Caitlyn’s Work

Week One:

Sol Lewitt Video Response: Sol Lewitt expresses this notion by creating his blueprints that other artists can recreate. He created the original idea, and created blueprints that were easy to follow which allowed other artists to try and replicate his work. As shown in the video by the group of artists moving his piece to a different area of the gallery. This idea allowed the other artists to come together and re-create his piece as a collaborative work. The idea put this project in motion and creates a wonderful outcome, and a great journey along the way for the artists at work.

Notes:

• Recreating piece to move in museum
• Have blueprints – Sol’s original idea
• Other artists follow
• Collaborative piece
• Unified

Yoko Ono Video Response: At first I watched this video and had a difficult time trying to separate one idea from another, but I decided to play it back and instead of watch it, I just listened. This helped me greatly and I was able to jot down more notes. The boundaries I felt were drawn by the themes of each of the pieces. Initially watching I thought it was all one big art piece with one overall theme, but listening back to it again, and reading my notes I realized that was not the case. Each piece was separated by theme and the emotions that you feel along with it. I think an important tool Ono used was her use of tone in delivering the ideas. She used the same tone to describe everything which I think was extremely beneficial to the viewer watching because we were able to envision what we felt and not Ono. We were able to feel for ourselves and not have Ono’s tone of voice sway our opinions and feelings.

My favourite concept that Ono discussed was about comparing the stones. She was saying that when you are sad, put a stone out to create a pile, and when you are happy to do the same thing in a different pile. After the piece is done compare the two and see what it looks like when you are done. I think this is a powerful idea to compare the happy and sad days.

Notes:

• Keep laughing
• Shake hands
• Painting for canvas
• Hole in canvas
• Shake hands – converse
• Cut hole in bad with seeds – winds
• See the sky
• Drill hole in canvas – see sky
• Change place of hanging – different?
• Square to circle
• Object, smell, colour comes to mind?
• Shadow becomes one
• Fly
• Heartbeat
• Walking in footsteps of person in front
• Be quiet
• Declare ownership of spot
• Send pictures to friends of spot
• Visit and invite spot
• Keep clean
• Send card to friends about spot
• Historical spot
• Feet are physical connection to the planet
• Let circulate
• Cleaning piece – pile up stones to sadness 
• Appreciate beauty of stones
• Happiness stones – pile up
• Compare stones – happy and sad
• Say nothing negative about anybody

Bruce Nauman Video Response:

Studies for Holograms, 1970, Bruce Nauman

Response One: I chose his piece, Studies for Holograms, as the first image of his to write about. This piece is a series of him making weird faces at the camera. Everyday we make strange faces and this would typically be seen as ‘art’, but the way he frames this image makes it a true piece of art, and not random photographs. The framing of this piece is very clean and pleasing to look at. It’s like a series that guides your eye through the overall piece of the work.

Fifteen Pairs of Hands, 1996, Bruce Nauman

Response Two: For the second piece I chose, Fifteen Pairs of Hands. For this piece I am going to focus my response around the hands in the foreground of the image. This sculpture is just one of a pair of hands, but the framing of it is what makes it very interesting. The hands could have been flat on the pedestal, they could have been clasped together; but instead they are attached by the fingers on a diagonal. The way the hands are positioned makes it very eye catching and it even makes the rest of the sculpture intriguing. The hole in the center of the first pair of hands acts as a viewpoint to the next sculpture, making it a unified piece.

Notes:

• Unique works
• Not supposed to be ‘pretty’
• “If I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art.”

My Project Response: For this assignment I had a very difficult time deciding what I wanted to do. I felt I was overthinking everything and started to get overwhelmed, until it finally came to me. I decided to look at how long it would take, on average, to walk a kilometer and make something based off of that. On average, to walk a kilometer it takes twelve minutes so I thought back to me stressing out about this assignment and decided that sometimes twelve minutes is all you need to calm down and recollect yourself. So, I decided to make a twelve minute video with the word breathe in the center, and calming music in the background. My project is “taking a kilometer” out of your day to take a step back, so you can recollect yourself and clear your mind.

Link to project: https://youtu.be/0OS-3oxzfX4

Song used: Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Isle of Songs, Nintendo, 2011.

Week Two:

For this assignment I took the time to sit down and relax for a bit, but I didn’t just sit. I decided to wear my new Doc Martens while sitting down. If anyone has ever owned a pair of Docs then you know that it is not a comfortable process to break them in. So for the hour that I was relaxing, I was also breaking in my shoes. I wanted to take before and after photos of what my feet looked like before the hour and after it was over. About 20 minutes in I could start to feel my feet going numb and giving me the tingles. I found it very hard to sit still breaking them in versus walking around. This was a very hard assignment for me to do because I cannot sit still at all, especially when my feet went numb and all I wanted to do was move them. I put on some music before the hour started so I could distract myself because I knew I would move if I just sat there and had nothing to distract me. I give Abramovic a lot of credit to be able to endure her performances for so long. While I was sitting and my feet were in pain I was thinking back to Abramovic and Ulay’s performance of them slapping each other. Their performance was not an hour but instead 20 minutes, but still the thought of them slapping each other (and not lightly) for that amount of time astonished me.

