Hi guys! I am Ophelia Yingqiu Zhao, I am in my second year in UBC Faculty of Arts. I intend to pursue a visual art major along with a minor in art history. I enjoy reading, writing and creating arts. Last year I have produced many artworks in a variety of mediums in UBC, such as drawing, painting, photography, performance, etc.
I am especially interested in digital arts as it provides so many possibilities in creating new things. I took VISA110 last term on digital media and I wish to have a more well-rounded understanding on this realm. So here I am, to strengthen my technological skills on making digital arts, to broaden my perspectives on ways to access technology, humanity and images, and most importantly, as an ultimate goal, to start a life-long learning process on art investigation.
Moreover, my art production also includes a diversity of subject matters from politics, psychology(psychoanalysis) and philosophy. So that I am always open for discussions with people on any kinds of artistic topics and ideas. My arts often deal with politics and humanity, and that is also one of the reasons I want to take this class. Through the first lecture today we briefly went through the idea of anthropocene as well as human activities as a major force in contemporary world. Artificial intelligence, virtual reality and etc. had place a revolutionary chance on human’s lifestyle. So as an artist, I am deemed myself to be responsible in investigating social formation in an artistic presentation. Hopefully I will have some work done at the end of term.
For more information on my please check out my UBC blog!
-What is the relation between Technology and Humanity?
As far as I concerned, technology is a product that serves human needs. Technology developed with various means and purposes in contributing a better human life. The demand and constraints of humanity decide how technology customize its function. Reversely, the growing capacity of technology also enlarged the domain and diversity of human activity.
-The impact of technological evolution on our everyday life
and foreseeable future?
There is a sure thing that the development of technology will bring human a more convenient lifestyle, as I can feel the technological change in my personal life as compare to 10 years ago. However there is also a rising anxiety on the over-developing of technology, as Sir Steven Hawking had predict that humanity will destroy by artificial intelligence, and such. Climate change and other environmental degradations also warning us to contemplate the consequence driven by technological evolution. It is a double-sided coin for sure, and we should consider what is better worthy to gain and to give up, for a more sustainable future.
-The nature of technical images and their role in contemporary culture and life?
The nature of technical images as a kind of visual language, provide a wider domain for human to record and present objects and ideologies. With the development of technology, people are not satisfied in traditional means of visual presentation, thus the role of technical images is to better helping human in challenging a broader domain of cultural activities.
-The possibilities offered by contemporary images for the examination of these questions?
A new approach of visual presentation is challenged by the emergence of contemporary images. As people are not only trapped in reality but also attained to a virtual sphere through technical means. So to speak, with assistance of technology, people can literally enter to any possibility in examining existed/non-existed ideologies.
The image I have chosen is an art project I did few months ago. In the image I was embraced by the Goddess of Democracy on UBC campus while I was dressing in red, as if the goddess is bleeding. I have this peculiar connection with the goddess’ statue, that the event happened behind the scene had completely changed my understanding on politics, and to some extent, helped me established a brand new world view based on my own interpretation on the event. Therefore, the goddess as a motif, has a significant relationship with me.
To be more specific, the Goddess of Democracy is as known as the representation of the Tiananmen Square Student Protest occurred on June, 1989 in China. Not until I went abroad studying did I have a chance to access this part of history (since back in China the officials blocked any related contents, we have no access to the truth). So having access to the entire event in a sense evoked my political awareness, since then I started to care about political conditions, democracy, human rights and etc. I started to get along with people who have same mind with me. The goddess of Democracy as a symbol of the Tiananmen Event, is a pivotal point of my life that awakened me from numb and brought me into the real world.
I took this photo with all my love in the reverence of people who sacrificed their life for democracy. Deep inside, I always deem myself to be one of them. Every time I pass through the statue, I see myself inside of her.
What is an image?—in my understanding, an image is an agent that depicts visual information. During class, as we discussed each of our individual understanding on “image”, an interesting opinion was raised—one of the students said: “image is a form of reality.”, and right after, “an image is a form of representation” was raised. I found this idea very fascinating. Few days ago I encountered this article by Pierre Bourdieu known as “The Reality of Representation and the Representation of Reality”, which discussed this interrelationship between representation and reality, though focused mainly on social subjects, I found certain universalities in ideas that can be shared when discussing images. Quoted Bourdieu “Social subjects comprehend the social world which comprehends them. This means that they cannot be characterized simply in terms of material properties, starting with the body, which can be counted and measured like any other object in the physical world. In fact, each of these properties, be it the height or volume of the body or the extent of landed property, when perceived and appreciated in relation to other properties of the same class by agents equipped with socially constituted schemes of perception and appreciation, functions as a symbolic property.” If I could translate my interpretation on “image” in Bourdieu’s language, an image is but not only is a surface that constitute by visual elements(e.g. colors, pixels, etc.), but also in relation to human, that classified by and work with socially constituted schemes of perception and appreciation, functioned as a symbolic property.
Talking about image as symbols, another question was being raised during class—“what is an apple?”. Instead discussing all of those already-known features and mundane interpretations, apple, in this case, works as a symbol(or representation) of something. To perceive an apple on the level of semiotics, the process is like:
[the word “apple” & the sound of the word “apple” & the image of apple] + the idea of apple =the actual apple.
(The former indicates the signifier of apple, and the latter indicates the signified apple. )
That is to say, a humanly-decided apple is constituted by all of the sensual, cultural, external and internal perceptions. And what we are looking at is the connection between the signifier apple and the signified apple.
Where does the image exist? —As I talked on above, image as something embedded both physical and perceptual information, it existed in somewhere beyond our lifeworld.
