Artist Talk: Joel Swanson

Listening to Joel Swanson talk about his art was an interesting experience. He came from a graphic design background which initially sparked my interest, seeing what someone with that kind of background is making in the art world. One of the main things that really fascinated me about his work was his theme of language. The idea that language is this invisible barrier that forces a certain perception of the world based on which language the person speaks. Indexicality was another point he liked to do work on and again it reinforced just how driven and focused language makes a person. That was a new perspective I had never considered before, how controlled I was by the language I could speak. It was really neat seeing a concept like that applied into artwork, there were some very interesting conversations created. I also enjoyed that he addresses that fact that there are errors in language and he plays around with that idea to create some interesting pieces. His minimalistic approach was effective in that his art was very minimalistic but it also seemed to fail in some points at being interesting. The small repeating white neon signs or a single blinking white LED, while being concept heavy pieces, they left something to be desired on the visual end. The bits of code work he talked about really emphasized how powerful code can be and that was something close to a powerful observation I hadn't made before. He didn't have much work based on code but the ones he did have displayed a great deal of the versatility code has to offer. The possibilities are endless. I appreciated the new perspectives he offered and his interpretations of those perspectives.

Final Project

Artist Statement:

The University of Nevada, Reno recently implemented a program called 15 to finish that puts a requirement on certain financial aid options and on-campus jobs that makes it so a student must take 15 credits or more a semester in order to receive any of those benefits or work on campus. This is putting a great deal of unnecessary pressure on students in order for the university to get more funding based on its four year graduation rates. With my final, this was the more conceptual piece of artwork I believe I have ever made. I used a picture of our library to represent the quality of our education. I 3D modeled and printed the library and I also took that 3D model, textured it and animated it being built. I then light the model on fire with a blowtorch. The picture in the background represents the unmoving standard we have for our education: pristine and sharp. The next layer is the animated model being built, showing that at its core the university is a place that furthers the education of the people who attend it. The final layer is the burning of the printed 3D model with represents what we are currently doing to that standard by forcing people to take more credits each semester which in turn is causing one person to spread thin with the requirement of all the class work leading to a less impactful learning environment. The sounds I paired with the piece are the sounds of a 3D printer at work to represent the push for newer technology, the sounds of a construction site which ties to the fact that our campus always seems to be under construction and the final sound which is the sounds of a blowtorch burning a 3D model to emphasize what is happening to the quality of the students education. 

Stop Animation Vignette

Artist Statement:

This was my first attempt at a stop motion video. We were tasked with 3D modeling and 3D printing that model to use as a prop within a vignette. If the model wasn't the main focus it had to have some other significant role within the piece. The vignette had to tell a narrative of our choice. Since I was going through some hard times when this project was assigned I wanted to tell a story of persistence and determination to keep getting back up and pushing on through. Sadly that deep concept was lost when my, what seemed to be an overly simplified, wandering story was finished. I chose a fox as the main character because fox's have a sort of whimsical background that follows them, as well as an air of mischief. I modeled the fox with two different leg positions to get an efficient walking effect when the frames were played at a lower frame rate. I built the set out of found materials to bring a sort of playful aspect to the video. Though in doing so it definitely brought in a childish aesthetic that might have taken away from the narrative. 

Color Key exercise

Linked below is my first exercise with using the colorkey function in Adobe Premiere Pro. The video consists of two layers of my own footage, with one having the colorkey effect to remove the background.

Al's Adventure

Responding to Heidegger artist statement

Artist Statement

I was originally inspired to make this work like that of Tinguely, work that is designed to ultimately destroys itself. One of the challenges of designing a piece that will destroy itself is that of the timing, whether the piece will break instantly or take a great deal of time to wear out. It was discussed that there could be an interesting dynamic if the audience could work interact with it or if the project would die at a random time, which means it would be possible for it to die without anyone in the gallery. I decided to bring both into the construction of the work and in our in progress critique it wasn’t that well received. The work was annoying for a great deal of people and the interactivity only allowed them to turn it on or off, which most just turned it off. So with taking in some suggestions, the point of the piece took a turn. I decided to make the piece entirely for audience participation. I replaced LEDs with buttons that activated one of three buzzers, three buttons were wired with resistors, three were not. 

This project was built in response to Heidegger and his essay on the essence of technology. Heidegger mentions that humans aren’t using technology in a way that would benefit all of humanity, we are taking its potential for granted and wasting it on things that aren't necessary. With this idea I made a device with its only purpose being to burn out and stop working. After the in progress critique I decided to tweak this response a bit. I am still responding to the idea that we are wasting technologies potential, instead of a device made to fail, its a device for purely entertainment purposes. Something that is so simple but also made for the entertainment of others.

