In this class, I am hoping to learn more about how humanity takes advantage of new visual languages so as to benefit both individual people and groups. I would like to learn more about how technology brings people together and the ways in which it offers improved methods of communication, as well as the many drawbacks an image-based language may hold. It would be interesting to discuss these drawbacks, including how the use of images to communicate may affect our ability to articulate ideas. This is since icons/pictograms are often a simplification of language/text. Finally, I am hoping to do well in this course by sharing various thoughts/ideas with others and by learning more about images in the modern day setting as a whole.
Communicate more and more through images and less through text in the modern day
– What are these images
– Are they really a new language
Even young kids are learning how to take photographs properly – sophisticated visual language that we all have access to and certain visual codes that exist – fairly new form of communication.
– More than just a language
– What are the implications of having a new language
– Selfies, Emjois, etc, sharing images of food
We are here but we are always thinking of others
Friends that we only see on the screen, whole universes that exist online (in images)
How can I take part in that conversation and still have a voice that is distinct/meaningful.
How we change and create each other through technology
• The interrelation between technology and humanity with images playing a pivotal place in this relation
• The impact of technological evolution on our everyday life and foreseeable future
• The nature of technical images and their role in contemporary culture and life.
• The possibilities offered by contemporary images for the examination of these questions.
Information is available to everybody now
Knowledge is being shared and disseminated in very new ways, poses challenges for teachers
Less point in teachers trying to teach stuff – can learn it online
Most classes are going to be obsolete by the time you leave school
Must stay updated
Teacher can teach us how to learn
The key skill from school is – how do I learn/prove information, how do I gather, how do I make sense of it, how can I embody it so that it becomes me?
How can I have my own voice and use these images in my own particular way.
Weekly charts – Have to do each week,
Consider visual approach as a response to this
Phones – profound new gap between people with and without phones
Anthropocene – Changes that are happening, are pretty much irreversible, and are being changed mostly because of us
Threats of artificial intelligence
Virtual world population: over 150 million (of people who spend a significant amount of time in games, etc.)
These people are colonizing new worlds.
The image I chose for this week’s challenge is actually from an online blog called Hyperbole and a Half. It was an image that use to circulate online a fair amount (yes, I chose a meme) called ‘(Clean) All the Things.’ I promise that I’ll give a good explanation as to why….
The reason why this image has had a particular significance in my life was actually because of my final year in high school. During this time, I took on a particularly heavy workload and, thus, was concerned about my ability to keep up with all of the tasks I received from my classes, extracurricular activities, and two tutoring jobs. About halfway through the year, I ended up having a mini crisis, and for a short-time period (about a week), I was feeling extremely down and unmotivated. Often, I like to work as much as possible, but towards the end of this week I finally conceded to my overwhelming desire to take a break. It was then that I randomly started browsing the Internet – not searching for anything in particular but hoping I would come across something relevant to my current situation.
When I finally stumbled upon this image, I was reminded of my time in middle school when this picture was still popular to share amongst friends as a joke (along with troll faces, ettccc (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧). I had always wondered where it originated from, and so one Google image search later I officially found the artists blog, Hyperbole and a Half. I began reading through the article that included this image, and honestly found the blog post to be one of the most enlightening, comedic, and enjoyable stories I had ever sat through. Soon enough, I read nearly the entire website (my sleep schedule suffered but it was sooo worth it).
During that one week, this blog and image were the only things that pulled me out of my down state, and made me realize that other people face similar challenges when it comes to keeping up with the constant cycle of work. ‘Clean All the Things’ represents the motivated state one experiences at certain times in their life (A state generally more productive, and one that I wanted to reflect) – but I also realized that it is not a state a person can maintain constantly. It’s important to take breaks every once in a while and to have fun too. Without this image, however, I wouldn’t have been reminded of this, and most likely would have faced way greater difficulty/hardship throughout my final high school year. So, yep, a silly childhood meme actually had an extremely positive impact on my life when I rediscovered it, and this is why it holds such a great significance to me in particular!
Look back to image as an experience
– What does it mean in terms of our relationship with the image
What is an Image? Images and the Real, Human = Imagination
Images have been with us since the beginning of times. They are reservoirs.
Visual representation/depiction – No true definition of an image; no single way of describing an image – way more fundamental than anyone can possibly explain.
What possibilities are embedded in an image? What is behind this drive of creating images?
What is the true nature of our relation to them?
Images → Imagination
– Ideas from web = (Re)Create, inference, desire, freedom, future, culture
– Visual depiction, Perception, Associations, Knowledge, Documentation (recording of previous events)
– Images are not neutral, they are an expression of certain values and they say something about ourselves
– When we create an image of something we are somehow also framing it
– Communication → Message
Why don’t we have drawing/images of people but many images of animals – old, ancient paintings?
Sign (ex. stop sign) – message is communicative (universal code)
– No ambiguity
– Want to convey a very clear and unmistakeable message
Can be limitations to certain images because sometimes we have to be a part of a certain culture to understand an image – about precision
Code behind all/any image
– Language is also a particular code/culture – need access to a certain culture to absorb certain images
– Text is an image – there is a narrative
– Words, sounds we use, etc. are images
o Depiction of an object
o But it is still just as coded as H20 – all about conventions – we have decided that these words will mean something
Conventions – The images that we use whether verbal, written, gestures or visuals – have conventions that lay behind these images that we use → based upon culture; have to accept a certain convention
Each sound is also an image
Sounds are very powerful as they are organized abstractions – can make you feel complete, whole, etc.
– Music is something we can inhabit – can cause us to cry, can move us, images take over us, feelings and emotions take over us and we can revisit this over and over again
– Music is an image – it is an experience that is fundamental to us (every sound can become an image if we are attentive to it)
Taking picture of chair – have to be in the physical presence of the chair – tied to a unique object
Signs, signified, signifier – of chairs → also hint at an nontangible concept of what a chair is – however, there is a universal chair that you can depict through visual means
– An actual chair is also an image of what a chair is – different from your mental perception of a chair – one produces the next when it comes to images
– Images create images – very hard to say where anything starts
– Images we can represent but they are intangible – can never fully show/represent – a representation is an essence
Abstract Art
– Modern artwork and abstractions – makes us feel emotions and are compelled by it
– Colour theory and use of colour – how it makes us feel too
– Abstract work not discernable
– Art is a testimony to times and conditions – from a very intimate experience
– There is a connection between abstract painting and impressionism and music – a way of understanding images or an attempt to create images that can go beyond description and create something essential within us
Icon, formula, words, sounds, photographic images – they all have their own possibilities and describe reality in particular ways, speak a particular language
What makes an image art?
– Malevich was a leading artist in the first period of the Russian revolution
– Wanted to create a society in which everybody and had equal rights and had basic access to food, health care, literacy
o Many embraced this dream inside and outside of Russia
– He would embrace these ideas to create something new – artists believed that new images should be created for a new world
o Very radical artistic practices
o Suprematism
– “Under Suprematism I understand the primacy of pure feeling in creative art.”- Kasimir Malevich
• Try to create art like this
• Can talk about composition, etc. – but always try to evoke emotion, etc.
