final project- cold

Mao Zekun 52638877

Zhang Yiwen 52631077

Mao Shu 53049903

Cold

Our group members are all very interested in Fluxus, Blast Theory and Generative idea. In the last few classes, we learned about the Generative Idea. We want to use this method to help us generate some ideas. And we all really want to do more Fluxus artworks, so we create our own Fluxus idea and perform them in a public place.

Zhang Yiwen and Mao Shu chose the word “cold” as their starting point of brainstorming. They generated the idea of wearing many clothes to stand for cold, and the idea of using ice-cream and ice to represent cold. They also combined the Fluxus thoughts to them, making the original ideas more unordinary and special. They also wanted to make our work like a complete performance. They thought that putting on the clothes was like the preparation or starting of the performance. So they added the action of taking a bow as the ending of the performance or the performer giving thanks to the audiences. Eventually, there were four actions. The first one is putting on all the clothes. The second one is giving the eaten ice-cream to people. The third one is kicking the ice. The last one is taking a bow to people.

The location was chosed by Mao Zekun, which is the Exit H of Kowloon Tong subway station. Mao Zekun do want to experience of doing some crazy Fluxus things in front of many people, so she volunteered to be the performer. They other two people didn’t tell her what she would do before. And we also wanted to try about the Blast Theory. So from this perspective, Mao Zekun became the person who did the directions while Zhang Yiwen and Mao Shu became the people who gave the directions. They used sending text messages by mobile phone to give the instructions. And Mao Zekun did everything they designed for her.

Before we started our project, we found that all the experimental artworks always focused on the process of making the works. They seldom recorded the reactions of audiences when they saw some crazy behaviors. Actually, we all wanted to find out what the reactions are when they see the crazy things. Thus, we wanted not only recorded our own performance, but also audiences reactions. Thus,ut what was happening around them. Most of they did not notice our performer, but just keeping walking fast. After the filming, we thought about it a lot. Nowadays, many people still can not accept or understand the experimental art, some even think they are not art. We think the reason maybe is that most of people seldom pay attention to the creative things happening around them in their daily life. Even they pay attention to the art area, they are so conservative that they can not accept the creative or crazy ideas.

The process of making this work is really great. We all very enjoy it. We just hope th at people could spend less time focusing on their smart phones, spending some time to notice any creative or unordinary things in their daily lives. that's why in our video sometimes Mao Zekun was out of focus while the audiences were in focus. During the process, we suddenly found out that the majority of people were not care abo

"The Quintet of the Astonished" by Bill Viola

http://vimeo.com/15130088

      This is a very short work in time but is also very slow. Even a breath can be last for half of one minute. The name of it is easy to understand, all the five people`s expression shows their astonished and sad. Maybe they have just gotten the news of losing some loved ones. I can see the every second detail of the changing in the motion. Even without sound and words, I can perceive their naturally reveal of sadness.

      As for the picture of the work, this is a very important element because the position of the five people don`t change a lot and it is more like a slightly transformation picture. We can see that the five people are tightly together, but this cannot help ease the grief. What`s more, the color of it is quite dark but by no means it is not able to draw the audiences` attention.

      Anyway, this distortion of time gives us a new aspect to learn and understand the world.

Jaka Zeleznikar: Fragments of Distances (a short digital story)

          

               This is my first time to see someone using the moving Google map as the background. It makes me feel like I am flying and looking at the ground. At first, I was quite wondering why this work could be defined as generative art. After I have browsed the whole work, I think the four pages make up this work and they are one. The map, the picture and the text remind me of the big and beautiful world and the love between human beings. Maybe we are so small in this world, but we have so many things to enjoy and to give others. Our life is meaningful.