Mental imagery (varieties of which are sometimes colloquially referred to as “visualizing,” “seeing in the mind’s eye,” “hearing in the head,” “imagining the feel of,” etc.) is quasi-perceptual experience; it resembles perceptual experience, but occurs in the absence of the appropriate external stimuli.
This explains, and in my own word, image depicts things on the ground, but like, floating.
“What is an apple?” This question reminds me of the time when people wants to explain something very difficult, and they would like to start with a simple question like “what is an egg?” or “what is an apple?”. In many academic realm people tend to endow “apple” with those high-end ideologies. Since the identity of “apple” is very interesting. As far as I concern, it is such a common object that almost everyone is able to get access. So to speak, “apple” is classless—to some extent, it resembles everyone.
I have a funny thought that if apples can think, they must get so tired of those burdensome titles from the wiseacre beings. Therefore I was thinking of remaining the simpleness of apple in my work, as they are born simple. However, apple is such a simple existence that I could not think of a way to make it even simpler. So I switch another way around, that I searched for things that is simple to resemble apple—Mark Rothko’ red paintings. Yes, my apple for Rothko’s form because they destroy illusion and reveal truth. When I think of Rothko, I am thinking of simple and pure art, which is the same when I am thinking of apple.
Quoted Rothko: “We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth.”
In my work, I used clone stamp tool in photoshop to copy pixels from an apple image to appropriate a Rothko’s pattern of his red painting.
Today during class we went through everyone’s work on “apple”. Everyone has brilliant work done and I was so inspired. Later we had a thorough discussion with the respect of reality. In the previous week when we had the conversation on “what is an image”, there was someone who brought up the idea that “image is a form of reality”. I found this idea has a lot to talk about. It reminds me of the time when I first get to know the name of Descartes, that he was super skeptical towards everything around him, and he even questioned if the world that we are experiencing is just an illusion created by our brain. My world view was challenged by this ridiculous idea. Nevertheless, as I learned more, I started to accept different ideas and individual interpretations on ways of perceiving the world. And that was the time I really understand what Descartes said: “I think, therefore I am.”
However, the discussion on the object world and the subjectivity never stops. During the lecture we came down to a consensus that the so-called “objectivity” is just a gather of each individual’s subjectivity that share in a common ground. Therefore, it is the sharing subjects that connect us in establishing a human-dominated lifeworld. With the assumption that “everything is an illusion”, there is a interrelationship between the subjectivity and the representation of it. To explain, as far as I concern, “beauty” is one of the most subjective yet objective vocabulary. In a humanly perspective, we share a consensus on the understand of beauty, and it diverges when dealing with individuals. As a mundane human being, I experience moments when I was fully baptized in my own self-consciousness and refused to stand on other’s feet. I am very confident that everyone would have experienced such moments in there life. However, no man is an island. People have to compromise certain parts of their ego in order to live in a community life, and that is the time when the object world is formed. We all have our own criterion on the standard of beauty, and for this we should have respect the rationality of the diversity of beauty to be existed. While based on the demand of communication, we also need to have a relatively broad definition of “beauty”, which on the level of semiotics, that Ludwig Wittgenstein referred to the concept as the language-games.
Quoted Wittgenstein: “Fictional examples of language use that are simpler than our own everyday language.”; “ The rules of language are analogous to the rules of games; thus saying something in a language is analogous to making a move in a game. The analogy between a language and a game demonstrates that words have meaning depending on the uses made of them in the various and multiform activities of human life.” Out of the demand of communication, simple and straight forward is well-appreciated. So to speak, the objectivity is based on simple, neutral, general representations, which connects the A(aka. the floating perception) and the B(aka. the down-to-the-earth understanding).
WEEK 4 Note and Reflection on Lecture and Reading
What is an image today? -What do images reveal about our world?
Image as a visual language that depicts things, reveals our world in many forms. Back in time, when painting(drawing) was the main approach of visual representations, the artistic autonomy largely determined what image would look like. Since the invention of photography, human capacity in capturing accuracy surpasses every other kinds of imaging techniques in our history. Later on, the development of technology also provided a variety of possibilities in representing subject matters, which reached beyond conventional human understanding(e.g. the science-fiction, virtual-reality, etc.). As human lifestyle has experienced a tremendous change, image as a representing and recording mean also involves much broader ideologies in order to serving modern human activities. That is to say, our life today largely decides what is an image today.
In “The Truth of Experience. Notes of Expanded Photography”, the article investigated in photographical image as a vehicle of representation that engaged with and act in our modern life. So to speak that image has positioned itself as not only a visual language that record and represent subject matters but also an [Architecture of Reception] that could be transcoded and translated into political/social/cultural ideologies, and furthermore engaged with human life. In the beginning of the article, a question was raised: “how to make sense of photography in excess? how to transcends its established definitions?” In my perspective, image(image-making) as a product(activity) of human life, are deemed to be embedded with functions that serves human, either it is politically, socially, culturally, etc. The dramatic change of image-making(especially photography as a modern invention) that we are now experiencing is actually the change of depicted subject matters(change of reality). That is to say, technological development in modern reality is the major force that oriented the content of modern images. Image is a representation of reality. Talking about our life(reality) today, I would like to bring in Edmund Husserl’s notion of “lifeworld” in clarifying my understanding of “reality”, which quoted Husserl: “In whatever way we may be conscious of the world as universal horizon, as coherent universe of existing objects, we, each “I-the-man” and all of us together, belong to the world as living with one another in the world; and the world is our world, valid for our consciousness as existing precisely through this ‘living together.’ We, as living in wakeful world-consciousness, are constantly active on the basis of our passive having of the world… Obviously this is true not only for me, the individual ego; rather we, in living together, have the world pre-given in this together, belong, the world as world for all, pre-given with this ontic meaning… The we-subjectivity… is constantly functioning.” In other words, lifeworld means a person’s subjective construction of reality, which he or she forms under the condition of his or her life circumstances.
