I have chosen an image of my mother and me. In the image, you can see my mother holding me in an embrace. You can see my mother’s face, but you cannot see mine. My mother has both her hands wrapped around me and I have my hands wrapped around her. My favorite part about this image is the expression on my mother’s face. Her eyes are closed but she has this beaming smile on her face. I remember exactly when this picture was taken. I was in Grade One and there was a competition that took place where students had to recite poems that were assigned to them in front of an audience. I ended up getting first position in my grade for my recital. This is one of the earliest memories I have of winning something. My parents were there to watch me recite my poem and they watched as I went up to receive the certificate for first position. Right after the competition ended I ran to my mother and she picked me up and hugged me so tightly. This image was taken at that moment. Another interesting thing about this image is that it is not staged in any way. The poetry competition had taken place on the ground floor in school and someone had captured this image of my mother and I from the first floor. My mother and I had no idea that this photo was being taken. To me, this image is very authentic. I have shared many special moments with my mother throughout the course of my life. This is one of the few moments that has been captured in an image.
My image last week was a picture of my mother and I right after I had won a competition. I decided to make my image this week abstract. I was focusing on the different emotions associated with my original image (happiness, pride, peace). I tried to represent those emotions through different colors and I also wanted these colors to be interacting with each other. My memory of my original image is quite vague; there are some moments I remember clearly while others are not as clear. I tried to recreate that feeling through this image.
An Image in My Mind: Refer back to this image as an experience
What is an image? We will never be able to find one single definition of the word image. Documentary about the oldest images we know of. Images go back to the beginning of humanity. What is imagination? Everytime we create an image there is something that it tells us about ourselves. Image can also be a way of communication or give a message. There are also certain conventions in relation to image. Sounds play a powerful role in relation to images. Photographic images have a reality attached to them. MoMa: chair. Universal chair is an image in our mind. Mark Rothko was a painter whose work was all about abstractions. His work is famous for invoking a certain emotion. Color theory in the video. Images that are not discernable in an attempt to remind us of an experience.
Malevich was a Russian artist working in the early 20th century. Leading artist in the period of the first Russian revolution. For Malevich painting was associated with feeling. There is something powerful in the black square painting that has influenced al art afterwards. That begs the question: what makes an image art?
-You will never find something that is absolute information; there is always some abstraction
-There is no image that is completely pure.
-Ask yourself how does an image make you feel. Do you associate a certain memory to it? A taste?
-Images are something very fluid today. They cannot be looked in an isolated environment.
-Images are very powerful.
-Excerpt from Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust. Proust is an author that every artist should read. He is looking for a memory that can only manifest itself as an image.
-How to control the masses with images. For the longest time people believed that information drives behaviour but that is not the case
-Connecting idea of smoking to controlling men and thus having a penis. He made smoking socially acceptable with a simple act.
Images used as a way of finding humanity
-In the other video talks about images in the 1960s. And how there is no reality; reality only exists in images. Everything is just a spectacle (an ongoing show). The discovery of the realization of how powerful images can be.
-With photography the notion of truth seems to have disappeared.
I just felt like I had a lot going on today. I had a lecture and then a tutorial. After that I had a work shift. I felt like I didn’t have time to process much. I just did my best to get through the day
Looking at everyone’s images was really interesting. I noticed that a lot of people approached many of their images with humor which felt kind of refreshing. It was also interesting to see the different kinds of mediums that people used. I wish I had thought of using an audio for one of my images actually.