– Poetry takes as its purview what is deeply felt and is essentially unsayable; that is the paradox on which the poem necessarily turns – Meena Alexander
– Between what I see and what I say, between what I say and what I keep silent, between what I keep silent and what I dream, between what I dream and what I forget: poetry – Octavio Paz
Emotions and feelings such as love are intangible concepts – we are forever trying to grasp them but they always slip away from us – use art to represent them
Think of the image as what it is making you feel, Information → Art
There is a transition between the two
An image can be fully information, always be aware of this
Feel =/= think
Cover the whole screen with the image? Be mindful of how images are in relation to the space around the image – pictorial quality – can add or take from the image
Importance is in the strength/value of the image – acquire tools to have a voice and a place within the universe of images
Images and the Real – focus on this relation
– See what kind of narratives exist within the image
– Have a medieval presentation
o Religious – these kind of images have a particular feeling to them – they look different from our own world and there is a certain kind of visual language that is primitive
o No sense of space
o Proportions are quite wrong
– However, can read this image as a way of stressing certain elements in the image – meant to convey a message (of holiness, of the sacred, the church would have commissioned this piece)
o The painter is like an instrument here, would remain unknown – didn’t see them as geniuses but rather as instruments of God
– This image tells us that Jesus is the center figure of this image and of this world
– Going to the church and encountering this marvel (the painting) was extremely powerful
o Kind of like going to the cinema today
– Powerful encounter that these images were made to create/produce – were confrontational in nature – very often paintings would contain gold
However, image was speaking to a particular version of reality – this is another reality that was waiting for us in the afterlife
– We were taught that we suffer during life so that we can achieve this greatness/happiness in the after life
o Didn’t represent the space that we live in right now since it represented the heavens
Church wanted it to be really clear that the afterlife made life worth living for
In the Renaissance, similar situation
– Images did the same thing, however, everything shifts
– An earthly scene is depicted
o Has real context in this world
– Still has biblical context but has now been brought down to earth
– All about perspective representation
o When you are at the front of this image you are a part of this world – because of the way this image is constructed with perspective – the whole image is now around the viewer – we are now the center of this reality
o Birth of humanism
– We are an important central part of it and are no longer alienated like the last piece
Beginning of Impressionism
– Moved away from photo realism and wanted to focus less on what the picture looked like but more about what it felt like
– There is a looking out into the shadows, sunset, and water
– There is also introspection, from within the person
o Not meant to give us a picture of the real
o Rather, the real is what I feel inside
– Clear attempt to escape realistic representation
– Happened around the time photography was discovered
o Had to find a new place for itself, a new real since the real had been taken over by photography, photography had the advantage that anyone could do it
– Was a fundamental and enriching situation that opened a new universe of the internal reality of the human being
At every moment in history, there seems to be a sensitivity shared by every human being alive
Flodor Dostoyevski – Extraordinary Russian Writer, book goes inside the human being
Marcel Proust – Also a good writer
Quintessential democratic progressive medium → Photography, allows us to be precise and tells us the truth – provides us with a certainty
– Painters had to reinvent themselves
– The world became much more tangible, something we could grasp, share, put in our pocket, etc.
Take a Photo – As is we are still grabbing something from the real and holding it/keeping it/sharing it: It is yours now. Tangible – can take ownership of it.
Technical Images = Reality
– Not only photographs but also X-rays
– Had absolute faith in technology
o Allowed us to overcome our shortcomings as humanity – created conditions in society that allowed people to become more equal
Photographs – anyone now could make art
Daguerreotypes – was seen as an instrument of democracy, now anyone could take/make an image – not just restricted to the upper class
– Also allowed reality to be preserved
o Proof of existence, that a person had been alive
o Could have your image printed and sent out to relatives
Started a race to create ever more faithful representations of photography
Eadweard Muybridge
People would be sent out to take photos of another place/different people/etc.
Was a fundamental shift in our understanding of the world.
Human eye could not discern some of these things before, allowed us to show/see new things – could slice time with still shots, not only did the world become smaller but time became something we could manipulate
Could use time for our own goals, wanted this to control nature and the world through technology – so as to make life much better, has changed life radically
“Documentary Photography” – emerged, brought in a whole new set of practices – Images were considered real, meant to bear witness to the realities of the world, were meant to portray the real, created an extraordinary variety of works
“Information” “Art”
– Sign – Something completely abstract
There is a scale between the two, no image is pure
Putting images out there
– When you see images we often look at them quickly and then move on
– The reality of digital images is very different, be aware of this and incorporate
The website that an image is uploaded to affects its dialogue and what people take from it. Ex. twitter, tumblr
Images are very powerful
Except from “Remembrance of Things Past”
-The gaze of a person, movement – goes very deeply into gesture and considers all of the aspects of a person through this
– Endless journey to the very core of human beings
– Brings us upon this journey
Adam Curtis
– British Filmmaker that works on documentaries
– For the most part, gathers materials and images in ways that allow him to make a particular point
– Collage approach
Relation between visuals and information – all between the art and the information (Dialogue between the two, they are intertwined)
By satisfying inner desire – make people happy and complacent
– How to control the masses of the 20th century
Happiness machine
Propaganda use – counselling on public relations used as a positive word for this term
– Used experiments to persuade people
– Found that hitting the masses with media/images alone did not persuade them – tried to find a new method
– Not about what you tell the people – not about “information”
o Communication has to happen at a different level
What Freud calls the unconscious – how can we control the public opinion of a whole country? Of an empire?
Control masses with images and using the unconscious
Images hold a particular power and it is up to us to use them in a particular way
Torches of freedom (cigarettes for women) – liberty – emotion and memory associated with the statue of liberty
– Made them socially acceptable with a single symbolic ad
Change people’s ideas/opinions very quickly with images
Artists and image creators have this kind of power
Images can be staged – by knowing or not knowing changes the power of the image
– Can feel like you have been fooled, however, the image still playing a role in changing public opinion
Images give us the ability to feel the emotions or information conveyed in the picture – great photographers should be able to bring across messages about humanity
– Appeal to humanity in each individual
o Family of Men – was a powerful idea that underplayed all these images
o We are one
All that was directly lived has moved away into a representation
– We use images as masks – there is no access to any kind of real human experiences or real human interactions
– By the 1960s, no other thing than images
o Live in an unconscious reality always mediated by these images
o How we perceive the real is dependent upon these images
– Everything is just a spectacle, an ongoing show, can never understand who another person is in front of us
Can images contribute to social change?
Can images motivate ethical action?
Can images embody human freedom?
Have images lost their power, their sensitivity? → desensitization?
Question of photography and truth is now broken, it doesn’t exist anymore
The whole notion of truth doesn’t exist anymore
When looking at older images, something old, something gone that we long for that is not here anymore – photography is dead
Took a little longer because wanted to work on the transitions between each day :> — but here’s 09.26.
Day started off wonderful – excited for the upcoming project! Workload got a little worse after all of my classes and lab (research) time, however, I was still hopeful I could get through my various readings/assignments quickly.
The mind can be eerily quiet at times…
Not that I’m complaining x3
Most of my assignments took longer to complete than expected — I was concerned I wouldn’t get through them along with responding to all of my emails (related to my research position).
Felt a little lost but oddly alright.
Morning and afternoon was quite bland, mostly work and study. Constant repetition. Felt a bit better by the end of the day since I had an opportunity to take a break :3 Saw a friend and watched some Youtube !
A lot of positivity. Had the opportunity to speak on the phone with a friend from high school who I really miss. I haven’t seen her in at least a year. I also went out for dinner downtown. Overall, was a pretty great day.
It was, overall, a very boring day – full of lots of waiting. I could stop thinking about all of the classwork I would most likely receive. It was started to make me very uncomfortable and impatient. I always like getting things done on time or in advance, when possible, and knowing that there is work to be done in the near future but that isn’t available at the moment can be horrible. Also began preparing for a midterm.