My materials were chosen based on availability but also on something I could keep clean and presentable, something that would give my work a finished feeling. I found an old first aid kit container that I decided to use as the case for all my electrical components. I wanted to keep the interface very straightforward, clean and simple. I had to stick with a similar layout in-between corrections in order to keep the all of the same holes where they were. Button colors were chosen on which connection it was making, relay or no relay. Everything was powered from a six volt batter pack. 

Final Artist Creation for Digital Media: Sound and Image

For our final project in Digital Media, we were given the freedom to choose what we wanted to do as long as it went along with the course theme: sound and image. One of the workshops we had in class involved this thing called "Circuit Bending." Circuit bending is when you take the circuitry out of a anything that makes noise (most commonly kids toys) and find points on the circuit board that distort or warp the sounds. When the points are found you add a switch to those points and then you play around with that. I had never heard of this before and I really enjoyed it. So I wanted to include that in my final. I also enjoy 3D modeling and was disappointed when there wasn't a project for that this semester. So I decided to 3D model a hollow dome, circuit bend some kids toys, then combine them all into the thing shown above. I added a button and switch for each toy and wired them all to play from an audio jack plugged into an amp. The circuit bending portions of the project went well, it was only when I started trying to fit them inside the model when wires start ripping out and I had to solder them in very awkward positions. As far as the modeling portion went, though the model was only a dome, it had a great deal of issues printing and took an entire weekend to construct, which luckily I wasn't pressed for time. When it came down to making holes for the switches to come out of, a very large drill bit and some manual adjustments finally lead to the sizing that I could work with. I did run into an issue when I had to figure out how to close the model.In order to get my circuits to work outside of their original toys I needed to craft battery packs. One of the battery packs wouldn't fit within a ball shape, so I had to distort the two halves. Which I actually like the new shape because it makes the device sit better in my hands. I chose the colors of the domes to represent those of a poke ball because not only did one of the circuit bent toys sound exactly like a selection tone from the very first pokemon games but since I was taking apart current kids toys it only felt right to put them into something that resembled my childhood.

Outside Artist Talk and Exhibition

Artist Talk: Melissa Milgrom “Adventures in Taxidermy”

Melissa Milgrom wanted to take this almost taboo field and show its inner workings to validate a lot of the effort and work that goes into this profession. I believed I was familiar with how taxidermy was done and how it worked, but Melissa shot any idea I had out of the water. When she talked about the in-depth process and how incredibly knowledgable a taxidermist must be to in order to be considered good it blew my mind. Taxidermists are a great deal closer to nature than I had originally thought. The sculpting of every muscle, the facial expressions, and the natural movement all have to be spot on or the piece isn’t wanted. I had never looked at taxidermy as an art before. Melissa got up close and personal with some taxidermists and told their stories, while attempting to explain their mindsets and passion for what they do. Taxidermy is an art that is closely related to sculpting as anatomically correct as possible. These people have such an incredible eye for detail and perfection it would put most artists to shame. There are apparently two types of taxidermy: Commercial and Diorama. Commercial includes types like the wild game head mounts, as well as small personal taxidermy. Diorama is the type that you see on display at museums, like most of the exhibits in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

Going into the lecture I did not know what I was in for, but I learned a great deal about a field, I was shown, that I knew nothing about. Taxidermists have a special niche within todays art and natural world that they continue to explore and develop. 

Art Exhibition: Bahareh Shabrabi Farahani and Mahsan Ghazianzad

Bahareh’s art was displayed on a variety of substrates, including canvas and tapestries. She is from Iran and she address the fact that Iran has a great deal more negative associations then positive here in the U.S. So she set out through her art to bring to the surface how rich of a culture Iran has and how it is represented poorly in media around the word. She used typography and symbols common in Iran as well as bright vibrant colors. Something that I have never seen used before was the addition of tar as a fill in for something like paint. That addition fascinated me and really brought a unique perspective into her work. When tar is used it has a very deep brown appearance as well as it provides a great deal of texture to the art, giving it a very dynamic appearance. She had a combination of abstract and conceptual pieces ranging from the emphasis of different strokes on a wood board, to an entire tapestry that had an elegant and fluid design painted with brights greens and accompanied by the dark brown of the tar. 

Mahasn wanted to portray this type of undetermined wanderlust that she struggled with. Her approach was depicting this through the painting of paper airplanes. She used complimentary colors and messy strokes on very large canvas paintings that all had different scenes happening within. Some had every paper airplane in flight but others had none, all of them just piled in a stack on the ground. Mahsan’s use of complimentary colors was very well executed because there was never too much of each, she used just enough to get the contrast throughout the piece but never so much as to overwhelm the viewer. All of the paper airplanes were the same type which provided a kind of blank slate for a viewer to insert their own journeys into the pieces.