Recap: Week 2

          I have not received any responses to my post on the Daily Nexus website.  I intentionally chose an article to write about that already had some comments written as responses in hopes that it would continue to get responses.  Unfortunately, that was not the case.  I believe that the fact that the articles written become further hidden within the forum as new articles get written is a hindrance in terms of receiving much feedback over a period of time longer than a week.

Find my post on the Daily Nexus.

          I am somewhat disappointed in myself with how I presented my work for the Public Environment assignment.  I believe I wrote a great description of what I was trying to convey through this assignment, but I just could not formulate those ideas into words in front of the class.  I will be more confident next time.

          I am under the impression that the guidelines for this blog post also allow me to discuss personal artistic endeavors outside of Art 7A.  I have been mulling over some ideas for subjects that I feel passionately for.  They are:

• The concept of the vessel and its relevance to gender and society today
• An evolutionary documentation of my growing interest the wilderness
• The intermingling of the many various and often contrasting interests in my life

Anyway, I find inspiration in these subjects and I hope to find an outlet for my ideas.

Confessions

          Although the whole “bathroom stall confessions” thing has been done before, I thought it would be interesting to compile a significant amount of bathroom graffiti pertaining to the subject of confessions and categorize each one based on a scale of privacy/intimacy.  For example, if someone wrote, “I ate a tuna sandwich for lunch today,” they might get a rating of 1, as in “not that intimate.”  If someone wrote, “I was raped when I was a child,” that might get a rating of 10, as in “very intimate.”

          I like the idea of people willingly confessing their secrets in an anonymous and public way.  That way, people who potentially share the same confession might see that another person shares this secret with them and they may then not feel so isolated.  I want to install a large writing surface somewhere public and somehow persuade people to write their secrets down—like on a bathroom wall, but not in a bathroom.

          I think it would be fun to eavesdrop on peoples’ conversations to see if they reveal any meaty details.  This idea is a little more sinister and would require some more undercover stealth than my other two ideas.  My victims would unknowingly be revealing information to a total stranger.  This idea is sort of reminiscent of the entire online social networking component that involves allowing practically anyone and everyone to view personal information.

Post Secret is an interesting website for people to anonymously submit creative postcard designs with "secrets" written on them.  There is an address to send the postcards to.  It might be an interesting class assignment.

Comic Reading: 2

          I remember learning about what McCloud refers to as “closure” in a psychology class.  I believe it was Freud who first hypothesized about this subject.  It’s a subconscious thing, something that our minds just do to make sense of our world.  It is based on memory, and we just trust that things and people remain how they are after we have moved on.  Comparing with the reading on Duchamp, McCloud writes about the audience of comics as “a willing and conscious collaborator”(65) of the medium.  The audience is a necessary part of the creative process.

          Because comics are fractured panels of imagery, they rely on the audience’s subconscious ability to connect the frames and interpret them as a fluid story. 

woo0o0ooaahh!

          The medium of the comic forces the audience to utilize closure much more than most other mediums, such as film.  There are six dominant categories of transitions, and they all rely on the audience to fill in the gaps, more or less.  However, it is up to the author to balance what information they choose to add or leave out.  The audience has to then fill in the blanks using all of their senses.

          The gutter forces the viewer to imagine time passing between frames, creating the illusion of time and motion.  Words representing sound also create this illusion of passing time, and panels themselves have the same effect.  All of these elements combined create the illusions of motion, time and space.

A Seemingly Useless Comic Book for Our Time, Just Taking Up Space

Reader: Week 2

I think Marcel Duchamp is a genius.  I appreciate that he not only considers the spectator as part of the creative process, but also relies on their participation/interpretation to validate the artwork.  Thus, the viewer is an integral part of the art making process.  Although Marcel Duchamp had so many original ideas and profound thoughts, he really did not care whether people considered him an artist.  This seems to be a trend among contemporary artists.  This shift in self-perception as an artist sort of frightens me.  Does this mean that I can only be great if I let go of the hope of becoming great?  What’s plan B? Am I still allowed to strive to be an artist?

            This reading made Duchamp sound like a really cool guy, someone I would want to be friends with.  He was a peculiar person, but what artist isn’t?  He “consistently helped promote the careers of other artists,” (62) who were also his friends.  It seems like artists are constantly in competition with one another, and to help a fellow artist would mean furthering their success while hindering your own.  Maybe we could all take a message from Duchamp and lighten up a little; make connections with our fellow artists; encourage each other.  Because their success could mean your success, even if nobody planned to be successful in the first place.

Marcel Duchamp

Bananas and Bridges

          Today, I ate a banana.  It was delicious.  But even more than that, it was a delicious, asexual work of art.  The bananas we consume today are all identical descendants of a single parent banana tree.  Because bananas don’t have seeds, they cannot be planted to grow banana trees.  Humans have been cultivating banana plants for centuries, splitting and splicing and replanting them.  Without humans, this plant would definitely not be as populous as it is today.  I am suggesting that the banana, although a living thing all on its own, is a currently and forever will be a product of human manipulation.  It exists because we desire it, and we allow, it to thrive.  Therefore, the banana is a work of art.