Jared Tarbell's website

 

http://www.levitated.net/daily/levIsoblocks.html 

         In this work, I can see dices in different colors, sizes, positions and orientations appears one by one in the screen. And some appears just inside or outside a larger one. Their places are in a specific order and the color is gradually changed from left to right. It makes viewers think about the new things born one by one and this process seems will never end, such as the rebirth and death of life and the repeated history. The growing number of dices are units, and they makes up the dynamic screen which is the entirety.

         As generative works, Jared Tarbell`s works on website is much different from other generative art. They have more technique on computer science and they can be interactive. (In this work I choose, there is no user interaction. ) what`s more, it is very creative to show art programme on the website. 

Sol LeWitt`s generative works

 

 

"Solomon "Sol" LeWitt (September 9, 1928 – April 8, 2007) was an American artist linked to various movements, including Conceptual art and Minimalism.
LeWitt came to fame in the late 1960s with his wall drawings and "structures" (a term he preferred instead of "sculptures") but was prolific in a wide range of media including drawing, printmaking, photography, and painting." 

——Wiki

LeWitt not only paints abstract painting, but also design many generative architecture.

Generative Art

According to wikipedia the defenition of generative art is:

“Generative art refers to art that has been generated, composed, or constructed in an algorithmic manner through the use of systems defined by computer software algorithms, or similar mathematical or mechanical or randomised autonomous processes.” 

  

                             

I think the is a quite typical form of contemporary art. I think if finishing this kind of work in a traditional method, it will take a very long time to do it and it is quite difficult. However, nowadays we can complete this king of design with the help of programming which makes it much more precise in the mathematical way.

      As for the artists, they can do the design more casually than making other kind of painting. Through the changes of color and lines, the outcome may be amazing to the audience. And the beauty of Generative Art not only in the elegant graph which bring us the visual sense, but also in the different imaginations brought to different people.

 

mediations——Gary Hill

     

       This is a work of experimental cinema. In the picture, a loud speaker is saying what is happening and a hand gradually covers the loud speaker with sand. As a result, the sound becomes vague as the sand on the loud speaker more and more.

     

          I think what Gary Hill tries to express is that the power of people`s thinking and speech can`t be turned down by some outside elements. The sand just stands for a kind of natural things, which tends to cover the voice and make it silent. However, the sound can`t totally disappear no matter how much sand over the loud speaker. And the sound just keep repeating ”A voice……” which sounds peaceful and ignores the sand. I think it is an interesting idea to do this.

Wavelength——Michael Snow

Snow is considered one of the most influential experimental filmmakers and is the subject of retrospectives in many countries. In his 2002 Village Voice review of *Corpus Callosum, J. Hoberman writes: “Rigorously predicated on irreducible cinematic facts, Snow's structuralist epics—Wavelength and La Région Centrale—announced the imminent passing of the film era. Rich with new possibilities, *Corpus Callosum heralds the advent of the next. Whatever it is, it cannot be too highly praised.” *Corpus Calossum was screened at the Toronto, Berlin, Rotterdam, and the Los Angeles film festivals amongst others. In January 2003, Snow won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Douglas Edwards Independent Experimental Film/Video Award for *Corpus Callosum. His numerous films have premiered in major film festivals all over the world. Five of his films have premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). In 2000, TIFF commissioned Snow with Atom Egoyan and David Cronenberg to make short films, Preludes, for the 25th Anniversary of the festival. Wavelength has been designated and preserved as a "masterwork" by the Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada[3] and was named #85 in the 2001 Village Voice critics' list of the 100 Best Films of the 20th Century .

                                                                             ——http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Snow 

      I guess this film is made by three fixed videos taken by camera. One is a row of windows and a street in front of it, the other is the back of a room whose color and exposure changes and light is flaring. There are also people appears in the picture. I can see a person with a coat walking on the street and lain down（maybe die?）. I can hear some people sing a song. And there is an electronic sound going through the whole film, which becomes higher in the end.

   

     This film is structurally like a dream. Because the sound and the people`s behaviors are no related. Everything seems has no meaning but actually this is our life, which is so simple and peaceful. The sea appears in the end of the film takes the place of the normal life. I guess the artist want to compare the daily life of human beings to the sea which will never stop flowing.