However, I am more interested in the alternative identity of image nowadays, that started from modernity, the notion of “art for art’s sake” has established a much broader discourse in public realm. Since then, photography can truly deliberate itself from its established functions which was embedded by human necessity. According to Clement Greenberg, painting was above all about its very remove from the world to which photography was indexically bound—a painting was good to the extent that it dealt exclusively with problems and issues related to its own specific qualities as a flat, bounded surface on which marks were made. So does photography, which one does not make significance in recording and representing the reality, but more interested in the process of transcending itself from the mundane sphere to a beyond space. The autonomy of photography produces much more possibilities in a free ground. (Quote from text: It’s as though our society has freed image-making from specific applications, and rendered the photographic image an autonomous subject on its own, detached from any function or relation.) Therefore I would conclude contemporary image has a dual-identity: it works as a traditional mean that serves and engaged with human life, recording/representing mundane subject matters as a vehicle of communication. It also autonomously detached from any functions or relations in a purely self-expressive form, and later come back to public sphere to interact with human life. Quoted Vasily Kandinsky: the work of art consists of two elements: the inner and the out. The inner element, taken by itself, is the emotion in the should of artist. This emotion is capable of calling forth what is, essentially, a corresponding emotion in the should of the observer. As long as the soul is joined to the body, it can as a rule only receive vibrations via the medium of feelings. Feeling are therefore a bridge from the nonmaterial to the material and from the material to the nonmaterial.”
In short, image today consist of two parts, our (constantly and rapidly) changing reality on the one hand, its individual subject on the other hand. The former depicts our world as an object, the later reveals each of us that constitute our world as individual subjects.
paleolithic: pictographic/figures/—20000 yrs ago—the power of image
communication
what makes an image an art?
information: power released from manipulating it
order and disorders
beginning: straight forward
information is so subtle that straight forward is not enough
writing word: transmitting and storage information
plate canvas: earlier writing text—
more than fact(information) that can convey
Leon craftsman: home of silk industry
Joseph Marie Jacquards: waving loom: punched cards
picture —punch card— pattern
data storage—information
Marcel Proust: image of something in a dreamy sphere
poetry takes as its purview what is deeply felt and is essentially unsayable, that is the paradox on with the prom
Poem: between what I see and what I say, between what I say and what I kept silent; between what I kept silent and what I dream, between what I dream and what I forget.
information and art
A poem is really a kind of machine for producing the poetic state of mind by means of words.
Andrei Tarkovsky: what is art
art is about finding who we are
what is the meaning of mans life on the earth
spiritual enrichment
knowledge distract us from our main purpose in life. The more we know, the less we know.”
the recognition and reaction of new forms of control
how art liberate us
The image of the image: make association between our daily subjects and visual representation —the way we communicate
association: a lose connection
the naturalness between sound and image—what is the nature between that association
to look at source and try to learn from it
information vs art: what makes an image art?
20 poets on the meaning of poetry:
the poem is an invention that exists in spite of history
you seeing the theory of freud of who owe are as human being
Edward Bernays: “He was subtly telling the women in the public that smoking had now become a symbol of freedom, not only was the cigarette a phallic symbol that they were burning but it also had links to the torch on the statue of liberty. He was then able to break the taboo of women smoking.”
is not about information: is about something connect to conscious, which is image
what image can do?—
Debord’s fourth thesis is: “The spectacle is not a collection of images; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images.
our relationship is mediated by images
image is to press people(control)
or in the opposite: deliberate us
the possibility of art: freedom-image-control(oppression)
the ability of art is to give one agency
all art is quite useless —art cannot fulfill one’s material need; we can live without art:
—art is something make human human—the sublimation
“16, TITE STREET,
CHELSEA. S.W.
My dear Sir
Art is useless because its aim is simply to create a mood. It is not meant to instruct, or to influence action in any way. It is superbly sterile, and the note of its pleasure is sterility. If the contemplation of a work of art is followed by activity of any kind, the work is either of a very second-rate order, or the spectator has failed to realize the complete artistic impression.
A work of art is useless as a flower is useless. A flower blossoms for its own joy. We gain a moment of joy by looking at it. That is all that is to be said about our relations to flowers. Of course man may sell the flower, and so make it useful to him, but this has nothing to do with the flower. It is not part of its essence. It is accidental. It is a misuse. All this is I fear very obscure. But the subject is a long one.
Truly yours,
Oscar Wilde”
There are two main views, one seeing art as a means to an end (e.g.: art teaches you ethics, politics..), the other sees it as an end in itself (e.g.: the work of art simply is). The first one implies that the work of art is dependent on an external principle (e.g.: the morals that a painting is expected to teach), and therefore it just be judged according to it. The second (which I prefered) is the work of art as an autonomous entity and must therefore not be judged according to any external rules (morals, etc.), the work of art is self-sufficient–(Aristotle’s concept of eudaimonia) it’s just beautiful by itself.
Hedy and I developed this work mainly focused on the two last questions that we investigated during lecture:
–Can images change society?
–Can art change the world?
We had a brief discussion based on the two questions and I came up with the conclusion that I do not think images can change society and so do art cannot change the world.
