_art

ARTICLE 

You can read Graham and Elizabeth Coulter-Smith’s article, “Art games: Interactivity and the embodied gaze” for more information on this subject.

“One of the most salient differences between fine art and new media art lies in the possibility for interactivity. Interactivity is not simply an inherent quality of new media, it also relates to a crucial ethico-aesthetic premise informing deconstructive art from Dada and Surrealism through radical art of the 1960s and 1970s and into the present. The ethico-aesthetic premise in question concerns breaking down the barrier between the viewer and the work of art and bringing art into life. More specifically the goal is to bring creativity into everyday life as an antidote to alienation and reification. Whereas new media art finds it relatively easy to devise art games that encourage creative involvement on the part of the viewer, fine art is severely hindered in its attempts in this direction by the traditional focus on the artist-genius and the transformation of the artistic product (whatever its material) into a precious object. It will be shown that creative games exist in fine art but they are for the most part designed by the artist for the artist. This is even the case with the most radical fine artists celebrated at the turn of the millennium such as Rirkrit Tiravanija who Nicolas Bourriaud put forward as a prime instance of so-called relational aesthetics.”

Abstract from “Art games: Interactivity and the embodied gaze”

Coulter-Smith, G. and Coulter-Smith, E. (2006), ‘Art games: Interactivity and the embodied gaze’, Technoetic Arts 4: 3, pp. 169–182, doi: 10.1386/tear.4.3.169/1

QUOTES

“…Embodied or performative interaction provides the viewer with a more creative mode of involvement and that this can have an emancipatory effect in the sense that it disrupts if only for a moment the hegemony of instrumental rationalism.”

Coulter-Smith, G. and Coulter-Smith, E. (2006), ‘Art games: Interactivity and the embodied gaze’, Technoetic Arts 4: 3, pp. 169, doi: 10.1386/tear.4.3.169/1

“Since the 1990s installation art has risen into prominence as a major movement in fine art and in her authoritative analysis Claire Bishop suggests that our experience of installation art goes beyond looking and reading towards what she refers to as ‘activated spectatorship’ (2005: 11). Sheeven suggests that such activated readership might inspire the viewer to ‘active engagement in the social-political arena’ (Bishop 2005: 11)…Most particularly it concerns the perception that since the industrial revolution fine art has become separated from society.”

Coulter-Smith, G. and Coulter-Smith, E. (2006), ‘Art games: Interactivity and the embodied gaze’, Technoetic Arts 4: 3, pp. 170, doi: 10.1386/tear.4.3.169/1

The idea of viewers being interactive with my work is an important aspect of my installation.  This will be my first installation, and it is necessary for viewers to walk on my fabricated floor in order for the work to be succesful.  Since this is the case, I feel as if I definitely need something on the wall to draw the viewer's eye over to the image, then realizing that they are stepping on part of the project.  I don't necessarily have a plethora of money to go digital in any way, but I feel as if walking on is interactive enough for me right now.

http://technabob.com/blog/2007/12/14/hundreds-of-box-fans-as-interactive-art/

installation by Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde

Artist - Raphael Lozano-Hemmer

http://www.lozano-hemmer.com/index.php

GALLERY

Raphael Lozano-Hemmer has his own art gallery, http://www.rafaellozano.com/

BIOGRAPHY

“Rafael Lozano-Hemmer was born in Mexico City in 1967. In 1989 he received a B.Sc. in Physical Chemistry from Concordia University in Montréal, Canada.

Electronic artist, develops interactive installations that are at the intersection of architecture and performance art. His main interest is in creating platforms for public participation, by perverting technologies such as robotics, computerized surveillance or telematic networks. Inspired by phantasmagoria, carnival and animatronics, his light and shadow works are “antimonuments for alien agency”.

His work has been commissioned for events such as the Millennium Celebrations in Mexico City (1999), the Cultural Capital of Europe in Rotterdam (2001), the UN World Summit of Cities in Lyon (2003), the opening of the YCAM Center in Japan (2003), the Expansion of the European Union in Dublin (2004), the memorial for the Tlatelolco Student Massacre in Mexico City (2008), the 50th Anniversary of the Guggenheim Museum in New York (2009) and the Winter Olympics in Vancouver (2010).

His kinetic sculptures, responsive environments, video installations and photographs have been shown in museums in four dozen countries. In 2007 he was the first artist to officially represent Mexico at the Venice Biennale with a solo exhibition at Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel. He has also shown at Art Biennials in Sydney, Liverpool, Shanghai, Istanbul, Seville, Seoul, Havana and New Orleans. His work is in private and public collections such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Jumex collection in Mexico, the Museum of 21st Century Art in Kanazawa, the Daros Foundation in Zürich and TATE in London.

