So this is the last day of class, and I’m hoping my Max patch doesn’t blow up or isn’t a total embarrassment. I don’t feel like I have enough of a grasp of it to do anything interesting or fun. I tried to get a neat duotone and rotation happening, but the image is a very strange color and vibrating instead. Maybe if I pretend that’s how it’s suppose to look and rationalize it….
The CAG has Henrik Hakansson’s flying bugs. I’ll go check them out since I’ll have so much more time now!! Happy Holidays to everyone, and I hope we all still keep blogging. It’s been very interesting.
I’m going on the New York trip in Feb. ..to get inspired and eat hot dogs. Anyone else going?
Filed under: About me | Tags: cat, emaciated, fractured, surveillance, tatoo
She’s only two and a half. She disappeared three months ago, and even though we were desperate to find her, we couldn’t. She is my cat Amber.
I got a call at work on Monday…the SPCA said that they believed they had Amber because of the tattoo in her ear. I raced down after work to find my gorgeous healthy orange tabby an emaciated mess with a back leg fractured in three places. Was she hit by a car?
Ok. I live in North Vancouver and Amber was discovered in East Vancouver by a woman who saw a mangled, skinny cat on her surveillance camera. She ended up feeding Amber for a few weeks until the cat became brave enough to come closer. Thank goodness for fellow cat lovers. I guess surveillance does have it’s place.
OK. Cats don’t cross bridges by themselves. I realize you shouldn’t assume, but did someone ‘cat-nap’ her, or did she jump into a truck? She was freaked around cars, especially when they started, so she was most likely trapped in a trunk of a car or back of some sort of truck. If someone took her for purely selfish reasons, I wonder if they would repeat their act if they had to step into the cats position. What would it be like to try to survive for 2 – 3 months with the agonizing pain of a broken leg, no food, out in the bitter cold in a strange environment?
Amber is recovering at home now. She will probably be getting that leg amputated in a few weeks. Hopefully her frail little boy is strong enough for surgery by then. Guess Amber will be an inside cat now and possibly a tripod.
Filed under: Art Projects
Sergio Prego, “Black Monday”(to view video: look up artists, Sergio Prego, video of selected work)
The Yerba Buena Gallery in San Francisco had a digital arts exhibition that ran until November 11, 2007 called “Dark Matters, Artists see the Impossible”. Various digital artists displayed their works in visuals, sounds and installations. There were many interesting works in the exhibit, but one I found intriguing was ‘Black Monday’ by Sergio Prego.
I walked around to the back of the gallery to encounter this partly enclosed video installation and was riveted in place by the sounds and visuals. There is a large screen video that flashes jolting images of an explosion fused with an electronic music. The images create a dizzying, vertigo effect. The ‘glitch’ soundtrack is disjointed and repetitive.
Prego staged explosions with flares in a large open warehouse. He used a ring of synchronized cameras to capture stages of the blast and the plume of smoke at fixed moments in time. Over 1000 photos were taken, scanned, then digitally composited into a film that rotates 360 degrees around the explosion. The 3 minute film uses a stop-motion technique, where the camera moves but the subject doesn’t (like in “The Matrix”). There is a zoom in and zoom out that occurs through each rotation of the film, probably due to blocking structures in the studio, but this amplifies the visual effect.
Prego creates a ‘hyperreal’ environment where authentic representation is altered and amplified. It could also be seen as a type of synthetic realism. His digitally manipulated images merge with the electronic sounds and create a surreal environment that would be visually impossible otherwise. Prego obviously wants truth and simplicity in his work because he kept his methodology obvious, and you can see the cameras on tripods surrounding the explosion.
Prego challenges the conventional notion time, space and navigation by manipulating different perspectives of a single moment in time. It forces us to look at how we comprehend relationships within visual images. He also explores our tendency to simplify patterns of events into sequences and manageably consistent images in an otherwise chaotic world.
I was most impressed with how Prego converted a series of still life photos into a 3 dimensional sculptural shape in video. It is a type of digital photogrammetry and a way of reinterpreting images. The explosion becomes an entity that is manipulated into a non-static sculpture. Each vapor of smoke is immobilized in time and space and transformed into a static tangible form, and then evaporates. His work can be seen as a ‘spectacle’ in that it is an event that has moved into the realm of representation.
Prego’s installation also brings to the forefront the topical aspect of explosions and their association with tragic and bloody outcomes, which gives the work a more ominous overtone.
Filed under: Art Projects
So I’ve moved again…my installation has anyway. It’s still the same image, but I’ve been relocated by the Charles Scott Gallery and facilities to the photo stairwell in the north west corner. There is a painting exhibition going on this Monday, so I was evicted from my obscure space under the concourse stairway. Oh well, I have control over the photo stairwell, which is bright, lofty, freezing cold, and mine for one day. It is a small “white cube”, and a pseudo gallery space unto itself for artists who don’t quite make it into the concourse gallery…yet. It is totally appropriate for my “Attempt to Levitate” intervention. I’ll have to post the final image on Monday.
Filed under: Artists of Interest
Trevor Paglen is another digital artist who I found interesting on my trip to San Fran. He combines art with geography, photography, journalism, and activism. His obsession is exposing what he can of undercover covert CIA operations throughout the world. Most of his works may not show you top secret documents…but it makes you think about what powerful government agencies hide from us. Paglen’s series of photo landscapes don’t catch your eye until you read what they are, then you want to look through the haze to see if you can make out any illicit activity. It’s when surveillance goes under surveillance.
Filed under: Artists of Interest
I’m big on collage….and Francesca Berrini makes the most interesting maps. I saw one at the Mark Wolfe gallery last weekend in San Francisco, and it’s one of those pieces that stick in your head. Her maps are a kind of a ‘Neverland’, and you don’t realize they are fictitious or made of hundreds of torn pieces of other maps collaged together until you stand up close. I wish I had the patience to try something like this!
Filed under: About me
It’s amazing how a microscopic strand of RNA can leave you feeling so s….y. So my friend, who is apparently hip on old school remedies and old wives tales told me that I need to eat turnips…apparently they have antibacterial qualities. Does anyone have a good turnip recipe? Also…for the cough that I’m developing, I should eat lentils. So…lentil soup with turnips. Maybe with lots of garlic and ginger to mask the taste. Any one else out there living on advil, with a very sore throat and shooting body pains? I’m sure I’ll feel all rejuvenated tomorrow.
Had an interesting day last Saturday in San Francisco. The digital art show I planned to see turned out to be in a different city…I was misinformed and very confused for a few minutes, and then let down. However, we ended up at the YBCA gallery which had a show called “Dark Matters”. It’s a group exhibition that addresses our bombardment with massive amounts of information through media and online, and how we can’t be sure of fact or fallacy…but I’m too tired to think critically about anything now except some sleep. Oh, an installation called “Listening Post” was there, which is over 20+ ft long and made up of a grid of suspended LED’s that bits of online chat phrases are captured and run across the screens at different intervals. A synthesized voice and background sounds accompany it and it is absolutely phenomenal and mesmerizing. Now every time someone walks past me chatting on their cell phone and I catch some of what they are saying I think of that installation…like a song you can’t get out of your head.
project02_shannonh.pdf Just finished a CGIA project using a quote on time. The gist of it is that you can’t live creatively in the present if you are freaked or worried about your past or future. So, after working on three projects this week, I’m ready to collapse into the hot tub at the ‘ol family cabin at Mt. Baker. There is no internet access, so I can’t keep up with the blog until Sunday. Oh, too bad!