Meshes of the Afternoon——Maya Deren

           “ Maya Deren (April 29, 1917, Kiev – October 13, 1961, New York City), born Eleanora Derenkowskaia (Russian: Элеоно́ра Деренко́вская), was one of the most important American experimental filmmakers and entrepreneurial promoters of the avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, film theorist, poet, lecturer, writer and photographer. The function of film, Maya believed, like most art forms, was to create an experience; each one of her films would evoke new conclusions, lending her focus to be dynamic and always-evolving.[1] She combined her interests in dance, voodoo and subjective psychology in a series of surreal, perceptual, black and white short films. Using editing, multiple exposures, jump cutting, superimposition, slow-motion and other camera techniques to her fullest advantage, Deren creates continued motion through discontinued space, while abandoning the established notions of physical space and time, with the ability to turn her vision into a stream of consciousness. Perhaps one of the most influential experimental films in American cinema was her collaboration with Alexander Hammid on Meshes of the Afternoon. She continued to make several more films on her own including At Land, A Study in Choreography for Camera, and Ritual in Transfigured Time – writing, producing, directing, editing, and photographing them with help from only one other person, Hella Heyman, as camerawoman. She also appeared in a few of her films but never credited herself as an actress, downplaying her roles as anonymous figures rather than iconic deities.”

                                                                ——http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Deren

  

                This movie is very exciting though it makes me indeed very confused. A woman picked up a flower, opened the door, a knife on the bread, went to upstairs, slept in a chair…… the repeated scenes and the provoking changes make me very confused. As the story progressed, I think the woman is dreaming and the dream shows her disturbance and suspicion of man.

 I guess the door stands for her mind, and the man comes into it. But she is afraid of his thoroughly master of her. As a result, the man becomes a mirror-face person in her dream. In the end, the woman dies in her suffering caused by herself.

           Another things of the movie impresses me a lot is the way it uses to show the woman`s psychological activity. Such as the shaking stairs, the key dropped out, the changing of the key and the knife…… Although this way to tell a story is quite strange and we may get confused, it is actually very interesting. What`s more, as an experimental films, it is a successful work I think.

Cybernetics

Cybernetics is a transdisciplinary approach for exploring regulatory systems, their structures, constraints, and possibilities. Cybernetics is relevant to the study of systems, such as mechanical, physical, biological, cognitive, and social systems. Cybernetics is applicable when a system being analyzed is involved in a closed signaling loop; that is, where action by the system generates some change in its environment and that change is reflected in that system in some manner (feedback) that triggers a system change. Originally referred to as a “circular causal” relationship. Some say this is necessary to a cybernetic perspective. System Dynamics, a related field, originated with applications of electrical engineering control theory to other kinds of simulation models (especially business systems).

Concepts studied by cyberneticists (or, as some prefer, cyberneticians) include, but are not limited to: learning, cognition, adaption, social control, emergence, communication, efficiency, efficacy, andconnectivity. These concepts are studied by other subjects such as engineering and biology, but in cybernetics these are abstracted from the context of the individual organism or device.

Cybernetics was defined in the mid 20th century, by Norbert Wiener as “the scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the machine.” Cybernetics from the Greek meaning to “steer” or “navigate.” Contemporary cybernetics began as an interdisciplinary study connecting the fields of control systems, electrical network theory, mechanical engineering, logic modeling, evolutionary biology,neuroscience, anthropology, and psychology in the 1940s, often attributed to the Macy Conferences. During the second half of the 20th century cybernetics evolved in ways that distinguish first-order cybernetics (about observed systems) from second-order cybernetics (about observing systems). More recently there is talk about a third-order cybernetics (doing in ways that embraces first and second-order).