He has received two BAFTA British Academy Awards for Interactive Art in London, a Golden Nica at the Prix Ars Electronica in Austria, a distinction at the SFMOMA Webby Awards in San Francisco, "Artist of the year" Rave Award in Wired Magazine, a Rockefeller fellowship, the Trophée des Lumières in Lyon and an International Bauhaus Award in Dessau.

He has given many workshops and conferences, among them at Goldsmiths college, the Bartlett school, Princeton, Harvard, UC Berkeley, Cooper Union, MIT MediaLab, Guggenheim Museum, LA MOCA, Netherlands Architecture Institute and the Art Institute of Chicago. His writing has been published in Kunstforum (Germany), Leonardo (USA), Performance Research (UK), Telepolis (Germany), Movimiento Actual (Mexico), Archis (Netherlands), Aztlán (USA) and other art and media publications.”

http://www.lozano-hemmer.com/bio.php

INTERVIEW

You can go to:

http://www.lozano-hemmer.com/texts.php and download multiple interviews with Lozano-Hemmer.

QUOTES

“Walter Benjamin spoke with great clarity about the birth of modernism. For him the image is that which can be reproduced mechanically, a condition that eliminates the aural quality from a work of art. Mechanical reproduction democratizes art, popularizes it, and takes away that privileged point of view born of singularity. However, with digital technologies I believe that the aura has returned, and with a vengeance, because what digital technology emphasizes, through interactivity, is the multiple reading, the idea that a piece of art is created by the participation of the user. The idea that a work is not hermetic but something that requires exposure in order to exist is fundamental to understand this “vengeance of the aura”.”

From an interview by Jose Luis Barrios on April 20^th, 2005

“Today digital art, —actually all art—, has awareness. This has always been true, but we have now become aware of art’s awareness. Pieces listen to us, they see us, they sense our presence and wait for us to inspire them, and not the other way around. It is no coincidence that post-modern art emphasizes the audience.”

From an interview by Jose Luis Barrios on April 20^th, 2005

I love the interactive aspect of Raphal Lozano-Hemmer's work.  He allows the viewer to make the art effective.  His conversation of space and the individual is admirable, and his use of digital technology speaks very well to the 21st century.  A lot of the artists I have recently found use aspects of Walter Benjamin's writings in their work, each very different from the next, and I really enjoy seeing the variations of communication of ideas.  I will be looking to Lozano-Hemmer for inspiration on installation art and interactivity.

Third Person

Shadow Box 2 - 2006

High-resolution interactive display with built-in computerized surveillance system.

Shadow box 104.5 x 80 x 12 cm. Installation variable.

6 copies + 1 AP

Eye Contact

Shadow Box 1 – 2006

High resolution interactive display with built-in computerized surveillance system.

104.5 x 80 x 12 cm.

6 copies + 1 AP

Sustained Coincidence

Subsculpture 8 – 2007

lightbulbs, computerized surveillance system, dimmers, IR illuminators, custom software

Variable dimensions.

Close-up

Shadow Box 3 – 2006

High resolution interactive display with built-in computerized surveillance system

Shadow box 104.5 x 80 x 12 cm. Installation variable

6 copies + 1 AP

Kiyomi Iwata Questions/Response

In your artist statement, you note that with "working in both silk and metal continue my collaboration of two cultures, East and West."  Do you think of each material as a certain culture? Or does it change from piece to piece?

I find it interesting that most of your silk work looks rough and hard to the touch, and your metal work looks delicate and soft, which are obvious contradictions of the materials.  At what point in your silk work did you decide that you wanted to work in a "more permanent medium?" What aspect of it made you want to create sculptures of a different style?

Kiyomi Iwata’s lecture was the second craft and material studies lecture I have attended, and I must say that they are very different from the photography lectures.  A lot of what is discussed is concerned technical process and material rather than expressing overall conceptual ideas.  But, compared to the first lecture I went to, I felt as if ideas and materials blended together much more seamlessly for Iwata.  She spoke of her “life [being] interwoven with textiles,” changing her style when an aspect of her life changed.  I really enjoyed this aspect of her work, because you can then attach emotion and memories to a technical piece.  I would describe her work as technical, conceptual, and thoughtful.  She frequently stated that the material was her language, and worked through silk and metal in different techniques in order to figure out where she fit into the mix of materials, similar to trying to fit into two cultures.  In regards to my questions, the use of silk and metal referring to certain cultures varied with each piece.  She began using flattened sheet metal, physically light but visibly heavy, to embellish her silk work and make it harder to see through, creating more of a visual mystery.  I am intrigued by the flat, “open” art that she began to create.  She stated again that a big event happened, and it caused her to want to be more “open,” and began making full, flat wall sculptures instead of enclosed bundles.  Relating your life to your art and visually portraying that is an honorable aspect that I look for in artists.