Finished my final and got to go to a concert! Feeling a lot more energized now. I’ve mostly gotten over my concern from yesterday though a little still lingers. However, I am looking forward to what tomorrow may bring!
Images – language → try to use this for → Art + Technology
– How artists are connected to the technologies of their time
– Turn technology into tool
– 3rd part of the term: Discuss questions around technology – written using language
How can I communicate a more complicated comment about the conditions in which we live today?
Art//Technology//Freedom – VISA 210
Futurists – Group of artists working at the turn of the twentieth century – very loose collective that found themselves having things in common
– Fillipo Tomasso Marinetti
o Created ideas related to the new life technology was bringing about
o He was a poet – poets have a particular way of seeing the world → not acknowledged enough – rappers are modern poets/poets of our time
o Read the Futurist manifesto
o Railroads, steamboats, airplanes – were changing life profoundly – was a moment of experimentation of very new things
• A lot of the methods were failures
• People were willing to risk their lives in an attempt to fly
– Futurists felt that the promise of technology could simply bring about and was bringing about a new world
o This new world would somehow bring about new dreams and could solve all of the ills within society – we could overcome all of the challenges that nature brought to us
– Anything can be done, anything is possible, the past is holding us back
– Erase everything from the past and start from scratch
o Were about violence in terms of creating the new world
o Embraced this new world in their own means
– Felt that the typical poetic from, with lines, was a thing of the past – wanted “words in freedom” – break away from everything – what is the language that can be used to describe a new world with new technology – how do we describe this new world
Sense of being more than human – can overcome any limitations that nature poses in front of us through the help of technology
Sense of invincibility – ex. Ironman
Italian Futurism: Sculpture Umberto Boccioni
War wasn’t something wonderful the futurists were claiming it to be
→ New technology led to World War (Was possible only because of the technology that promised so much) → brought about a nightmare that deeply traumatized the consciousness of everybody alive
Freud
– Mass control: This notion became center because of the experience of war
– How do we end up here and avoid that
– War in which humans became machine like
o Dada’s works – expression of what people saw: often killing each other
• Wanted to portray this nightmare
• There is something dark inside of us
– Mass control → Man and Machines became one thing
World War I took away the hope for a bright, new, beautiful universe with humans and technology
Were portraying nightmares – nothing makes sense – everything has lost meaning since words have been so corrupted by politicians and the media that we could not communicate with one another
Art was an expression of the lack of language, wanted to talk about this nightmare – created new language to describe this horror and this is what came out of it (Dada) – wanted to portray the nightmare, cynicism, a complete nihilism and disbelief in anything, all about monsters (Karawane)
Technology → Its promises → and the reality of its promises
(dichotomy/dilemma that we are living in now is not new, other artists have struggled with this; many times living in Vancouver is an Oasis)
– Know that fascism is emerging in many places of the world, many people are dying – how do we express this?
– How do we describe our world today with our own words – through technology
What are the possibilities that this new media provides to us? – Continue to experiment with different media
Impressionism
Clair de lune – Composition that was done in the time of the impressionism – time very different from the one that we are describing – speak about their time (a very different time – a sense of beauty and hope in Paris, technology still held hope – those feelings are somehow embedded in this work)
Polo and Pan – Pays Imaginaire (modern version of the song above)
Another version of this same song by Janelle Monae
ART
Image?
Representation/Visual←doesn’t have to be/Depiction
Language/Expression/Indication
Documentation
Mental Images → Illusive and Untouchable: images in the sense that they can be almost anything, how do we describe and manifest this image that we have within our mind
What is an image today?
Motion/Light/Cycles/Waves
Depth/Colours/Reflections
Medieval images centralized the importance of humanity and Christ → each image can have more than one meaning – can be a political motif → in the medieval times we believed that human beings were the centre, we are the centre upon which this universe exists
Images ←→ Worldview
Images always correspond to a particular worldview; particular perception of what real is
When photography was invented → Worldview also changed – reality is something that is palpable, graspable, and this is proof that something existed – it is actual reality, not what somebody thought it was like. Erased the lack of truth in other depictions.
Technology of the time → Images → “Real” → (changes all the time)
Above (cyclic) and one generates the other
In a moment of crisis – look inside of yourself
“I think therefore I exist” – Impressionists: the idea of representation was dissolved so one looked inside themselves; what they felt
Right now we don’t understand the world anymore
Science is in crisis – we don’t know what it is to be alive anymore → creates crisis and confusion: political conflict, endless separation of individuals into smaller and smaller enclosures, we are going through a profound crisis in all aspects
Don’t know what:
– Light
– Matter
– Gravity
– Human?
There is no reason anymore
Images have become a form of EXPLORATION
It is not a statement; it is a way of understanding, questioning, and trying to make sense of the world
Images created by TUMBLR, VINE
Creates different images and, from this, different realities emerge
Conflict/Hope/Unknown
Perception/Senses/Space
Pixilation/Technology/Manipulation → A rethinking of something else
Reconfiguration
Appropriation – 1980s, It is meaningless to talk about this today since cutting and pasting is an everyday act in every field of knowledge, there is no more appropriation
Simply using these images in a different way, ownership is no longer important
Using words is not a transgressive act – use them as our language
Can use existing images as a language
Applied to the real → Conflict, Hope, Reconfiguration of the real (we are creating new materials that never existed before, reality can be reconfigured to our real – everything revolves around technology (our conflict and our hopes)
What is the image today? – Have a relationship with the real
That drawing, painting, and photography no longer have
The real of today emerges from the images of today
Not saying that these aren’t able to depict our reality, instead, these images are what create the real today → particularly acute here
Image – Essentially unsayable, it is an abyss between things, this abyss is the image and we use other things to represent it
My main conceptual idea for this was really inspired by the stylized vaporwave videos that are quite popular on Youtube — To me, the whole experience of this song elicited feelings that were very similar to the ones vaporwave videos (and their corresponding audio) also produced.
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Economy of Means
Futurismo → Futurists
– How they responded to the conditions of their time
– Living in a moment that echoed the moment that we are living in
– Technology was starting to have the influence that we feel today
– Cities as we know them today started to rise in the 20th century – water, electricity, amenities, buildings, brought about the cities of today
– Chaotic moment when technology became the glue for social life
o Birth of capitalism
o Cant live without technology anymore
– Quite harsh, radical, and fascist
o Living in a moment when this fascist sensibility is emerging
– What is the role of technology in fostering this sense of sensibility
– For futurists: limit of freedom was fundamental – had to leave behind the past – all of the traditions were holding back the future – freedom from the past that was being advocated
o Flying was a promise – envious of freedom
• This was a dream, only in the realms of dreams was this possible, made it happen
– Futurists very grounded in their time
– Group of artists that came up with a plan, idea, project – that was made possible with the new media
– Movement started within the newspaper – a sign of the time
o New sensibility, get rid of the past
– Drive to find a new language/a new means to describe this moment
– In images, included: Flight, speed, reoccurring perspective of space
Promise of technology = freedom (from the past, from limitations of nature, etc.)
Everything seems possible, we feel this today
– Whatever the risks, we still hold onto the powerful promise of freedom through technology
Reconstruction of the universe
1. Images
2. Art/Technology/Freedom
Move onto a different stage with our images
Russian Cubo-Futurism
– Polarization of movements – see fascism emerging all over the world but at the same time a very pacifist movement and people looking for ways out of this
– Communist revolution – new society in which everyone will be equal, get access to food, to the arts – no poor no rich → was a very powerful dream
– Communist or socialist dream
– Technology – Lenin said that the way for the future was a combination/common property of technology and the sharing of stuff – used to move forward, the way towards the future
– Trying to communicate not only with the words but also with sounds
– A Slap in the Face of Public Taste
o Lot in common between the two forms of futurism
– Were, in a way, destroying the museum – not by burning it – but by bringing art to the streets and to everyone
– People were living in horrendous poverty in the country side and images allowed communication to the masses – most important form of communication was the cinema
– Dziga Vertov – Man with a Movie Camera
o Wanted to liberate film from script, artifices, storyline/plot, actors, etc.