To be more specific, by pairing the two questions up I found that is not image that change the society but it is society itself constantly changing. Image is just one of many means that serves human in revealing and altering the appearance of society. So to speak, it is not image that changes the society, but society itself constantly changing. This may also respond to my opinion on the first question: what is an image? and what is our relation to image—which I think image is a tool, no matter what information it delivers, it is invented/created by human and for human. Therefore, I would say that image plays a pivotal role in the changing progress of (especially modern and contemporary) society, our interrelation with images determined that image cannot change our society autonomously, but human (aka. image-producer) who owns the autonomy to change the society. In our collaborative work, I selected some images came up into my mind that best resemble the power of images: some of the most well-known photos by the Farm Security Administration, which represents how the privileges picture the poor; a group photo of the most influential scientists and philosophers, which resembles the powerful human beings who own most agency in altering the appearance and contents of society; Hedy also picked a photo depicts religious context. We also arranged some signs on the left side—an electric current symbol as connecting/protecting/attecting, a swastika resembling human force. And the use of symbols also unfolds how images are embedded with signified ideologies by human.
As for art, which I as I raised during lecture, that I think the essence that makes art different from others is its transcendental nature. Art is something very personal and intimate that varied from different people. So I would say that art is very powerful, it may even powerful enough to change the society, however, art does not really aiming at changing society. It is autotelic and self-sufficient, and liberate from any societal tangles. In our project, I chose Malevich’s Red Square of Suprematism in revealing the supremacy of art and its liberation from objectivity. Quoted Malevich: “Under Suprematism I understand the primacy of pure feeling in creative art. To the Suprematist, the visual phenomena of the objective world are, in themselves, meaningless; the significant thing is feeling, as such, quite apart from the environment in which it is called forth.”
I also used a circle and a horizontal line in representing that art derives its origin from the mundane sphere and attain to the transcendental realm.
At the beginning of the class we shared some works from the pervious week. I love how some of the work done in a very creative way of collages. During discussion, we came back to the question: what is an image?—To be honest, I like how we talk about this question over and over again since very time I get something new from it. For a big question like this, it is worthwhile for us to investigate from different perspectives. Also one reason I really appreciate it is that nowadays in such a hectic world, I do not always have such chance to spend a long period time on one single question, to really gain something from the process of investigating.
I have read an article another day, and there is a quote from it that I would like to share: “Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise.”—John Tukey. This also reminds me of a quote from Mark Twain: “ I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” As we come down to the point where one question has been discussed for half of term, I really start getting the beauty from discussing it. While I am still not able to provide a precise answer, I have a relatively vague picture of how my answer would be in my mind, which is all about abstraction. I believe everyone in our class has a different answer of what they think an image is, and that is the key to it—there are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people’s eyes, so does image, so does art. So instead of trying finding any accurate definitions for “image”, I guess it is truly a process finding ourselves through images and arts.
This week we started our topic on Art, Technology and Freedom. We discussed the Constructivists, the Futurists and the Fluxus. One thing I really enjoyed was that video of John Cage’s interview. The way he talk and think was very peculiar, as he described music as “a purposeless play” which is “an affirmation of life – not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we’re living”. During break I went Spotify for his musics, trying to get a sense of what his music would sound like and trying to relate what he said with his works. After listening to his “Imagery Landscape”, I suddenly get what he said that: “if there are two kinds of sounds that do not need to have meanings, they are music and laughters”. And this also explained how his radical work of “ 4’33’’ ” comes from—the ambient noise of the recital hall that created the music in a way evoking the sound of silence. Moreover, last week I went to a dance show in Vancouver International Dance Festival, and one of my favorite show by choreographer Shen Wei, the “Rite of Spring”, which the music was by Igor Stravinsky. Both as modern composers, John Cage was inspired from Stravinsky, and I can really see the interconnection from their sound art that they are aiming at the “purposeless” of sound.
Quote John Cage: “The function of art is not to communicate one’s personal ideas or feelings, but rather to imitate nature in her manner of operations.”
This week we had shown each of our works responding the relationship between technology and daily life. Started with considering my own relationships in this case, I thought about a lecture I went few weeks ago. The title of the lecture was “ How to Find Happiness in a Hectic World.—A Scientific approach and A Guidance on Meditation”. By the time I was fascinated by this title, however the lecturer ended up talking about avoiding distractions from technology and social media—by not using them at all. I was quite disappointed to be honest, that I always believe there is a balance between technology and our daily life which human could benefit from. While I can find eudaimonia in a peaceful state of mind without technologies, I can also find hectic happiness in a hectic world with technologies; which according to Socrates, that we need both spiritual happiness for our mental health as well as bodily pleasure for our physical health. So to speak, I appreciate technology as part of my life so far—mostly because I am not super dependent on them but use them properly as tools, and partly because technologies do brought more fun into my life. Therefore I created this piece which I printed all of my instagram photos and made them in a form of a roll of film. The process of unrolling it to some extent breaks the gap between the virtual and the reality. People have been argued about the fake mask that instagram photos developed, which by creating this piece I want to respond to this argument that—by the gesture of printing, I am bringing my virtual identity into the real world and I appreciate it.
Besides, the movement of unrolling acted like an arrow of time, it represents how our generation record our life with a technology-based platform—in a good way. Life in the 70s is like a box of chocolate, whereas life in 2018 is life a roll of instagram photos, and technology assists us creating all of those beauties.
Hi guys! I am Ophelia Yingqiu Zhao, I am in my second year in UBC Faculty of Arts. I intend to pursue a visual art major along with a minor in art history. I enjoy reading, writing and creating arts. Last year I have produced many artworks in a variety of mediums in UBC, such as drawing, painting, photography, performance, etc.
I am especially interested in digital arts as it provides so many possibilities in creating new things. I took VISA110 last term on digital media and I wish to have a more well-rounded understanding on this realm. So here I am, to strengthen my technological skills on making digital arts, to broaden my perspectives on ways to access technology, humanity and images, and most importantly, as an ultimate goal, to start a life-long learning process on art investigation.