An introduction to the idea of Art and Technology
Artists often tried to incorporate the notion of freedom. We start of by talking about The Futurists. They were a group of artists working at the turn of the 20th century. They were very loosely connected and just found they had stuff in common. For some reason poetry is considered one of the lesser arts but throughout history poets have been very important. Manifesto which brought together ideas of the Futurists. With the appearance of technology in people’s lives, everything seemed to be possible. Thus, began people’s execution of their dream of flying. The premise of technology at that time was simple; everything was possible. The Futurists felt this deeply. If you think about it this idea has extended to us today. The Futurists felt that the past was something that was holding them back. Radical set of statements said by Marinetti saying that he will wipe out everything of the past and start a new world. The Futurists embraced the new world in many ways. One thing they did was make specific posters (check website). A way of using words differently. What language can be used to describe this new reality of machines, noises and new smells. How do wed describe this new world? This kind of art resonates with our current reality; this idea of being more than human. Parallel with Iron Man. Umberto Boccioni sculpture focusing on Italian futurism. This promise of being able to achieve everything was shattered by the realities of WW1. The war wasn’t this fantastic thing the Futurists claimed it would be. That same technology that seemed to promise everything brought about a horrible world war. Millions of people died in a short period of time. Dada art talks about how the war involved people becoming almost machine-like. This idea which Freud had already introduced that there is something dark inside of us. Dada art had this way of almost portraying nightmares. Thorough way of describing what was around us. An artist at every given moment is struggling the idea of reality and the world we are living in. What is the language of today? Looking at our everyday in a larger context.
Homework:
Clair De Lune- Impressionist music (An image of the impressionist time)
Impressionist painting
Polo and Pan- Pays Imaginaire uses that same tune in a different way and making it contemporary
Janelle Monae also did it.
Image of the Image Part 2: Create an image using a song . Transform song into a contemporary context. Take initial song and put it into contemporary setting. Express what the song is giving you in today’s language. Translate feelings and sounds into a new image. Translate it in any way we like.
Images
Art/Technology/Freedom
Technology
What is an Image: Representation/Visual/Depiction/Language/Expression/Indication/Documentation
An image does not actually need to be a visual. We looked at audios and they created a powerful experience that created an image. When we confront an image and we can’t really place it but it still invokes something in us is the power than image has.
Black Hole/Vacuum that you are being sucked into. Space
Qualities of the image: Motion, Light waves, cycles, depth, colors, reflection,
What is an image today? How do we speak about today? What is the contemporary condition? Images depicting a universe that is not necessarily ours- an existence beyond our own. Because of that every single image can have two narratives. Images correspond to a particular world view. Representation corresponds to what is real. When photography was invented the world view also changed. Connection between Images, technology and ‘real’ (real always changes). The real creates certain images and vice versa. This can all be rendered by technology. In a moment of confusion when you do not know what to do you look inside (Impressionist). Today we are living in a world of unknown. An image becomes a means of exploration. Not a statement but a way of understanding. Let go of what we know and focus on how we feel (focus on the experience). Everything is possible today.
Perception/senses/space/pixelation/Tech/manipulation/reconfiguration/appropriation. Movement that started in the 80s when people would take someone else’s image and call it their own. The notion of author was questioned. It is kind of meaningless to talk about appropriation today because we are living in it.
Creating images and images creating the real. This is not necessarily something that photography, painting and printmaking etc. cannot do. But that idea is truly being rendered on our screens on websites (Tumblr) with images. Have a conversation using images. Using images to ask questions about technology. The abyss is the image. We
reach this abyss through different mediums: music, painting, photography.
All Watched Over by Machine of Loving Grace Trailer
Signs telling us what to think. Collage of images working with the music. That is all pointing to something.
Poetry takes as its purview what is deeply felt and is essentially unsayable; that is the paradox…
The Image of the Image II
So for my image I had already made a video last week which I decided to integrate. When I first heard this piece it reminded me of the past. It made me think of all the movies I have seen that are set in the past showing different lifestyles and dressings. I also felt like there was a feminine quality to the music. There was also something nostalgic and sad about it but at the same time there was a feeling of being free.
17th Oct Notes:
Promise of technology. The futurist came up with a project/idea as a group which at that time was monumental. The image reflects it’s time. Time of chaos, dynamism, confusion. Somehow everything we create today is in the footsteps of The Futurists. Creating a new language. A similar parallel moment happening in Russia. Polarization of movements. Centered around this idea of creating The New Man. Commonalities between the Futurists and the Russian Cubists: the idea is common. They all feel it is the same universe and technology. The man and the camera. Economy of means. Man and technology. Technology was also a common threat in their time. Dream of flight. Dada art. There is something more to beauty than what we expected. Gifs as a possibility for expressing beauty.