Resulted in global massacre – artists were killed and repressed – most artworks were censored and hidden
– Most were rediscovered recently (90s)
– Fundamental moment in cinema, said that the history of cinema (and Hollywood) would have been very different today
o An experimental band took the film and added music to it during the 90s
o Can see a common thread between both the futurists and the Russian futurists – fundamentally the same thing
• Car, automobile, speed, new life, technology – feel like the future is a new universe (Man and the camera, man and technology)
– Notion of freedom through alliance with technology
Artists make art for the rich – we advocate for equality but we end up creating works for the educated ones, the ones who have the time and technology to understand art and study it – within the museum, etc.
Even against there own will = artists creating a new sense of beauty
– These movements have changed – they have expanded the new notions of beauty
– Something more to beauty than what we expected
– Think about gifs as new possibilities for creating beauty
– New possibilities that these views inform us of – what is the new beauty emerging from our moment
o We are always creating new forms of beauty
Ray gun magazine
– Rise of personal computers
– Rise of the new software that offered all of these possibilities – artists embraced this and tried to reinvent what they could do with that
New technology invites new forms of art
– Medium became the content
How can we rediscover or reinvent what beauty is to us today
Relationship between art/technology/freedom
Questions –
What is the relation between technology and art?
What is the relation between art and freedom?
What is the relation between technology and freedom?
I initially found myself feeling quite lost while attempting to represent the relation between each concept within an image. Many different ideas came to mind but none of them seemed appropriate. At first, I wanted to consider the positive impact that technology can have on both art and freedom, especially with regard to bringing people together. However, while working on this assignment, I started to ponder over the times that technology can limit these two concepts – i.e. segregating people from one another – and what this could look like visually.
Art = Knowledge
Philosophy – Understanding (We can never do fully – but there is an endless drive to pursue this)
Art (Never about understanding)
Art gets at the questions that are un-answerable – is a knowledge that I share from myself hoping that this resonates with other people – endless exploration
No other fields of knowledge can tell us about the true nature of what being human means
The process below works, but messiness is where things become more rich and powerful – where you learn about what it is that you’re doing and thinking about
1. Think
2. Distill
3. Make Art
Messiness – embrace it
Success comes later
Art → Leads to freedom but requires technology (ex. brush, computer, piano)
Also conditions it
Artistic creation – a negotiation between what I want and what the instrument allows me to do
Ex. expand our freedom because allows a new form of art – close relationship between technology and the art (ex. perspective representation)
Photography came along and created an entirely different type of freedom – with it came new possibilities and new limitations – couldn’t make coloured images
Photography was called – the Drawing of Nature
Since it was black and white and had the freedom to create something instantly with absolute precision without colour
– We gained colour – but can tell that an image isn’t from today because of the colours created within films at the time
– Ex. colours from film print
Have to find the right place for us between art and tech
Process of creating as a central element
Fluxus – Means flow → not interested in arrival but rather just going with the flow
“Music” – Artist (Organizes sound for us; intended)
Sound ← John Cage – to him this is the sound of life, life in itself happening, wanted to wipe out the mediation of the artist and access experience through experience
– Was very interested in ZEN philosophy, of being aware and being here in the now
– Being able to appreciate the world as such
Was obsessed with silence – it is impossible to achieve complete silence because our body creates noise too
– Power in the raw manifestation of life – wanted to really enjoy this power
Sound Sculptures
– Duchamp
Fluxus was not about big artists – was about living out life as if it was a work of art, was for everyone
4’33” – Everything that happens during this piece becomes a part of the artwork – a part of the experience of art
– Called it an art composition
– A music/noise composition
– Makes us participate in this creative moment – spontaneous
– Creates a new definition of the musician and the artists
o What the artist is
• We all become the artist
Creates a space of messiness, improvisation, and openness telling us that art can be anything we want it to be
Wanted to erase the high arts and make everyone an artist
Wanted to create the ultimate art – the ultimate work of art since everything is art
Notion of art becoming life and life becoming art – no boundaries between them
Music is an important, recurrent piece in their artwork
Yoko-ono one of the most popular
With the absurd, with the unproductiveness, etc. – beauty is not in the artwork but rather in the eye of the beholder – therefore, don’t need an artist and can define certain parts of life as beautiful
Had Events – to create a space for people to come and hang out
Nam June Paik
Three Transitions – Peter Campus
Birth of new possibilities created by technology to create art
Game of creating and creation between art and tech
Art, Technology, Science, and Military – play a role together
A variation of the Art, Technology, and Freedom
Contradiction between these two – free art movement → nobody has achieved this kind of drive – ex. today the artwork is sickening and we are all just clowns
Fluxus – felt that they were participating in a revolution through the arts by embracing life without violence – wanted to achieve this for today, were founders of this new world – the imagination of an artist can create this new world
Art is somehow always trapped – money often comes from the part that you are criticizing/that you are against
When I first started this assignment, I had selected a different piece entirely. However, I soon found I wasn’t enjoying the process and also felt uninspired. Subsequently, I changed which Fluxus piece I wanted to perform. I finally settled upon “Paradigm [for Dick Higgins],” which involved selecting an object surrounded by similar items, designating it as a model for all such objects, and isolating its distinct features. Instead of selecting a physical object, I chose a digital one (my desktop VISA folder).
While working on this piece, I started to consider the concepts of information documentation vs. art, which seemed to blur overtime. I soon became overwhelmed by the amount of information I could find or generate that was specific to my “folder model,” as well as the endless ways this information could be represented. In the end, I chose newhive as a platform for my finalized work since it provided a visual way to culminate any data relevant to my project.
In this class, I am hoping to learn more about how humanity takes advantage of new visual languages so as to benefit both individual people and groups. I would like to learn more about how technology brings people together and the ways in which it offers improved methods of communication, as well as the many drawbacks an image-based language may hold. It would be interesting to discuss these drawbacks, including how the use of images to communicate may affect our ability to articulate ideas. This is since icons/pictograms are often a simplification of language/text. Finally, I am hoping to do well in this course by sharing various thoughts/ideas with others and by learning more about images in the modern day setting as a whole.
VISA 210 – Class Notes September 5th
Communicate more and more through images and less through text in the modern day
– What are these images
– Are they really a new language
Even young kids are learning how to take photographs properly – sophisticated visual language that we all have access to and certain visual codes that exist – fairly new form of communication.
– More than just a language
– What are the implications of having a new language
– Selfies, Emjois, etc, sharing images of food
We are here but we are always thinking of others
Friends that we only see on the screen, whole universes that exist online (in images)
How can I take part in that conversation and still have a voice that is distinct/meaningful.
How we change and create each other through technology
• The interrelation between technology and humanity with images playing a pivotal place in this relation
• The impact of technological evolution on our everyday life and foreseeable future
• The nature of technical images and their role in contemporary culture and life.
• The possibilities offered by contemporary images for the examination of these questions.
