Abby’s Work

Notes for Jan 12th 2022:

Sol Lewitt: 

Sol Lewitt is an American Conceptual artist that uses his written preparatory work as well as the final piece as a collective work of art. Sol Lewitt meticulously plans his works out in detailed form, so that his work can be moved and reproduced by others without him being there. 

Now, this doesn’t sit right with me. It kind of reminds me of when you are in a group project and one person doesn’t help and gets the same grade as everyone else who worked hard on it. I understand that he made the idea and did the detailed process work for the art, but as a person who is very task oriented in a sense, I wouldn’t like the feeling of other people making my final work without me; even if they were following exact details.

When Lewitt says the line about the idea becoming the machine that makes the art, I believe that he is talking about how all art comes from an idea, whether conscious or subconscious. In turn that idea gets you thinking (like a machine) and generating ways to produce the final artwork/end result. The process of creating is often spoken about as a sort of machine or generator, having either your brain go over what the option for the final artwork may be or actually physically creating drafts of art in different mediums or sketches. 

The artist’s physical hand in conceptual art doesn’t really mean a lot for those conceptual artists, or at least what I’ve seen about them. The final artwork really is about the process it took to become the end result, all stemming from that original idea that the artist generated.

Yoko Ono:

Yoko Ono is a Japanese born multimedia artist, with most of her popular work being performance art. I find most of her work odd and different; not in a negative way but in a confused way. I think in the world of performance art specifically she is so different from what I usually expect from performance art and it’s too different for me. There are some of her performances that I enjoy but, a vast majority of them I don’t seem to grasp the concept and/or I don’t particularly like.

In the video it seems like she’s giving us as the viewer prompts to do either a performance piece with them, or to do even just a plain artwork from these prompts. I think the real artwork in the grapefruit book is the ideas that she’s thinking of while writing down each prompt. Each page is in its sense its own piece of art and then as a collective all these prompts and all these pages of the book equate to another art piece. So what we are actually looking at when watching the performance or when we have the physical grapefruit book in our hands is an art piece made up of the foundation blocks that we use to create art, which are ideas.

Ono speaks in a way in which it sounds like she’s assigning these tasks to us in order for us to actually take on the ideas to do them as art pieces themselves and this really challenges the viewer because it doesn’t seem like it’s a performance it seems like it’s an assignment like you’re being given by your teacher. As I said in the beginning, I’m not a huge fan of performance art and most of Ono’s work. However, there were a couple of prompts that were interesting and made me think about doing, however as I said I’m not a big performance fan so I would probably end up trying to change that into some other medium like drawing or painting.

Bruce Nauman:

Okay so I actually really like Bruce Nauman’s work and not because I think it’s beautiful or anything but I really like it because it creeps me out. It genuinely makes me unsettled in a way and there’s one of his works that is shown in the video where he stands in a corner and bounces off the wall for an hour. The way the camera is positioned and the silence filled by a thud against the wall is just unnerving. I don’t know particularly why but it unsettles me like I would not want to be locked in a room with him if he was blank faced in a corner hitting his back into the wall like it’s really creepy and it’s almost a horror movie kind of horror. I just think that is really cool. I love art that really moves you because I think fear is one of the biggest things that can really shake/move you in life so I like seeing artworks that can make me afraid/creeped out in which this particular performance did.

In the video the performance is framed and set up in a way in which it looks like a catalog (at least to me) and with the videos being in black and white it kind of gives the viewer a raw experience. What I mean by this is like there are no colors coming from the videos that distract the viewer in any way. The viewer themselves is solely focused on the motion that Bruce is doing. Looking at the motion a couple more times it looks like a motion that a kid would do when they’re bored and were put in time out. I myself used to do this as a kid to help me distract myself or not get bored. However with the POV being at an odd angle, this simple action makes it look creepy and feel eerie.

So, for Bruce Nauman’s ‘thank you’ video I honestly had a small sensory overload because of everything that was going on in this video. There were so many names on the screen and he was yelling “THANK YOU” over and over again really loudly, so it was very overwhelming to watch and listen to. However the video made me think about how many times we actually say thank you in a day and how by saying these words of gratitude, we might actually be killing the word itself. I mean that’s just what I thought from this, it honestly could be way off, but that was my initial thought when I first saw it.