Fields of study which have influenced or been influenced by cybernetics include game theory, system theory (a mathematical counterpart to cybernetics), perceptual control theory, sociology, psychology (especially neuropsychology, behavioral psychology, cognitive psychology), philosophy, architecture, and organizational theory.

 all above from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetic

             When I first searched for this word, I was quite wondering what the connection between cybernetics and art was. I have learned that this is to study the rule of communication between animals and machine. I think this rule can not only be used in this small field, it can also refer to our society, science, psychology…… As for art, it can be also very useful because it may explain how the art work affect people and why people come up with a certain idea in a scientific way. We can also discover that what kinds of artwork are more popular in different background…. 

Science Friction 1959（Stan Vanderbeek）

VanDerBeek studied art and architecture first at Cooper Union College in New York and then at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he met architect Buckminster Fuller, composer John Cage, and choreographer Merce Cunningham. VanDerBeek began his career in the 1950s making independent art film while learning animation techniques and working painting scenery and set designs for the American TV show, Winky Dink and You. His earliest films, made between 1955 and 1965 mostly consist of animated paintings and collage films, combined in a form of organic development.

VanDerBeek's ironic compositions were created very much in the spirit of the surreal and dadaist collages on Max Ernst, but with a wild, rough informality more akin to the expressionism of the Beat Generation. In the 1960s, VanDerBeek began working with the likes of Claes Oldenburg and Allan Kaprow, as well as representatives of modern dance, such as Merce Cunningham and Yvonne Rainer. Building his Movie Drome theater at Stony Point, New York, at just about the same time, he designed shows using multiple projectors. These presentations contained a very great number of random image sequences and continuities, with the result that none of the performances were alike.

His desire for the utopian led him to work with Ken Knowlton in a co-operation at Bell Labs, where dozens of computer animated films and holographic experiments were created by the end of the 1960s. Between 1964 and 1967 Vanderbeek created Poem Field, a series of 8 computer-generated animations with Ken Knowlton.

During the same period, he taught at many universities, researching new methods of representation, from the steam projections at the Guggenheim Museum to the interactive television transmissions of his Violence Sonata broadcast on several channels in 1970. He ran the University of Maryland, Baltimore County visual arts program until his death.

 ——http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Vanderbeek

      

         On the last week`s tutorial class, we watch this amazing work which is made up with many moving pictures. It is my first time to see this form to produce a film and it is really funny.

        In the film, there are many similar contents such as scientists, rockets, instruments, leaders…… I think Stan Vanderbeek against the war and at that time maybe the officials asked the scientists to invent more weapon such as rockets or biochemical weapon to make their country stronger. But they ignore the humanity and this kind of pursuit will make the world tends to extreme.

     Actually, all above is just my personal understanding and I think this work is really a fascinating one, not only the rich color and pictures, but also the message it conveys. 

Eadweard Muybridge

He was an English photographer important for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion and in motion-picture projection.

He immigrated to the United States as a young man but remained obscure until 1868, when his large photographs of Yosemite Valley, California, made him world famous. Muybridge is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion in 1877 and 1878, which used multiple cameras to capture motion in stop-action photographs, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip used in cinematography.

In his earlier years in San Francisco, Muybridge had become known for his landscape photography, particularly of the Yosemite Valley. He also photographed the Tlingit people in Alaska, and was commissioned by the United States Army to photograph the Modoc War in 1873. In 1874 he shot and killed Major Harry Larkyns, his wife's lover, and was acquitted in a jury trial on the grounds of justifiable homicide.[2] He travelled for more than a year in Central America on a photographic expedition in 1875.

In the 1880s, Muybridge entered a very productive period at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, producing over 100,000 images of animals and humans in motion, capturing what the human eye could not distinguish as separate movements. He spent much of his later years giving public lectures and demonstrations of his photography and early motion picture sequences. He also edited and published compilations of his work, which greatly influenced visual artists and the developing fields of scientific and industrial photography.

