A Memory of Long Ago – A Mini Series.

I couldn’t decided which one was best so I decided to upload my different styles that I did, and created a little series that made I created to remember my Pappy. When doing the video my roommate’s cat wanted to be in it but I wants to keep the video whole because it capture the sound of the pen and I enjoyed that about the piece, I also uploads the scanned photos of the final product and it sits heavy on my chest because I remember him a lot. I hope this series helps you remember someone special to you!

Week 9

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The Memory of Long Ago — Conceptual Portrait 

I wanted to use the photography we did in this semester and also use to the memories of someone who had a huge impact on my life even though it’s been 10 years since they have gone to rest. 

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I bounced between either adding an audio and movement or just one to the photo to make it a style of performance art like we learned about during the semester. 

I found myself connected to Spring Hurlbut when it came to working with the memories of people, My pappy isn’t in ashes and I don’t have much of his left to use as props next to photos of his life and those are limited from what is posted to facebook from when he passed.

If you refer to the photos above you will see my brain storming when it comes to the idea that my mom and grandma came up with that would work with keeping his memories but keeping it creative where you can’t really tell the stories of where the photos came from and make you question his life and make up your own interpretations and I like that idea as long as nothing horrible comes from it but understand it might. 

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Week 8

Repetitive Reminders

I had so much fun recording these audios, it was interesting to play them back just on my phone and hear the different audios. Once I finally got them uploaded onto my computer and into Garageband that is where the fun started. Though in the start I wanted to channel Kelly Mark and have this basic monotone reminder going nonstop on a loop but I like the idea of making it your own and changing the sounds in post production. I put both audios in reverse and but a voice effect on them to see how it would change the sound of the audios and I loved listening to each one to hear the differences. When I let my family listened they heard different things each time, what do you hear in the individual audios and the combined audio?

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Week 7

Repetitive Reminders — A Proposal

I do mindfulness every day and I find myself always stating to myself throughout the day with reminders and I thought it would be good audio to repeat over and over what I say to myself to get through the day. After completing DBT therapy with the CMHA in my hometown I find myself doing these daily reminders. I find that sometimes people need to hear these small reminders to continue in everyday life, and I wanted to make that happen. I got the inspiration from Kelly Mark’s I really should piece but instead of things that I should do it is things that I am or that I am worthy of. For example, I would say some things:  

I am powerful

I am enough 

I am beautiful 

I have self-worth 

You create your own clam. 

I would try to be in a very quiet spot just like Kelly Mark, I do not have a studio to record in but I would try to find a spot to do this audio, so it is a peaceful reminder of just my voice a calming effecting. I am currently unsure if I should possibly add music to the piece or if that would distract from the affirmations that I would be saying. Most mindfulness exercise and affirmations I have come across on youtube and websites it just talking so I am leaning towards that so I can stick to that type of things. 

Resources/References: 

Pinterest Board of my reminders → https://www.pinterest.ca/imrachealnorton/mindfulness/

Mindfulness Website → https://www.excelatlife.com/downloads/mindfulness/index.htm

Kelly Mark’s I Really Should → http://kellymark.com/MULT_IRS_CD1.html

Three Artists & The Breakdown

Kelly Mark – I really should

The User – Dot-matrix Sympthony

Laurel Woodcock – One Minute Apology 

What were the conceptual prompts for each piece?

I believe each of these artists had their own prompts in mind when it came to creating these pieces, narrowing down the prompts can seem a little hard but I will give it a shot. For Kelly Mark I believe she gave herself a prompt of using a list of things from past New Years Resolutions that never came to be and just keep growing as she thought about what she could do better or change. For The User I think they decided to give themselves a prompt of being old technology into a world of new, to use something that creates a unique noise and make it into a sound track. And finally for Laurel Woodcock, hers was a little more challenging, I believe she gave herself a prompt to remix something already made and put her own twist on it. All of their prompts to me seem so amazing with the outcomes they created, they all show conceptual art prompts amazingly well even if we can’t pinpoint the exact prompt itself and have to make up our own for it. 

How are these audio pieces different from conventional music, or scoring of films? 

I feel like each piece that is create is different in their own way but if we are to thinking about this when comparing it to the conventional music that we listen to everyday or the scores on films, these pieces are different. For Laurel Woodcock she uses music from an early generation and put a little twist on it, the music she used would be classed as conventional music that would be listened to either today or in the past and she put it in a program and cut it up and made it a different piece all together. For Kelly Mark her piece is all spoken word with some repetitive words, and I find those words create a beat for the piece itself but past that it is not like a regular day music, it could be close to a film score because sometimes in films there is voice overs instead of music but not to the extent that she does it in this one piece. And finally for The User their piece is completely different from any conventional music we listen to or film scores, they use items that create a unique sound and put the record of those sounds in a program and mix them up to create a different type of dubstep style of music, it not exactly like the conventional dubstep music you would hear but the more you listen to it, it has that quality. 

How did the artists perform and resolve these ideas in the works? 

I personally believe each artists has their own way of performing be it with paint or audio or any other type of media. For The User I believe they stayed in a quiet room with just the printer so only the sounds of the machine were to be picked up, they probably used a high quality microphone and recording equipment to make sure no background noise was picked up including the breathing of the artist. I believe the same goes for Kelly Mark, I believe she sat in a recording studio that was super quiet and only picked up her words and saying so it had no distractions other then what she was speaking. Laurel Woodcock seems to have used a program on a computer to make the changes to the audio, unless she sat in-front of a record player and made it skip and scratch it at certain parts to create the noise and musically tone she was looking for. 

What are some of the strategies they used to maintain interest in listening to the works – how did the works use repetition and change over time? 

I think I choose these three artists because each of them used different techniques to keep our attention during the audio piece. For Laurel Woodcock, she interchanged which part skipped and how long it skipped creating a different illusion the skipping/scratching noise is also a jolt of energy because that isn’t a sound you like to hear when listening to records. For The User, they used tonal variations; they had the machines make different noises throughout though defiantly repetitive it changed in volume as well making you think was this change on purpose or mistake when listening to it sometimes. And Finally for Kelly Mark she used the same words I really should and made a statement, though she used repetition their wasn’t much change over time that I caught when listening to the piece itself, it was very monotones and sometimes hard to listen to and keep my attention on.  So some of the strategies that these 3 artists used were; volume control, beat change, repetition of certain words. 

What is the effect of listening to the piece on you?

These pieces defiantly had an effect on me when listening to them. Each artist had a different effect on me when listening to them. Kelly Mark, I was entranced for the first bit curious as to want she was going to say next because she was all over the place with what she really should do, but also awhile I lost instead in the lengthy piece of work and started to tune it out. For Laurel Woodcock I found myself cringing as the scratch of the record, unable to tell if it was a real scratch or a fake one create in a program either way it made me jump because you don’t do that to records. And Finally for The User I loved listening to this piece, it kept my attention and curious as to what part of the machine was making which noise and enjoy the slight volume changes, nothing that made myself jump or overthink or tune it out; it was by far my favourite piece. 

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Week 6

❁ The Failed Masks of Our Times (A Series) ❁

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Photo 1 (blue cube): a cat toy with 3 holes in it, sitting on my head and face poking out of another hole. I call this one the failed masked astronaut, my expression in this one gives me the weird childhood astronaut portrait vibes and I am looking at how baby my face is looking.    

Photo 2 (red tube): a cat toy again, I was sighing in defeat when the tube would not stay flat and kept popping up; so I just went with it and I think this represents some peoples tunnel vision when it comes to the pandemic, I also just laugh at this picture and the 3rd one as well. 

