My 1st .swf

I spent my Sunday morning making this little baby.

I'm in love

I had to post this link.

http://rhizome.org/editorial/2013/oct/25/artist-profile-steve-roggenbuck/?ref=journal_p10_post_readbtn 

      This page and video is about a young poet who uses social media to communicate his poems. He is just so energetic and passionate his video makes me smile. All of his reasons for writing poetry can be connected to art making. He argues that poetry can change your day or make you think about something else. Poetry draws your attention to what's happening in the world. He proselytizes, "As a poet, it's your job to text people pictures of the sunset. I'm not saying that strictly, but I'm saying that as a metaphor." He is vehement about using the internet to communicate his ideas to as many people as possible. He is defending his eccentric work (similar to the Gutai, he experiments and may be seen as unusual but he's questioning a conventional system of written, published poetry) as poetry in a society with limitless possibilities because of technology.
      When judging his own work he asks, "Does the piece simply make a person smirk once, or is it really going to shake them, make them reconsider their life choices, or really shape their identity?" He also believes, "Once [my work] has reached them, and they've seen it, it's moved them, impacted their day or even their personality... that's the artwork i think." Art is not just about the processes of making, its effect on an audience is equally if not more important because art should be communicative and influential. Art is a package for delivering a message to lots of people.

      All of this can be applied to any type of artist today. Artists work to change people's ways of thinking, make them question, learn, appreciate something through the communication of an idea. In our society there are so many ways to do this that the definition of art becomes more and more broad.

Gutai movement

      The Gutai movement was a group of artists reacting to a post-World War II society in Japan. The Gutai group celebrated experimentation, innovation, and creativity by making art through unconventional processes and art that crossed multiple disciplines. Most of their work makes you think and question what is art?

      The picture above is from the 1960 International Sky Festival. The group recreated sketches from multiple artists onto banners and strung them between helium balloons and cables connected to a department store in Osaka. The group used this piece as advertising for their journal publication. It mixed sculpture and painting in a specific context--the sky.

      I like this piece because it seems like a lot of work went into something that was probably hard to see from the ground. The balloon posters change with the wind, but act as a collective being. According to the exhibit website, one of the balloons flew away at the end of the day. This work could be a metaphor for our time on earth. We all interact, live together, have similar highs and lows, try to go with the flow, share beautiful moments, but eventually our lives will end. Even though they are just balloons because of their movement and majesty I feel that viewers can connect with them. At the same time this piece also feels very light and silly because balloons have a connotation of celebration. This work looks simple, but is very powerful.

In class .GIF

Here is a group .GIF we made for class.

24 hour project complete

      I did my project from about noon Sunday March 2 to noon today. I walked around my town (from my house to cvs to buy an ankle brace, past my high school, to a nature preserve, back to the high school, back home), went out to dinner, and went to school. It was easier for me to think about the main walk as an experience and collect ephemera (my rules were to walk as far as possible and to take a picture every time I stopped for whatever reason--to look at something, to figure out how to go around snow, to text, to check the map, etc.). I had trouble thinking of the daily, monotonous parts of my life as an experience and had to remind myself to look for ephemera.
      Emotionally, it was weird to re-visit places from my past. I had to walk by my high school twice, I could hear the sounds of a basketball game inside, I walked around the preserve where my high school P.E. classes would take nature walks and my family would take hour long hikes, and I coincidentally went to a restaurant with my family that I hadn't been to in six years, but it felt completely the same. I liked the peacefulness of the experience, but at times I felt like an outsider, not in a sad way, just different. I did things I don't know I would have done before this class, like sitting in the middle of a parking lot filled with bird seed for ten minutes to listen to all the birds or routinely taking pictures.
      No one had very strange reactions to me. I said hi to most strangers I passed. One couple thought I was completely lost and stared at me for a bit while I held out my map. I tried to be sneaky about taking photos if I was in populated areas or photographing abnormal things (like the library).
      My problems were: reminding myself to take pictures, remembering to collect ephemera, and my knee and ankle pain which was awful at the end of the six hour walk and my zumba class on Mon. morning. I started and ended my experience in pain :/ On a different note, it's very hard to rewire your brain to think of simple things as art and ephemera.
      I liked this experience because I got to focus on one project for a longer period of time, but didn't have a set goal. I literally hiked in a circle, for nothing, but the experience, which is really all going anywhere is.

24 hour idea revised: Nature walk

Ok, mixing it up people. I changed my idea to something that suits my lifestyle more. I am going to try to walk, map, and collect ephemera from a state park near my house, but I'm going to try to walk farther than I've ever walked in that park. Which means I'll have to walk for at least four hours in the park. I will connect this walk to the rest of my routine so I have a larger opportunity to collect ephemera before and after the walk as well.

My rules:
- Start my journey at noon (I was going to try sunrise but I sleep in. . .). This signifies that my nature walk will be connected to the cycle of the day and the source of nature itself.
- Count every place I go as an opportunity to collect ephemera.
- Stop walking/return home when: I feel dehydrated, my legs are too sore to go very much farther, or it gets dark. Sunset is at 5:47 pm today. (Whatever comes first.)
- Map out my walk.
- Don't be disappointed if I don't get very far, the whole day is an experience not just the main walk itself.

This is an opportunity to analyze my day and notice little things that maybe I don't normally notice.