Exhibition Post

Looking at Cecelia Condit's piece, Within a Stone's Throw at the Nevada Museum of Art was really neat. I had never seen a piece in this tryptic video format. The magnitude of the video really transformed the space and gave me a good basis to start my own tryptic video.

I really appreciated how she used all three sections to draw the viewer in and make them turn their head and move their eyes. She had the stone on the left screen and the viewer became transfixed (or at least I was) when she throws it and it arcs to land on the right screen. I thought her use of space was incredible. In addition, the colors she used throughout the piece seemed to help convey her message. The message I perceived was one of an interaction with nature. She was an adult, sort of longing to "play" in nature and reminisce about where she grew up. I think so many people can identify with this message — THAT is what makes this piece so mesmerizing and powerful.

A screen grab from Within a Stone's Throw, the color palate is striking. 

My only criticism of this piece was the slightly over edited sections. The moon, for instance, part way thorough the pieced looked like it was just plopped down. I'm not sure if this was her intention, I'm guessing not — as the rest of the piece looked consistent and polished.

Here is a portion of the piece: http://vimeo.com/44030303

Paul Baker Prindle Lecture

I stopped by the Paul Baker Prindle lecture, expecting to see some beautiful and intriguing photos from his current work, Mementi Mori, a collection of photos from where people have been murdered based on their sexual preference. I definitely found much more than that. 

His work in this piece reminded me of the Midtown audio tour walking from the two childhood friend's homes to the park where they used to play. The photographs, and the audio tour, made me look at buildings and the memories surrounding them (even if they weren't my memories) in a totally different way. In both pieces, death was the main, sort of hidden sorrow. 

A photo from Mementi Mori. 

    Prindle described having experimented with photographing friends in their youth and truly capturing certain moments in their life. This again reminded me of the audio tour with the two friend's letters, reminiscing about times past and their childhood memories. Each had different moments that stood out to them — much like a photograph captures a moment in time, where endless thoughts can arise just be looking at it. Photos can also become a way of creating memory, as Prindle described when he wasn't able to remember his car accident. 

Lecture #1

Tony Allard and the Pesky Heckety 

During the Tony Allard lecture, I noticed several things. I really appreciated his speech on his alter-ego, Heckey, because it showed how important and often grueling art can be. When he goes out as Heckety, he, like much any good art, is seriously questioned and sometimes looked down upon by authority figures or simple on-goers because they're unaware of how to react to something so raw and uncontrollable. It really takes guts to continually stand up for your art and in Tony's experience — truly be your art. I thought it was great that he brought the mask in to show and represent this non speaking character that can communicate so much. For example, Tony as Heckety is pesky. He is the trickster as an artist and the artist as a trickster.  

Another major component of Tony's lecture was sampling bits and pieces of his past and current art. One piece that really stood out to me was his "Drawing in the Media Stream." This appealed to me probably because I'm a journalism major and am particularly sensitive and curiously receptive to how people view the media, what is remembered and what is picked out for projects like this from what journalists produce and inform on daily. Unfortunately I didn't have a chance to participate in the version he did on campus, but I did see the results. I think it's a great idea to incorporate this sort of thing into art. Reacting to the media is a huge thing. It's a great way to express one's self. 

Overall, I found Tony to be refreshing in the sense that he was able to communicate his process and motives well. I find that many artists are phenomenal at actually producing art but maybe not the best as explaining it. Tony seemed open about his work which made me appreciate it more. I also loved that he was able to draw on quotes for inspiration. 

In my opinion, the most compelling quote he shared was:  

"Minds like beds, all made up." — William Carlos Williams

I liked that this made me think about changing my mind and being open to new things. I think part of an artist's job is to introduce people or at least invite people to come along with them to question ideas, practices and thoughts. 

Below is addition information concerning the lecture and his website. 

Holiday Party Projection Video

I decided to go with the holiday classic and literally my favorite movie, "It's a Wonderful Life" as a basis for my video installation. I took the entire movie but cropped and reproduced some of my favorite, significant scenes. When I copied certain sections of the movie, I added different effects. For example in the first part of the movie, where the stars are speaking, are reproduced and the top star gets larger and more dominant in each reproduction. Then midway through the film, the portion where George Bailey first stands up to Mr. Potter, is duplicated many times to show it's significance to George's later actions in the film.

Some portions, I repeated and messed with the audio, made it louder or quieter.

There are a bunch of scenes I messed with, just to give them more significance and praise or spunk - even though many may be iconic pieces of the film already! Because in a room with 20 plus projections, it's obviously easy to miss something. I partly chose this film because it's to recognizable, and used in so many other films (just for its pure awesomeness and joy), and because it really is my favorite holiday movie... I would bring it to any holiday party to watch.