Photo 3 (Tupperware): a piece of Tupperware of my countertop, I was just happy I got it to stick to my face even for a brief moment and you can see the smile on my face behind the well used container. I have 2 other photos (?) of different facial expressions behind this container and each of them made me laugh.  

❁ Article Answers ❁ 

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

I find that when I am covering security break at work and having to keep count of how many people enter the store, the faces blur together, they sometimes seem like the same person. The literally masks that they were sometimes make it hard to distinguish if I counted that person or not when another person is talking to me or asking myself a question. I find it hard to tell people apart nowadays. 

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

I think all of them had some sort of interest for myself and they all sort of connected to my experience stated above. I liked when she talked about the plague doctor mask being worn and scaring some people on the street, I believe that type of mask kind of suits the times we are in currently. When it comes to connecting to my experience, I’d have to say that when she was talking about the masks everyone wears from patterned fabric ones to regular surgical ones and that her identity is fraying. I feel like my identity is fraying but also the identity of everyone around making it hard to tell them apart and count them as individuals. 

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

Who am I without my face? I don’t know I feel like I would be no one just another body on this earth, I feel like our faces give us our unique place in the world. The experiences daily are so different from before the pandemic, I feel like smiling is a lot harder nowadays because no one can see it so do you really want to smile? I feel that interacting and recognizing people is harder especially if you rely on faces to remember people because you suck at names, which is defiantly me. I believe I am adjusting more and more every day when it comes to our new world, I find myself smiling with my voice instead of my face so people can hear the cheerfulness instead of seeing it, I rely on looking at the top half of faces to remember who they are for the best I can so I can remember who they are it, my coworker or friends. 

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Week 4

I decided to do a self portrait idea after trying to work with my family over the thanksgiving break but not being super successful with them staying still even for one minute.

I measured a 6-foot distance even though it does not look like it because my camera zoomed in when on video mode. I wanted to capture the essence of online zoom University which is what we are all stuck in for now. I tried my hardest to stay still with my whole body in the frame while not talking to my grandma who insisted on a conversation at the very second.

I found staying still even for the one minute was hard, it made me think about the stay still for the 1-hour project we had a few weeks ago, yes it wasn’t as long but still hard. In the end it was a fun project to do, even when trying with my mom fidgety and never stop moving family on mine I have a few outtakes of videos from my step-dad and grandma when I tried to make them stay still for 1 whole minute and I tried to have them relate to 1 hour exercise we had earlier, they congratulated me for being able to do that because their 1 minute was hard enough.

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Week Three

Video Sentences: 

Making Changes — change one thing in the space he’s in.

Sitting — to make people feel uncomfortable and awkward.

Ladder Climb — successfully climb the ladder without support.

Dead End, Eastern Market, Detroit  — successfully turn the van around in the alley. 

The distance I can be from my son – Back Alley — let my kid travel as far as possible before nerves kick in.

Severa Observations — give the viewer relaxing tingles. 

I did a lot of my brainstorming for this project on the phone with my mom and grandma. I tossed around ideas for things to throw and if it was safe to throw out my window on the 3rd story (we ruled no). 

Some of the ideas that we came up with by bouncing ideas off each other and viewing Pinterest as inspiration

✿ hard boiled eggs

✿ cereal 

✿ books 

✿ medication packs 

✿ skeletons 

✿ raw eggs 

✿ rice 

✿ fruit 

these were just some of the ideas. My final idea came from combining two ideas together and see what would come of it. I took some old cereal that I had in my apartment and the spooky cheap skeletons I got from Walmart. 

When it comes to shooting I needed to find a spot that would be safe and not super embarrassing spot on my living property to photograph me throwing these images up in the air, I believe I have a spot I will document if it was successful later on. 

Equipment Used: 

✿ Nikon 7100 

✿ 18-140mm lens (kit lens) 

Camera Settings: 

✿ ISO 100

✿ 20mm

✿ f/3.5

✿ 1/60 sec 

Shooting went a little rough, getting the setting right and getting the camera to focus was the hard part. I took about 63 photos and only 2 came out and only 1 was really useable in post. I found myself making a huge mess when throwing the items, I even broke one of the skeletons’ arm. I have attached some behind the scenes and one of the attempts that my hand decided to make an appearance. Overall the shooting went okay, my feet were cold because of the morning dew by other than that it was good. 

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In the video is the quick recap of the drawing, the drawing in total took about 10-12 minutes which is also how long it takes for the average person to walk a kilometre, so I used two different types of measurements in this prompt, it is sped up because procreate does not allow real time if it is under 30 minutes I believe.

Week’s work can be reached by the numbered buttons at the bottom of the page.

The midterm break was included in the page count, following weeks for exercises correspond to their consequent number.

Week 1: September, Tuesday 15th 2020

How does Sol Lewitt express the notion that “the idea is the machine that makes the art” in his work? What does the artist’s actual hand have to do with the final work in a conceptual art context?

Sol Lewitt expresses the notion that “The idea is the machine that makes art” in Paragraphs on Conceptual Art (1967). It is implied that in the process of making a work of art, the written instruction and diagrams are to be sent out to performing equipment operators (In this case, the art students). This act challenges the role of the artist’s hand, changing it to resemble that of an engineer. Every decision is made meticulously before it reaches any hand. Colours and Planes are an abstract to Lewitt, pure idea than physical material.

Where do you draw the boundaries around the artworks in this video? What are the artworks? What strategies and tools does Ono use to challenge the viewer? Do you like any of these concept-works? Discuss.

The Artwork is nested among multiple scales. At the most largest scale, it is a video performance depicting Yoko Ono declaiming a list of instructions. The instructions representing another scale, a different aspect, that are predetermined. Similar to Lewitt, they are decided and coordinated before the act and hand of the artist.

Dressed in black, with a hat and circle sunglasses to match, Ono is slouched and perched on an ordinary bar-stool. Looking much like someone who may well have been to a funeral. A kind of To-do list is read out loud; spoken dispassionately, even ironically staged for five and half minutes. It makes for a challenging experience, not because the material and the execution is not interesting but because of it’s own disinterest and non-seriousness. It is quite literally Yoko Ono reading to a witness with a set of instructions to perform. It is quite humorous in that regard, making it successful as a provocative piece of work.

Describe two works by Bruce Nauman (include images) where he frames every day actions (non-heroic, banal) as art. How are they “framed” as art, and what does the framing do to our understanding and experience of the actions?

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Bruce Nauman was inspired by a sense of helplessness, the creative block. When given an art studio, was lost as to what to do in that space. He reached out asking what he should be doing and the response he was given had a profound effect on Nauman. “Do what you do” was exactly he was told to do in the studio, cause if you are given an art studio you are expected to make art in it. In a way, it is a measure of artistic intent.

The art pieces I chose are framed curiosities. Both perform an activity. Double Poke in the Eye II(1985) is a comic animation of two profiles poking each other in the eye. made with neon lights, this piece feels like a sign, and signs function like directions, as if allowing the audience to know what is to be expected. The second image, studies for hologram(1970), is a silkscreen of a person holding their mouth open. This demonstration is possibly Nauman looking for a way to see how wide it opens.

Everything is examined.

A kilometre is a concept. Make a kilometre in any medium – photo, video, object, text etc.

As described in the assignment: “make sure to measure your kilometre in some way. Discuss your process in your description of your kilometre, and how you know it is precisely a kilometre. Don’t decorate your kilometre or make it “artistic” and masterful. Use only the necessary materials to be what it must be. “

What is a Kilometre?

Breaking down the word, Kilomtre is literally a measurement of a thousand, which prompts an additional question: A thousand of what?

Take into account that Artists like Lewitt, Ono, and Nauman were about the idea of what makes art. Nauman specifically was interested in performing activities within an art space -Nauman found the studio to be the measurement of what consitutes as art and non-art.

