Master Debaters

Last Tuesday, during the Art Week events, four Art professors (the Master Debaters) gathered for a throwdown via debate. Professor Calwell, Professor Lucchesi, Professor Sheer and Professer Friebele worked independently, in teams and against each other to debate questions about art and its place and purpose in society. There were four rounds: 2 rounds of 1-on-1 debating, 1 round of tag team debating and a deathmatch round to end the throwdown with a decorated Master Debater. Each round consisted of 2 minutes for each debater's opening statement, 2 minutes each for a rebuttal, and 1 minute each for a closing remark. At the end of the event, Professor Sheer was Lucchesi was decorated with a medal as this year's Master Debator.

For the second 1-on-1 round of debating, Professor Caldwell and Professor Lucchesi debated about whether gun or art were the stronger force in society. Professor Lucchesi spoke first and argued that art is the stronger of the two. As the last frontier of imagination and creativity, art is and must be stronger than guns--its message is more powerful because it is the only outlet for these strong human forces. Professor Lucchesi also argued that art is infinite because it lives on after the artist, thus giving great power to any artist whose art remains after him. Professor Caldwell then opened his argument of guns as stronger than art by pointing out that the reality of capitalism and the marketplace (which were brought up in the first 1-on-1 round of debating between Professor Sheer and Professor Friebele) drives society. As guns have become a means of gaining and controlling the forces of capitalism and the marketplace, Professor Caldwell opened his argument by mentioning the devastating effects of guns on society, slightly widening the scope of the definition to include weapons of mass destruction. He argued that weapons create art--they inspire artistic reactions to their conflicts and impact on society. The "aesthetic of power" is what guns create and what art seeks to represent, thus placing guns (and weapons) as the cause of art's inspiration. In an interesting and coincidental rebuttal, Professor Lucchesi used visiting artist Karley Klopfenstein's work as an example of how the power of art exceeds the power of guns and weapons and allows the viewer (and the artist) to re-imagine weapons through art. Through art, people can see the effect of weapons in a different light and this enlightenment, Professor Lucchesi argued, is more powerful than the weapons themselves. To end the debate, Professor Caldwell used the fact that the budget (which comes from taxes) for defense (guns) is greater than the budget for art education. Using this, Professor Caldwell argued that society, which votes representatives who set tax rates and allocate money, values guns and protection more than the "touchy feely" expression art education provides. He said, "We have put our money where our mouth is, not where our heart is," revealing that he budget reflects the practical more vocal needs of society (protection) rather than the emotional needs (art).

I'm a pretty big cynic. Additionally, I don't have too much faith in humanity, especially Americans. I have to admit, Professor Caldwell's arguments spoke to me and I thought his ending quote was very effective. I think that it would be nice to think that art is more powerful than the crass concerns of weapons and protection. However, I think we would be lying to ourselves if this is what we truly saw as reality. No war is fought over art but over money, land and ideology. These are the strongest things and the battles for them are fought with guns. Art is certainly powerful but I just don't think that humanity regards it high enough or is even fully capable of becoming enlightened enough by art to change its ways and stop fighting. Because of that, I don't think it will ever be a stronger force than guns and the endless need to be more prepared and better protected than your neighbor. Bleak, I know, but I am not going to hide myself from the truth I can see.

Music

Inspired by a re-mixed mix.

Project 2: Digital Self-Portrait

 This is the photo I've chosen to turn into a digital self-portrait. Though I didn't take the picture myself, I think it is the picture of me that best captures who I am. Though my eyes, my favorite part of my body, aren't really well captured, my personality is. There is a certain feistiness and attitude to the picture that I think expresses me well and the way my head is turned and my hair lays is very flattering and beautiful. Coupled with the vivid colors and the nice color-blocked background, I think the picture is captivating and will be challenging to turn into a digital portrait (the hair especially).

I'm a perfectionist--I'll admit it. Being so, a digital self-portrait enables me to become a perfectionist about myself, my appearance and my physical features. If there's a blemish or other undesirable physical trait that I don't like, I can easily remove it in my digital self-portrait. You can also even out skin tone and even slightly alter hair color to match the hue you always wished it was (redder!). Of course, that takes away a bit from it being a true self-portrait but the editing power is there all the same. I think creating a digital self-portrait allows the artist to accentuate all the features they like best about themselves. I can pay more attention to my hair since it is the element I like best in this picture and pay less attention to something like my face (my chin is huge and I don't really like it) and thereby draw attention away from the face and direct to toward the intricately-digitized hair.

I intend to make a flat image--I love them and how they play with depth and perspective in ways other than shading and gradient. Most of my depth will come from differences in color. I think this will be like compressing myself, flattening my image to a flat computer screen where it will be viewed. In this way my portrait becomes digital because the shapes are made by digital information and because I will become a flattened image, rather than a 3-D image that mimics reality.