Homework:
What are the new ways of portraying beauty? What is the new image of beauty? How to create new beauty? Ray gun was a magazine that emerged when there was a rise of personal computers (offering this opportunity of all new possibilities) Commonality between technology and the sensibility of the time. Freedom with limitations.. What is freedom?
Art/technology/freedom and the relationship between them.Sharing that uncomfort. Posing the questions differently
What is the relation between technology and art? What is the relation between art and freedom? What is the relation between technology and freedom? How do these three questions interrelate?
I actually had a hard time working on this. The main reason being that the questions that were posed to us were so broad and open-ended. In many ways I think technology has given us a kind of ‘freedom’ to create art using different mediums. But at the same time some art made using technology is trapped in the digital world. That made me think about reality and the different realities that exist for each individual. I do not know if I can come up with a single answer for each question. The one thing I do believe is that the relations between art, technology and freedom cannot be clearly defined and our different for every person.
I did not really know how to approach this idea as a visual. But here’s an image I made while thinking about these questions. I found that thinking about these questions actually led to more and more questions but less answers.
It is important to focus on the process. Being lost is actually a great place to start from when actually making art. Embrace openness and messiness of process of making art. Freedom to respond to what you are thinking about. It does not necessarily have to be successful. Photography was initially referred to as the drawing of nature. Fluxus means flow. It is about arrival and going with the flow. John Cage says he is not content listening to music but listening to sounds. The difference between sound and music is music is organized by somebody. John Cage wants to assess sounds as they are. 4’33” is a composition made by John Cage. For 4 minutes and 33 seconds there is the sound of silence. Everything that happens in between this moment is part of the artwork. Fluxus art promoting this idea that everything is art. Making us aware of everything we are doing. Similarities with dadaism. Nam June Paik was the first person to incorporate video into art. The Unabomber is a terrorist who decided to start a revolution.
Homework: Go to the Fluxus workbook and find a performance that everyone will create
Ponder over this question individually: Do artists foresee the future or do artist create the future? What is an artist in relation to this?
For my work I decided to choose George Brecht’s word event piece from 1961 which basically included the word Exit.
In class last week it was mentioned that this whole Fluxus movement was heavily influenced by Dadaism. From what I have learned the word Dada in itself literally means nothing. And I think that is something I wanted to explore and think about; this idea that can something emerge from what we define as ‘nothing’.
When I first read the word ‘Exit’ in the Fluxus scores I immediately said the word to myself in my head. I decided I wanted to include the aspect of actually saying the word in my piece. And since we have been talking so much about art and technology I wanted to include this notion of exit or exiting within the digital world. So I opened up different accounts/programs and filmed myself ‘exiting’ them. It seems mundane but it made me think about this whole notion of performance and how in our daily lives we are constantly performing or kinds of tasks regardless of how obvious they may seem.
What I hope to learn from this course:
To learn to critique an image appropriately; and talk about it’s significance in the current world.
1. An Image in My Mind
I have chosen an image of my mother and me. In the image, you can see my mother holding me in an embrace. You can see my mother’s face, but you cannot see mine. My mother has both her hands wrapped around me and I have my hands wrapped around her. My favorite part about this image is the expression on my mother’s face. Her eyes are closed but she has this beaming smile on her face. I remember exactly when this picture was taken. I was in Grade One and there was a competition that took place where students had to recite poems that were assigned to them in front of an audience. I ended up getting first position in my grade for my recital. This is one of the earliest memories I have of winning something. My parents were there to watch me recite my poem and they watched as I went up to receive the certificate for first position. Right after the competition ended I ran to my mother and she picked me up and hugged me so tightly. This image was taken at that moment. Another interesting thing about this image is that it is not staged in any way. The poetry competition had taken place on the ground floor in school and someone had captured this image of my mother and I from the first floor. My mother and I had no idea that this photo was being taken. To me, this image is very authentic. I have shared many special moments with my mother throughout the course of my life. This is one of the few moments that has been captured in an image.
