Sweaters

so, you start with some full size sweaters. i got these at goodwill, and they're actually really nice. but we're going to ruin them. so throw them in the washer and crank the temperature up to hot, then put some soap in. let them go through the cycle, and if all goes right they'll come out... like this! really tiny!
once i get pictures of the different designs for bracelets, i'll get them up.

powerpoint rescources

http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=81348

moma's website with pictures.

Fun gurilla art

"Words That Glow in the Dark
For a graffiti artist, Evan Roth has an unusual rapport with the police. Case in point: he was doing his thing on New York City's Lower East Side one night when the cops pulled up in cruisers. Instead of pulling out handcuffs, they stopped to admire his craft.
That's because Roth and his partner James Powderly are pioneers of no-mess graffiti. Drawing on Powderly's background in military robotics and Roth's expertise in architecture, they have invented new ways to leave their mark on the city without defacing it. Their latest development is called the "throwie"--a cluster of LEDs attached to a battery and small magnet. A bunch of throwies can be tossed at any iron surface to create instant graffiti. Alternatively, a tag can be spelled out in advance on a T-shaped "night writer" and slapped onto metal surfaces at improbable heights.
Dubbing themselves the Graffiti Research Lab and backed by Eyebeam, a not-for-profit dedicated to patent-free open-source technology, Roth and Powderly set their invention loose on the Internet, where it quickly developed a passionate following. Others were soon adding improvements the duo had never thought of, such as timers and on-off switches. A website sprang up selling throwie kits--much to Roth's delight. "We want to get people excited about using public spaces," he says. "And get them excited about art." --By Ta-Nehisi Coates and Carolina A. Miranda

http://galenet.galegroup.com.proxy-tu.researchport.umd.edu/servlet/BioRC?vrsn=149&OP=contains&locID=umd_towson&srchtp=name&ca=1&c=4&AI=U17615043&NA=cai+guo-qiang&ste=16&tbst=prp&tab=8&docNum=A150281001&bConts=41

More rescources for powerpoint

http://galenet.galegroup.com.proxy-tu.researchport.umd.edu/servlet/BioRC?vrsn=149&OP=contains&locID=umd_towson&srchtp=name&ca=1&c=11&AI=U17615043&NA=cai+guo-qiang&ste=16&tbst=prp&tab=8&docNum=A86194957&bConts=41

"In the gallery off to the other side of the golden bird-cage was a room-size installation titled Dream. This lyrical work also contained hidden barbs. A wall-to-wall swath of red silk was activated by industrial fans so that it billowed and rippled just above the ground like the surface of a windswept sea. Suspended from the ceiling, and casting the only light in the room, were myriad red lanterns constructed from the same silk to suggest various familiar objects. The forms recalled the Chinese funerary custom whereby paper versions of personal items are burned as offerings for use by the dead. But Cai updated the rite by creating his red lanterns in such nontraditional shapes as those of automobiles, laptops, refrigerators, fighter planes, missiles, skyscrapers, UFOs, a battleship and even the ubiquitous McDonald's arches. Thus a practice once designed to connect the living and the dead became a tacit critique of the consumerism and militarism of modern China. Equally subversive is the red color that pervaded this work. White is the funerary color of China, while red is the color for more joyful occasions. It is also the color associated with the Communist government. "

-a retrospective article.

http://galenet.galegroup.com.proxy-tu.researchport.umd.edu/servlet/BioRC?vrsn=149&OP=contains&locID=umd_towson&srchtp=name&ca=1&c=9&AI=U17615043&NA=cai+guo-qiang&ste=16&tbst=prp&tab=8&docNum=A99730565&bConts=41

"His explosions tap into a primordial human attachment to fire and to what he sees as our genetic memories of the Big Bang. "

"The most moving work in Ghent is a video montage of mushroom clouds above a sandpit filled with crabs. Protected by water, crabs were the only creatures to survive Hiroshima. Mr Cai sees the mushroom as the modern equivalent of the Great Wall. "Both were deterrents; both were stunning, visible symbols of power". Mr Cai conceived this show long before the Iraq war, but he is worried by the idea of smart bombs. Explosions create chaos. They are by nature uncontrollable; that is what attracts him to them as an artist. "No matter how carefully you prepare an explosion," he says, "when the elements of heat, wind, speed and height combine, explosions are still unpredictable. Nothing ever turns out the way you expect, which is ideal in art but perhaps not in war." "

http://galenet.galegroup.com.proxy-tu.researchport.umd.edu/servlet/BioRC?vrsn=149&OP=contains&locID=umd_towson&srchtp=name&ca=1&c=3&AI=U17615043&NA=cai+guo-qiang&ste=16&tbst=prp&tab=8&docNum=A175974758&bConts=41

"New York's Rent Collection Courtyard" is the on-site, temporary re-creation (repeating one that earned Cai the International Award of the Venice Biennale in 1999), in clay, by ten Chinese artists, of a vast socialist-realist sculptural tableau, from 1965. Cai intends "to bring the tradition of figurative sculpture into the arena of contemporary art, while also commenting on the fate of art under the manipulation of political ideology."