Information is available to everybody now
Knowledge is being shared and disseminated in very new ways, poses challenges for teachers
Less point in teachers trying to teach stuff – can learn it online
Most classes are going to be obsolete by the time you leave school
Must stay updated
Teacher can teach us how to learn
The key skill from school is – how do I learn/prove information, how do I gather, how do I make sense of it, how can I embody it so that it becomes me?
How can I have my own voice and use these images in my own particular way.
Weekly charts – Have to do each week,
Consider visual approach as a response to this
Phones – profound new gap between people with and without phones
Anthropocene – Changes that are happening, are pretty much irreversible, and are being changed mostly because of us
Threats of artificial intelligence
Virtual world population: over 150 million (of people who spend a significant amount of time in games, etc.)
These people are colonizing new worlds.
The image I chose for this week’s challenge is actually from an online blog called Hyperbole and a Half. It was an image that use to circulate online a fair amount (yes, I chose a meme) called ‘(Clean) All the Things.’ I promise that I’ll give a good explanation as to why….
The reason why this image has had a particular significance in my life was actually because of my final year in high school. During this time, I took on a particularly heavy workload and, thus, was concerned about my ability to keep up with all of the tasks I received from my classes, extracurricular activities, and two tutoring jobs. About halfway through the year, I ended up having a mini crisis, and for a short-time period (about a week), I was feeling extremely down and unmotivated. Often, I like to work as much as possible, but towards the end of this week I finally conceded to my overwhelming desire to take a break. It was then that I randomly started browsing the Internet – not searching for anything in particular but hoping I would come across something relevant to my current situation.
When I finally stumbled upon this image, I was reminded of my time in middle school when this picture was still popular to share amongst friends as a joke (along with troll faces, ettccc (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧). I had always wondered where it originated from, and so one Google image search later I officially found the artists blog, Hyperbole and a Half. I began reading through the article that included this image, and honestly found the blog post to be one of the most enlightening, comedic, and enjoyable stories I had ever sat through. Soon enough, I read nearly the entire website (my sleep schedule suffered but it was sooo worth it).
During that one week, this blog and image were the only things that pulled me out of my down state, and made me realize that other people face similar challenges when it comes to keeping up with the constant cycle of work. ‘Clean All the Things’ represents the motivated state one experiences at certain times in their life (A state generally more productive, and one that I wanted to reflect) – but I also realized that it is not a state a person can maintain constantly. It’s important to take breaks every once in a while and to have fun too. Without this image, however, I wouldn’t have been reminded of this, and most likely would have faced way greater difficulty/hardship throughout my final high school year. So, yep, a silly childhood meme actually had an extremely positive impact on my life when I rediscovered it, and this is why it holds such a great significance to me in particular!
VISA 210 – Class Notes September 12th
Look back to image as an experience
– What does it mean in terms of our relationship with the image
What is an Image? Images and the Real, Human = Imagination
Images have been with us since the beginning of times. They are reservoirs.
Visual representation/depiction – No true definition of an image; no single way of describing an image – way more fundamental than anyone can possibly explain.
What possibilities are embedded in an image? What is behind this drive of creating images?
What is the true nature of our relation to them?
Images → Imagination
– Ideas from web = (Re)Create, inference, desire, freedom, future, culture
– Visual depiction, Perception, Associations, Knowledge, Documentation (recording of previous events)
– Images are not neutral, they are an expression of certain values and they say something about ourselves
– When we create an image of something we are somehow also framing it
– Communication → Message
Why don’t we have drawing/images of people but many images of animals – old, ancient paintings?
Sign (ex. stop sign) – message is communicative (universal code)
– No ambiguity
– Want to convey a very clear and unmistakeable message
Can be limitations to certain images because sometimes we have to be a part of a certain culture to understand an image – about precision
Code behind all/any image
– Language is also a particular code/culture – need access to a certain culture to absorb certain images
– Text is an image – there is a narrative
– Words, sounds we use, etc. are images
o Depiction of an object
o But it is still just as coded as H20 – all about conventions – we have decided that these words will mean something
Conventions – The images that we use whether verbal, written, gestures or visuals – have conventions that lay behind these images that we use → based upon culture; have to accept a certain convention
Each sound is also an image
Sounds are very powerful as they are organized abstractions – can make you feel complete, whole, etc.
– Music is something we can inhabit – can cause us to cry, can move us, images take over us, feelings and emotions take over us and we can revisit this over and over again
– Music is an image – it is an experience that is fundamental to us (every sound can become an image if we are attentive to it)
Taking picture of chair – have to be in the physical presence of the chair – tied to a unique object
Signs, signified, signifier – of chairs → also hint at an nontangible concept of what a chair is – however, there is a universal chair that you can depict through visual means
– An actual chair is also an image of what a chair is – different from your mental perception of a chair – one produces the next when it comes to images
– Images create images – very hard to say where anything starts
– Images we can represent but they are intangible – can never fully show/represent – a representation is an essence
Abstract Art
– Modern artwork and abstractions – makes us feel emotions and are compelled by it
– Colour theory and use of colour – how it makes us feel too
– Abstract work not discernable
– Art is a testimony to times and conditions – from a very intimate experience
– There is a connection between abstract painting and impressionism and music – a way of understanding images or an attempt to create images that can go beyond description and create something essential within us
Icon, formula, words, sounds, photographic images – they all have their own possibilities and describe reality in particular ways, speak a particular language
What makes an image art?
– Malevich was a leading artist in the first period of the Russian revolution
– Wanted to create a society in which everybody and had equal rights and had basic access to food, health care, literacy
o Many embraced this dream inside and outside of Russia
– He would embrace these ideas to create something new – artists believed that new images should be created for a new world
o Very radical artistic practices
o Suprematism
– “Under Suprematism I understand the primacy of pure feeling in creative art.”- Kasimir Malevich
• Try to create art like this
• Can talk about composition, etc. – but always try to evoke emotion, etc.
– Poetry takes as its purview what is deeply felt and is essentially unsayable; that is the paradox on which the poem necessarily turns – Meena Alexander
– Between what I see and what I say, between what I say and what I keep silent, between what I keep silent and what I dream, between what I dream and what I forget: poetry – Octavio Paz
Emotions and feelings such as love are intangible concepts – we are forever trying to grasp them but they always slip away from us – use art to represent them
******Flash Warning******
via GIPHY
Represents a transition between the mental states expressed in my previous description :0
via GIPHY
(Test)
VISA 210 – Class Notes September 19th
Think of the image as what it is making you feel, Information → Art
There is a transition between the two
An image can be fully information, always be aware of this
Feel =/= think
Cover the whole screen with the image? Be mindful of how images are in relation to the space around the image – pictorial quality – can add or take from the image
Importance is in the strength/value of the image – acquire tools to have a voice and a place within the universe of images
Images and the Real – focus on this relation
– See what kind of narratives exist within the image
– Have a medieval presentation
o Religious – these kind of images have a particular feeling to them – they look different from our own world and there is a certain kind of visual language that is primitive
o No sense of space
o Proportions are quite wrong
– However, can read this image as a way of stressing certain elements in the image – meant to convey a message (of holiness, of the sacred, the church would have commissioned this piece)
o The painter is like an instrument here, would remain unknown – didn’t see them as geniuses but rather as instruments of God
– This image tells us that Jesus is the center figure of this image and of this world
– Going to the church and encountering this marvel (the painting) was extremely powerful
o Kind of like going to the cinema today
– Powerful encounter that these images were made to create/produce – were confrontational in nature – very often paintings would contain gold
However, image was speaking to a particular version of reality – this is another reality that was waiting for us in the afterlife
– We were taught that we suffer during life so that we can achieve this greatness/happiness in the after life
o Didn’t represent the space that we live in right now since it represented the heavens
Church wanted it to be really clear that the afterlife made life worth living for
In the Renaissance, similar situation
– Images did the same thing, however, everything shifts
– An earthly scene is depicted
o Has real context in this world
– Still has biblical context but has now been brought down to earth
– All about perspective representation
o When you are at the front of this image you are a part of this world – because of the way this image is constructed with perspective – the whole image is now around the viewer – we are now the center of this reality
o Birth of humanism
– We are an important central part of it and are no longer alienated like the last piece
Beginning of Impressionism
– Moved away from photo realism and wanted to focus less on what the picture looked like but more about what it felt like
– There is a looking out into the shadows, sunset, and water
– There is also introspection, from within the person
o Not meant to give us a picture of the real
o Rather, the real is what I feel inside
– Clear attempt to escape realistic representation
– Happened around the time photography was discovered
o Had to find a new place for itself, a new real since the real had been taken over by photography, photography had the advantage that anyone could do it
– Was a fundamental and enriching situation that opened a new universe of the internal reality of the human being
At every moment in history, there seems to be a sensitivity shared by every human being alive
Flodor Dostoyevski – Extraordinary Russian Writer, book goes inside the human being
Marcel Proust – Also a good writer
Quintessential democratic progressive medium → Photography, allows us to be precise and tells us the truth – provides us with a certainty
– Painters had to reinvent themselves
– The world became much more tangible, something we could grasp, share, put in our pocket, etc.