Here is a portion:

Final for Tinguely/Marclay Project

I really wanted to capture both artists by honoring the record and depicting sound in a unique, untraditional way.

I used two 45 vinyl records to encompass bells in the middle. They're supported by a balsa wood base and round outside edge to house placed needles. I used bells both because of the sound they produce and the sense of holiday spirit they bring about. I know only the projection had to have "holiday" tied to it, but I really wanted to connect each of my projects in that way. The projection (see individual post) uses "It's a Wonderful Life." The pieced together record uses Bing Crosby, Hawaiian Hits and Reader's Digest records to symbolize the travel, classicness and integrity in "It's a Wonderful Life."And lastly, the Tinguely/Marclay Project uses bells to allude to holiday.

Really, it takes aspects of an old record player: spinning motion, needles, records, wood and screws to create a new kind of experience. The mechanical part is the person spinning the records, making the bells sound and the tab hit the needles (both for added sound and for a mesmerizing visual). I was happy how finished it looks and will keep it for something fun in my own home!

Photos:

Record Project Ideas

1) Cut Up Playing Record - I got Bing Crosby and a Hawaiian themed record. My goal is to go with a similar theme to "It's a Wonderful Life" because I know I want to base my projection off of that. Bing Crosby, to me represents Christmas, the time and all things wonderful, romantic and sort of classic. A huge theme in "It's a Wonderful Life" is traveling and escaping one's current situation. I want to break  up the two records (one representing the classic, traditional, pleasing to the ear music - BING) and the other representing travel and fantasy (the Hawaiian themed music). 

2) Given away already, I want to use the movie and Christmas classic, "It's a Wonderful Life." I do want to edit bits and pieces. I may play the entire movie but edit the sound significantly and have that play as a separate entity! I'll have to experiment. 

3) For my larger project, the mechanic piece, I want to create a sort of wind chime or mobile. I think it would be neat to made a wind chime, completely independent of forced mechanics. I want to use cut and formed records, along with bells, and other (probably) found gadgets. The noise will be created by various pieces put onto the structure and I definitely want each piece to have its own sense of movement, able to spin, go up and down, etc. The piece should look simple and clean in the end. 

Taste Not Midtown Restaurant Tour

This is my brief sample of flourishing restaurants in Midtown. I'm extremely interested in the local food movement and love diving into it. The piece evolved into an experience more than a simple description solely on taste.

The portions in between visiting the restaurant are meant to be both fun and contemplative, replicating a walk to your favorite restaurant.

If you haven't tried some of these restaurants - I highly consider it.

Hope you enjoy - now go eat!

Reminder:
Restaurants were:

Restaurants Midtown

30 sec intro
45 ish sec each restaurant
30 sec exit

An Auditory Vegetarian Insight to Midtown's Food District

Ideas

- Michael's Deli & Catering: Describe Falafel on Pita (with Tzatziki, cucumbers, lettuce, tomato and onion)
- Dreamer's Coffee: simple breakfast of scrambled egg and pepperjack cheese on an everything bagel and a caramel latte with soy milk.
- Wedge - A Cheese Shop: Cheese plate with glass of wine
- Sup: Black Bean and Green Chiles Soup with a cranberry salad (gorgonzola cheese, dried cranberries,  almonds, mixed greens and a white balsamic vinigarette) and a small oatmeal raisin house cookie.
- Midtown Eats: Truffle Mac & Cheese and Hummus and Baby Ghanoush as an appetizer, served with Pita.

• Tzatziki is a Greek sauce made of strained yogurt mixed with cucumbers, garlic, salt, olive oil and lemon juice, dill, mint, or parsley. Served cold.

• Ghanoush is a Levantine dish of eggplant mashed with a mix of olive oil and various seasoning. 

Need to write scripts, try a couple more dishes and get in the sound booth.

Nat sound from each restaurant?

Video Live Performance Assignment

We approached this assignment in a humorous way. One could see this performance as a spoof on the scene in "Forgetting Sara Marshall" or as something completely independent. We went in with the idea that one person would do the complete opposite of everything the yoga teacher was saying. I do yoga frequently and this sort of thing definitely happens. It's always confusing, though, because a yoga studio isn't somewhere you generally giggle. We wanted to exaggerate it for entertainment purposes. We brought the spray bottle, yoga mat, dressed the part and played music to enhance the room and make it seem like a yoga studio.

Ideas for Audio Tour

Midtown slogan: "This is city life"

** = favorite ideas

1) Diversity in a block of Midtown - humorous maybe, go from the Wild Orchid to a yoga/wellness studio. Mostly my voice with sound effects.

**2) An auditory experience of taste, walking to several restaurants in a block or two of midtown and describing the place and what I order and what it tastes like in great detail. You'd walk to the restaurants and probably be really hungry by the end of the tour. This could almost serve as advertisement. Really detail oriented, what's the food look like? The vibe of the restaurant? My view, as a vegetarian foodie?

