Game The Playing

This is my Video Art piece. I wanted to take somthing that i do every day and decontextualize it so i chose video games. Everyone always sees the screen so i decided to take video of my face and the keyboard while i played instead.

Stelarc

Stelarc is a performance artist that uses machines and mechanical devices in his work. His view on the human body is that it is obsolete and that new mechanical parts will take over soon. Some of his works include a 6 legged walking spider vehicle and a third mechanical arm. He has also had his body controlled with electronic muscle stimulators connected to the internet. A lot of his work tries to extend and enhance the human body beyond what it is capable of.

His work to me is important because the use of technology to aid the human body is an old concept, but he is adding to it with all of his ideas. I do believe one day we will have a choice to keep our natural body or be implanted in an artificial one, but this may be even after I die of old age. The major argument with creating artificial bodies for people is the lifespan of the person. It would be extended incredibly, or even cease to exist all together.

Stelarcs work with the body continue to amaze and interest me. i would love to take a class with him as my professor some day.

Joseph Beuys

Joseph Beuys is a very interesting person from both his standpoint of art to his style and background. He flew bombers in world war two for the german army and was shot down on a mission. He crashed in a forest and his copilot had died on impact. a few days later some natives found him and wrapped him in body fat and felt, to keep the warmth inside. This experience would carry over to his work later in life.

The work of his that i like the most is the one where he wanders around a room at a gallery with a coyote. he is wearing a felt cloak and has a shepherds staff. The coyote is a wild one and he stayed in there for 8 hours over 3 days. I think that he was trying to say that animals of america and the humans of america can get along together. He also does a lot of sculptures with felt and body fat. he uses body fat to make sculptures of used spaces such as a triangle of fat on a chair as if it were meant to be there. Some of his sculptures are objects that he has covered in felt like a piano.

i think his work is a definite window to his inner self, showing what he really thinks and what makes him grateful. some of the most eccentric artists are the best because they can think outside the norm.

The Xerox project

For this project i wanted to get away from the basic poster board feel and do somthing different. I enjoyed the exquisite corpse exercise that dadaists used and that was my inspiration for this project. all 6 sides of all 3 boxes have images on them, and you can rotate them to make different pictures.

Grid art project

This is my grid art project that i did for class. I thought about this project for a while before i set my mind to this idea. I wanted to create a project that would embody the classic dungeons and dragons feel and use a medium that would be interesting to work with. I chose to make a wooden sign of the logo because I felt like when dungeons and dragons first came out, they were on the brink of the digital age.

First I took my wood and created the grid by using a table saw to cut lines every 1/2 of an inch. Then i found the logo online and photoshopped it to look more pixilated and I had to match the number of pixels to the piece of wood that I had created. After that I used wood stain and paint brushes to color every square on the piece of wood. It took about 3 or 4 hours to stain the whole piece.

Name June Paik

Name June Paik is a very interesting and literal person in his work to me. He takes many normal activities like playing instruments to a new level such as when he "plays" the piano or violin. The piano is played with a sledgehammer as he bashes away at it on stage. Once the whole piano is in pieces on the ground he stops "playing" and walks off stage. His definition of "playing" an instrument is different from the classical viewpoint of sitting down and using the tool as it should be used. One of his performances was to drag his violin around behind him on the ground as he walked through New York City. He stood on a bridge and dangled it off the side hitting it against the railing and beams.

To me this was an example of taking things to the extreme in my book. To me this is also taking the word "playing" literally. He "plays" with his instruments like a kid with a child's toy, dragging it around and beating it up.

Fluxus

Fluxus is a collection of artists in the 1960's that came together to collaborate and create art that made you think. They took objects and ideas that were basic and common and made art out of them. Many of the works had a very basic approach to it, and they wanted it to be simple, not complex. The artists worked with anything that they could find.

Fluxus is a group but also a way of thinking and a movement. The artists worked together as a group but also some worked alone.