Self-Portraits (in the most literal sense)

 

Lines

 

Benji

The GreenScreen

French (or maybe Belgian?) artist, Benji, has a very interesting project called the ExtrActor(GreenScreen) (2005). The project in an installation--a greenscreen made out of hydroponically-watered grass. The idea is a pretty simple yet cool one: grow a platformed wall of grass and then use the green backdrop as a greenscreen to "extract" people into different settings. Like a greenscreen in the movies (hence the "ExtrActor"), a person standing on the lush, green platform can be placed into a digital setting by replacing all the green in the image with a pre-selected digital image. When exhibited in galleries, participants can use the GreenScreen themselves, selecting a background with a remote.

Extracted participant in a bowling alley.

Benji says that the project was born from the discovery that "a natural environment could be used as a 'greenscreen.' We, as a rule, have no green pixels in our skin so we are easily separated from nature and included into other digital environments." By this statement, I think Benji is making a comment on how humans are sort of unnatural. There is no green in our skin and, since green is the color most easily associated with nature, it could be interpreted that we are "easily separated from nature," especially when given the context of a natural GreenScreen like in this project. Because we are separate from nature (in this case both the color green and the green grass of the GreenScreen), we can be easily extracted from the image and placed into a "digital environment" of a fabricated setting. In the picture above, the participant is standing on the GreenScreen platform and her image is captured by a movie camera. The camera replaces all areas of green with a pre-selected background of a bowling alley, making it seem as though the participant is really in a bowling alley instead of in a gallery, standing on a platform of grass. As all of the backgrounds available are man-made, artificial places, it emphasizes the idea that humans are easily extracted into from natural environments to "digital environments."

In looking at the gallery of extractions, I saw that many of the resultant images didn't turn out quite as well as with a true greenscreen. In most of the extractions, some pixels of the participant's image were missing or green pixels would show up in the background (as seen below). For some reason, it seems as though the program used to select the participant and separate them from the GreenScreen was not completely successful. This might be because of the texture of the grass, the color variation in the grass, or even spots in the GreenScreen where grass was missing (it is, after all, real grass and prone to dying). I think that if Benji were to try to do this project again, there would be, as in most second "drafts," many improvements he could make to ensure the second round is much better than the first.

Extracted participant on a city street.

Jeff Baij

Triceratops/Tapir/Red Panda

Jeff Baij is a young digital artist who lives in Venice, California. There isn't much biographical information on him either as a person or an artist but some things can be inferred from his website. A lot of his artwork seems to have a lot of humor in it--his Shitty Food in a Gallery is a Photoshop experiment where he takes pictures of supposedly "shitty" food and puts a spotlight on them as if they were in a gallery. A lot of his work also uses .gif files as the medium. .gifs are somewhere between images and movies--they are animated images that show a couple frames of movement. One piece of his in particular, though it didn't use .gifs, caught my eye. Baij's ANIMALMIXUP! is an interactive media piece where the user can choose from the head, body and tail of twenty different animals (including a human baby, triceratops, woolly mammoth and red panda) to make different combinations of animals.

Rabbit/Zebra/Cat

By allowing the user to make their own combinations, Baij leaves his art in the hands of others. His real work, then, is selection of the animals, separation of the body parts, and creating the framework for the interaction (the website). The animals he chooses are very diverse--many are common animals (cat, dog, rabbit, hamster) and many are uncommon (triceratops, woolly mammoth, tapir). By putting these different types of animals together in one place and, potentially, together in one new "animal," Baij gets allows the user to play God. The way in which Baij makes the animal parts, though, is interesting. The framework is not flawless--the pictures do not all line up and the image does not take up the whole frame but, instead, starts to repeat, creating a disconnect in the finished "animal." I think Baij may be making a veiled statement about cloning and cross-breeding between species. Today, there are many new combinations of animals like the liger and the zorse. Perhaps, through this digital creation of a new animal, Baij is trying to show people how absurd it is to mess with and alter animals. Sometimes, the combinations don't even work and the parts don't line up. In addition, every finished "animal" is flawed by the slivers that are repeated when the image does take up the whole frame. Even if this is not his intended concept, there is definitely a statement being made about how digital image manipulation can change and alter nature's form--the program Baij creates is not meant for the user to make "real" animals but new, unnatural ones comprised of many different combinations.

I don't know if the incomplete frames are intentionally flawed but I think they detract from the piece. The slivers on the right-side of each frame that start to repeat the image make it harder for the three body parts of the animals to combine seamlessly. In addition, the way Baij cuts the images of each animal into three parts sometimes does not match well with the division of another animal. I think if this was better executed, the interaction, creation and concept would be clearer and more successful. However, most of Baij's work seems to be done in a hasty, quick-witted manner that speaks more for a volume of work rather than quality. This is a casual piece with a light-heart to it, not a serious work of art and I think it works for Baij--someone needs to have a sense of humor!

Human Baby/Rabbit/Woolly Mammoth