The image of an image
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Cyd89zWkyn0zuRz6XiHXuOxdo-GgOB4C/view
My image last week was a picture of my mother and I right after I had won a competition. I decided to make my image this week abstract. I was focusing on the different emotions associated with my original image (happiness, pride, peace). I tried to represent those emotions through different colors and I also wanted these colors to be interacting with each other. My memory of my original image is quite vague; there are some moments I remember clearly while others are not as clear. I tried to recreate that feeling through this image.
What is an apple:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-OFO6O__zZBVHJfX2w5VFpuX0F2cTBzS01Zc3ZlVFVZeTZJ/view
12th Sept Notes-
An Image in My Mind: Refer back to this image as an experience
What is an image? We will never be able to find one single definition of the word image. Documentary about the oldest images we know of. Images go back to the beginning of humanity. What is imagination? Everytime we create an image there is something that it tells us about ourselves. Image can also be a way of communication or give a message. There are also certain conventions in relation to image. Sounds play a powerful role in relation to images. Photographic images have a reality attached to them. MoMa: chair. Universal chair is an image in our mind. Mark Rothko was a painter whose work was all about abstractions. His work is famous for invoking a certain emotion. Color theory in the video. Images that are not discernable in an attempt to remind us of an experience.
Malevich was a Russian artist working in the early 20th century. Leading artist in the period of the first Russian revolution. For Malevich painting was associated with feeling. There is something powerful in the black square painting that has influenced al art afterwards. That begs the question: what makes an image art?
26th Sept Notes-
-You will never find something that is absolute information; there is always some abstraction
-There is no image that is completely pure.
-Ask yourself how does an image make you feel. Do you associate a certain memory to it? A taste?
-Images are something very fluid today. They cannot be looked in an isolated environment.
-Images are very powerful.
-Excerpt from Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust. Proust is an author that every artist should read. He is looking for a memory that can only manifest itself as an image.
-How to control the masses with images. For the longest time people believed that information drives behaviour but that is not the case
-Connecting idea of smoking to controlling men and thus having a penis. He made smoking socially acceptable with a simple act.
Images used as a way of finding humanity
-In the other video talks about images in the 1960s. And how there is no reality; reality only exists in images. Everything is just a spectacle (an ongoing show). The discovery of the realization of how powerful images can be.
-With photography the notion of truth seems to have disappeared.
An Image of Today
09.26-https://www.instagram.com/p/BoaiFsHnfOZ/?taken-by=areyoulookingclosely
I had two 3 hour lectures that day and I had not gotten a lot of sleep. So I was basically pretty exhausted and tired throughout the day.
09.27-https://www.instagram.com/p/BoaiLWDH6g6/?taken-by=areyoulookingclosely
My morning class didn’t end up happening which felt pretty inconvenient. But on the plus side it was a beautiful sunny day.
09.28-https://www.instagram.com/p/BoaiV-IH3fj/?taken-by=areyoulookingclosely
I just felt like I had a lot going on today. I had a lecture and then a tutorial. After that I had a work shift. I felt like I didn’t have time to process much. I just did my best to get through the day
09.29-https://www.instagram.com/p/BoaidiNnvz5/?taken-by=areyoulookingclosely
I basically just gave myself a bit of a day off which was nice. I also celebrated a family member’s birthday.
09.30-https://www.instagram.com/p/BoaihsWHc5r/?taken-by=areyoulookingclosely
I spent way too much time watching TV. Probably not the most productive thing to do.
10.01-https://www.instagram.com/p/BocrfG-H3vy/?taken-by=areyoulookingclosely
Spent most of the day on my laptop doing readings for different classes. It was a pretty boring day but obviously the readings had to be done.
10.02-https://www.instagram.com/p/BodZ8goHtSm/?taken-by=areyoulookingclosely
Fall is here! It was really cold and windy today….and today felt like the first day the leaves started falling.