-cai likes to give subtle, underhanded commentary on political matters. these clay sculptures crumble over time.

http://www.caiguoqiang.com/shell.php?sid=3

-a full pdf of a new york times article with pictures.

http://proquest.umi.com.proxy-tu.researchport.umd.edu/pqdweb?index=1&did=404799911&SrchMode=1&sid=1&Fmt=3&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1226264670&clientId=41150
-library database of the seme article.

Mr. Cai -- his full name is pronounced sigh gwo chang -- is one of several artists from China who gained international attention during the 1990's, and one of the few who has sustained the momentum. He has been using gunpowder as an art medium for years. With it, in 1993, he created a six-mile-long ''wall of fire'' extending west from the end of the Great Wall of China in the Gobi Desert. (remember the pronunciation!!!)

The stickers came!

piccys soon.

artist profile project

http://www.caiguoqiang.com/

this is his own webpage, it basically has pictures of his works. they're nice pictures but there's little else.

Body Art

http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/survival_kit/
this article talks about Chris Burden's work. Love the "flying steamroller".
The way that this article puts it, Burden's "body modification" is like the way pagan Celts would adorn themselved with full-body tatoos, which must have been excrutiating. These tatoos were considered magic, and sometimes they would fight naked with only the tatoos for protection. Burden empowers himself by doing what he wishes with his body.

Mendieta was like the artists in the video we watched because she adorned herself to get in touch with nature and the divine.

Collateral Damage

ok, i'm going to try something new. i've always had trouble turning my opinions into words (recently discovered this is called disgraphia). that's why i turned to art- i can express my feelings freely. so i'm going to post one of those ranty peices of art on this blog instead of writing about it. i think it's message is pretty obvious, but if this isn't okay, please tell me.






without further adoo: "Collateral Damage"

ugg... the glare on the glaze i used to tack all the collage papers down is really glarey in this picture. if you can't tell, the gray things at the top are jet planes, they're dropping bombs on an abstracted city skyline.

a close-up of the focus of the picture. you can't read the text in this bad picture, but it reads, "who dropped the bombs? it didn't matter-to her." as i said, really obvious. i even drew the girl on a tag labled "evidence". if you want to get a closer look at these, they're up on my Flikr account.

....is this okay? or am i going to fail?

edited line photots

the edits on this one are very simple.

none of these are quite as good as my earlier digital collages, but they're still decent.

this one just turned out funny.

ugh. this one didn't turn out too well. but i'm tired and i can bareley see the screen in this lab, so i guess it's too be expected.

oooooh...is it too teenie? hope not.

so far with the magnets

well, i'm going to make magnets to stick everywhere for learning disorders. here's what i've done so far:

i started by finding a website that talks about learing disorders. http://www.ldonline.org/ is a network for people with learning disabilities (LD) and it had pages that talked about the symptoms of LD. it broke down into three categories:

-dislexia (reading problems)

-discalcula (math problems)

-disgraphia (processing and writing problems)

i made slogans for all three of these, and typed them into a word processor (first picture). i then printed them onto magnetic sheets and cut them into bumper-sticker like sheets.(at left)

in the end, i think they need a central slogan and a citing of rescources- though i don't want to put up a blog (especially since these are going into grade schools) and i don't want to leave myself open to lawsuit by putting the LD Online site on them.

Design Statement for Project 1

okay, i admit, i was totally lost. i've never done (or even heard of) a design statement before. so i looked it up on the internet. if this is wrong, please tell me.

Design Statement:

One of the greatest problems when trying to stop animal cruelety is apathy. People think that kids hurting animals on halowe'en is just a harmless prank, and there is no way to start the conversation about abuse with children. This creates the illusion that abuse is acceptable, because they have never been told it is wrong. I wanted a way to raise awareness and empathy among children.
I wanted a way to reach children without frightening them. Cute stuffed animals draw children, and these that i made sort of have a "damaged" twist that can be popular with certian groups of kids and teens.
Unfortunateley, i'm an artist, not a psycologist, so the idea that copycat crimes could be spawned by these pathetic creatures makes the whole project fail in my eyes.