As you can see in my progression photos my feet became very red and I had many indents in them.

Week Three:

Making Changes: “Moving things that don’t belong to you”.

This piece made me laugh a lot. I love how he just kept moving things and nobody said anything. Except for the one part with the giant cylindrical thing that he push and went on the road. I was just envisioning a disaster waiting to happen!

Sitting: “Appreciating the companionship of strangers”.

This piece made me very uncomfortable as he was sitting so close to people! It made me think back to when I had to take the bus to school and there would be so many empty seats, yet a stranger would sit right next to me! The artist seems to be content with sitting next to the strangers. I give kudos to the strangers in the video as I would’ve gotten up and left!

Ladder climb: “Keep trying, no matter how impossible it may seem”.

This piece gave me a sense of adrenaline. I felt so invested in watching him trying to climb the ladder, I felt so motivated. After watching I wanted to go do something exciting!

Dead End, Eastern Market, Detroit: “Patience is a virtue, and that patience will reward you”.

This piece made me mad! I was getting so frustrated seeing him trying to get out of the tight alley and made me want to go help him get out! In the end though he did get out and going faster wouldn’t have been as successful.

The Distance I Can Be From My Son: “No matter how far you go, there will always be home”.

This piece gave me such anxiety because I just kept envisioning a car driving by and hitting the boy. I wanted to chase after him and make sure he was ok! I can just imagine the mother’s anxiety. But she did chase after him which made me so relieved!

Several Observations: “You can be more than what you think you are”.

This piece made me feel calm. I love the sound of bubble wrap so much and it was just so nice to listen to!

I loved watching all of these videos as they made me feel a variety of emotions in such a short amount of time! It’s so unique to witness these events and see how we feel because others could feel completely different!

For this assignment I decided to throw bagged air so  I could see how it would move in a natural air environment. I was not able to throw this out a window, so I just threw it outside. I had some other ideas of what to possibly do for this assignment. For example one was throwing peanuts up in the air, but the final products for those did not live up to my expectations, so I decided to change my idea. I had no idea what else to do but then I saw the bagged air that came with one of my packages. I initially was going to either store it away or throw it out, so I thought it would be a great idea to use it as a piece of art! I enjoyed seeing how the bagged air reacted, well in the air, and seeing how it fell. I especially love how it is something so artificial being placed in such a natural and green environment. It is like two different worlds colliding.

Week 4:

Adad Hannah Studio Visit:

• Moment of pose when we think we are getting our photo taken
• Decameron – Frame story
• When you watch someone being still, you also tend to stay still
• Mirroring
• Reminded of moment

Handheld Case Study:

• Video makes me feel anxious
• Just waiting for the ball to drop, but it never does
• Photos are very compositionally pleasing

Burghers of Vancouver:

• Beautiful piece of work
• Waiting for something to happen
• Models are very still, almost look as if they are completely frozen
• Makes me hold my breath

The Screen: 

• Interesting piece as models are all half dressed (except for two)
• Make viewer feel as if they intruded, especially as front model stares at you

Traces: 

• Similar to The Screen, viewers feel as if they are intruding on an intimate situation
• I feel discomfort when looking at the female model as she is holding an awkward pose and I can imagine how uncomfortable it is
• Captures an intimate moment in time

Social Distancing Portraits 2020:

• Empowering
• Telling a story
• A documentation of the year 2020

Adad Hannah’s videos are so unique and interesting to watch because all of his subjects are so different. Not even just look and style wise, but in what they are doing. Some are standing, some are holding things and some are even in cars. Each of these videos tells a different story of each individual subject. It’s interesting to see how the portraits change over time. They start off normal, how we would see people just on the daily but as time goes on you can see the masks start to be a prominent feature. It shows a shift from how things were, to how they are and how they are going to be for a long time. The portraits show a story over the year of 2020 with the rise of the pandemic and the protests for the BLM movement. It is a powerful story that Hannah has documented that I am certain people will look back on in future years.

My work:

“I’m feeling a little awkward but also good!  I’m doing ok standing still for a minute (though it is a little awkward). For life in general I’m also doing ok! Especially today! I really enjoy the cold, but I do kind of wish it would rain! I love the rain.”

