Project 0.5 Homage

Rather than talk about Paul Smith and how his work influenced this, I'll describe the technical process. I used a Nikon D80, with a mediocre lense and less than ideal environment. My original intention was to shoot a scene against the sky as a backdrop, but I could not find any angel where the sky was visible, and instead choose to do it in front of some bamboo. Due to cramped space, there was inadequate room for a good depth of field and really at the end of the day I had a collection of rather poor shots I didn't feel very good about. The two best ones were picked and composited into each other. The background was blurred, the clothes desaturated, the shadows were picked up where I thought appropriate, and a glimpse of sky behind the leaves removed. 

Daniel Canogar

Daniel Canogar ( visit his website here ) is a Spanish artist who does mostly video and installation projects. I presented three of his artworks to the class, beginning with one that we all read in our book: Horror Vacui. I found the differences between the description in the book (it's about dismemberment and the creation of an 'other') and what the artist himself had to say about it (it's about obsessive searching and viral multiplication) interesting.

Horror Vacui was made back in 1999, and Canogar's themes of technology and organism has evolved much since then. Circadian Rhythms is pulsating lights projected on to a wall of dead lightbulbs, a juxtaposition of a representation of electric impulses in the brain's nervous system and dead electronic waste. Sikka, a video installation where DVD content is projected onto the DVD from where the content comes from, is an attempt at bringing the dead back to life.

I think Canogar is working with some interesting themes, but without seeing his work in person I cannot say for certain how effective his projects are.

F.A.T. Lab

So besides what we've got on the Class Blog I've found one interesting group of "digital" artists who are really into the whole open source movement: F.A.T. Lab. I guess to describe F.A.T. Lab I'd have to talk about open source and "enriching the public domain", as they put it... but why bother trying to explain it when I can link to a description one of the biggest open source projects ever? F.A.T. Lab, which stands for Free Art & Technology, is so dedicated to the cause of "openness" that they claim no rights reserved and are "copyfree".

Art 410 - 510 / Fall 2012

From now on this will probably maybe be my class blog thing to record responses to class material. Maybe. For now, here's a video of some pictures from the last time I took Art 410 in the spring.