Moreover, my art production also includes a diversity of subject matters from politics, psychology(psychoanalysis) and philosophy. So that I am always open for discussions with people on any kinds of artistic topics and ideas. My arts often deal with politics and humanity, and that is also one of the reasons I want to take this class. Through the first lecture today we briefly went through the idea of anthropocene as well as human activities as a major force in contemporary world. Artificial intelligence, virtual reality and etc. had place a revolutionary chance on human’s lifestyle. So as an artist, I am deemed myself to be responsible in investigating social formation in an artistic presentation. Hopefully I will have some work done at the end of term.
For more information on my please check out my UBC blog!
WEEK 1 Note
-What is the relation between Technology and Humanity?
As far as I concerned, technology is a product that serves human needs. Technology developed with various means and purposes in contributing a better human life. The demand and constraints of humanity decide how technology customize its function. Reversely, the growing capacity of technology also enlarged the domain and diversity of human activity.
-The impact of technological evolution on our everyday life
and foreseeable future?
There is a sure thing that the development of technology will bring human a more convenient lifestyle, as I can feel the technological change in my personal life as compare to 10 years ago. However there is also a rising anxiety on the over-developing of technology, as Sir Steven Hawking had predict that humanity will destroy by artificial intelligence, and such. Climate change and other environmental degradations also warning us to contemplate the consequence driven by technological evolution. It is a double-sided coin for sure, and we should consider what is better worthy to gain and to give up, for a more sustainable future.
-The nature of technical images and their role in contemporary culture and life?
The nature of technical images as a kind of visual language, provide a wider domain for human to record and present objects and ideologies. With the development of technology, people are not satisfied in traditional means of visual presentation, thus the role of technical images is to better helping human in challenging a broader domain of cultural activities.
-The possibilities offered by contemporary images for the examination of these questions?
A new approach of visual presentation is challenged by the emergence of contemporary images. As people are not only trapped in reality but also attained to a virtual sphere through technical means. So to speak, with assistance of technology, people can literally enter to any possibility in examining existed/non-existed ideologies.
Week 01 Challenge- An image in my mind
The image I have chosen is an art project I did few months ago. In the image I was embraced by the Goddess of Democracy on UBC campus while I was dressing in red, as if the goddess is bleeding. I have this peculiar connection with the goddess’ statue, that the event happened behind the scene had completely changed my understanding on politics, and to some extent, helped me established a brand new world view based on my own interpretation on the event. Therefore, the goddess as a motif, has a significant relationship with me.
To be more specific, the Goddess of Democracy is as known as the representation of the Tiananmen Square Student Protest occurred on June, 1989 in China. Not until I went abroad studying did I have a chance to access this part of history (since back in China the officials blocked any related contents, we have no access to the truth). So having access to the entire event in a sense evoked my political awareness, since then I started to care about political conditions, democracy, human rights and etc. I started to get along with people who have same mind with me. The goddess of Democracy as a symbol of the Tiananmen Event, is a pivotal point of my life that awakened me from numb and brought me into the real world.
I took this photo with all my love in the reverence of people who sacrificed their life for democracy. Deep inside, I always deem myself to be one of them. Every time I pass through the statue, I see myself inside of her.
wEEK 3 Challenge–an image of an image
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1JPp7BE04xod7j3i9e5VK815H5Wyvsahw
Week 2 Note—What is an image?
What is an image?—in my understanding, an image is an agent that depicts visual information. During class, as we discussed each of our individual understanding on “image”, an interesting opinion was raised—one of the students said: “image is a form of reality.”, and right after, “an image is a form of representation” was raised. I found this idea very fascinating. Few days ago I encountered this article by Pierre Bourdieu known as “The Reality of Representation and the Representation of Reality”, which discussed this interrelationship between representation and reality, though focused mainly on social subjects, I found certain universalities in ideas that can be shared when discussing images. Quoted Bourdieu “Social subjects comprehend the social world which comprehends them. This means that they cannot be characterized simply in terms of material properties, starting with the body, which can be counted and measured like any other object in the physical world. In fact, each of these properties, be it the height or volume of the body or the extent of landed property, when perceived and appreciated in relation to other properties of the same class by agents equipped with socially constituted schemes of perception and appreciation, functions as a symbolic property.” If I could translate my interpretation on “image” in Bourdieu’s language, an image is but not only is a surface that constitute by visual elements(e.g. colors, pixels, etc.), but also in relation to human, that classified by and work with socially constituted schemes of perception and appreciation, functioned as a symbolic property.
Talking about image as symbols, another question was being raised during class—“what is an apple?”. Instead discussing all of those already-known features and mundane interpretations, apple, in this case, works as a symbol(or representation) of something. To perceive an apple on the level of semiotics, the process is like:
[the word “apple” & the sound of the word “apple” & the image of apple] + the idea of apple =the actual apple.
(The former indicates the signifier of apple, and the latter indicates the signified apple. )
That is to say, a humanly-decided apple is constituted by all of the sensual, cultural, external and internal perceptions. And what we are looking at is the connection between the signifier apple and the signified apple.
Where does the image exist? —As I talked on above, image as something embedded both physical and perceptual information, it existed in somewhere beyond our lifeworld.
Mental imagery (varieties of which are sometimes colloquially referred to as “visualizing,” “seeing in the mind’s eye,” “hearing in the head,” “imagining the feel of,” etc.) is quasi-perceptual experience; it resembles perceptual experience, but occurs in the absence of the appropriate external stimuli.
This explains, and in my own word, image depicts things on the ground, but like, floating.
Week 2 Challenge–What is an apple?
“What is an apple?” This question reminds me of the time when people wants to explain something very difficult, and they would like to start with a simple question like “what is an egg?” or “what is an apple?”. In many academic realm people tend to endow “apple” with those high-end ideologies. Since the identity of “apple” is very interesting. As far as I concern, it is such a common object that almost everyone is able to get access. So to speak, “apple” is classless—to some extent, it resembles everyone.