Kilometer Assignment:

So, for my kilometer assignment I had originally intended to go for a walk to a park that is a kilometer away from my house but then I forgot to do it during the daytime, so then I had to do it at night. In freezing cold temperatures. Then on top of that I was told to take my dog. So I have a video of my 20 minute or so walk to the front edge of the park that I was talking about and then a little bit after that because I turned around. The main part of my assignment that I wanted to capture was how I deal with going outside as someone who gets overwhelmed by sound easily (either a lot of sound or a lack of). I usually have headphones that I wear but unfortunately this was another part of my plan that didn’t go well: my headphones had died. In the end I was going outside in the dark with no headphones, so in the video you will see me look around a lot and I also talk to myself a lot as well as the dog. I feel like you could take this in a way where it’s like ‘a girl outside at night that’s kind of scary’ but I think I was more afraid of the coyotes than getting attacked by a man at night because there are coyotes where I live. I even hear them towards the park so that’s why you’ll see me turn around and walk back when finishing the kilometer. 

Week 2:

Notes:

Marina Abramović’s work in general is very hard to watch at some times. Now, I’m not one for performance art in general, but Marina’s work is something that I’ve admired for a long time. I believe that art should create a visceral feeling when you see it, either one of fear, disgust, love, anger or other strong emotions. And while I don’t get that feeling from most performance artists, or contemporary artists in general, Abramović’s work does just that for me, in which I love. Her performance piece “Art must be Beautiful” where she is repeating the same phrase over and over again while she is combing her hair in a way in which it looks like she’s ripping it out looks like something from a thriller horror movie. It unsettles me. It creeps me out. I love it.

With her performances in The Artist is Present, the one that I actually cried about was her performance in which Ulay came and sat across from her in silence for a minute. You can see how they were communicating without words, all through the eyes. The fact that they hadn’t seen each other in so long, the longing to hold, touch and talk was so loud throughout that minute of silence. Maybe I’m just a sucker for the longing trope, but I was literally crying when she saw and recognized him. It was all too emotional for me.

Be Still Assignment:

For my hour of stillness, I tried to stay still in my chair for an hour. Above is the time lapsed video of my hour, in which I did fail almost immediately with moving around in my chair. I set up a few limits for myself, with one being not to use my computer, phone and other electronics, another being not to talk. Now, I was feeling really depressed at the time and thought it would be a good idea to see if I could, within the hour, make myself calm down while not using the traditional ways I usually calm myself down with (phone/music/talking/moving).

Week 3:

Notes:

Lee Walton:

Now this guy is just a shit disturber. I kind of love it though. The idea of just adjusting minor things around us questions what is right in our eyes versus someone else’s. Seeing him do all of these minor adjustments reminds me of people who suffer from OCD, with things not being the exact way they need it to be, wether that be perfectly neat on in an exact position made by their own hands. When he was just going up to people and sitting near them though, I thought it was pretty funny, but also I felt bad for some of them, because if that were me I would be very uncomfortable, and would probably leave after like a minute of him sitting down. I would be cool as a series though to see how many people got up and left after he sat down right next to him and how long it took them to do so.

Lenka Clayton:

Now watching this video was really funny and stressful at the same time. While I thought it was funny that all of the build up lead to her just like sprinting towards her child, I was also very stressed out the further the kid got away from the camera. The silence also gives a feeling of prolonging something bad happening, which made me nervous and wanted her to get him sooner in fear of like a mountain lion coming out from the bushes and grabbing him.

Defenestration Assignment:

For this week’s assignment I chose to take photos of some of my stuffed animals on my bed as I projectile launched them at my window. Since my room is on the basement floor, and I can’t open my window, I decided to just throw them at it rather than out of it. I also have a relatively dark room, so as I played around with the ISO and shutter speed on my camera the only good photos coming out were ones with a dark red hue to them, and as cool as that sounds, it made the image really tonally flat and uninteresting. So, I had the idea to use the flash on my camera. Now, I use my camera mainly for photography and I usually shoot in manual mode with no flash, so using the flash felt really odd to me. For the final set of pictures I really enjoy how they came out, as they give off a kind of party-esqe 2000’s disposable camera vibe. For some reason it reminds me of Katy Perry’s “Last Friday Night” music video – I don’t know why exactly, it just gives me that vibe.

Week 4:

Notes:

This week, we learned about Pandemic Art in this new way of living, one in which we cannot easily ask for others help and stand side by side with them. What I find interesting about this pandemic, is that people are always so quick to blame or complain about the things keeping them safe rather than accepting them and interacting them into their daily life. With this pandemic I think it really helped artists to explore isolation and loneliness as well as tenderness and kindness in these times. With Jill Magid’s tenderness photo, it really exposes the intimacy between people that lots of people are craving right about now. I think that she does a great job in conveying that yearning to have just a small amount of contact with someone, for any type of contact with another.