For this assignment I decided to do a portrait of my friend Shelby. I filmed the video of her outside of our house in the afternoon. It was a little hard because we were both trying to keep a straight face. She was trying her best not to smile or laugh, and I too was trying not to laugh behind the camera. I also had a hard time filming because Shelby is a bit shorter than me and I wanted to get her full body in the shot nicely so I had to hunch over. Being hunched over I could feel my back aching, and my hands got really shaky as I had nowhere to set my phone down. So the minute did feel very long!

Week 6:

Article Questions and Answers:

Describe a situation from your recent experience where not seeing faces has caused significant misunderstanding, confusion, or grief.

I work in retail and I always smile at the customer when I cash them out, so with the masks they obviously cannot see me smile. I had one experience that I was so confused by with a customer. I finished cashing her out and told her to have a great day and smiled at her. I thought I was being very friendly but the lady glared back at me and left. I was so confused as to why she would glare at me. I knew we had the masks, but still I was so confused. I looked in a mirror we have near the cash and realized what probably happened. I normally have an “RBF” and my eyes and eyebrows looked as if I was glaring at her first. Since she couldn’t see my smile she was just going off of the ‘emotion’ of my upper face. I was so embarrassed and ever since that experience I made sure to over exaggerate my emotions so people could tell I was smiling at them and not glaring. 

Which of the faces discussed in the text were of particular interest to you and your experience? What do you think about these faces?

The face in the text that most related to my experience I would have to say is with the author and her husband when they went grocery shopping. She was trying to give him instructions and as he could not see her mouth he was confused. We take for granted the simple gesture of even reading lips for instruction or clarification. Now it is almost re-learning another way of communication with one another.

Who are you without your face? How is your experience different without your face in public? Can you imagine new ways to face the world?

It is hard to say who I am without my face. It was hard at the beginning, trying to get used to the look and feeling of wearing a mask, but now I see the mask almost as an accessory. I especially love wearing the masks that have some sort of pattern or face on it because I see it as another way to express ourselves and bring a little joy to these times. Wearing the mask I have noticed I am less self conscious going out in public. Usually when I go out I am always worried that I have something on my face or in my teeth but now it doesn’t matter since no one can see.

Photo 1:  Lights

For this photo I went searching through my household’s Christmas decorations. I thought this would be an interesting picture, especially to see how the light casts shadows and interacts with my face. I really enjoyed playing around with the lights, but I had to stop at a certain point as they were heating up and I could feel them burning my face!

Photo 2: Masks

For this photo I decided I wanted to mock the people who wear their masks wrong by covering my entire face except for my mouth and nose. I see way too many people wearing their masks improperly which completely defeats the purpose of them. This one I was inspired a lot by Jan Hakon Erichsen’s (2020) image of the face with masks everywhere, but for mine I left the nose and mouth exposed.

Picture 3: Broughie

For this picture I grabbed one of the Broughies we have in the kitchen and stuck it under my glasses. I really don’t know why I did this one other than I thought it would look funny. One thing about my picture is that I feel I look like some sort of animated/cartoon character but I can’t place the name of them!

Week 7:

Audio Lecture Notes:

Piss Record, Matthew Sawyer

This is a very interesting piece since it is the artist peeing and creating a song out of such a weird subject. I think this piece maintains interest because of its unusual subject. Going to the washroom is a private thing and Sawyer is sharing it with the world. This piece, at first, made me feel uncomfortable as if I was intruding. The longer I listened the more I found the song hilarious. Adding in the additional music transformed this piece from a simple bathroom routine to an actual song.

“Love-online-audio-converter.com_”

I really enjoy this piece and find it very catchy. The use of repetition makes for an interesting compilation but I also think it tricks the viewer. I recognize a lot of the songs and when I hear one of them start singing, in my mind I want to continue with the rest of the song, but another completely different ‘love’ is said next. The use of repetition is so interesting because it is the same word but sung in different ways with different background music. You would think it doesn’t work well together but it surprisingly does!

I Really Should, Kelly Mark

I think this piece is one of my favourites from all of the audio pieces. When I hear this I think of intrusive thoughts that we have all had. A lot of the things Mark says are quite normal, alsmot as if you are cresting a to-do list, but then some obscure ones make their way in. It reminds me of whenever I have intrusive thoughts. I’ll be thinking of what I still need to do but then a random thought will pop in (For example, I should get bangs or shave my head). The repetition also makes me feel as if I am forgetting something that I need to remember.

Proposal:

Looking at the audio examples I really enjoyed listening to Anna Ripmeester’s Pipes in “C”. I love the idea of creating music just from simple everyday sounds. I would like to also try and create a song, but instead of a pipe life Ripmeester, I want to use a variety of noises that my dog makes. I hope to create a piece of music that encompasses all of the noises my dog makes. I want to use my dogs’ sounds and overlap them and hopefully create a harmonious piece.