Giving up the teens.

this shows just how bad it is when parent's can't find help for their borderline kids.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/us/03omaha.html

Dancing Cat Orphanage

"Oh Superman"

a youtube vid i might show in class of Laurie Anderson's masterpeice, "oh superman".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hhm0NHhCBg

The Remember Ninja Project

here's a link to the site i was talking about in class. It's a story about a little black cat named Ninja and family who loved her.

http://www.sniksnak.com/trnp/menu.html

Frontline Video

okay, i'm sick of this shit. i'm sorry to cuss, but it seems that all the poster children of online interaction are some dumb little girls that don't know how to controll their behavior and their checked-out parents that always seemed so shocked that little Jenny wants to emulate her heroes by posting homemade porn.
I have found many terrible things on the internet. but i have also been inspired, uplifted, informed, and connected to other people in ways that i never could be without the internet. it allows you to express yourself with little fear of judgement and connect to your friends no matter how far away they are. and as long as you are street smart and know the dangers, you'll be fine.
there are things that i would never have known about if it hadn't been for the internet. one of those things, altered books, changed my life and the direction of my art FOREVER. so don't preach to me about the dangers outweighing the benifits. i'm a smart kid.

-BRN

whoops, didn't totally read the whole assignment. But let me tell you this: i have asperger's syndrome. I find it hard to approach people in the real world anyway. And i would never have told you anything on these blogs face to face. The internet is my portal to a semi-normal life, where i can express my opinion without my face freezing up and my mind going blank. No amount of fear of exploitation can take that away from me.

Sources

http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC?vrsn=149&OP=contains&locID=umd_towson&srchtp=name&ca=2&c=2&AI=U13005192&NA=laurie+anderson&ste=12&tbst=prp&tab=1&docNum=K1636000848&bConts=59


this one has a lot of book names and magazine article things. mum can help me with this.


http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC?vrsn=149&OP=contains&locID=umd_towson&srchtp=name&ca=2&c=6&AI=U13005192&NA=laurie+anderson&ste=16&tbst=prp&tab=8&docNum=A130570546&bConts=59


this is a really long article about her work "the end of the moon". i've got to see some of this stuff to get a better idea of what it's all about.


"Some of her discoveries were deeply troubling. She was amazed to see the latest space-suit designs, which include fibers that increase the strength of the wearers and release adrenaline or morphine, depending on the situation--but her heart sank to learn that the suits are no longer being developed for NASA and that the Defense Department is adapting them for its own purposes. "Instead of going into outer space, they will be sent to the desert, out into the war," Anderson says.
In her performance of The End of the Moon, she presses this political point further: "And tell me how you'll know when this war is over. Because this war will never be over. It will just keep moving from place to place." And then she plays a requiem on the violin.
"It's my emotional partner," she says. "The violin says everything I can't say about fragility and endlessness and running into some kind of crazy eternity, without sounding ridiculous."


-that's from the above article. i think i'll put in that quote about the violin.


"I didn't think of this as a sad thing until I did the first performance. Maybe I'm not the only one, but I do feel a sense of loss these days. Like I lost something and I can't quite articulate it, so I'm walking around it. I wrote this piece about a year ago. The war was beginning. I think what I lost was my country--the feeling of belonging somewhere. The last three years have been pretty tough and alienating for a lot of people. "


-about her show, "the end of the moon"


American Theatre, March 2005 v22 i3 p26(7)
Fly her to the moon: what's art got to do with NASA? Laurie Anderson listens to the cosmic pulse. (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)(Interview) Gener, Randy.


-that's the official thingy of the article. let's find another.





http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC?vrsn=149&OP=contains&locID=umd_towson&srchtp=name&ca=2&c=1&AI=U13005192&NA=laurie+anderson&ste=16&tbst=prp&tab=8&docNum=A182933842&bConts=59


a nice article from thwe smithsonian.