I myself have struggled with this pandemic, but in terms of isolation and wanting to connect with others, I think I’m actually alright, with myself not really liking talking to others much and being less verbal when I don’t need to be. However I can see the struggle myself when looking at these art pieces, the vulnerability of someone to want to communicate and connect with others around them is truly sad to watch unfold in-front of your eyes.

With Adad Hannah’s portraits of others, it gives us that communication between others that we’ve been wanting, but in a unique way. Hannah like many artists, like to adapt to their situation rather than resist; this is something that I really admire with artists. With his portraits they give of this freeze frame pose, almost like a tableau that you would do in drama class, or like the mannequin challenge that was going around in the early 2010’s. This slight movement gives life to the subject/person while also capturing that sense of pause that we feel that the pandemic has done to our lives.

Face Changing Assignment:

For my face changing/different mask assignment, I decided to do a series of sorts, and put different types of bags on my head. To start, I put a plastic bag on my head (do not try this at home), then I went with a Rexall bag and then a dark and thicker computer bag. Now I like the idea and the funny look of them, but if I had to change anything, I would have chosen a better place to shoot. I don’t really like the yellow in the background, but as it is my fool tarot card tapestry I think it kind of lays into the message I’m trying to send about bags and consumerism. Now the fool isn’t actually a fool, it’s actually a good card if you know about tarot, but I’m just using it as a literal term here for people who choose to use plastic bags over reusable bags which can contribute to many animals like turtles and birds dying because of choking or strangulation. If possible I might reshoot these if I can make a white background set up, and repost them below on the blog, but for now I’m pretty happy with how these turned out and all the messages that people can derive from it, whether hit be the one I intended or not.

Week 5:

Notes:

For this week, we learned about masks and the ways that they can be alternated, used or even poke fun at the use of them in general. In terms of the artists we spoke about, I was really interested and drawn to Jan Hakon Erichsen’s Work, with it being really high quality photos, as well as the playfulness he brings to his subject matter. With his “How to survive a deadly global virus” series, it’s very clean ad organized, which makes it very attractive to look at as a set or series in this case. The use of normal everyday objects that you can find laying around in your house to use as a mask in such a professional looking portrait is very striking to look at upon first glance, second glance too.

I also enjoyed Nina Katchadourian’s work, with her work being very funny and dramatic in a way, with a vine like quality of images (I guess that’s why I think they look funny – RIP vine 🙁 ). The idea of her sneaking off to the bathroom of an airplane to make these elaborate outfits made mostly of toilet paper and towels is so funny to me yet it’s so amazing that she can do this because all I can do with toilet paper is fold it and half and possibly make one of those cootie catchers that kids made n public school for fortune telling. Anyways, I think that she needs to invest in her own plane or something because plane tickets aren’t cheap, but I would like to see this series continue, or perhaps a new series of her own made up characters in the bathroom would be cool to see.

Pandemic Portraits

Week 7:

Notes:

This week we learned about artist multiples and replication of artworks in the art world. Two works in particular spoke to me when during this week’s lecture. Firstly – the work titled “Money Isn’t Love”, where it is a printed out set of instructions to build/create your own Chinese Money Envelope that instead of saying “Happy New Year” on it, it says – “Money isn’t Love”. I thought that this piece is so interesting because it made me realize/notice that not just in Chinese culture people receive money en lieu of affection, but literally everywhere else, and that you could probably do a set of these spanning across all cultures (which would be cool to see). I know that when I was a kid at least receiving money instead of a gift was nice, but there was something always off about it to me. Now that I’m older, I see receiving money instead of a gift as a kind of sad thought, knowing that the person giving it to you – this especially hurts if you are really close – doesn’t know/care enough about you to get you something that you may actually like. I have a feeling that the piece probably meant something different to the artist, but this is what I got out of it as someone who is not apart of that culture.

The other work that I really enjoyed this week was the work titled “Plants you can’t kill” by Shannon Gerard. I also really enjoyed her “Guts” series as they were so large in scale and also due to the fact that I really enjoy biology and sciences, so it was fun to see the overlap in her works. I really like how she combines this cute and cuddly substance into these giant versions of body parts and tiny houseplants that you don’t have to water (although they may not supply you wth much fresh oxygen). In hewing her website out, all of her works have this playful feel to them, and I think that the choice of medium and how easy it can be to just sit down and go on auto pilot while making them is for her.