The following are a list of requirements for the assignment.

The final activity was decided to be a morning walk to Royal Park in Guelph with my partner. measured out our thousand (or two thousand?) with an app. Photos of where we started and ended up were taking, as well as a intermediate photograph of the space and time between. The final measurement was captured while watching the phone’s screen and screen-capturing that data as it reached 1km.

WEEK ONE

WRITE: How does Sol Lewitt express the notion that “the idea is the machine that makes the art” in his work? What does the artist’s actual hand have to do with the final work in a conceptual art context?

As the video describes, he is a composer, he composes these works for others to “perform.” His work is all behind the scenes, much like the work of an architect who creates blueprints for a construction site, he creates the blueprint for a group of artists and installers to follow through with. Each and every detail has been thought of by the artist in their plan or blueprint and is thusly executed. Everything from the colour to the way each colour is applied to the wall. Lewitt has created the instruction that then performs the final tangible artwork and in so doing has created an art form all his own.

WRITE: Where do you draw the boundaries around the artworks in this video? What are the artworks? What strategies and tools does Ono use to challenge the viewer? Do you like any of these concept-works? Discuss.

In the works of Yoko Ono, the “work” of art varies depending upon the instruction. Sometimes, the resulting artwork is simply a feeling while in other cases the final product is a tangible item. Her artworks though are the instruction and how each individual interprets them. Her works have to do with human interaction more so than a tangible item that represents a final work. I think that the works that have to do with canvases that she described at the start of the video are perhaps more easily understood as art where, the rest must be considered and thoughtfully come to by an interpreter in order for them to be considered an artwork. I think these instructions are a great way of becoming a more mindful artist, they are a practise more than anything else.

WRITE: Describe two works by Bruce Nauman (include images) where he frames every day actions (non-heroic, banal) as art. How are they “framed” as art, and what does the framing do to our understanding and experience of the actions?

The “Run From Fear” piece rendered using neon lights and mounted on the wall caught my eye. It is yellow and pink and says “Run From Fear” then below that “Fun From Rear” which is a comical statement with a sexual connotation to it however, all Nauman did was switch the “R” and the “F” from the first statement. The framing occurs in the action of lighting the words up which, brings attention to statements that otherwise are just simple statements, not anything note worthy. By lighting them up Nauman has made them note worthy.

“Coffee Spilled Because the Cup was too Hot” is a photographic presentation that has framed the cup and the spill of coffee on the floor in a colourful manor. The image is of an ordinary occurrence, everyone has spilled coffee before, but Nauman has highlighted his own spill. I find this piece humorous and pushing the boundary of what we traditionally call art.

EXERCISE: A kilometre is a concept. Make a kilometre in any medium – photo, video, object, text etc. Post documentation and description of your kilometre on your blog page.

For this assignment I decided to think about the construct of a kilometer in terms of how a car engine describes a kilometer. Cars measure the output of gas whether in motion or stationary. There are censors that calculate how much fuel is left in the tank and how many kilometers you have before the tank is empty. For this reason, I measured my kilometer by sitting in the car in the exact same place. I took a photo of the gas level and idled the car until it read one kilometer less. It took about a minute or two. What I find interesting about this measurement though, is that it is so vastly variable. This same measurement could be taken at a high speed and the gauge would read a kilometer lower much faster although you may not have actually gone a full kilometer yet, you’ve just burned that amount of fuel.

WEEK TWO

For my interpretation of Marina Abramovic’s work, I laid on my parents kitchen table with the overhead light very close to my body. The light is adjustable, so I pulled it down as far as it would go then laid flat underneath it for an hour. The whole process was strange and I giggled a few times because my sister was watching me do this. She studies at the dining room table with a clear sight to the kitchen table and this “event” so to speak was distracting.

As I laid there, I really thought about how food might feel were it an animate object. I felt like I was served for dinner. What if someone sat down and decided to bite my toe? What does it feel like to be the roast beef about to be carved for consumption? Or maybe with the light so close to me, like a piece of fried chicken or some other kind of fast food, under infrared light to be kept warm. Slowly drying out.

I also felt a bit like Frankenstein’s monster. Like I was going to have something about my person altered. Perhaps the close lighting and being on a table in the kitchen exacerbated the feeling of some DIY surgery. What would happen if you were awake for such a thing? What if a cold blooded killer happened to break in right at that moment and decide to fillet me? I felt very strangely exposed even though I was in my parents home where everything is familiar.

The act itself was kind of uncomfortable and awkward, especially being that I had an inadvertent audience. At the end of the process, I had my sister take photos of me for documentation. After reviewing the images I felt as though I was looking at a dead body, which was uncomfortable. I also happened to be wearing black which elevated that dark eerie feeling.

WEEK THREE

Making Changes, instructional sentence: Adjust the placement of random objects in the city, don’t move them far, or remove them.

Sitting, instructional sentence: Sit closely to patrons seated on benches.

Ladder Climb, instructional sentence: Ascend a ladder without anything to support it.

Dead End, Eastern Market, Detroit, instructional sentence: In a cargo van, locate a small ally way in which you must complete a full turnaround, complete in the smallest ally the van can fit.

45.9 Yards, 42 meters, instrctional sentence: Find a long driveway, observe a toddler walk up the driveway, measure the distance.

Several Observations, instructional sentence: Feel an object wrapped in bubble wrap, remove the object from the wrapping and feel it more.

Defenistrate an object

The item I chose to throw out of my apartment window was a Klean Kanteen. The reason for this choice is their claim… they say they are indestructible. So, naturally, I put this to the test. I filled the water bottle, screwed the cap on tight and gave it to my significant other to throw out of our second story bedroom window. The bottle itself stood up quite well to this test actually. I was surprised at only some small dents being made in the aluminium. The cap on the other hand was completely smashed and leaked all the water out all over the place.

I found it difficult to know if I actually captured the bottle falling. It felt like I was trying to search my image for a ghost. As the water bottle was a small one and it was thrown with some vigor the spin on it as it descended made the bottle just a metallic blur in the photos. There is one image of the back ground, one of the bottle in mid air, a few are of it once it hit the ground, and the final image is of the remains of the cap.

I’m not totally sure why this is art but it was kind of cathartic so, I suppose it doesn’t really matter.

WEEK FOUR

Write: Actively explore and think about the work of Adad Hannah.

The work of Adad Hannah is very interesting, I enjoy the idea of watching someone hold a pose that would normally be captured in an instant. His work reminds me a little bit of the Humans of New York blog with his approach. The way the images are set within the frame as well as how the individuals are interviewed are very similar. I enjoy that he went out into the community and made a point of connecting with people in a time when making connections is not easy.

I think that the weird in between time Hannah describes is a good way of describing the time we are all living in. We are all together going through this crisis, we each have our own lives going on and have our own routine’s we have developed in order to continue living in this new normal. I think that the way the images have been captured are quite lovely and personal feeling, he is respecting social distancing while creating these intimate images. They feel as though he was much closer and was having a personal conversation with his subjects.

I think the videos are kind of empowering and insightful. They seem to act as a way of bringing people together in a scary time. It’s interesting to see how people are making their way through the difficulties of every day life right now. There are people from all walks of life and all nationalities in his work. There are images of people safely being activists during the pandemic. There are images of people going outside to enjoy the outdoors. Each image is set within the frame the same way, right in the center of the frame, the background is out of focus and the subject in focus. When the pandemic began and this art work began it seems that Hannah was still adapting the structure of the images and how they would be described within the frame. Where later in this work the images are mostly of people standing and the images are set more similarly. I enjoy the evolution of the images and the time documentation. As you scroll through the images there’s the start, in the spring, before there were leaves on the trees and everything was very desolate and reflective of the fear everyone was feeling. Then as you scroll further there are images of people out enjoying parks and outdoor spaces and embracing what’s going on around them.