Some of the noises included would be:

• Claws tapping on ground
• Rustling in the leaves
• Barking/Growling
• Snoring
• Licking
• Whining

Initially with this project I wanted to make a song with the noises from my dog. I tried but I wasn’t happy with the result so I instead made a piece that is just a complication. I guess it could be seen as a song, but not what I originally indented for it to sound like. Sally makes a lot of weird and interesting sounds so I did have a lot of fun playing around with them. The sounds I used in the video was of her bark, her claws, her prancing in the leaves, her snoring, and probably the most uncomfortable noise of them all, her licking and chewing on her paws. I used that noise as the base for the audio clip and the longer I listened to it the more grossed out I got. It reminded me a lot of the sound from the Sucking Face exemplar. I am happy how this turned out and though the licking sound grosses me out, it all reminds me of my dog who I don’t get to see that much as she is at my hometown and I am currently residing in Guelph.

I was only able to add the YouTube video because whenever I tried to add the audio file it said it couldn’t add for ‘security’ reasons and I don’t know how to fix it.

Week 10:

For my idea I decided that I was going to go to my most listened to playlist and find the top 50 most listened to songs I have on it. After finding the songs I am going to create a list with the number of times I listened to certain songs. After I do that I want to do different types of grouping of the songs and create a photo series on that. For example: Organize all the artists, then organize all the albums, the genres, etc… I was inspired by Douglas Gordon’s List of Names, 1990 to Ongoing series. He created an entire list of all of the artists he has ever met. I find his concept interesting as it is a reminder of these people that he met. For me it will be interesting to see what the results are and how they relate to me.

Update: I had another idea and that was to write out each of the song names the amount of times I’ve listened to them. This new idea was still inspired by Gordon’s piece, but it was also inspired by John Baldessari’s I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art, 1971. It is a repeated piece with the words “I will not make any more boring art”. I repeated the song title with the amount of times I listened to it. I unfortunately was not able to fit all 50 songs but I got up to 42. The piece took a very long time and I went through two Sharpie markers and writing nonstop took up to three hours. By the end of the piece my hand was in a lot of pain, but I am very happy with how it turned out!

Songs:

1. Cola, Lana Del Rey – 82
2. Garden, Halsey – 81
3. Nightcore Mashup – 77
4. Lolita, Lana Del Rey – 65
5. Sweet Dreams, Emily Browning – 65
6. Blue Jeans, Lana Del Rey – 60
7. September, Nightcore – 55
8. Lonely Hearts Club, Marina and the Diamonds – 54
9. Teacher’s Pet, Melanie Martinez – 54
10. Queen of Disaster, Lane Del Rey – 53
11. Bottom of the Deep Blue Sea, Missio – 52
12. Smarty, Lana Del Rey – 51
13. Wicked Game, Chris Isaak – 49
14. Kinda Outta Luck, Lana Del Rey – 49
15. Body Electric, Lana Del Rey – 48
16. Gods and Monsters, Lana Del Rey – 48
17. Break My Fall, Lana Del Rey – 48
18. Be my,  Lana Del Rey – 46
19. You Can Be the Boss, Lana Del Rey – 45
20. Serial Killer, Lana Del Rey – 44
21. Hit and Run, Lana Del Rey – 42
22. Back to Black, Amy Winehouse – 41
23. Off to the Race, Lana Del Rey – 41
24. Big Bad Wolf, Lana Del Rey – 39
25. E.V.O.L, Marina and the Diamonds – 39
26. F*ck it I Love You, Lana Del Rey, 380
27. Agoraphobic, CORPSE – 37
28. Forever… is a Long Time, Halsey – 35
29. How You Remind Me, Avril Lavigne – 34
30. Money Power Glory, Lana Del Rey – 34
31. Lolita (DEMO 1),  Lana Del Rey – 34
32. Diet Mountain Dew, Lana Del Rey – 33
33. The Blackest Day, Lana Del Rey – 33
34. Religion, Lana Del Rey – 32
35. Summer Bummer, Lana Del Rey (feat ASAP Rocky) – 32
36. Dance Monkey, Tones and I – 32
37. Paralyzer, Finger 11 – 31
38. Nightmare, Halsey – 31
39. Graveyard, Halsey – 30
40. You Should Be Sad, Halsey – 30
41. Ultraviolence, Lana Del Rey – 30
42. Florida Kilos, Lana Del Rey – 30
43. Wicked Game, Theory of a Deadman – 30
44. Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, Lana Del Rey – 29
45. Sad Girl, Lana Del Rey – 29
46. Froot, Marina and the Diamonds – 29
47. Finally//Beautiful Stranger, Halsey – 28
48. More, Halsey – 28
49. Million Dollar Man, Lana Del Rey 28
50. You know I’m No Good, Amy Winehouse – 27

Portrait Series: Playlist C