I have a funny thought that if apples can think, they must get so tired of those burdensome titles from the wiseacre beings. Therefore I was thinking of remaining the simpleness of apple in my work, as they are born simple. However, apple is such a simple existence that I could not think of a way to make it even simpler. So I switch another way around, that I searched for things that is simple to resemble apple—Mark Rothko’ red paintings. Yes, my apple for Rothko’s form because they destroy illusion and reveal truth. When I think of Rothko, I am thinking of simple and pure art, which is the same when I am thinking of apple.
Quoted Rothko: “We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth.”
In my work, I used clone stamp tool in photoshop to copy pixels from an apple image to appropriate a Rothko’s pattern of his red painting.
Image link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xvHTNq1Q3pVK5vFTO0z9V23V1dn1eBdx/view?usp=sharing
Week 3 Note–What is an Image?
Today during class we went through everyone’s work on “apple”. Everyone has brilliant work done and I was so inspired. Later we had a thorough discussion with the respect of reality. In the previous week when we had the conversation on “what is an image”, there was someone who brought up the idea that “image is a form of reality”. I found this idea has a lot to talk about. It reminds me of the time when I first get to know the name of Descartes, that he was super skeptical towards everything around him, and he even questioned if the world that we are experiencing is just an illusion created by our brain. My world view was challenged by this ridiculous idea. Nevertheless, as I learned more, I started to accept different ideas and individual interpretations on ways of perceiving the world. And that was the time I really understand what Descartes said: “I think, therefore I am.”
However, the discussion on the object world and the subjectivity never stops. During the lecture we came down to a consensus that the so-called “objectivity” is just a gather of each individual’s subjectivity that share in a common ground. Therefore, it is the sharing subjects that connect us in establishing a human-dominated lifeworld. With the assumption that “everything is an illusion”, there is a interrelationship between the subjectivity and the representation of it. To explain, as far as I concern, “beauty” is one of the most subjective yet objective vocabulary. In a humanly perspective, we share a consensus on the understand of beauty, and it diverges when dealing with individuals. As a mundane human being, I experience moments when I was fully baptized in my own self-consciousness and refused to stand on other’s feet. I am very confident that everyone would have experienced such moments in there life. However, no man is an island. People have to compromise certain parts of their ego in order to live in a community life, and that is the time when the object world is formed. We all have our own criterion on the standard of beauty, and for this we should have respect the rationality of the diversity of beauty to be existed. While based on the demand of communication, we also need to have a relatively broad definition of “beauty”, which on the level of semiotics, that Ludwig Wittgenstein referred to the concept as the language-games.
Quoted Wittgenstein: “Fictional examples of language use that are simpler than our own everyday language.”; “ The rules of language are analogous to the rules of games; thus saying something in a language is analogous to making a move in a game. The analogy between a language and a game demonstrates that words have meaning depending on the uses made of them in the various and multiform activities of human life.” Out of the demand of communication, simple and straight forward is well-appreciated. So to speak, the objectivity is based on simple, neutral, general representations, which connects the A(aka. the floating perception) and the B(aka. the down-to-the-earth understanding).
WEEK 4 Note and Reflection on Lecture and Reading
What is an image today? -What do images reveal about our world?
Image as a visual language that depicts things, reveals our world in many forms. Back in time, when painting(drawing) was the main approach of visual representations, the artistic autonomy largely determined what image would look like. Since the invention of photography, human capacity in capturing accuracy surpasses every other kinds of imaging techniques in our history. Later on, the development of technology also provided a variety of possibilities in representing subject matters, which reached beyond conventional human understanding(e.g. the science-fiction, virtual-reality, etc.). As human lifestyle has experienced a tremendous change, image as a representing and recording mean also involves much broader ideologies in order to serving modern human activities. That is to say, our life today largely decides what is an image today.
In “The Truth of Experience. Notes of Expanded Photography”, the article investigated in photographical image as a vehicle of representation that engaged with and act in our modern life. So to speak that image has positioned itself as not only a visual language that record and represent subject matters but also an [Architecture of Reception] that could be transcoded and translated into political/social/cultural ideologies, and furthermore engaged with human life. In the beginning of the article, a question was raised: “how to make sense of photography in excess? how to transcends its established definitions?” In my perspective, image(image-making) as a product(activity) of human life, are deemed to be embedded with functions that serves human, either it is politically, socially, culturally, etc. The dramatic change of image-making(especially photography as a modern invention) that we are now experiencing is actually the change of depicted subject matters(change of reality). That is to say, technological development in modern reality is the major force that oriented the content of modern images. Image is a representation of reality. Talking about our life(reality) today, I would like to bring in Edmund Husserl’s notion of “lifeworld” in clarifying my understanding of “reality”, which quoted Husserl: “In whatever way we may be conscious of the world as universal horizon, as coherent universe of existing objects, we, each “I-the-man” and all of us together, belong to the world as living with one another in the world; and the world is our world, valid for our consciousness as existing precisely through this ‘living together.’ We, as living in wakeful world-consciousness, are constantly active on the basis of our passive having of the world… Obviously this is true not only for me, the individual ego; rather we, in living together, have the world pre-given in this together, belong, the world as world for all, pre-given with this ontic meaning… The we-subjectivity… is constantly functioning.” In other words, lifeworld means a person’s subjective construction of reality, which he or she forms under the condition of his or her life circumstances.