——http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eadweard_Muybridge 

The blast theory

         Blast Theory is renowned internationally as one of the most adventurous artists' groups using interactive media, creating groundbreaking new forms of performance and interactive art that mixes audiences across the internet, live performance and digital broadcasting. 

          The group has made major innovations in its use of technology, in its working methods, and in its business model. The uses of locative media and mixed reality in works such as Can You See Me Now? (2001) and I Like Frank (2004) have had wide impact. The group recognises that true innovation requires significant risks and it continues to be agile and highly responsive to new ideas and opportunities. Its BAFTA nomination for Technological and Social Innovation is an example of the success of that model. 
         The artists remain fascinated with how technology, especially mobile devices, creates new cultural spaces in which the work is customised and personalised for each participant and what the implications of this shift might be for artistic practice. 

 

CAN YOU SEE ME NOW?

         Can You See Me Now? is a game that happens simultaneously online and on the streets. Players from anywhere in the world can play online in a virtual city against members of Blast Theory. Tracked by satellites, Blast Theory's runners appear online next to your player on a map of the city. On the streets, handheld computers showing the positions of online players guide the runners in tracking you down.

         With up to 20 people playing online at a time, players can exchange tactics and send messages to Blast Theory. An audio stream from Blast Theory's walkie talkies allowed you to eavesdrop on your pursuers: getting lost, cold and out of breath on the streets of the city.

 all above from  http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/


After the further introduction of the blast theory in the tutorial class, I understand more about the amazing group. I think their games are not only just for fun, but also trying to use and combine some new technology. What`s more, I am impressed by their efforts to connecting the relationship between the strangers, which is born of their love for the city and their belief to the natural friendliness.

And there is another latest work done by the Blast Theory in last year.

http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/bt/work_jog_shuttler.html

 

 

 

 

 

Time passed, but the main idea of the Blast Theory doesn`t change. They used CRT TVs and VHS tapes. I don`t think this kind of things are as new as the GPRS used in their former works. However, this work is as interesting as the old one. This makes me amazing: oh, I can`t imagine that ordinary things can be used in such a creative way!

  

 

New Babylon (Constant Nieuwenhuys)

      As we know, architecture is another form of art. Maybe I am not quite familiar with the anti-capitalist theory, but I am amazed that the modern design of the building and the ideal regional planning. I think the advanced idea of unlimited structures can still be learnt.

     In his design, we can know about his pursuing of generating a city in which people share both work and live together and the social goal is Self-fulfillment and self-satisfaction. However,I don`t think it is quite realizable because the completely fairness is hard to achieve due to the weakness of the humanity.

    After all, it is still a very meaningful try.

Thanks for your looking my blog!

Fluxus performance & characteristics

want to see our project?
Please click here~


***the open event***
 1.staring at the people passing by with smile
 2.a boy put up a girl`s colth
 3.go to a restaurant and only ask for a cup of wate

 

*List 5 characteristics of the Fluxus：

1.crazy: They can do something that seems strange to us.

2.free: They will do anything they like to do.

3.break the rule: Their movement may out of the commen norms.

4.interesting: Of course they will do things they think interesting.

5.show to the public: It is also an interesting part to see the reflection of audience.

the Situationist International and the Lettrist International

 

       The SI began as a group called The Lettrist International, which was a collection of artists and drop - outs living in Paris during The 1950 s. The Lettrists belonged to that long French tradition of epater la bourgeoisie - to shock and provoke and unsettle The bourgeoisie - that is, they wanted to reject The banalities of bourgeois life and celebrate instead all their wildest and most profane impulses. They wanted to find new and experimental ways of living and of being.

       The Lettrists were most famous for their elaborate stunts and pranks - one example of which would be when one of their number snuck into Notre Dame cathedral during Easter High Mass in 1950, stole a priest 's outfit and went up to The main pulpit where he started giving a sermon on how God is Dead. When The congregation eventually realised what was going on, they chased him down and, The legend goes, if a policeman hadn' t intervened he would 've been lynched.