Take a Photo – As is we are still grabbing something from the real and holding it/keeping it/sharing it: It is yours now. Tangible – can take ownership of it.
Technical Images = Reality
– Not only photographs but also X-rays
– Had absolute faith in technology
o Allowed us to overcome our shortcomings as humanity – created conditions in society that allowed people to become more equal
Photographs – anyone now could make art
Daguerreotypes – was seen as an instrument of democracy, now anyone could take/make an image – not just restricted to the upper class
– Also allowed reality to be preserved
o Proof of existence, that a person had been alive
o Could have your image printed and sent out to relatives
Started a race to create ever more faithful representations of photography
Eadweard Muybridge
People would be sent out to take photos of another place/different people/etc.
Was a fundamental shift in our understanding of the world.
Human eye could not discern some of these things before, allowed us to show/see new things – could slice time with still shots, not only did the world become smaller but time became something we could manipulate
Could use time for our own goals, wanted this to control nature and the world through technology – so as to make life much better, has changed life radically
“Documentary Photography” – emerged, brought in a whole new set of practices – Images were considered real, meant to bear witness to the realities of the world, were meant to portray the real, created an extraordinary variety of works
Robert Capa – Took photos in the 1930s
Life
Images = Reality = Images
https://spaces.hightail.com/space/QApVb9PzZs
What is an Apple?
https://spaces.hightail.com/space/QApVb9PzZs
What is an Apple Assignment Submission!ヾ(˚▽˚)☝
https://spaces.hightail.com/space/QApVb9PzZs
What is an apple?
https://spaces.hightail.com/space/QApVb9PzZs
https://spaces.hightail.com/space/QApVb9PzZs
What is an Apple?
https://spaces.hightail.com/space/QApVb9PzZs
Apple!
Apple
no just notes
(•_•) ( •_•)>⌐■-■ (⌐■_■)
VISA 210 – Class Notes September 26th
“Information” “Art”
– Sign – Something completely abstract
There is a scale between the two, no image is pure
Putting images out there
– When you see images we often look at them quickly and then move on
– The reality of digital images is very different, be aware of this and incorporate
The website that an image is uploaded to affects its dialogue and what people take from it. Ex. twitter, tumblr
Images are very powerful
Except from “Remembrance of Things Past”
-The gaze of a person, movement – goes very deeply into gesture and considers all of the aspects of a person through this
– Endless journey to the very core of human beings
– Brings us upon this journey
Adam Curtis
– British Filmmaker that works on documentaries
– For the most part, gathers materials and images in ways that allow him to make a particular point
– Collage approach
Relation between visuals and information – all between the art and the information (Dialogue between the two, they are intertwined)
By satisfying inner desire – make people happy and complacent
– How to control the masses of the 20th century
Happiness machine
Propaganda use – counselling on public relations used as a positive word for this term
– Used experiments to persuade people
– Found that hitting the masses with media/images alone did not persuade them – tried to find a new method
– Not about what you tell the people – not about “information”
o Communication has to happen at a different level
What Freud calls the unconscious – how can we control the public opinion of a whole country? Of an empire?
Control masses with images and using the unconscious
Images hold a particular power and it is up to us to use them in a particular way
Torches of freedom (cigarettes for women) – liberty – emotion and memory associated with the statue of liberty
– Made them socially acceptable with a single symbolic ad
Change people’s ideas/opinions very quickly with images
Artists and image creators have this kind of power
Images can be staged – by knowing or not knowing changes the power of the image
– Can feel like you have been fooled, however, the image still playing a role in changing public opinion
Images give us the ability to feel the emotions or information conveyed in the picture – great photographers should be able to bring across messages about humanity
– Appeal to humanity in each individual
o Family of Men – was a powerful idea that underplayed all these images
o We are one
All that was directly lived has moved away into a representation
– We use images as masks – there is no access to any kind of real human experiences or real human interactions
– By the 1960s, no other thing than images
o Live in an unconscious reality always mediated by these images
o How we perceive the real is dependent upon these images
– Everything is just a spectacle, an ongoing show, can never understand who another person is in front of us
Can images contribute to social change?
Can images motivate ethical action?
Can images embody human freedom?
Have images lost their power, their sensitivity? → desensitization?
Question of photography and truth is now broken, it doesn’t exist anymore
The whole notion of truth doesn’t exist anymore
When looking at older images, something old, something gone that we long for that is not here anymore – photography is dead
https://animageoftoday.tumblr.com/post/178657875757/0926-mixed-feelings
Took a little longer because wanted to work on the transitions between each day :> — but here’s 09.26.
Day started off wonderful – excited for the upcoming project! Workload got a little worse after all of my classes and lab (research) time, however, I was still hopeful I could get through my various readings/assignments quickly.
https://animageoftoday.tumblr.com/post/178657975877/0927-calm-after-the-storm
09.27
The mind can be eerily quiet at times…
Not that I’m complaining x3
Most of my assignments took longer to complete than expected — I was concerned I wouldn’t get through them along with responding to all of my emails (related to my research position).
Felt a little lost but oddly alright.
https://animageoftoday.tumblr.com/post/178658230067/0928-a-slow-transition
09.28
Morning and afternoon was quite bland, mostly work and study. Constant repetition. Felt a bit better by the end of the day since I had an opportunity to take a break :3 Saw a friend and watched some Youtube !
https://animageoftoday.tumblr.com/post/178658315327/0929-happy-medium
09.29
A lot of positivity. Had the opportunity to speak on the phone with a friend from high school who I really miss. I haven’t seen her in at least a year. I also went out for dinner downtown. Overall, was a pretty great day.
09.30
https://animageoftoday.tumblr.com/post/178674921722/0930-anticipation
Continuing with the audio and also wanted to represent the transition between emotional states in another format.
https://animageoftoday.tumblr.com/post/178659545112/09290930-mood
It was, overall, a very boring day – full of lots of waiting. I could stop thinking about all of the classwork I would most likely receive. It was started to make me very uncomfortable and impatient. I always like getting things done on time or in advance, when possible, and knowing that there is work to be done in the near future but that isn’t available at the moment can be horrible. Also began preparing for a midterm.