The Life of a Banana

          Although beautiful and skillfully created, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California is not a work of art (for this blog).  Its sole purpose is to function practically for commuters.  It was created to get people from San Francisco to Marin faster than by ferry, because ferry traffic was too heavy. The bridge is utilized because of its practicality.  Because it is used for functional purposes, the physical bridge itself is not a work of art (Notice how I left its iconography out of this thesis).  You wouldn’t call a blender in your kitchen a work of art, nor would you call your ordinary public toilet a work of art.  

The most objective picture I could find

Scrub, Rinse, Repeat

          Today, I visited Albertson’s grocery store on Calle Real with the intent to wash my dishes in the aisle that contained the type of food I had eaten for lunch a few minutes earlier.  As I plopped a seat in the aisle, I got a few strange stares from some girls walking by as well as from a lady with a shopping cart.  Other than that, my mission was completed without a hitch.  Nobody working in the grocery store came running over to me and tried to kick me out, which was what I was sort of expecting and hoping for.  The fact that I can go and do these types of activities in places that people don’t normally do them is somewhat of an eye opener.

           I always feel like I’m being watched, but after today, that feeling is a little less intense.  Everyone has their own thing going on, so the last thing they probably care about is why some girl is sitting in an aisle in the grocery store with soapsuds everywhere.  They have a reason for being where they are, in this case the grocery store, and even if they are mildly distracted by my out of place activity, ultimately they are going to continue about their business and do what they need to do.  It is a completely self-centered way of thinking that just because I am washing my dishes in a grocery store (or doing anything somewhere you wouldn’t normally do it) that the whole world is going to stop and take notice.  No.  They won’t.

           I am going to take this lesson that I have learned and try to broaden my outlook on life.  Maybe I won’t hesitate to be more outgoing or make a fool of myself, because who will notice anyway?  I can only gain knowledge and experience from behaving this way.  So that’s what I’ll be working on next.

Alberson's floors are really clean, by the way.  There was hardly any dirt on the paper towels I used to clean my mess.

So Legit

Posted on the Daily Nexus in response to "'Sucker Punch' Is Porn Without the Good Parts"

I am a film critic from Los Angeles and I frequently visit college newspaper websites to acquire various perspectives on current events.  I must admit I did not share your obvious excitement for this film upon viewing its trailers.  It immediately struck me as trashy, cheesy and blatantly created for a male audience.  Needless to say, I was not going to rush out and see this film.  But, as a film critic, I feel the need to expose myself to various genres of film, even the shoddy ones.  So I saw Sucker Punch, and it was everything I had expected; awful plot line, girls in skimpy clothes running around with explosions in the background, and people in the audience expressing the same disdain I was feeling.  With the obvious aside, I wanted to congratulate you on writing a fabulous article.

I am sure you have heard about the LAFCA.  I am a member of this association and am looking for a bright, young individual to intern with me this summer.  The job requires a lot of hard work, dedication and time.  But I can tell by your writing style that you can perform written tasks quickly.  This is a quality I am in need of with my busy schedule.

I could not find your contact information on this website, so that is why I have chosen to leave you with this letter, hoping that you would be free to lend me your talents for a few months.  You would gain great professional writing skills, be exposed to various cultural happenings, and acquire some amazing references.

I do not feel comfortable posting my phone number on this forum; there are a lot of weirdo’s out there.  If you are interested in my offer, please reply to this post on the Daily Nexus website.  I assume that an individual who cares about what they have written frequently checks to see if they have received any feedback.  Also, this shows me your dedication to your work and makes me even more confident in my decision to ask you to come on board.

Thank you for your time,

Amy

Feel free to access my bio: http://www.lafca.net/members/amy_nicholson.html

or visit http://algalgae.blogspot.com/

On "Truth and Fiction"

          I’m pretty proud of how official I sound in this letter.  I almost became this lady, Amy, in the letter I wrote to Damion Damaske, a staff writer at the Nexus.  Amy is a real person, by the way.  I looked her up on the Los Angeles Film Critics Association website.  It’s amazingly easy to find such information… and completely abuse it.  I have just proven that anyone on the Internet can say they are someone else and provide completely false hopes and promises to any other poor soul online.

          One thing that struck me was how utterly easy it was to write as if I was this other person.  As if the Internet itself wasn’t enough of a barrier between this Damion fellow and I, I took it a step up and even further removed myself from him by claiming to be some random person.  So in this sense, cyber bullies, online child predators, and just plain sinister characters have it so easy.  If I, an innocent art student, can successfully use information I found on the Internet to fulfill my needs, why can’t someone with even stronger, more obsessive needs do the same or more?  It’s scary to think about, but it happens.  And there’s probably nothing anyone can do about situations like this, except embarrass them on a national scale like on “To Catch a Predator.”

Stuff I found online about Amy Nicholson:

Stories she wrote!

Her Rotton Tomato account!

Her Twitter account!

Another bio!

Her Vimeo account!