Oct 3rd Notes-
Looking at everyone’s images was really interesting. I noticed that a lot of people approached many of their images with humor which felt kind of refreshing. It was also interesting to see the different kinds of mediums that people used. I wish I had thought of using an audio for one of my images actually.
An introduction to the idea of Art and Technology
Artists often tried to incorporate the notion of freedom. We start of by talking about The Futurists. They were a group of artists working at the turn of the 20th century. They were very loosely connected and just found they had stuff in common. For some reason poetry is considered one of the lesser arts but throughout history poets have been very important. Manifesto which brought together ideas of the Futurists. With the appearance of technology in people’s lives, everything seemed to be possible. Thus, began people’s execution of their dream of flying. The premise of technology at that time was simple; everything was possible. The Futurists felt this deeply. If you think about it this idea has extended to us today. The Futurists felt that the past was something that was holding them back. Radical set of statements said by Marinetti saying that he will wipe out everything of the past and start a new world. The Futurists embraced the new world in many ways. One thing they did was make specific posters (check website). A way of using words differently. What language can be used to describe this new reality of machines, noises and new smells. How do wed describe this new world? This kind of art resonates with our current reality; this idea of being more than human. Parallel with Iron Man. Umberto Boccioni sculpture focusing on Italian futurism. This promise of being able to achieve everything was shattered by the realities of WW1. The war wasn’t this fantastic thing the Futurists claimed it would be. That same technology that seemed to promise everything brought about a horrible world war. Millions of people died in a short period of time. Dada art talks about how the war involved people becoming almost machine-like. This idea which Freud had already introduced that there is something dark inside of us. Dada art had this way of almost portraying nightmares. Thorough way of describing what was around us. An artist at every given moment is struggling the idea of reality and the world we are living in. What is the language of today? Looking at our everyday in a larger context.
Homework:
Clair De Lune- Impressionist music (An image of the impressionist time)
Impressionist painting
Polo and Pan- Pays Imaginaire uses that same tune in a different way and making it contemporary
Janelle Monae also did it.
Image of the Image Part 2: Create an image using a song . Transform song into a contemporary context. Take initial song and put it into contemporary setting. Express what the song is giving you in today’s language. Translate feelings and sounds into a new image. Translate it in any way we like.
10th Oct Notes
Images
Art/Technology/Freedom
Technology
What is an Image: Representation/Visual/Depiction/Language/Expression/Indication/Documentation
An image does not actually need to be a visual. We looked at audios and they created a powerful experience that created an image. When we confront an image and we can’t really place it but it still invokes something in us is the power than image has.
Black Hole/Vacuum that you are being sucked into. Space
Qualities of the image: Motion, Light waves, cycles, depth, colors, reflection,
What is an image today? How do we speak about today? What is the contemporary condition? Images depicting a universe that is not necessarily ours- an existence beyond our own. Because of that every single image can have two narratives. Images correspond to a particular world view. Representation corresponds to what is real. When photography was invented the world view also changed. Connection between Images, technology and ‘real’ (real always changes). The real creates certain images and vice versa. This can all be rendered by technology. In a moment of confusion when you do not know what to do you look inside (Impressionist). Today we are living in a world of unknown. An image becomes a means of exploration. Not a statement but a way of understanding. Let go of what we know and focus on how we feel (focus on the experience). Everything is possible today.
Perception/senses/space/pixelation/Tech/manipulation/reconfiguration/appropriation. Movement that started in the 80s when people would take someone else’s image and call it their own. The notion of author was questioned. It is kind of meaningless to talk about appropriation today because we are living in it.
Creating images and images creating the real. This is not necessarily something that photography, painting and printmaking etc. cannot do. But that idea is truly being rendered on our screens on websites (Tumblr) with images. Have a conversation using images. Using images to ask questions about technology. The abyss is the image. We
reach this abyss through different mediums: music, painting, photography.
All Watched Over by Machine of Loving Grace Trailer
Signs telling us what to think. Collage of images working with the music. That is all pointing to something.
