Monday, January 30, 2017

numeroquatre

umeshu

non-conformity, anti-socialness - so according to McLuhan, artists have a particular job.
how do i sharpen others' view of our current environment?
umeshu.

this photo series is about containing and commodifying culture.
we observe it, put it under microscopes to uncover more meaning from it (archeology), are struck by awe when we see it in a glass vitrine (museums -> exoticizing, romanticizing)
how do we obtain consent from the culture when we put these artifacts on for display, do we look towards the people themselves or to those who are "qualified" in that area of study/people,
am i exoticizing the culture by viewing this"revered" type of fruit and calling it a brain,
is it okay that i manipulate these images so that you are intrigued by whether or not i am holding a container of a brain?
this is alcohol.
drinking alcohol is fun.
what we do to culture is fun
?????



Sunday, January 22, 2017

numérotrois

Doing Stuff In My Room

“the new feeling that people have about guilt is not something that can be privately assigned to some individual, but is, rather, something shared by everybody, in some mysterious way.” (61)


Well, my work is clearly something about [my] private life made public, since it is a film of stuff I do in my room, by myself. I saw this quote/passage relating to my work and vice versa because guilt is one of those hefty gray-cloud feelings that may be associated with others like fear or anxiety, and these are sentiments that are more-so private than public-oriented. My work, more or less, focuses on this private sphere turned public, the direct result of my rolling camera. Anxiety may be sensed as I sit down on my bed with my headphones in, as well as apprehension, when I looks straight into the camera. Are my burdening feelings mitigated because others are watching me experience them, so I am not alone in all this? Or are they amplified because there is a more distinguished divide of me against them? How do we deal with these feelings that can be so heavily individualized after we know so many others have encountered the same exact thing?


“The past went that-a-way. When faced with a totally new situation, we tend always to attach ourselves to the objects, to the flavor of the most recent past.” (73)


I felt that this passage connects the most with the embedded photographs and the accompanied zooms and outs in certain parts of them. The photographs are of objects (except for my nose, but even then, it is a photograph of my nose) and the camera, or actually the editing, zooms all about, seemingly, in an effort to search for something. It is the same object/photograph, and the zooming everywhere might mean we, the viewers, are looking so hard to find some sort of answer, solution, or idea to whatever problem or reality we must deal with. I feel like we tend to always look towards these things that are artifacts of our time, for the purpose of trying to see and understand the processes that went into creating these objects that are physically manifest, in hope of using those processes and energies for our own agendas, that require of us something that we feel we cannot conjure from just ourselves.





Wednesday, January 18, 2017

numérodeux

Anne Harris discusses the idea of creating communities through transformation, which is a result of entanglements. The entanglements she speaks of in relation to a college campus, of Lawrence University, hone in on temporality - the typical student's four year career, 30 + years for tenured faculty, and an even longer duration for alumni. This temporality becomes a part of our environment. The environment that each Lawrence student takes part in and lives in, everyday of his or her numbered days here. McLuhan has something to say about a stagnant environment that passes through the old and new:

"The interplay between the old and the new environments creates many problems and confusions. The main obstacle to a clear understanding of the effects of the new media is our deeply embedded habit of regarding all phenomena from a fixed point of view." (McLuhan, 69)

I won't include the rest of the quote here, but basically he talks about how we exist as people with separate and fixed points of view, and that's the main idea behind this work

Rainy Day. Gustave Caillebotte
and new media necessitates us to leave these fixed perspectives for an exploration into multiple ones, of which characterize the nature of new media.


From Harris and McLuhan, I am struck by the idea of an environment hosting temporality and fixedness. And of how new media plays into this.




we are here at Lawrence and we will graduate soon though some will stay a bit longer, others might cut their time short by dropping out, or transferring.
we are here and so we are fixed but time is passing and we are growing so are we no longer fixed? have we become new media because we gain novel and differing perspectives by going to class and meeting new people from everywhere around the world?

if people don't go to class and hole up in their rooms, they then cannot become the types of new media those who go to class and go out become, but perhaps they learn and interact with a diverse group online, so they become a different type of new media person through the environment of the internet and not Lawrence? despite the fact that they physically reside on campus?

This is what the New Media Institute has to say about new media:
http://www.newmedia.org/what-is-new-media.html

New Media is a 21st Century catchall term used to define all that is related to the internet and the interplay between technology, images and sound. In fact, the definition of new media changes daily, and will continue to do so.

so the definition of new media changes daily. yet there seems to be an emphasis on the technological, internet-oriented aspect. so who is more new media? the student that goes out and enriches his brain and soul through proper classroom education and social mingling or the one that digs a hole in the corner of his room and fills his world with chat rooms and multi-player gaming sites? does it matter who is more? is there a problem with integrating to the point of abandoning your grounded reality for the virtual? well yeah....
Online Personas Rarely Real-Life Behavior

an emphasis on the technological. i am using technology to describe people. both literally(i am typing on the computer and writing about types of people) and metaphorically(new media becomes an adjective for talking about college students). ok.


soon?? no??^
The Singularity
this is Ray Kurzweil the guy behind this major theoretical???realistic??? stuff














i dunno. new media. it's exciting shit and i guess so is the idea of technology dissipating humanity.

Sunday, January 8, 2017

numéroun

"
there
is
absolutely
no 
inevitability
as
long
as
there
is
a
willingness
to
contemplate
what
is
happening
"
(McLuhan) 

my name is veronica. i am an art history major and i am exhausted of sitting in a stuffy room and looking at old man-creatures renaissance painters called 'infant Christ'. 

i used to get stuck in doors alot because my backpack was too big and i didn't open the door wide enough.

i once took a snapchat as i was falling up stairs.
snapchat amuses me.

i believe words can be powerful, but they are not my medium.

i think easy and portlandia on netflix are incredibly good. i aspire to be a customer in the feminist bookstore.

i can only vibe with music.

Untitled. Mixed media.

caffeine breathes into me a second life.

my friends wanted to look fly so i took pics of them.

Cool Kids on the Roof. Digital photography.

my old dog used to sit on my head while i slept and i thought we could have made a fabulous duo.

i think laughter can be simultaneously a cry for help and a rejoice in living.

i think it'd be pretty damn cool to work with emma sulkowicz.

my world went a little wild when i first learned of the soviet montage, and then german expressionism.
it went a bit wilder when i took my first college art course at the university of pittsburgh. my professor's name was www.dylanvitone.com

i cling currently to what happens when you combine art and code. i do so because of this woman carolinerecord.com 

ART100
Living in a Computer World. Performance.