Exercise: Make a self-portrait or portrait of someone else in the style of Social Distancing Portraits. Post and describe your 1 minute video.

For this assignment I chose my models based on my own every day life. Right now I am homeschooling my aunt’s children three days a week while my mom helps out the other two. They are going to school synchronously online every day from 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. They have attendance taken, stand for “Oh Canada,” have their recesses and stretch breaks the same as they would at school.

This strange time is very scary for them and when speaking about the craziness that is currently going on we choose our words carefully so as not to exacerbate their fears. Sayge, 6, and Siena, 8, have become a part of my own routine with synchronous learning. Sayge sometimes sits in my lap while he listens to his teacher and I listen to my own instructor. This bizarre time has been stressful and sad. These kids can’t be with their friends, they can’t connect with their teachers in the same way and they are expected to sit in front of a screen for hours on end. On top of that, they are living with our grandmother while their house in Windsor is being built and their parents oversee the construction.

On the day I took the video the kids were participating in crazy hair day and were thrilled to be doing it. It was difficult to get them to stand still for one whole minute, Sayge had a very hard time with this. I think he’s the wiggliest little human I have ever met. Siena had an easier time with standing still and only cracked a grin while I filmed. Prior to taking the video I had told them the goal was for them to stand like statues for one minute and then they could go run around because it was a beautiful day and they were on recess.

WEEK SIX

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

Recently my great grandmother passed away. She was a week shy of her 104th birthday. It is always unfortunate to attend a funeral however, during this unusual time it was particularly sad. Not many people came as there were strict regulations on the number of people who could be there. We all stood behind a taped line and the people coming to give their condolences had to remain behind another taped line in order to abide by social distancing regulations. We were only allowed within touching space of people we lived with or were in our social bubble. Anyone coming in we could only waved and speak to. It was difficult to recognize some people and it was very difficult to read the emotions on people’s faces. Was anyone sad? Were they angry? Were they content because she had lived a full life and died simply of age? Who knew!? In this regard I would have to say that wearing masks was taking away from a human exchange, the sharing of emotions over the loss of a loved one. My great grandmother was a pillar in our little community, she owned her own business and was acknowledged for her expertise in her field on more than a few occasions. It was sad to see only a smattering of people come out to pay respects for this woman who had been outfitting women in bras and lovely undergarments for 60 years. Many women from our little town had bought their first bra from my great grandmother when they were young girls and they had continues to purchase their undergarments from her for many many years. Any of these women that came to the funeral were had to recognize either from the disguise of old age or because of the face coverings we all are required to wear. It is difficult to understand grief when you cannot see the emotion on people’s faces. I think that the masks have made us all a little bit blind.

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

I am currently reading Boccaccio’s Decameron and have found some interesting connections between that book and Steinke’s article. She mentions a few different stories of plague and the masks worn with scented objects tucked into the beaks of the bird-like masks. In the Decameron the introduction describes people walking through the streets holding items of pleasant scent to their noses so as to avoid the stench of death and decay in the streets. I suppose what interests me here is that we in Canada have not had piles of people decaying in the streets however, in New York in April, people were dying from this virus so rapidly that they were forced to put the bodies into cooled 18 wheeler trucks so the smell could be avoided and because people were dying faster than graves could be dug. This is very similar to the Black Death that Boccaccio writes about in his Decameron. Steinke mentions different accounts though history of masks being worn and I appreciate the fact that we right now are living in a moment in history. I think that seeing a bird -like mask would be jarring and I don’t think I would want to get too close, they remind me of a gas mask.

WRITE: 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?

One of the attributes about me that my boyfriend loves is how expressive I am with my face, he finds humor in it and likes knowing the excitement or frustration that I am feeling. I agree with Steinke in this regard that I don’t feel like myself with a mask on because I feel that I can’t express myself appropriately. Facial expression is a way of connecting with others and making them understand you. The faces you make are what give you your unique and characteristic lines which then become a part of how people identify you as you. I suppose then that without people being able to see my face I also don’t feel like myself. I feel like even just smiling to someone from behind a mask feels strange because they have to rely on your eyes to understand what your face is doing. Do your eyes then always convey what the rest of your face does? Or do we need to see the face as a whole to really understand? I think the thing I think about most is how my face does not necessarily matter in the grand scheme of things however, the face of a nurse in a children’s hospital, that face matters. Those children need to feel emotionally connected to their health care team and need to feel safe and encouraged. Not being able to see their faces is jarring and impersonal. So, yes I feel less like myself when half my face is hidden by a mask but that said, I don’t think I feel as strange as some others might. Those who rely on making personal connections in their jobs I think would feel more strange than I do.

EXERCISE: Change your face three ways. Make up a new face, or a new way to hide your face. Make an alternative pandemic mask. Use your face as the base of a sculpture. Make your face into something that is not a face. Or that is someone else’s face. Be playful, and see how many ways you might explore your own face, and to think about faces in this moment.

In these images I do not see myself, I cannot recognize my face. The first is a sort of costume, the second is a complete covering but made of canvas and is breathable, the last is also a complete covering and makes a sort of sculpture. For this project I tried a few different things covering my face, one was a candle in an attempt to make a parallel to people in the Decameron walking with scented things to avoid the stench of death. Another was my small pencil case unzipped and sitting vertically covering my nose and mouth and part of my forehead. I tried to make each image as similar as possible so I sat in the same position and used the light switch in the background as a means of centering myself in the same spot. My head was tilted the same way and I looked in a slightly upward direction in each photo even though you can only see my eyes in one of the images I have here.

WEEK SEVEN

WRITE: Select a total of THREE works from the Audio lecture, each by different artists, to describe and discuss in your notes. What were the conceptual prompts for each piece? How are these audio pieces different from conventional music, or scoring of films? How did the artists perform and resolve these ideas in the works? What are some of the strategies they used to maintain interest in listening to the works – how did the works use repetition and change over time? What is the effect of listening to the piece on you?

Kelly Mark

Horroridor, created for Nuit Blanche in 2008 is a sound piece that takes clips from movies of people screaming. This is not a movie nor is it music, it is entirely removed from any context that may aid us in placing it. Instead, the clips are forced together in a sort of collage of screaming horrors. To me, the idea was to hear the screams as noises the human body creates in a vast variety of scenarios. When do people scream and why? It was uncomfortable listening to screaming like that. As an experiment, I turned the volume up considerably and listened to it as I imagined it would have sounded in person, LOUD. I’m sure that most people came and went as the screaming loop played without standing and listening until the moment came back around from whence they arrived. Thus, the sounds would not often have been heard more than once by the same listeners which makes for an interesting display, seeing many different clips of many different people doing the same thing, screaming. The screams range in intensity and I’m sure range in meaning, from excitement to horror to panic to anger.

Marla Hlady

This interactive musical piece of art is quite a feet of engineering. Each way the “instruments” are turned and oscillated they make a different sound. This means that the sound is as individual and unique as the person who created it. To me, this piece is all about human interaction and experience. If these items were simply on display or even shown in use in a video they (the viewer) would not have the same pleasurable experience as they do being a part of the art and sound making. I think that having a “try-me” aspect makes the viewer experience much better and aids in the understanding of the work overall. Though the sounds are not music per se, they are musical and melodic and they play off each other when used at the same time creating interesting sounds. None of the sounds will ever be quite the same which makes this piece more encapsulating.