However, I am more interested in the alternative identity of image nowadays, that started from modernity, the notion of “art for art’s sake” has established a much broader discourse in public realm. Since then, photography can truly deliberate itself from its established functions which was embedded by human necessity. According to Clement Greenberg, painting was above all about its very remove from the world to which photography was indexically bound—a painting was good to the extent that it dealt exclusively with problems and issues related to its own specific qualities as a flat, bounded surface on which marks were made. So does photography, which one does not make significance in recording and representing the reality, but more interested in the process of transcending itself from the mundane sphere to a beyond space. The autonomy of photography produces much more possibilities in a free ground. (Quote from text: It’s as though our society has freed image-making from specific applications, and rendered the photographic image an autonomous subject on its own, detached from any function or relation.) Therefore I would conclude contemporary image has a dual-identity: it works as a traditional mean that serves and engaged with human life, recording/representing mundane subject matters as a vehicle of communication. It also autonomously detached from any functions or relations in a purely self-expressive form, and later come back to public sphere to interact with human life. Quoted Vasily Kandinsky: the work of art consists of two elements: the inner and the out. The inner element, taken by itself, is the emotion in the should of artist. This emotion is capable of calling forth what is, essentially, a corresponding emotion in the should of the observer. As long as the soul is joined to the body, it can as a rule only receive vibrations via the medium of feelings. Feeling are therefore a bridge from the nonmaterial to the material and from the material to the nonmaterial.”
In short, image today consist of two parts, our (constantly and rapidly) changing reality on the one hand, its individual subject on the other hand. The former depicts our world as an object, the later reveals each of us that constitute our world as individual subjects.
Week 5 Note–An Image of An Image
translation and narrative: time and continuity
image-photo-reality(truth)-?
relationship
The power of image
paleolithic: pictographic/figures/—20000 yrs ago—the power of image
communication
what makes an image an art?
information: power released from manipulating it
order and disorders
beginning: straight forward
information is so subtle that straight forward is not enough
writing word: transmitting and storage information
plate canvas: earlier writing text—
more than fact(information) that can convey
Leon craftsman: home of silk industry
Joseph Marie Jacquards: waving loom: punched cards
picture —punch card— pattern
data storage—information
Marcel Proust: image of something in a dreamy sphere
poetry takes as its purview what is deeply felt and is essentially unsayable, that is the paradox on with the prom
Poem: between what I see and what I say, between what I say and what I kept silent; between what I kept silent and what I dream, between what I dream and what I forget.
information and art
A poem is really a kind of machine for producing the poetic state of mind by means of words.
Andrei Tarkovsky: what is art
art is about finding who we are
what is the meaning of mans life on the earth
spiritual enrichment
knowledge distract us from our main purpose in life. The more we know, the less we know.”
the recognition and reaction of new forms of control
how art liberate us
what is art and what is an image today.
Week 5 Challenge–Clair de Lune
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cZOgOVjaz5xIvPihu0-JOVBrZXZBHV6U/view?usp=sharing
WEEK 6 NOTE
The image of the image: make association between our daily subjects and visual representation —the way we communicate
association: a lose connection
the naturalness between sound and image—what is the nature between that association
to look at source and try to learn from it
information vs art: what makes an image art?
20 poets on the meaning of poetry:
the poem is an invention that exists in spite of history
you seeing the theory of freud of who owe are as human being
Edward Bernays: “He was subtly telling the women in the public that smoking had now become a symbol of freedom, not only was the cigarette a phallic symbol that they were burning but it also had links to the torch on the statue of liberty. He was then able to break the taboo of women smoking.”
is not about information: is about something connect to conscious, which is image
what image can do?—
Debord’s fourth thesis is: “The spectacle is not a collection of images; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images.
our relationship is mediated by images
image is to press people(control)
or in the opposite: deliberate us
the possibility of art: freedom-image-control(oppression)
the ability of art is to give one agency
all art is quite useless —art cannot fulfill one’s material need; we can live without art:
—art is something make human human—the sublimation
“16, TITE STREET,
CHELSEA. S.W.
My dear Sir
Art is useless because its aim is simply to create a mood. It is not meant to instruct, or to influence action in any way. It is superbly sterile, and the note of its pleasure is sterility. If the contemplation of a work of art is followed by activity of any kind, the work is either of a very second-rate order, or the spectator has failed to realize the complete artistic impression.
A work of art is useless as a flower is useless. A flower blossoms for its own joy. We gain a moment of joy by looking at it. That is all that is to be said about our relations to flowers. Of course man may sell the flower, and so make it useful to him, but this has nothing to do with the flower. It is not part of its essence. It is accidental. It is a misuse. All this is I fear very obscure. But the subject is a long one.
Truly yours,
Oscar Wilde”
There are two main views, one seeing art as a means to an end (e.g.: art teaches you ethics, politics..), the other sees it as an end in itself (e.g.: the work of art simply is). The first one implies that the work of art is dependent on an external principle (e.g.: the morals that a painting is expected to teach), and therefore it just be judged according to it. The second (which I prefered) is the work of art as an autonomous entity and must therefore not be judged according to any external rules (morals, etc.), the work of art is self-sufficient–(Aristotle’s concept of eudaimonia) it’s just beautiful by itself.
Week 7 In-Class Collaboration
Hedy and I developed this work mainly focused on the two last questions that we investigated during lecture:
–Can images change society?
–Can art change the world?
We had a brief discussion based on the two questions and I came up with the conclusion that I do not think images can change society and so do art cannot change the world.
To be more specific, by pairing the two questions up I found that is not image that change the society but it is society itself constantly changing. Image is just one of many means that serves human in revealing and altering the appearance of society. So to speak, it is not image that changes the society, but society itself constantly changing. This may also respond to my opinion on the first question: what is an image? and what is our relation to image—which I think image is a tool, no matter what information it delivers, it is invented/created by human and for human. Therefore, I would say that image plays a pivotal role in the changing progress of (especially modern and contemporary) society, our interrelation with images determined that image cannot change our society autonomously, but human (aka. image-producer) who owns the autonomy to change the society. In our collaborative work, I selected some images came up into my mind that best resemble the power of images: some of the most well-known photos by the Farm Security Administration, which represents how the privileges picture the poor; a group photo of the most influential scientists and philosophers, which resembles the powerful human beings who own most agency in altering the appearance and contents of society; Hedy also picked a photo depicts religious context. We also arranged some signs on the left side—an electric current symbol as connecting/protecting/attecting, a swastika resembling human force. And the use of symbols also unfolds how images are embedded with signified ideologies by human.