Laurel Nakadate Questions/Response

In a lot of your work, you seem to be placing yourself into many potentially very dangerous positions.  Has this ever become an issue?  Or is that something that you want the viewer to interpret along with your work?  Do you ever feel like there is any exploitation involved in your work?

I feel as if the power of narrative still photography can be very strong.  Why did you decide to move away from still photography and towards film?

I really enjoyed Laurel Nakadate’s lecture.  I was introduced to her work over a year ago, in hopes to get inspiration on how to communicate with strangers.  Her methods are a little extreme for me, but I suppose if I wanted it bad enough like she did I would find a way as well.  Her tone was very pleasing, and it seemed like she was trying to have more of a casual conversation about photography and film rather than being lectured.  I feel as if the way she started out the lecture was appropriate, discussing the idea of failure and having that be okay, since she was speaking to a bunch of lost college students. I would describe her work as provocative, evocative, and clever.  She has an interesting way of studying genders. In regards to my first question, Nakadate stated that at the time of making the work, she didn’t really realize how potentially dangerous it was, yet looking back now, she would never do it again.  In regards to the idea of exploitation, I still see it in her work, yet maybe seeing the process building up to choosing her subjects, or actually, letting her subjects choose her, would remove that aspect.  But she spoke of an interesting bond between herself and her subjects, who were willing to drop their guards and make a video with her, and some she still collaborates with.  She spoke of visual fact and narrative fiction, which I believe is a very important aspect to both photography and film work.  I feel like I am more interested in her video work now after hearing her speak of it.  She began making them in grad school, in a new town without knowing anybody.  One of the most important things about making art is passion, and she became obsessed with making these videos, disregarding her social life, and created fictional relationships recorded on film.

Idea - Installation Art

INSTALLATION ART

"Installation art describes an artistic genre of site-specific, three-dimensional works designed to transform a viewer's perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however the boundaries between these terms overlap."

wikipedia.org

You can read:

From Margin to Center

The Spaces of Installation Art

By Julie H. Reiss

“Unlike traditional art works, installation art has no autonomous existence. It is usually created at the exhibition site, and its essence is spectator participation. Installation art originated as a radical art form presented only at alternative art spaces; its assimilation into mainstream museums and galleries is a relatively recent phenomenon. The move of installation art from the margin to the center of the art world has had far-reaching effects on the works created and on museum practice.

This is the first book-length study of installation art. Julie Reiss concentrates on some of the central figures in its emergence, including artists, critics, and curators. Her primary focus is installations created in New York City—which has a particularly rich history of installation art—beginning in the late 1950s. She takes us from Allan Kaprow's 1950s' environments to examples from minimalism, performance art, and process art to establish installation art's autonomy as well as its relationship to other movements.

Recent years have seen a surge of interest in the effects of exhibition space, curatorial practice, and institutional context on the spectator. The history of installation art—of all art forms, one of the most defiant of formalist tenets—sheds considerable light on the issues raised by this shift of critical focus from isolated art works to art experienced in a particular context.”

 http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=8533

QUOTES

"Installation art is an artwork that encompasses an extended space, it suggests that art lies not in objects alone, but also in the experience of perception....
Installation art can also be site-specific, time sensitive, interactive, environmental."


From the press release for "Blurring the Boundaries: Installation Art, 1969-1996," at the San Jose Museum of Art

http://straddle3.net/context/01/010123.en.html

“Installation art is often temporary, and the physical work is destroyed or stored after exhibition; its documentation is therefore crucial.”

http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/jcamd/research/rae-2008/nico-deoliveira/portfolio_outcome04.cfm

The idea of installation art has become of interest to me this semester.  I have been struggling with it though, since I am a photographer, and a lot of the images that I am using are old family images.  Yet I feel as if for this project, I need to move away from the definite term of "photographer," and move towards "artist."  I want to install the old photographs, which are etched into metal, seamlessly into a floorboard installation to force the viewers to walk on it to emphasize overlooked relationships.

Jac Leirner

http://www.artnexus.com/PressReleases_View.aspx?DocumentID=17315