10.01
(Audio) https://animageoftoday.tumblr.com/post/178675188422/1001
(Visual) https://animageoftoday.tumblr.com/post/178675323052/10011002-race-against-time
Barely any time to study, had to cram for my exam.
Too many projects to focus on and complete.
Didn’t get enough sleep.
10.02
https://animageoftoday.tumblr.com/post/178690132932/1002-content
Finished my final and got to go to a concert! Feeling a lot more energized now. I’ve mostly gotten over my concern from yesterday though a little still lingers. However, I am looking forward to what tomorrow may bring!
VISA 210 – Class Notes October 3rd ( ﾟヮﾟ)
Images → Art
Images – language → try to use this for → Art + Technology
– How artists are connected to the technologies of their time
– Turn technology into tool
– 3rd part of the term: Discuss questions around technology – written using language
How can I communicate a more complicated comment about the conditions in which we live today?
Art//Technology//Freedom – VISA 210
Futurists – Group of artists working at the turn of the twentieth century – very loose collective that found themselves having things in common
– Fillipo Tomasso Marinetti
o Created ideas related to the new life technology was bringing about
o He was a poet – poets have a particular way of seeing the world → not acknowledged enough – rappers are modern poets/poets of our time
o Read the Futurist manifesto
o Railroads, steamboats, airplanes – were changing life profoundly – was a moment of experimentation of very new things
• A lot of the methods were failures
• People were willing to risk their lives in an attempt to fly
– Futurists felt that the promise of technology could simply bring about and was bringing about a new world
o This new world would somehow bring about new dreams and could solve all of the ills within society – we could overcome all of the challenges that nature brought to us
– Anything can be done, anything is possible, the past is holding us back
– Erase everything from the past and start from scratch
o Were about violence in terms of creating the new world
o Embraced this new world in their own means
– Felt that the typical poetic from, with lines, was a thing of the past – wanted “words in freedom” – break away from everything – what is the language that can be used to describe a new world with new technology – how do we describe this new world
Sense of being more than human – can overcome any limitations that nature poses in front of us through the help of technology
Sense of invincibility – ex. Ironman
Italian Futurism: Sculpture Umberto Boccioni
War wasn’t something wonderful the futurists were claiming it to be
→ New technology led to World War (Was possible only because of the technology that promised so much) → brought about a nightmare that deeply traumatized the consciousness of everybody alive
Freud
– Mass control: This notion became center because of the experience of war
– How do we end up here and avoid that
– War in which humans became machine like
o Dada’s works – expression of what people saw: often killing each other
• Wanted to portray this nightmare
• There is something dark inside of us
– Mass control → Man and Machines became one thing
World War I took away the hope for a bright, new, beautiful universe with humans and technology
Were portraying nightmares – nothing makes sense – everything has lost meaning since words have been so corrupted by politicians and the media that we could not communicate with one another
Art was an expression of the lack of language, wanted to talk about this nightmare – created new language to describe this horror and this is what came out of it (Dada) – wanted to portray the nightmare, cynicism, a complete nihilism and disbelief in anything, all about monsters (Karawane)
Technology → Its promises → and the reality of its promises
(dichotomy/dilemma that we are living in now is not new, other artists have struggled with this; many times living in Vancouver is an Oasis)
– Know that fascism is emerging in many places of the world, many people are dying – how do we express this?
– How do we describe our world today with our own words – through technology
What are the possibilities that this new media provides to us? – Continue to experiment with different media
Impressionism
Clair de lune – Composition that was done in the time of the impressionism – time very different from the one that we are describing – speak about their time (a very different time – a sense of beauty and hope in Paris, technology still held hope – those feelings are somehow embedded in this work)
Polo and Pan – Pays Imaginaire (modern version of the song above)
Another version of this same song by Janelle Monae
The Image of the Image II Assignment Submission:
https://youtu.be/OrakCiyq6B8
VISA 210 – Class Notes October 10th (~˘▾˘)~
1. Images
2. Art/Technology/Freedom
3. → Technology
ART
Image?
Representation/Visual←doesn’t have to be/Depiction
Language/Expression/Indication
Documentation
Mental Images → Illusive and Untouchable: images in the sense that they can be almost anything, how do we describe and manifest this image that we have within our mind
What is an image today?
Motion/Light/Cycles/Waves
Depth/Colours/Reflections
Medieval images centralized the importance of humanity and Christ → each image can have more than one meaning – can be a political motif → in the medieval times we believed that human beings were the centre, we are the centre upon which this universe exists
Images ←→ Worldview
Images always correspond to a particular worldview; particular perception of what real is
When photography was invented → Worldview also changed – reality is something that is palpable, graspable, and this is proof that something existed – it is actual reality, not what somebody thought it was like. Erased the lack of truth in other depictions.
Technology of the time → Images → “Real” → (changes all the time)
Above (cyclic) and one generates the other
In a moment of crisis – look inside of yourself
“I think therefore I exist” – Impressionists: the idea of representation was dissolved so one looked inside themselves; what they felt
Right now we don’t understand the world anymore
Science is in crisis – we don’t know what it is to be alive anymore → creates crisis and confusion: political conflict, endless separation of individuals into smaller and smaller enclosures, we are going through a profound crisis in all aspects
Don’t know what:
– Light
– Matter
– Gravity
– Human?
There is no reason anymore
Images have become a form of EXPLORATION
It is not a statement; it is a way of understanding, questioning, and trying to make sense of the world
Images created by TUMBLR, VINE
Creates different images and, from this, different realities emerge
Conflict/Hope/Unknown
Perception/Senses/Space
Pixilation/Technology/Manipulation → A rethinking of something else
Reconfiguration
Appropriation – 1980s, It is meaningless to talk about this today since cutting and pasting is an everyday act in every field of knowledge, there is no more appropriation
Simply using these images in a different way, ownership is no longer important
Using words is not a transgressive act – use them as our language
Can use existing images as a language
Applied to the real → Conflict, Hope, Reconfiguration of the real (we are creating new materials that never existed before, reality can be reconfigured to our real – everything revolves around technology (our conflict and our hopes)
What is the image today? – Have a relationship with the real
That drawing, painting, and photography no longer have
The real of today emerges from the images of today
Not saying that these aren’t able to depict our reality, instead, these images are what create the real today → particularly acute here
Image – Essentially unsayable, it is an abyss between things, this abyss is the image and we use other things to represent it
The Image of the Image II Assignment Submission: L A L U N E W A V E
https://youtu.be/OrakCiyq6B8
My main conceptual idea for this was really inspired by the stylized vaporwave videos that are quite popular on Youtube — To me, the whole experience of this song elicited feelings that were very similar to the ones vaporwave videos (and their corresponding audio) also produced.
(>人<) Hope you enjoy –
VISA 210 – Class Notes October 10th ( ˘◡˘ )
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Economy of Means
Futurismo → Futurists
– How they responded to the conditions of their time
– Living in a moment that echoed the moment that we are living in
– Technology was starting to have the influence that we feel today
– Cities as we know them today started to rise in the 20th century – water, electricity, amenities, buildings, brought about the cities of today
– Chaotic moment when technology became the glue for social life
o Birth of capitalism
o Cant live without technology anymore
– Quite harsh, radical, and fascist
o Living in a moment when this fascist sensibility is emerging
– What is the role of technology in fostering this sense of sensibility
– For futurists: limit of freedom was fundamental – had to leave behind the past – all of the traditions were holding back the future – freedom from the past that was being advocated
o Flying was a promise – envious of freedom
• This was a dream, only in the realms of dreams was this possible, made it happen
– Futurists very grounded in their time
– Group of artists that came up with a plan, idea, project – that was made possible with the new media
– Movement started within the newspaper – a sign of the time
o New sensibility, get rid of the past
– Drive to find a new language/a new means to describe this moment
– In images, included: Flight, speed, reoccurring perspective of space
Promise of technology = freedom (from the past, from limitations of nature, etc.)