As for art, which I as I raised during lecture, that I think the essence that makes art different from others is its transcendental nature. Art is something very personal and intimate that varied from different people. So I would say that art is very powerful, it may even powerful enough to change the society, however, art does not really aiming at changing society. It is autotelic and self-sufficient, and liberate from any societal tangles. In our project, I chose Malevich’s Red Square of Suprematism in revealing the supremacy of art and its liberation from objectivity. Quoted Malevich: “Under Suprematism I understand the primacy of pure feeling in creative art. To the Suprematist, the visual phenomena of the objective world are, in themselves, meaningless; the significant thing is feeling, as such, quite apart from the environment in which it is called forth.”
I also used a circle and a horizontal line in representing that art derives its origin from the mundane sphere and attain to the transcendental realm.
Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S6nuD7SPxiyf957cWshctV9RNAu2uiaD/view?usp=sharing
OneNote Page:
https://1drv.ms/o/s!AoVDiTTpo3b_gW_b1gIfS5FYuSvN
Week 7 Challenge–Portrait of a Classmate
For Hedy:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Fp2Zd1uVW4G1Zks5HmQdHbPPK7wWjT09/view?usp=sharing
Week 8 Note
At the beginning of the class we shared some works from the pervious week. I love how some of the work done in a very creative way of collages. During discussion, we came back to the question: what is an image?—To be honest, I like how we talk about this question over and over again since very time I get something new from it. For a big question like this, it is worthwhile for us to investigate from different perspectives. Also one reason I really appreciate it is that nowadays in such a hectic world, I do not always have such chance to spend a long period time on one single question, to really gain something from the process of investigating.
I have read an article another day, and there is a quote from it that I would like to share: “Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise.”—John Tukey. This also reminds me of a quote from Mark Twain: “ I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” As we come down to the point where one question has been discussed for half of term, I really start getting the beauty from discussing it. While I am still not able to provide a precise answer, I have a relatively vague picture of how my answer would be in my mind, which is all about abstraction. I believe everyone in our class has a different answer of what they think an image is, and that is the key to it—there are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people’s eyes, so does image, so does art. So instead of trying finding any accurate definitions for “image”, I guess it is truly a process finding ourselves through images and arts.
Week 9 Note
This week we started our topic on Art, Technology and Freedom. We discussed the Constructivists, the Futurists and the Fluxus. One thing I really enjoyed was that video of John Cage’s interview. The way he talk and think was very peculiar, as he described music as “a purposeless play” which is “an affirmation of life – not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we’re living”. During break I went Spotify for his musics, trying to get a sense of what his music would sound like and trying to relate what he said with his works. After listening to his “Imagery Landscape”, I suddenly get what he said that: “if there are two kinds of sounds that do not need to have meanings, they are music and laughters”. And this also explained how his radical work of “ 4’33’’ ” comes from—the ambient noise of the recital hall that created the music in a way evoking the sound of silence. Moreover, last week I went to a dance show in Vancouver International Dance Festival, and one of my favorite show by choreographer Shen Wei, the “Rite of Spring”, which the music was by Igor Stravinsky. Both as modern composers, John Cage was inspired from Stravinsky, and I can really see the interconnection from their sound art that they are aiming at the “purposeless” of sound.
Quote John Cage: “The function of art is not to communicate one’s personal ideas or feelings, but rather to imitate nature in her manner of operations.”
Week 9 Challenge
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GIUhVlW5qz2cnCoZN2Fi_kmVgdJI75ZZ/view?usp=sharing
Week 10 Class Note
This week we had shown each of our works responding the relationship between technology and daily life. Started with considering my own relationships in this case, I thought about a lecture I went few weeks ago. The title of the lecture was “ How to Find Happiness in a Hectic World.—A Scientific approach and A Guidance on Meditation”. By the time I was fascinated by this title, however the lecturer ended up talking about avoiding distractions from technology and social media—by not using them at all. I was quite disappointed to be honest, that I always believe there is a balance between technology and our daily life which human could benefit from. While I can find eudaimonia in a peaceful state of mind without technologies, I can also find hectic happiness in a hectic world with technologies; which according to Socrates, that we need both spiritual happiness for our mental health as well as bodily pleasure for our physical health. So to speak, I appreciate technology as part of my life so far—mostly because I am not super dependent on them but use them properly as tools, and partly because technologies do brought more fun into my life. Therefore I created this piece which I printed all of my instagram photos and made them in a form of a roll of film. The process of unrolling it to some extent breaks the gap between the virtual and the reality. People have been argued about the fake mask that instagram photos developed, which by creating this piece I want to respond to this argument that—by the gesture of printing, I am bringing my virtual identity into the real world and I appreciate it.
Besides, the movement of unrolling acted like an arrow of time, it represents how our generation record our life with a technology-based platform—in a good way. Life in the 70s is like a box of chocolate, whereas life in 2018 is life a roll of instagram photos, and technology assists us creating all of those beauties.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1U4ejUR26Fwe6rw5FIwHsCcFxCxIrYYJB/view?usp=sharing
WEEK 9 Challenge
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1U4ejUR26Fwe6rw5FIwHsCcFxCxIrYYJB/view?usp=sharing
Final Discussion
http://newhive.com/opheliazhao/visa210-final