Week 8:

Notes:

This week we learned about the works of John Cage, more specifically his work that surround the idea of silence. His work 4’33” in particular is quite interesting because it is not what you think it is when you think of a piece surrounding audio. This piece is one in which you have your own individual experience with the silence, and what that presents for the listener. I enjoy this work as something that you can listen to whenever and wherever, and just take in the sounds of the world around you as a composition that result in many thoughts emerging (or at least they did for me)

Another work that we looked at other works like Steve Reinke and his “I’m practicing my cartoon voices” audio piece, in which I found to be quite amusing and fun to listen to. I feel that with this work, it feels as thought I am with my friends and we are all trying to get that perfect impression of a certain cartoon character that we just got right once but somehow can’t get it again without going through all the variations. This work stood out in particular to me because of that, and because of how the choppiness of the audio/how it goes non stop/no brakes, and how that indicates to me that a lot of effort and love must have went into this project.

Audio Art:

For my audio art, I chose to try and drink all of the water from my 946ml Hydro flask within a minute. As I failed at doing so, and I knew that I could not drink anymore water in fear of throwing up, I decided that I would edit the approximate two minutes it took for me too drink all of the water down into under a minute. I was really interested and fascinated with the Resolve program that we had used previously in our Pandemic Portrait assignment, so I was really happy to delve deeper into using it for this assignment as a whole and playing around with the audio.

So, what I did was I cut my audio up into three different clips and layered each one on top of one another, making the final product seem as though I was drinking the water very fast, when in actuality I was struggling immensely. You can even hear my struggles within the audio itself, as its not easy to chug a lot of water, especially if you are not tired or thirsty.

Week 10:

Notes:

This week we learned about On Kawara’s works, along with others like John Baldessari, Kelly Mark, Micah Lexier, Katie Patterson, and Felix Gonsalez-Torrez. Some of these artist’s I had previously knew of, but for the most part I didn’t recognize any of their works. However works like Katie Patterson’s “Map of Dead Stars” and her “Fossil Necklace” were really interesting to hear about and to see the artist’s process of creating the work. I am both a big fan of astronomy and geology (whenever I’m not overwhelmed by how small and insignificant we are), and I used to be very into the study can classification of rock and minerals which I could say is somewhat related to digging up fossils from the earth (they go hand in hand in my opinion). So by watching the video about her mapping out all of these known dead stars was both exciting, beautiful and also a bit scary to witness. However I thing my awe-ness was more overpowering my scariness, and I always enjoy when art can generate that kind of response from a person, so I’m all the more drawn to her works now.

On the topic of artists that I was introduced to this week – Micah Lexier. I found his David works quite interesting as a form of documenting both time and relationships through name. I think that people have this likeness people other people who they don’t even know through their names, like whenever I meet someone with the same name as me, I start off liking them but having this weird sense of “hey that’s mine name not yours” to which I think that everyone can somewhat relate to. So its really interesting to me to see how Lexier takes this relationship of people named David and turns that into a question of “What does a David look like?”.

One of the works that I knew from beforehand was Felix Gondalez-Torrez’s work called the Portrait of Ross in LA. It’s shows a deviating story and it always makes me tear up and get emotional whenever I see it. I think that not only how painful it must be for him to make work on someone who he loved so dearly, who is no longer here with him, but how strong their love for each other must have been – and how his works signify this eternal love that transcends life and death. To me that’s the most beautiful part of this work, as well as his other related works.

Conceptual Portait Ideas:

• Do a portrait on my grandparents and what they left for me
  • audio of me repeating the way to spell beautiful (my grandmother)
    • only problem with this is I will definitely start to cry, but that might be interesting to include because of how hard it is to do and speak about
  • video of how to draw a canoe (my grandfather)

• Monologue on grandparent’s deaths / saying the goodbye I never got to say
• Self portrait of myself
  • take a picture of my room every morning and night – show how clean/dirty it gets/ how I feel each day
  • what I wear every day (but not on me – on my chair (my chair is weird shaped)
  • what I listen to in a day
  • state of my bed in the morning/night

Week 11:

Conceptual Portrait:

For my conceptual portrait, I decided to create an audio portrait, as I still wanted to play with the software on the computers, and because I felt that you can really tell a lot about a person from what they/who they listen to. So for my final assignment, I recorded myself reading off the list of my most listened to songs of the month, then supercut them to sound like they were going back to back. I wanted them to sound like I was cutting myself off, but I had a bit of trouble doing so, so only a bit sounds the way I wanted to. Other than that, I’m pretty happy with the outcome, if I had to add anything to it given more time and/or knowledge, I would probably have made a video of sorts to go along with it – possibly going to find all the titles of the song names I’m reading out in public spaces and cut them together; I think that would be cool now that I’m thinking about it.