Emeka Ogboh

Ogboh uses the sounds of Lagos, his home, as a sort of back ground noise to what is to him, a quiet city (New York). I find the purpose of his music shocking, to me, New York is a bustling and noisy city no matter the time of day or night. However, according to Ogboh it is too quiet and he missed the sounds of home. He creates his city sounds as a means of reminiscing about his home in Lagos. These sounds he then shared with others who agreed that this helped them with this permanent state of quiet to which they were not accustomed. The sounds of Lagos are constant and ever changing, it is the music of the city.

PROPOSAL:

After listening to the work of Emeka Ogboh and his ambient city sounds I was inspired to listen to the ambient noise of my hometown. With Christmas coming soon and people out shopping the streets are bustling. It’s comforting to me knowing that people are staying local to do their shopping because they aren’t risking spreading this virus but also because my family’s small business is thriving. Seeing people in the streets means they are spending their time in small mom and pop shops, buying from local artists, and supporting families in our community.

I was also inspired by the work of Cevdet Erek who recreates the sounds of the ocean. My town is on the St. Laurence river which is quite an immense river, it filters in from the Ocean in the south east of Quebec and runs into the great lakes. I spent early mornings in high school out in rowing boats on the river and feel a calm connection with it.

I feel connected to the water that is a focal point of my town as well as the hustle and bustle that is the downtown that I have spent so much of my life in. My plan for my audio piece is then to record the hustle of the street while layering the lapping of the water in the harbor. Both of these sounds play on memory and familiar sounds. Both of these sounds are so integral of my experience of my hometown, but my experience is entirely different than any other individual’s experience would be. The only other person that could relate to these two sounds is my younger sister who also rowed and worked in our family business. She is the one I walked to practice with and the one I continue to walk along King street with.

In order to record the sound, I will walk from my family’s business at one end of King street to the bakery we get egg salad sandwiches from at the other end of King street. I will then layer over that with the sound of the water lapping against the docs in the harbor. I plan to use the sound of the water only during lulls in the street noise. The walk itself is about 2 minutes so I may look at speeding up the sound so that it fits in a one minute parameter. However, if the sounds are too mottled I may simply use a segment of the sounds of the walk.

The title of this piece will be: The Sounds of Home

I also read this article about sound artists:

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/12-sound-artists-changing-perception-art-587054

The Sounds of Home, audio art piece

WEEK TEN

Write:

Wow, the time commitment that some of these artists has committed to is immense! I could hardly imagine having one task like punching a time clock every hour on the hour for a year, what an incredible and bizarre accomplishment. I appreciate the imperfections in these tasks the artists have laid out for themselves, having a count of the number of times they did not complete the task which just shows the fallibility of man. To me this is like the artists hand being visible, like the brush strokes in a painting.

I also appreciated the portraits of boys and men named David. This makes me wonder what would happen if someone were to document everyone’s names like this. What if there were a catalog of names and portraits of the people that had the same name together in sections. What an immense collection that would be. I feel as though that may also have an affect on the way people select the names of their children. Perhaps they would go through these catalogues and see what names had on average the longest lives if this information were attached to the portraits.

Proposal:

I am intrigued by the documentation of people and things over time thus for my conceptual piece I will be examining all the places that I have lived. This examination will remove completely any emotional sentiments I may have to these places and be simply locations where at one time I existed. In order to remove emotion I will utilize google street views as my “camera.” This will put me in the position of an observer simply doing a task and nothing more. I have lived in 8 different residences in two different cities throughout my life. Each place has a certain image in my memory and that memory is entirely different from the way they appear in google street view. What I find interesting about this conceptual piece is that while these places have left a mark in my memory they have also been eternalized in the cyber sphere, meaning that in 10, 20, 30 years or maybe more, I will still be able to find these places even if they no longer have a physical or tangible place on earth.

Week #1

Exercise: For my 1km challenge I decided to capture 1 km in meters. The reason for this is because for my sport which is track and field for the last 10 years everything to do with my event is seen in meters. Whether it be for training or a weekend full of competition. I have run this distance many times in my life 5-6 times a week for the last ten years. Ps halfway through, I sprained my ankle in the making of this assignment and rolled around in the grass while my friend sat down 300m away from me on the phone.

Week #1: notes

WRITE: How does Sol Lewitt express the notion that “the idea is the machine that makes the art” in his work? What does the artist’s actual hand have to do with the final work in a conceptual art context?

Sol LeWitt expresses the idea of the machine being the main driver that makes art in his work is the many different part and processes that come together to make this collab one piece that cannot be understood by logic, but by the heart. Also, by having the other artist there to help on the team it helps add there on personal touch to the piece.

WRITE: Where do you draw the boundaries around the artworks in this video? What are the artworks? What strategies and tools does Ono use to challenge the viewer? Do you like any of these concept-works? Discuss.

When watching this video with Yoko Ono it was quite interesting. When it comes to drawing boundaries of the various artwork mention in the video. I think it depends on the artist and how comfortable they are when it comes to doing the artwork mentioned in the video. Ono challenges people by seeing how personal one would go to document the task that is given. I found many of the concepts pretty interesting, as she went on somewhere more personal than other and or time-consuming. The one challenge that stood out to me was the “not saying negative things” for 3 days then to 45 days then to 3 months. this to me is a useful exercise that could help someone that might need this in their life.

WRITE: Describe two works by Bruce Nauman (include images) where he frames everyday actions (non-heroic, banal) as art. How are they “framed” as art, and what does the framing do to our understanding and experience of the actions?

One work that stood out to me was the exaggerated walk he filmed going around the taped box on the ground to slow down the process and really demonstrate this movement helps one view an everyday regular movement in a different way.

Another one of his works that stood out to me was the sex position 69 instalments. to me this piece is playful and at the same time changing the way society sees relationships. The overlapping of the neon light also gives the piece movement which I found quite interesting to me.

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Conceptual Portrait:

• volumes documenting thousands of pages of dates
• it’s not really something that needs to be written down to know how the years change, but it shows the expanse of time
• records of times that had no records
• each year is given just as much importance – no one year is privileged because of historic events
• dedicated to “all those who have lived and died” – not a record of historical events but of people

• Handwritten in lines like it’s disciplinary
• repetition makes something memorable, but too much repetition can make it redundant
• uses this repetition as a statement on “boring art” – it’s not too exciting to look at, but thinking about this piece is very interesting

• keeping track of her working hours as an artist
• fights idea that being an artist isn’t a regular or secondary job
• it’s an artwork that is also a way of organizing her routine, time management and self-direction is important as an artist
• she has to remember every time she works that she needs to contribute to this piece, it’s a constant reminder and a project that’s always in the back of her mind

• 170 fossils carved into beads to show the range of geological time
• “charts the development of our species and affirms our intimate connection to the evolution of those alongside us”
• using physical pieces from important stages of the Earth
• controversy of using irreplaceable fossils for a work – but I think it’s relatively unobtrusive
• the piece only takes a tiny bead worth of material and I think it’s a much more interesting and even respectful way of displaying geological history
• I think this necklace is worth a lot more than an untouched fossil found by chance

• using human materials for art – photography of ashes
• balance of respect and ingenuity in art
• takes something dead, a memory, and gives it life again in her photos
• “When I began this process, I didn’t even think I could call it art. It was just something I urgently needed to do for myself.”
• gives a feeling of acceptance, moving on
• a collaborative piece between Hurlbut and the ashes

Conceptual Portrait Proposal:

For my portrait, I originally wanted to find ways of recording the changes in each day but I recently heard from my brother who won’t be able to come home for Christmas for the first time, so I wanted to make a piece about him instead. I was very inspired by Hurlbut’s use of human material and by Paterson’s scientific documentation of geological time in her piece, so I thought I’d use the accumulated dust in his room to show his absence as well as the traces of him that remain.