** 3) Five minutes in the life of someone walking around in Midtown, what types of things do you see or smell or witness...you'll probably experience it similarly to the audio description when you're walking the streets yourself. I like this idea because it's something that at times can be humorous (you see a woman dressed in a furry orange hat and a red mini skirt with combat boots) or something really upsetting (a homeless man wandering around, maybe asking for spare change). I think taking someone through the emotions one could experience when they really look at the scene and the details around them could be very interesting.

I think it would be really cool to repeat every so often "this is midtown, this is city life" or vice versa on order (something I could have done in my coffee tryptic).

5 Original Sounds from Phone

Map of sounds -

Focused on coffee shops, scanners and a couple randoms.

Cityscape Through Coffee

Triptych time!

Cityscape Through Coffee is about discovering a city through its coffee shops. The warm feeling, the broken conversations and the small escape are all things to notice and invite while viewing the triptych. The clips, and photos, were shot in Reno and San Francisco. By going to these two radically different cities - nothing changed. Coffee, its allure and the attitude it has, is the same everywhere. Overall, this project was about celebrating the things I love - simple and questioning how much time is spent in coffee shops. The shots moving and repeating try to explore and convey time.

The music was street music in San Francisco - it gets louder because I am walking closer to it. All the coffee shop type sounds are collected from probably 8 coffee shops in both cities.

Each piece is a different length so the viewer does not have the same visual or auditory experience each time its watched.

UPDATED MICROWAVE

Expand browser until there are two rows of video and the title is centered over the microwave.

Video Mixer Final

"Microwave Me" is a video mixer made from many combined, edited and rethought found video. The purpose for using existing video rather than shooting it myself was to follow the instructions: "do not try this at home." I decided that the people who had already ruined their microwaves and truly went big for each individual microwave subject produced a better visual product than I could have achieved at home - keeping my microwave in tact. That said, each video was cut, cropped and edited with possible effects. The gremlin video, I made.

The constant microwave sound heard throughout the videos is recorded from my own microwave, along with the beeps. I had intended not to use any voices or reactions but found some here and there added to the viewing experience. If you play each video individually, the sound may be broken and you may miss the sound of a crinkling marshmallow bag. This was done purposefully. I feel that we expect certain sounds as we see an action, I took some of these away to try and engage BOTH sight and sound to comprehend what's happening. In addition, I did this so all the videos' sound would not be overwhelming. I wanted the viewer to get bits and pieces of reactions and produced sounds along side the constant (playing between the videos) hum of the microwave. The blue tile background was meant to resemble kitchen tile backsplash. The white box encompassing the video was meant to great a microwave itself.

The start button is where I hope people will start but it will work either way. The print is so small in this video to make fun of the "fine print" associated with appliances. Obviously, they're not meant to set someone's hair on fire or put on a Christmas light show.

http://www.unr.edu/art/digital_media/345fall2013/Erin_Meyering.html

Video Mixer Ideas

Repurposed video?? 1) Reno Air Races coverage 2011, news is incredibly sensitive and in your face, especially with disasters. The visuals of this are compelling and sometimes (like the project's nature) it's chaos and nearly inescapable if you're to watch. Affected me immensely. Some video of the footage, some simple audio extracted, some reactions shot by me or sent to me through friends and family. 2) Totally other direction - unique things to put in a microwave that do something interesting, ex: marshmallow expanding, shell explodes on an egg, soap bubbles, gremlins, etc. The sound of a microwave is iconic, expected - the image isn't. All shot by me or sent in through friends and family.

Exhibition

An Interactive Home

Overall I found the entire exhibition powerful because I had never been to an entire show that seemed to be so hands on. The artwork was encouraging people to “play” and not just in a supervised manner. This form of play was meant to be discovered, uncovered, confusing, celebratory, and basically whatever the player wanted it to be. Although there was artwork such as Sheila Malone’s “Simply Knot: A Queer Performance Video,” that didn’t have a particular “play” or “active” aspect to it, it was still engaging and thought provoking.

My favorite piece, and somewhat an unexpected favorite piece, was “Siena” by Vera Fainshtein. The light projection on the three-tiered cloth was so simple but truly drew me in. It was a piece that again, was thought provoking in a light, airy and not in your face way. This may have been because this was one of the more “quiet” pieces in the show or it may have been because it was secluded and almost secret from the rest.

I loved this piece because it was curious and thinking about it (or not) was still enjoyable. Either way, I thought the piece was visually striking but when I read up more on the meaning – basically that through time-lapse and special technologies, it is possible to sort of transport a person to a place. For me, the calm, idyllic and unchangeable characteristics of Siena are also displayed by the installation. The sense of time disappeared watching the piece, in its own way “perform.”