"WHAT'S THE MESSAGE IN YOUR WORK? If I had a message, I would write it down and e-mail it to everybody. I would save a lot of paint that way. My work is more about trying to create images through words and pictures. I want to evoke a reaction more than explain anything clearly. I don't like things to be confused, but I like them to be multifaceted. "


-quote from the interview.


http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC?vrsn=149&OP=contains&locID=umd_towson&srchtp=name&ca=2&c=3&AI=U13005192&NA=laurie+anderson&ste=16&tbst=prp&tab=8&docNum=A179279349&bConts=59


-an article about her latest work. love the quote at the beginning.


http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC?vrsn=149&OP=contains&locID=umd_towson&srchtp=name&ca=2&c=4&AI=U13005192&NA=laurie+anderson&ste=16&tbst=prp&tab=8&docNum=A140145875&bConts=59


i have got to fricking see this video. and see that book. i wonder where it is?


http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=laurie+anderson&hl=en&emb=0&aq=0&oq=laurie+#

google search for laurie anderson videos.



http://www.donshewey.com/music_articles/laurie_anderson_NYT.html

this is an article with a lot of descriptions.



http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/anderson/index.html

this page has alll sorts of goodies on it.



http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002173/

video database

Critique: Faculty Show Piece

i was immediateley drawn to the video screen on the wall. it was playing an animated video that just hypnotized me, so i'll critique that.

"LaLaLa" by Lawrence Cromwell

This peice was incredible. The video is (supposedly) hand drawn. The images twist and warp into scenes that start out innocent and then turn quickly into violent images in a PTSD kind of way. A simple tounge grows missle silos, a snowman aquires guns and his face turns skull-like, and a house in a snowglobe is shaken to reveal the "snow" is really tiny macine guns, among others. It's hypnotizing. The only sound in the video is the artist (i think it's the artist, anyway) droning "la, la, la, la..." in monotone, like a mantra or holy chant. The peice finishes with a boy (who was chasing a ball that turned into a bomb) swept into the arms of his mother. What kind of world will he grow up to inherit?

Silly Stories

speaking of geurilla art, has anybody else heard of the "Butt-Print Bandit"?

http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-odd/20080911/ODD.Crude.Dude/

Some websites about Performance Artists

okay, starting this progect one step at a time. i'll find five artists or art groups to talk about. here are their websites, for future reference:

http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/arcx.html Stelarc, an austrailian artist that works with integrating robotics with his body. this guy kind of creeps me out.

http://laurieanderson.com/index.shtml Laurie Anderson. i actually love this artist, her works are deep and creepy. she has this violin that plays random sounds- haunting and strange. the work i first saw by her is called "Home of the Brave", i'm glad i found her again because there is a song from that work that still haunts me to this day.

http://www.ghostship.org.uk/flash.htm "Ghost Ship" is a work by artist Chris Burden. it's a small shetland fishing boat that has no crew and is navigated by computers. while it was supposed to juxstapose modesty against the super-fancy boats in the world race (which it followed out of Fair Isle, England) i found the videos of the tiny boat in the gray on gray river haunting, suggesting the so many ships that havn't come back from these races haunting the ships leaving on this new journey.

Fostering Creativity

what is meant by design skills?

i actually couldn't find an actual website that defined design skills. i can only assume that they are the ability to make something asctetically pleasing and ergonomically sound at the same time.

creativity is the ability to either make things that have never been seen before or the ability to take something that already exists and make you see it in a different way.

cool quote i found on one of the sites:
“Science arose from poetry… when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.”—Johann Goethe

What is "desighn thinking"?

Wikipedia sez: "Design thinking is a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues that looks for an improved future result.[1] Unlike analytical thinking, design thinking is a creative process based around the "building up" of ideas. There are no judgments in design thinking. This eliminates the fear of failure and encourages maximum input and participation. Outside the box thinking is encouraged in this process since this can often lead to creative solutions."

that's just what wikipedia said. it went on to describe the steps (which is helpful for me, being one of those people that needs things spelled out for her). it seems to be an alternative to other ways of solving problems.

when i looked up design thinking, i found this page (http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/357/) on a man called Tim Brown, who was speaking at MIT. he's the head of IDEO, a design firm that uses the design thinking process. i loved the description of his team going to the places and situations the product would be used in to figure out how it would work better. it makes me wonder what non-design thinkers do to plan out their ideas, and how accurate they are.

Tim Brown's firm designed the Mac's mouse, one i actually remember using as a kid. here's a link to the site where they explain the whole thing: http://www.ideo.com/work/item/microsoft-mouse/. wow, that really brings back memories.

http://www.servicevote.org/ this is a nice website. i don't know how partisan it is, but i think it's a good idea to get kids involved- the website makes me feel like my vote is needed, so i guess it works.

Hate the dots. going to change it when i get home.

so, this is my first entry in my first blog. i have to have a blog in two classes- how am i going to manage that? and still have a blog for my art?
art scares me. what if nobody ever notices me? what if i don't find a peer group? that's all i really want, in the end. to be known to at least a few people, to have a few fans.
and now this is getting to personal.
website subgect to change.

BRN