Here are some of the things that are sitting in my brother’s room that he won’t be able to tidy up this year:

My Brother Can’t Come Home this Year

Dust is made mostly from bits of dead skin cells and human materials, so like in Hurlbut’s work, it’s like there’s a part of him that’s still made it home. I’ve always been very close with my brother and because we moved a lot as kids, we were both a constant in the other’s life, so not being able to see him for so long has been hard.

It got me thinking that at least there’s always social media and technology we can use to connect, but he’s not big on social media, so I’ve compiled people I’ve found on social media with the same name as my brother, similar to the Davids work. Here’s my brother Aidan Flynn:

Audio Art Piece:

Marla Hlady – Basement Base (Justina M. Barnicke Gallery)

• rotating floor as base speaker – interactive, you can stand on it
• playing recording of various things in the basement but just the base end
• mundane background noise made the focus
• I want to feel calm listening to this but I can’t help but feel a nit anxious – it sounds very ominous
• makes me think of a horror movie premise where the basement is always darker and scarier than it should be, all the noises that should be ordinary are enhanced
• the more I listen, the more I try to pick out the individual sounds of the fans, vents, and other noises (I can’t though)

Anna Ripmeester – Pipes in “C”

• noisy pipe used to improvise a musical composition in C
• taking something obtrusive and distracting and using it to make a work
• I especially like this piece for how she took a noise that may be annoying to others and did something productive and creative with it
• I have a hard time with background noise sometimes, especially if it’s a monotone and repetitive note
• there’s a feeling of resolution to this piece – she found a solution to what might have been a problem
• inspires me to find creative solutions to overstimulation – ignoring it isn’t the best so I might be able to transform that feeling through my own work

Laurel Woodcock – One Minute Apology

• remixing a song to repeat the same message for a minute – audible record scratch sounds as the record is moved to the right spot
• like when you have a single line from a song stuck in your head and you don’t know the other words
• I have the habit sometimes of apologizing for minor things too much but at a certain point it’s incessant
• listening to this piece makes me want to break that habit – it’s important to know how to apologize for wrongdoings, but in the right way, can’t always carry guilt around, good to learn and grow from mistakes after apologizing
• this artist might have that same habit, apologizing for everything is something that can be taught by social expectations and depictions of “ideal behaviour” (especially for women)

Proposal – How to Focus

I have a lot of trouble with losing focus and getting overwhelmed by ambient noise when I’m trying to work, so I either need complete silence or some instrumental music playing. There’s a very specific area in my house that is a good spot to work, but I can’t usually stay there for long because of the subtle noises around me.

I was very inspired by Marla Hlady and Laurel Woodcock using ambient noise to make the works I mention above, so I want to make a piece that captures the ambient noise in that room and enhances it so that I can convey how it gets to be overwhelming for me. I also like how Christian Marclay uses instruments, records, and other objects in ways that they weren’t intended to make his pieces. I would like to play with the “unwanted sounds” in my work like he has in his.

Some of the noises may include:

• the buzzing of the electronics in the room – home phone (the loudest), outlets, tv
• the fridge – humming and the ice maker
• the laundry directly a floor below
• family talking a couple rooms over
• the dishwasher
• people walking by/kids playing outside
• my own breathing and heartbeat

My Assignment:

Please listen with headphones on!!

For this piece, I recorded various sounds in the common area of my house and layered them so that they would continue to build up and get louder. I used ambient noise that can be very distracting for me but that may seem mundane and manageable to others if not for the building up of noise. In order to make this piece more immersive, I changed which ear certain noises were played in to simulate which part of the room they’re coming from. By introducing each element one at a time, I was hoping to make a symphony of ambient noise – an interesting, almost musical piece, stemming from a bunch of distractions.

Changing Face:

Turn and Face the Strange: Darcey Steinke on Our New Life with Masks

• faces interact with other faces – reading a face, blocked by a mask
• difficulty understanding with the masks – like a dialogue
• faces as reflections of the self
• silent films – example of the importance of communicating with faces instead of talking
• co-operation starts with conveying feelings/expressions
• the face makes meaning – Levinas
• prosopagnosia – face blindness, inability to recognize faces
• can use other tells and habits to identify people
• faces as a way of affirming our humanity
• “A mask is a kind of permanent pose.” – disrupts the vulnerability
• long history of masks – functional, ceremonial, and ritual
• “Interfacing with the unknown”
• battling with identity – the self seems less tangible
• “The fantasy of coherence replaces clarity with ambiguity” Efrat Tseelon
• “turns the face into a mask” – partial coverage means full privacy
• a person’s history seen on their face
• Expectations for women – wearing a particular mask (standards)
• feeling invisible – less interesting, like wearing a mask
• the aging face doesn’t receive the same empathy – the non-face
• discrimination and not seeing faces – blackface
• “What they do see when they look at you is what they have invested you with” – James Baldwin
• Pareidolia – seeing faces everywhere
• veils hide entire ways of being – liminal space between worlds
• disconnection like in a dream

In the article Steinke says: When I look at masked people my brain still feels like its malfunctioning, a skipping sensation, a tenuous connection is reached for and missed.” Describe a situation from your recent experience where not seeing faces has caused significant misunderstanding, confusion, or grief.

There haven’t been a lot of significant experiences that had to do with not seeing faces for me, I have noticed that it’s harder to understand people and hear what they’re saying without being able to lipread or look at their expression though. One thing that I have noticed is that the people I’m closest too seem less familiar with their masks on. I know nothing has really changed, but it’s like there isn’t as much intimacy in our communication – I can’t read their expressions and conversation can seem stilted or more formal than familiar like that. It’s like how Steinke’s dialogue with her husband have changed.

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

I felt particularly empathetic to when Steinke talked about her whole history being seen on her face and how expectations for aging and for looks for women are so high and so much different than for men. I’ve always been very self conscious about my skin and my face because there’s this expectation that women should have perfect, clear skin, which is only heightened by the huge makeup industry. I have marks and acne and old scars on my face that, realistically, are more noticeable to me than to anyone else, but it’s still there if you look and it still tells a story about my face’s history.

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?

At first, I liked the feeling of anonymity that came with wearing a mask. I had less of a chance of being recognized, I blended in more with others, and I could mouth along to my music under my mask without others noticing. But now, I found that I’m starting to worry more about what my mask says about me and if I’m wearing a mask that looks nice or that suits me. It’s like my mask has become my second face since it’s just a part of life now and you can tell a lot about someone by their style, even if it’s just their mask.

My Face Assignment:

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I’ve found that, with all the pictures and social media and reflections of our own face around us, it’s very easy to get caught up in appearances and spiral into self criticism. Lately, I’ve been making an effort to be kinder to myself about appearance, but some days, looking in the mirror can be particularly challenging. So I figured if I overexpose myself to my own face at different angles, I would either come to accept my appearance, or I would simply stop seeing it in terms of good or bad, but instead, as a grouping of shapes and facets of myself.

In this picture, I wanted to do something that always comes to mind when I think about my face, which is my skin. I used to pick at my skin a lot, especially through puberty when my acne was at it’s worst. It’s cleared up a lot since then, but I still have marks and a couple scars from then, but I wanted to show what it felt like when it would get particularly bad or when I’d pick too much.

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For my last picture, I wanted to touch on more abstract concepts of the face, in this case, the sense of self. For these pictures, I took them through a prescription pill bottle, which is why they’re tinted orange and my face is distorted. I wanted these pictures to represent my uncertainty and fear about my sense of self and how, when I take medication, I’m different than when I’m off my meds. It’s majorly a good difference, but it makes my relationship with my sense of self feel skewed, because I’m not sure if I’m more authentic with or without medication. So, the result is a distorted and uncertain self image, like in these pictures.