Everything seems possible, we feel this today
– Whatever the risks, we still hold onto the powerful promise of freedom through technology
Reconstruction of the universe
1. Images
2. Art/Technology/Freedom
Move onto a different stage with our images
Russian Cubo-Futurism
– Polarization of movements – see fascism emerging all over the world but at the same time a very pacifist movement and people looking for ways out of this
– Communist revolution – new society in which everyone will be equal, get access to food, to the arts – no poor no rich → was a very powerful dream
– Communist or socialist dream
– Technology – Lenin said that the way for the future was a combination/common property of technology and the sharing of stuff – used to move forward, the way towards the future
– Trying to communicate not only with the words but also with sounds
– A Slap in the Face of Public Taste
o Lot in common between the two forms of futurism
– Were, in a way, destroying the museum – not by burning it – but by bringing art to the streets and to everyone
– People were living in horrendous poverty in the country side and images allowed communication to the masses – most important form of communication was the cinema
– Dziga Vertov – Man with a Movie Camera
o Wanted to liberate film from script, artifices, storyline/plot, actors, etc.
Resulted in global massacre – artists were killed and repressed – most artworks were censored and hidden
– Most were rediscovered recently (90s)
– Fundamental moment in cinema, said that the history of cinema (and Hollywood) would have been very different today
o An experimental band took the film and added music to it during the 90s
o Can see a common thread between both the futurists and the Russian futurists – fundamentally the same thing
• Car, automobile, speed, new life, technology – feel like the future is a new universe (Man and the camera, man and technology)
– Notion of freedom through alliance with technology
Artists make art for the rich – we advocate for equality but we end up creating works for the educated ones, the ones who have the time and technology to understand art and study it – within the museum, etc.
Even against there own will = artists creating a new sense of beauty
– These movements have changed – they have expanded the new notions of beauty
– Something more to beauty than what we expected
– Think about gifs as new possibilities for creating beauty
– New possibilities that these views inform us of – what is the new beauty emerging from our moment
o We are always creating new forms of beauty
Ray gun magazine
– Rise of personal computers
– Rise of the new software that offered all of these possibilities – artists embraced this and tried to reinvent what they could do with that
New technology invites new forms of art
– Medium became the content
How can we rediscover or reinvent what beauty is to us today
Relationship between art/technology/freedom
Questions –
What is the relation between technology and art?
What is the relation between art and freedom?
What is the relation between technology and freedom?
Whoops these actually Class Notes October for 17th
Art / Technology / Freedom
http://newhive.com/blue42/visa210
I initially found myself feeling quite lost while attempting to represent the relation between each concept within an image. Many different ideas came to mind but none of them seemed appropriate. At first, I wanted to consider the positive impact that technology can have on both art and freedom, especially with regard to bringing people together. However, while working on this assignment, I started to ponder over the times that technology can limit these two concepts – i.e. segregating people from one another – and what this could look like visually.
This was the end result. ಠ_ಠ
VISA 210 – Class Notes October 24th （・ｗ・）
Art//Technology//Freedom
Art = Knowledge
Philosophy – Understanding (We can never do fully – but there is an endless drive to pursue this)
Art (Never about understanding)
Art gets at the questions that are un-answerable – is a knowledge that I share from myself hoping that this resonates with other people – endless exploration
No other fields of knowledge can tell us about the true nature of what being human means
The process below works, but messiness is where things become more rich and powerful – where you learn about what it is that you’re doing and thinking about
1. Think
2. Distill
3. Make Art
Messiness – embrace it
Success comes later
Art → Leads to freedom but requires technology (ex. brush, computer, piano)
Also conditions it
Artistic creation – a negotiation between what I want and what the instrument allows me to do
Ex. expand our freedom because allows a new form of art – close relationship between technology and the art (ex. perspective representation)
Photography came along and created an entirely different type of freedom – with it came new possibilities and new limitations – couldn’t make coloured images
Photography was called – the Drawing of Nature
Since it was black and white and had the freedom to create something instantly with absolute precision without colour
– We gained colour – but can tell that an image isn’t from today because of the colours created within films at the time
– Ex. colours from film print
Have to find the right place for us between art and tech
Process of creating as a central element
Fluxus – Means flow → not interested in arrival but rather just going with the flow
“Music” – Artist (Organizes sound for us; intended)
Sound ← John Cage – to him this is the sound of life, life in itself happening, wanted to wipe out the mediation of the artist and access experience through experience
– Was very interested in ZEN philosophy, of being aware and being here in the now
– Being able to appreciate the world as such
Was obsessed with silence – it is impossible to achieve complete silence because our body creates noise too
– Power in the raw manifestation of life – wanted to really enjoy this power
Sound Sculptures
– Duchamp
Fluxus was not about big artists – was about living out life as if it was a work of art, was for everyone
4’33” – Everything that happens during this piece becomes a part of the artwork – a part of the experience of art
– Called it an art composition
– A music/noise composition
– Makes us participate in this creative moment – spontaneous
– Creates a new definition of the musician and the artists
o What the artist is
• We all become the artist
Creates a space of messiness, improvisation, and openness telling us that art can be anything we want it to be
Wanted to erase the high arts and make everyone an artist
Wanted to create the ultimate art – the ultimate work of art since everything is art
Notion of art becoming life and life becoming art – no boundaries between them
Music is an important, recurrent piece in their artwork
Yoko-ono one of the most popular
With the absurd, with the unproductiveness, etc. – beauty is not in the artwork but rather in the eye of the beholder – therefore, don’t need an artist and can define certain parts of life as beautiful
Had Events – to create a space for people to come and hang out
Nam June Paik
Three Transitions – Peter Campus
Birth of new possibilities created by technology to create art
Game of creating and creation between art and tech
Art, Technology, Science, and Military – play a role together
A variation of the Art, Technology, and Freedom
Contradiction between these two – free art movement → nobody has achieved this kind of drive – ex. today the artwork is sickening and we are all just clowns
Fluxus – felt that they were participating in a revolution through the arts by embracing life without violence – wanted to achieve this for today, were founders of this new world – the imagination of an artist can create this new world
Art is somehow always trapped – money often comes from the part that you are criticizing/that you are against
Technology in relation to humanity
When I first started this assignment, I had selected a different piece entirely. However, I soon found I wasn’t enjoying the process and also felt uninspired. Subsequently, I changed which Fluxus piece I wanted to perform. I finally settled upon “Paradigm [for Dick Higgins],” which involved selecting an object surrounded by similar items, designating it as a model for all such objects, and isolating its distinct features. Instead of selecting a physical object, I chose a digital one (my desktop VISA folder).
While working on this piece, I started to consider the concepts of information documentation vs. art, which seemed to blur overtime. I soon became overwhelmed by the amount of information I could find or generate that was specific to my “folder model,” as well as the endless ways this information could be represented. In the end, I chose newhive as a platform for my finalized work since it provided a visual way to culminate any data relevant to my project.
“Current Existing Model of: The Desktop Folder” ヽ(ﾟ∀｡)ﾉ
http://newhive.com/blue42/visa2102