Poetry takes as its purview what is deeply felt and is essentially unsayable; that is the paradox…
The Image of the Image II
So for my image I had already made a video last week which I decided to integrate. When I first heard this piece it reminded me of the past. It made me think of all the movies I have seen that are set in the past showing different lifestyles and dressings. I also felt like there was a feminine quality to the music. There was also something nostalgic and sad about it but at the same time there was a feeling of being free.
http://newhive.com/hareemminai/visa-210-the-image-of-the-image-ii
17th Oct Notes:
Promise of technology. The futurist came up with a project/idea as a group which at that time was monumental. The image reflects it’s time. Time of chaos, dynamism, confusion. Somehow everything we create today is in the footsteps of The Futurists. Creating a new language. A similar parallel moment happening in Russia. Polarization of movements. Centered around this idea of creating The New Man. Commonalities between the Futurists and the Russian Cubists: the idea is common. They all feel it is the same universe and technology. The man and the camera. Economy of means. Man and technology. Technology was also a common threat in their time. Dream of flight. Dada art. There is something more to beauty than what we expected. Gifs as a possibility for expressing beauty.
Homework:
What are the new ways of portraying beauty? What is the new image of beauty? How to create new beauty? Ray gun was a magazine that emerged when there was a rise of personal computers (offering this opportunity of all new possibilities) Commonality between technology and the sensibility of the time. Freedom with limitations.. What is freedom?
Art/technology/freedom and the relationship between them.Sharing that uncomfort. Posing the questions differently
What is the relation between technology and art? What is the relation between art and freedom? What is the relation between technology and freedom? How do these three questions interrelate?
I actually had a hard time working on this. The main reason being that the questions that were posed to us were so broad and open-ended. In many ways I think technology has given us a kind of ‘freedom’ to create art using different mediums. But at the same time some art made using technology is trapped in the digital world. That made me think about reality and the different realities that exist for each individual. I do not know if I can come up with a single answer for each question. The one thing I do believe is that the relations between art, technology and freedom cannot be clearly defined and our different for every person.
I did not really know how to approach this idea as a visual. But here’s an image I made while thinking about these questions. I found that thinking about these questions actually led to more and more questions but less answers.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BpTVX3XH95Z/?taken-by=areyoulookingclosely
24th Oct Notes:
It is important to focus on the process. Being lost is actually a great place to start from when actually making art. Embrace openness and messiness of process of making art. Freedom to respond to what you are thinking about. It does not necessarily have to be successful. Photography was initially referred to as the drawing of nature. Fluxus means flow. It is about arrival and going with the flow. John Cage says he is not content listening to music but listening to sounds. The difference between sound and music is music is organized by somebody. John Cage wants to assess sounds as they are. 4’33” is a composition made by John Cage. For 4 minutes and 33 seconds there is the sound of silence. Everything that happens in between this moment is part of the artwork. Fluxus art promoting this idea that everything is art. Making us aware of everything we are doing. Similarities with dadaism. Nam June Paik was the first person to incorporate video into art. The Unabomber is a terrorist who decided to start a revolution.
Homework: Go to the Fluxus workbook and find a performance that everyone will create
Ponder over this question individually: Do artists foresee the future or do artist create the future? What is an artist in relation to this?
For my work I decided to choose George Brecht’s word event piece from 1961 which basically included the word Exit.
In class last week it was mentioned that this whole Fluxus movement was heavily influenced by Dadaism. From what I have learned the word Dada in itself literally means nothing. And I think that is something I wanted to explore and think about; this idea that can something emerge from what we define as ‘nothing’.
When I first read the word ‘Exit’ in the Fluxus scores I immediately said the word to myself in my head. I decided I wanted to include the aspect of actually saying the word in my piece. And since we have been talking so much about art and technology I wanted to include this notion of exit or exiting within the digital world. So I opened up different accounts/programs and filmed myself ‘exiting’ them. It seems mundane but it made me think about this whole notion of performance and how in our daily lives we are constantly performing or kinds of tasks regardless of how obvious they may seem.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-OFO6O__zZBWm12Q2pjV0RZY1BnWWJYYVhfOUpkVzlUTHpJ/view?usp=sharing