Signs – what are they and why should they matter?

Signs are present in everyday life. Signs on the billboards, in the subway, on the street, in the stores, on your home, the bathroom, the airport, the stores, everywhere you can imagine. They are used to express information through words, pictures and colors. They are EVERYWHERE... although in a more abstract way, "signs" can be seen as something occurring and telling us something we are ignoring or need to know such as smelling something familiar to remind us of something, but in terms of the art world and this class, signs are conductors of information to tell the world something. We see them everyday, and are bombarded with them in our lives. They matter because without them we would not get the proper information we need, but also, they matter because it's how we communicate indirectly with one another- from the written words in the many the alphabets and characters of the world to simple pictures communicating to people basic needs, from Ikea instructions to intricate paintings created to express emotion and incite feelings, we need signs to communicate to one another visually.

Response to Mark Dery’s Culture Jamming article (Living in the Empire of Signs)

In Dery's article, I felt that although this article felt somewhat dated in terms of it's relevancy to issues, events and themes now in United States American culture, that the spirit of challenging normatives within society are apparent in relation to revolutionary ways of looking at the world cramming us with information and advertisements and feeding us what we are to do and think. I felt that him including the "Ant Farm" group was good in terms of using them as examples of performance art and challenging mass media and what they are telling the public. I feel that culture jamming is a great way of challenging people to look beyond what they are being told and artists are using this to their advantage to educate and challenging thoughts about art. The movements of post-modernism and looking at art in different ways is no longer new and I felt that this article does expand on it, but nowadays artists are taking it further than before.

Community Art Event #1 PIXAR: 25 Years of Animation

PIXAR: 25 Years of Animation

One of the biggest animation companies in the industry, Pixar, had a wonderful exhibit in Oakland. Pixar's exhibition, "PIXAR: 25 Years of Animation," has a wonderful showing of concept Art from Pixar's designers, and artists. I grew up watching Pixar films from the first "Toy Story" to the latest movie, "Toy Story 3," and I always enjoy them. The art from this show shows how the evolution of characters from the ones we see on screen, to the storyboard changes and the actual art in 3D in sculpture forms. It was such an honor to see the art on display and it was fun to be able to interact with the actual art used to inspire the animators of Pixar.

Culture Jamming

Reverse graffiti by Moose

Banksy Piece

One of the art forms I feel that is "culture jamming" art is graffiti art. Many graffiti artists use their forms of spraypaint, wheatpasting, stenciling and to express their ideas, feelings, art forms, and messages to the world in a rebellious way. The history of graffiti art stems from going against the system by oppressed people and for them to get themselves out there in a world through their rebellious art forms. Various artists have made huge statements about political issues, social issues, environmental issues, etc. One famous, " a sell out" in the graffiti arts underground world is Banksy, the world known graffiti artist from the UK. He makes huge statements through his art on commenting things going on in the world from war to disasters, classism, etc. I feel that culture jamming is a wonderful art conceptual form and that it is a way for people to learn and question the world around them for the better.

The top photo is from an article I found on "reverse graffiti" which is the use of erasing dirt off the wall, this one is by Moose. I found this to be interesting because of the use of "cleaning" to be the "pen" or "medium." It's a culture jamming to me since it is a use of dirt rather than paint... the medium in itself is statement to the art world.

I instantly think of adbusters as one of the greatest source of culture jamming.

Chance Project Results

Heather's Chance Project results (above)



Hanada's Chance Project Results (above)

Chance Project Directions

Hanada's Chance Project Directions for Heather

Instructions:

you need an

1) 18x24" white paper/board/whatever but it has to be white

2) 5 different colored pens/sharpies/colored pencils/pastels/paint brushes/ even crayons of you want as long as its 5 colored drawing objects

3)the song

listen to the song and draw away

navigate your hand the way your mind interprets the tune from when the song begins to when it ends and draw your interpretation with a fist full of those 5 drawing tools. remember the tips of your drawing tools cant separate from the paper aka you can lift your hand up or take a break and you have to stay within the edges of the paper so you cant have part of the drawing be on the floor haha

lastly name the finished piece

Heather's Chance Project Directions for Hanada

Instructions:

Materials: A large sheet of Drawing paper 18”x24” grided into 12 boxes (either 3 or 4 boxes diagonally or 3 or 4 horizontally). Pens, pencil, charcoal, crayons, colored pencil, etc… or whatever medium you want to use.