Adad Hannah:

• “tableau vivant” and photography
• recreating early photography by looking at the “moment of the pose”
• uses performers to tell stories through stills
• viewer mirrors the subject of the videos – both stand still and think of the moment of the pose
• often inspired by preexisting works or texts
• His videos remind me of Cindy Sherman’s film stills

• “through videos […] stillness is used to highlight the subtleties of motion” – Handheld Case Study (White, Orange, Blue) Equinox Gallery
• limiting colours, forms, and movement force the viewer to notice the smallest distinguishing features (texture, slight shifts, etc.)
• The Burghers of Vancouver – “theatricalized but devoid of drama” miscellaneous group of performers brought together to pose as a living sculpture
• immobility and anonymity for the powerless dealing with unemployment and marginalization

• The Screen – crowd scene where their clothes are cut out in the shape of a rectangle
• made by projecting a rectangle of white light into the group, they become the screen that is being projected on
• the projection isn’t in the final piece, just the cut out shape

• Traces – “dialogue between photography, video, and performance”
• tableaux vivants arranged in Toronto’s Nuit Blanche
• photos of details and videos of poses

• All Is Vanity (Mirrorless Version) – identical twins performing tableau
• “illusion within an illusion”
• inspired by drawing by Charles Gilbert – optical illusion of a skull crated by the arrangement of objects in the piece
• connects more with viewer than the original static drawing, clearer sense of time passing in his video

• Museum Vivants – appropriates the museum setting, “museum vivants”
• “the act of aesthetic apprehension” imitating the art or reacting to/interacting with the space around them
• two extremes of engaging with art in a museum – disinterest or banal engagement (traditional standard) vs. engaged and exaggerated
• aspiration and excessive interest vs. quotidian vs. banal/disengaged
• they become the art, like living breathing sculpture

Social Distancing Portraits:

• COVID-19 daily experience – stars from frustration
• captures strangers living life during the pandemic, tableau vivant style
• diverse subjects because they’re whichever stranger agrees to have their portrait taken
• Subject in focus, blurry background for emotional intimacy
• each video has music
• subtle movements reflect life during the pandemic – distance and isolation are restricting our ability to move
• “strange, tense in-between moment”
• includes peoples comments about how they feel living in a pandemic
• Titles with “Social Distancing Video Portrait [#] (_______ edition)” — NAME — “quote” —
• title is based on the quote given
• you can see when he takes multiple videos of different people in one spot
• lots of everyday adjustments mixed in with many pictures from the BLM protests
• shows the differences between each persons experiences during this singular shared event that connects us

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My Assignment:

For my piece, I wanted to show how someone with different circumstances than me may be dealing with COVID-19 in other ways than I am. I chose to take a portrait of my grandma, who unlike me, doesn’t have classes to attend and doesn’t use the internet other than for emails, so she passes time in her own way. Since she can’t meet up with the other people in her building now, she goes out every day, sometimes two or three times, for a walk in the park. I asked her how the pandemic has affected her life and you can read her response bellow.

Social Distancing Video Portrait (the park is so peaceful edition)

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Ann

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“Well, I certainly miss being able to go to the store and go enjoying Guelph because it’s a very interesting city, but I’m very grateful that I live here so I can come through this park. Two, three times a day, as often as I want because there’s always someone that I know, there’s always something to see, a little different. Some days the geese – the wild geese – are around, some days they’re not, like today, and nature – and it’s so peaceful. There’s no traffic to hear. It’s the water and the leaves. It makes me feel peaceful.”

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Instructional Sentences:

Lee Walton – Video one: Change the order of the street by moving one item. Video two: Quietly sit down next to a stranger close enough to touch on a bench.

Jon Sasaki – Video one: Climb a ladder without leaning it against anything. Video two: Turn a van around in a narrow alleyway.

Lenka Clayton – Let your child walk ahead of you for as far as you’re comfortable with.

Yuula Benivolski – Explore the sensations of touch and sound of an object.

Defenestrate objects. Photo them in mid-air:

For this assignment, I was really inspired by the use of the expression “getting a feel for things” in Lee Walton’s work, so I wanted to try my hand at my own artistic pun. I couldn’t figure out how to take the screens off my windows and get them back on after, so I threw my objects off of my neighbour’s balcony. So, here is me “throwing a party“:

Be Still:

For my assignment this week, I was very worried that I wouldn’t be able to stay still for an hour since I’m prone to fidgeting subconsciously. So to best account for that, I decided to pick a comfortable position and find a way to fill the silence so that my brain would have something to hold on to during the hour. For the duration of this assignment, I read from a book in my hands and sat lounged back in a comfortable spot, like I would when I normally read. Only, I couldn’t turn the page since I needed to stay still, so out loud, I read the same page over and over again for the whole hour.

I was inspired by a couple things, firstly, by a book called The Reader on the 6.27 by Jean-Paul Didierlaurent, in which the main character saves pages from old books about to be destroyed to read on the train. I was also interested in how Abramović would repeat the title of her work, Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful, like a mantra during her performance. Personally, I have a hard time reading, as much as I love it, since my experience with mental health makes it difficult to focus on what I’m reading. This makes it so that I don’t take in the words and more often than not, I have to reread whole sections or pages of a text to register it. So, for a lot of this piece, I was finally able to fully digest what I was reading. The work isn’t really about the book itself, but about the rhythm of my reading and my breathing that repeated throughout the hour. In case you’re curious though, it’s Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones.

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I didn’t move much during this work, but after, I could feel the tension and ache in my hands from how tightly I was holding the pages of the book. What I did notice though, was how strained my voice became and how sore it made my throat. About halfway through the hour, I had started a steady rhythm since I knew the words well, so I knew what tempo to keep and when to pause for a breath and how quickly I could jump back to the top of the page so that I read non-stop. It was going smoothly and I was completely focused on the beat of my voice and the sound of the consonants each time I would close my lips, but then it started to get harder and harder to read at the same pace since I would need to pause to give my throat a break or to swallow, hoping that would sooth it, and the less focused on the rhythm I became, the more mistakes I would make while reading. I’ve included a couple videos of how my voice started to die on me.

Just out of curiosity, I tried to write down what I could remember of the page after the hour. I couldn’t get it word for word but I got the meaning and the order right at least, but after a while, the words lost their meaning and just became sounds and beats.

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Marina Abramović:

• performance art – putting herself in danger, physical harm and exhaustion was common in her work
• ex Rhythm 10 – stabbing between her fingers over and over again

• Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful – repeating phrase over and over while she brushes and combs her hair aggressively/frantically in different directions
• drag along face and up back of head, all directions and intensity
• not always true but there’s expectations for art to be beautiful like how there are expectations specifically for female artists to also be beautiful
• there’s a fine line female artists are expected to tread where they can’t put too much effort into their appearance or their work will be devalued and they can’t put too little effort or else they won’t fit the conventional beauty standards of “natural beauty” – it’s never just natural

• Relation in Time – sitting back to back, tied by hair, silence, for 16 hours
• once again pushing limits of the body, 17th hour with audience
• more energized – posture, focus, stillness
• Breathing In/Breathing Out

• Rest Energy – this is my favourite work so far, I know that no one was hurt and that Abramović is alive today but just looking at the image terrifies me and thinking about how one slip up could have ended disastrously makes me want to both look away and keep staring
• it’s an exercise in trust maybe, but I don’t think I’d be able to recreate it

Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present:

• “It takes such a long time to take you seriously” – she’s finally getting recognition
• still, people are questioning her and her art
• three versions of herself, her favourite being the one with “spiritual wisdom, who can go above all that”
• she was asked more why her art was considered art when she was younger, always seen as alternative
• “shared experience of the audience and the artist”
• a lot of her works are interventions – interaction with the audience, see what they’ll do once they have permission
• 30 young artists to reperform her 5 MoMA pieces
• “performance is all about state of mind” – Abramović
• performance done every day for 3 months – nothing else but your own presence
• mix between spirituality and discipline from her childhood
• her manifest – thing’s an artist shouldn’t do and should avoid
• volatile relationship but now forgive each other – very separated based on gender roles (conventional tasks for men and women in a relationship) – symbiotic
• her work has no illusions, harsh truth in each performance piece
• “inactive, silence, fasting” 3 things people discredit
• The Lovers – walk along the great wall, end to their relationship
• newer works – more theatrical, formalist
• “when you perform, you have a knife and your blood. When you’re acting, its ketchup and you don’t cut yourself”
• no life partner for the piece, the audience becomes her lover
• clean the slate for each audience member, reconnect with each person
• becomes about the audience member instead of the artist, transformative
• won’t even consider ending the performance early even if she’s in pain
• she says that pain puts you in another state of mind and the public starts to feel that – how to bring them in the same state of mind
• moving table removes obstacles and makes it more direct
• people lining up tp participate, camping out overnight
• she’s in love with the world, not each individual person but she loves the connection with the audience
• self portrait

Make a Kilometre:

For my kilometre, I wanted to do something about how distance is affecting how I stay in touch with people, since the best way for me to catch up with others is in person. Since I can’t do that right now, finding other ways to stay in touch has helped but it’s still tricky! I often find it overwhelming trying to keep up to date with everything and everyone and I feel unraveled at times, so this was my way of working through that feeling.

My idea: using a kilometre of yarn –> make a really long paper cup phone

• average ball of yarn was 50g or 100m of yarn
• 10 balls of yarn tied together = 1000m = 1km

Here’s me unraveling and tying together 1 kilometre worth of yarn, and this is my final product:

Seeing my final draft, I realized it was much too complicated and decorated, so I’ve decided to post a couple pictures of just my pile of yarn as well so you can get a clear look at how much a kilometre of yarn is.

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Sol LeWitt:

“How does Sol Lewitt express the notion that “the idea is the machine that makes the art” in his work? What does the artist’s actual hand have to do with the final work in a conceptual art context?”

• written instructions + diagram = the work of art
• compared to music, other artists recreate the piece
• “no creative input” from artists creating mural, where they “take over”
• “successful cooperation” group art
• like a construction site, they don’t design but they build
• sense of connection between group artists
• “ultimate pragmatist” LeWitt
• artists “leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach”

Sol LeWitt expresses this notion through using what could be described as an assembly line to create the finished piece. His work makes me think of an architect, who designs a building and chooses what materials it’s made of, but then sends the designs to a construction team to build it. You wouldn’t say that the construction team came up with the idea of the building, just like how the artists that painted the mural didn’t design it, but they still had a hand in its creation.

There’s a certain level of trust between LeWitt and these artists since he can’t guarantee that they’ll follow the instructions exactly how he envisioned them, but then that could lend itself to the idea of the machine. It may not always be reliable, but if the instructions are specific enough, then it will be more accurate. In this way, the artist’s hand becomes part of the machine since it is a tool being used to build the final product. However, it doesn’t seem to matter who’s hand is being used as long as it does exactly what it’s been set out to do (follow the instructions). I think that because of this, LeWitt’s work isn’t about the skill of the hand, but rather the collaboration of each part in this machine as a perfectly running assembly line.

Yoko Ono:

“Where do you draw the boundaries around the artworks in this video? What are the artworks? What strategies and tools does Ono use to challenge the viewer? Do you like any of these concept-works? Discuss.“

• artwork ideas with instructions, most called painting, not conventional painting
• painting to be stepped on
• laugh piece
• “painting’s for cowards”
• painting to see the skies
• sun piece – watch the sun until it becomes square
• fly piece, fly
• walking piece – step in someone else’s footsteps
• on ownership – declaring ownership of spot, includes painting/photography as a symbol of ownership, taking care of what you own, does this much care for the spot reinforce ownership or make ownership more disrespectful?
• earth pieces – connecting to earth, “good for your health” appreciation of the earth
• cleaning pieces – saddness vs happiness, clean out negativity?
• room piece 4 – not having to find meaning in everything, “unclog your mind”
• sound pieces – listen to breathing

I think that each of the pieces Ono lists can be artworks in their own right, but that the video as a whole is also a singular artwork. Each piece seems to have instructions that range from vague, to precise, to impossible, but all together, they can be seen as one set of instructions for a better life, or at least more of an appreciation for life. Ono is giving the opportunity for other’s to use these instructions to create their own artwork, which is different then how LeWitt has given instructions. LeWitt gives precise instructions based on his design and his vision, but Ono gives instructions that may create wildly different results each time they’re followed. Her work gives more freedom to other artists so that their hand in the piece is obvious.

At first, the works seemed like a challenge, both to the conventions of what is considered an artwork and to the viewer, as a demand to be followed. I then started to see the piece as an invitation to start appreciating and viewing life in a different way. This change in perspective started around the “Walking piece”, it reminded me of when I would step in people’s footprints in the snow as a kid. Ono was presenting something familiar to me as an artwork, which at first seemed too simple to be a work of art, but the more I think about it, the more I can see the intrinsic beauty in something that brought me joy as a child. Each of these works offer a new perspective on life and challenge how the world around me can be viewed, which, to me, is what all art is capable of.

I also like the “Sound pieces”, I think that breathing is one of the most beautiful sounds because it shows how unrelenting and constant someone’s life is in that moment. Each breath taken just adds on to all the ones before it and each breath after is something so reassuring and I keep anticipating it. It’s the most obvious sign of life and that makes me feel alive in return.

Bruce Nauman:

“Describe two works by Bruce Nauman (include images) where he frames every day actions (non-heroic, banal) as art. How are they “framed” as art, and what does the framing do to our understanding and experience of the actions?“

• art should be disturbing at first – as in confusing
• sound, lights, colour
• whatever he does is art since he’s an artist
• make art with whatever he has available, anything he does becomes art
• “operates with artist block” where he starts with a piece, hoping something will come
• ideas form when he manifests it, just like his art
• between sense and nonsense, always something more than we think we see
• humour in his art, not concerned about beauty, wants to show how the world is in a funny way
• musical structure to his work, rhythmic form

In the video, it’s said that Nauman creates sculpture using his own body and that he uses whatever is available to him. It doesn’t matter what he uses to make his art, or what little he uses, because according to him, whatever he makes as an artist becomes art automatically. I find that I like his approach to the creation of art, since meaning can come from any everyday occurrence. Gesture is one of the most universal ways of communication, it’s one of the first steps of learning other languages, and it’s one of the things that we don’t think much about. So, Neuman stating that everything he makes is art is able to bring a new importance to common gestures by exploring them further, repeating them, and documenting them. In this work, for example, Neuman uses his body language and the professional setting of the artist’s studio to frame his own gestures as the artwork.

Neuman takes a similar approach in this piece by using the body as a medium, but he takes one step closer to the sculptural comparison. It seems silly at first to have him spitting water towards the camera but when compared to his more recent work of the two, he takes a more direct approach to presenting the body as a sculpture in this one. He’s even posed with his hands up like he’s been turned to stone. It’s a way of forcing the viewer to accept this piece as art because of the clear link to a sculpture in a fountain, highlighted by the studio lighting to give the piece a more professional look. Although I like the silliness of this one, I think his later work does a better job of framing his gestures and his body as the work of art since there is no obvious comparison or reason to his poses, so they demand more from the viewer. This, I think, shows more confidence as an artist, since Neuman’s later piece gives me the impression that he’s more sure that whatever he’s making is art.