        There are loads of examples of Lettrist pranks like this - but in 1957 the so - called left - wing of the group realised that its activities needed more structure, more focus. This left - wing split off and formed the Situationist International, which was founded as a way of formulating these types of nihilistic gestures of defiance into a more systematic and ordered programme of assault upon life and culture under capitalism.

from: http://www-scf.usc.edu/~estevao/itp104/project_SI/about.html 

Blindfold photography

       On 29,sep，two of my friends(Liu Qiao & Ouyangdenian) and I went to Mong Kok to do our homework. We tried to take photos with a plastic bag on our head so that we could not see anything, which could make our photo seems more random.

       Actually I wanted to focus on the photos I took at first, but as soon as I put the plastic bag on my head, I found that I no longer pay attention to my job, I just felt quite afraid because I saw nothing. I can only heard trumpet from car and the wind blowing from the road.

       As for the images we made, I found that most of them looks good because they showed the busy of the daily life in city. Some of them also amazing! For example, I caught my shadow in the window in a shop, and a bunch of sunlight shooting between two buildings. In some pictures, I can see people`s eyes looking at me in wonder. I have to admit that our performance may be quite strange for the other people. Anyway, this experience gave me a different point of view towards photography, art and the word around us. 

Surrealism & Dada

        After the class as well as searching for the internet, I have known many things about Dada and Surrealism.

For some historical reason, people in the World War One are all quite hurt and they had some wound on their mind more or less. These may lead to the Dada artists proposed that everything should be destroyed, even people and history. I don`t think it is a rational opinion which is another kind of Nihilism, but I can understand these people under that background. They are anguished and need to create a new meaning for their lives.

After the World War One, many Dada artists turned Surrealism. They paint with fantasy and drifted from the real world. The color is pure and bright, such as Salvador Dalí`s work: The Persistence of Memory (1931). We can see from some typical works that the Surrealism also had absorbed some element of romanticism and symbolism.

Thoughts after today’s SM1701

      In today`s class, we learned about Dada and The Merzbau and so on. Kurt Schwitters`s art The Merzbau impressed me a lot. Schwitters himself has described it as his life's work. In the bulding,the ceilings and walls were covered with three dimensional shapes and filed with a variety of objects. Actually , I don`t think it looks beautiful,but it conveys a feeling of war, which causes people thinking. Maybe that is the reason that it become famous,noy just because it`s creative shape of building.

   Then I start thinking about the title of our course­­——CONTEMPORARY & NEW MEDIA ART. Which work can be one of this ? I think the artist should be creative enough to create a new style or a new form to express the art. What`s more, the work should convey an idea to the viewers. A surprise and a deep thought are enough to make a work succeed, and it may be a little difficult to achieve.

An eye on Winter Pool by Robert Rauschenberg

        

        This is one of Robert Rauschenberg's Combine painting. This style breaks the limit of tranditional painting which only with a kinds of material. What`s more, it use many common things in our daily life such as fabric, wood, metal, sandpaper, tape, printed paper, printed reproductions, handheld bellows,  ladder, canvases.  The wooden ladder bridges the gap between the two pictures , just like inviting the viewer to climb into the colorful art world which fulls of imagenation. So I think this work reflects his idea” work in the gap between art and life perfectly.

As for the painting on the wall, it closes to our life and is energetic though it is in the shape of rectangle. The unequal size of the two painting also show a casual life attitude and they are beautiful enough just by themselves.

My First SM1701 Class

       The name of this class is Contemporary & New Media Art. Before the class, my general idea of this is funny, new and interesting art. However, I found some work is very difficult to understand which need us to search for the history, politics and the author.

       I think this class will lead me to a new world art which I have never thought of I will try to understand them carefully. As an artist, he should learn as much as possible about the art history and the excellent work. So this class will be my first step on my road of art. Good luck!