Instructions: Use words that are from 8-12 letters long into the google search box. When you type it in once the google “guessing software” guesses the correct word note what letter it guessed it on…. For example: Amoeba… you type in a…m…o… it guess its on the 3^rd letter “O” so then in the 3^rd box (you can number them however you want) you draw whatever the word feel to you in one stroke. Do not pick up the pen. You can change the medium whenever you feel like it to the word. You can use any words you want but try to make them uncommonly used words and a variety of words.

Some Examples of words you may want to use:

Amoeba

Sphincter

Precipitous

Equivocal

Vicarious

Procrastinate

Lupine

Seersucker

Pomegranate

Penguins

Antarctica

Vuvuzelas

Write them on the piece of paper like this…

Amoeba (3)

Sphincter (6)

And then execute your drawing OR you can do it as you type in the words into your computer.

Extended Body Project

In my first attempts at Photoshop, I created my Extended Body project. I decided to go with making myself part butterfly and trying to use elements of insects to create my own extended body self. I have always wanted to have the ability to fly and see beyond what we see with our two eye. Originally, I had a third eye to represent the ability to see the spiritual world but I changed myself to have more than one eye. In a spiritual sense, I have always felt that changing is reflective in butterflies. A lot of my work actually integrates butterflies and some form or theme of change for the better. So it's interesting while I was piecing this project together that I chose this as a form of inspiration for this project without any real structured planning but what I felt reflected what I want if I was given the ability to change or extend my body and self somehow. I did feel my limited photoshop knowledge was a challenge in this project but I think I did well in terms of what I did know and accomplish. I think if I was able to, I would make my lower body as well somehow maybe with extensions beyond the limitations of the body.

Visual Indeterminacy Art

Succulus by Robert Pepperell : Visual Indeterminacy

I found some artists who focus on using Indeterminacy as a way to process their art. I find abstractism to be a difficult subject for me to grasp a lot of the time when it comes down to my own process with my work. Being very detail oriented and planned out is one my strong traits but when I'm challenged to examine the very aspect of randomness, Indeterminacy and Chance; my mind has a hard time wrapping itself around these things. I consider myself an artist, and many see artists as free flowing and just going with things as they are, but I know, myself in terms of my need to order things in my life a certain way and this is a good challenge for me. In terms of the artists I found, one that stuck out from this particular art piece is "Succulus" by Robert Pepperell. His findings in his article found on this link helped me a lot in terms of trying to understand visual indeterminacy and chance. The allowing of letting go and seeing what comes to mind is very post-modern and open ended but it also allows one's mind to flow to the next ideas. His piece, "Succulus" is very beautiful but hard to distinguish when it comes to it's subject and actual real form, it becomes so random but familiar all at once.

Response to John Cage and Chance

I found that John Cage's body of work to be interesting in terms of his experimental work with chance music to be something totally random and new to the art world during his lifetime. The whole idea of this type of artform is new to me and I feel extremely challenged by it's abstractness and unpredictable qualities. I, for one, am a planner and I tend to meticulous about my work and what I do with it and the steps I take to execute my work. But with "Chance"- things seems so risky and unpredictable that my whole world is flipped upside down. I wasn't a big fan of enjoying a lot of Cage's works but I did appreciate the process he took with it all. One particular work I enjoyed was his composition called "In the Name of the Holocaust" played on a prepared piano. I felt that is represented the pain and suffering that people experienced in Germany during the Holocaust.

Extended Body Artist: Bridging the Human Form and technology

Her home page: Rebecca Horn

I found this German artist, Rebecca Horn, whose art is focused on body extensions. I found her art to be interesting in terms of using different items to extend the body further into different materials, worlds and places. I found that the picture on the very right reminded me of one of my favorite movies, Edward Scissorhands. The main character has this scissorhands and he is not truly human and this reminded me of how he was created from a machine engineer's mind. His hands were made of scissors and his body I believe was to look human but was not. Rebecca Horn's art makes me think about how limiting the human form is at times and looking beyond it is something incredible and exciting.

Extended body artist: Disfigured gender and loss of identity

In an article about monstrous bodies, by Yvonne Volkart, delves into the art of Aziz and Cucher's Faith, Honor and Beauty, a digital painting done to comment on the body no longer needing sexual parts and almost becoming ken and barbie like people. I thought this was interesting in terms of it commenting on gender and femininity and masculinity in our culture. These artist challenge this by putting the over masculine male with no nipples, little body hair and no genitals with a gun in his hand. Although this is not "extending the body" persay it is challenging the body and limiting it to equalize things amongst people which I find interesting as well as challenging my thinking. The article is pretty long and this is part of the "monstrous bodies" portion which I felt was something negative but in their stance they see it as challenging these ideas of cyborg bodies on an equal playing field somewhat.