Princess Peach Update #2

Here's a picture update, I finally got my stuff printed. I had a lot of trouble with the hair so I think I'm going to make Peach's umbrella for a weapon instead of focusing on the paper craft hair! Either way, I'm excited to fight!

Lecture #2

Performer at Heart

Genevieve Erin O’Brien, even just in a lecture, was extremely compelling. I could tell she was a performance artist by the way she carried herself and spoke. The way in which she conveyed meaning to the audience was almost in itself a performance – confident and bold.

In her lecture she said that she wanted to “[have] everyone tell their own story, everyone has one.” I thought this was a fantastic yet simple statement to make. Her piece “The Monk Who Licked Me” seemed to illustrate this concept well. Although the people who got a free hair cut were just as equally “committing to peace,” they all had their different reasons for doing so. It could have been simply for the free haircut, it could have been because they saw someone else doing it, it could have been because they were and still are entirely devoted to peace and strive to create it in anyway they can. Regardless of what their reason was, by even participating, they were telling a story. Their very different and various stories told and shared helped to create an entirely new story – one that was looking for peace. Genevieve Erin O’Brien asked these people, “what is peace, what does it look like?” To this, and furthering her opening statement, she got a variety of answers. People define peace according to their own experiences and in a way, like the artist, perform and interact with the story they tell themselves. Genevieve Erin O’Brien mentioned that idea that like art, people have their individual relationships to peace and to war.

This idea made me think of my own relationship to art, peace and war. I have been surrounded by art more than war. Peace seems relative so I am still not sure where it fits into the mix. I know people in the military, but does that make me in any way closer to war itself? Or peace? These questions are ones I will and should continue to ask myself. I realize, though, that my answers are based upon the story I tell myself about what I’ve been through, what I’ve seen, what outcomes I project out of peace, art and war. I wonder if they are ever the same? The outcomes seem relative to those involved also.

Questions:
1) How do you deal with negative responses (and do they get physical) to your performance pieces?
2) What was the most surprising reaction someone had to the “Monk Who Licked Me” piece?

Lecture #1

Destruction in Art

During Dr. Rocio Aranda-Alvarado’s lecture, I was most engaged by her discussion of Rafael Montanez Ortiz, an artist both interested in the physically body and the destruction of art. Being the curator for the El Museo del Barrio in New York City, Aranda-Alvarado brought a much needed insight (for me) into the Latin (American) art scene. In her lecture, Ortiz became the trigger in discussing the notion that all artists engage in similar ideas, regardless of race. Body and physical destruction are some of those ideas.

Ortiz used his Avant Guard style to portray simple ideas. He was interested in public participation and interaction in his art. I was drawn to the work Ortiz did when he used a chair for a destruction performance. He bought a chair (to sit in) at a big event. Typically, these chairs were coveted. If you bought a chair, it was YOUR chair. After someone had been mistakenly sitting in it and Ortiz was verified by a waiter that he was the “owner” of the chair, he leaped into it, rolled around with it on the floor and just tore it apart. Aranda-Alvarado described people running away in confusion and worry after Ortiz’s unexpected performance. In destroying something as simple as a purchased chair, Ortiz comments of the ridiculousness of “owning” a chair and almost seems to claim that, in the end, it means nothing. It is probably even more entertaining to watch the chairs destruction versus just occupying it. Although, there is something interesting behind the fact that Ortiz actually had to involve himself in the possibly arbitrary act of purchasing a chair before he could destroy it.

Overall, Aranda-Alvarado, shed some light on ideas that many artists of different races share but focused on how Latin (American) artists did it well. I, personally, would like to experiment with producing art and having its destruction become a performance. The production of something can be extremely interesting and has the ability to similarly create thoughts in people. However, watching someone destroy something has the opposite effect. It makes us question why it was there in the first place, does it have a purpose. In Ortiz’s case, we ask if the chair’s purpose is being served? Its representation becomes the performance’s focus. The chair may represent high society, conformity and how money is spent. The destruction of the chair acts as a greater thought provoking art piece that it’s counter part – the creation of a chair.

Questions:
1) If you were personally at the performance where Ortiz destroyed the chair, how would you have reacted? Do you think it’s even possible to predict a reaction?
2) Who is your personal favorite Latin (American) artists and why?

Princess Peach Update #1

I bought a costume! I plan on using this as a basis for my costume and overall appearance. I want to add a bit of cardboard to the dress. For example, I plan on adding a big pendant to the middle of the dress for exaggeration. In addition, I want to stuff the bottom of the dress and maybe sleeves so it's extra poofy. The darker pink overlay will also be cardboard for exaggeration.

Here is the costume I bought:



The main cardboard will be on the head and hair. Here is the file to be printed out for Peach's face.

I'm not sure yet if I want to go with paper craft or just try to mimic the face on my own.