Lecture: Genevieve Erin O'Brien

As a LGBT supporter myself, I found that her art and lecture was quite amazing. She didn't focus on art that aimed toward the LGBT community, but knowing her background towards it made her much more appealing. She is a performance artist who is very odd but creative. 

Genevieve Erin O'Brien performing

     O'Brien explained through her lecture that she got involved in performance through a lot of different workshops and all finding her own voice through all these workshops, which she greatly recommends. Her mediums included working with social networks, television and different technology uses to create messages for people around the world. 

    A few different performances were inspired texts. One performance in particular really stuck out to me which was called Peace Salon. This was a spontaneous act to shave off her hair, but had strong reasons behind it. She was going to perform head shavings in an art gallery, but due to complications she was forced to leave. Instead she decided to do it on the street. Shave your head for peace! This performance seemed to be very successful and meaningful, especially to the community she was currently in. Personally, I would not partake in this, but it would have been fun to watch all these people give up their hair. 

O'Brien performing Peace Salon

     Another piece that was creative, was GEO work. This piece was probably my favorite that she showed because it was so powerful and really viewers aware of a specific topic. The idea behind it was specifically service work. During her own show, she dressed as a worker in the art gallery. She performed minimum wage work while leaving traces of her shoe prints around the gallery. It would have been interesting to see peoples reactions and the floor once it was covered with where she had been the whole time. She also explained that one time she washed the whole floor of a gallery on her hands and knees. Pretty impressive and exhausting.

    Another thing I liked about her work was that she included her family in some of the pieces, including her moms ability to cook with her dads line of work in factories. She created a whole factory made out of cake. This too seemed really symbolic and had much meaning seeing as though she connected her, her mom and her dad through her work.

     I didn't really see pieces that were too confusing to me. Most all of her work was interesting and meaningful. I would like to see more pieces from here, especially pieces that really connect with the LGBT community. That would be cool.

Lecture: Joe DeLappe

     Joe, as you well know, is an art performer, sculptor, video game player, an artist, etc. He has many works that range from using computer mouses as drawing tools, or creating a giant sculpture of Gandhi made out of cardboard.

     I have not seen many similar works as DeLappe's work, which was really sparked my attention. Starting off the lecture with a piece about the male and female sex organs made me feel a little skeptical about the whole thing... since I've never experienced his work before. As a gamer, I was really drawn to a specific piece he did called Dead In Iraq. This was a type of 'in-game performance' where DeLappe would interact with the game while other people played and watched, too. What he did was created a player in the American Army online shooter game and would start listing names of dead American soldiers. Personally, if I was another person playing the game and happened to run into this, I would not start yelling at him, but most likely just watch and see how many people are on the list that he has in front of him. Another video game piece that was pretty cool was called Quake Friends. This was about another online game that was performed by himself and 5 others who all reenacted an episode of Friends. How awesome would it be to see that happening while playing in an online game. Sadly, it was just an experiment that happened to be hard to control since they were killed so often by other online players. Although that happened, I think that it was a creative way to interact with others while in an online game. 

   Probably my favorite piece Joe made was his  Gandhi March back in 08', I believe. He reenacted a 240 mile walk which Gandhi did way back when. DeLappe walked these 240 miles on a treadmill connected with the online game, Second Life. Second Life allows people all over the world create their own world and their own character. Joe created Gandhi and walked those miles all throughout the virtual world. 26ish days of walking, he ran into random things everywhere, people even joined for a bit as well. This is a project I would have liked to participate it. I wouldn't mind getting exercise and walking throughout a video game for a few days. It seems like too much fun to wonder around a huge virtual world. I would have also liked to see this in action. My only question is how was the treadmill connected to the character in Second Life?

     Speaking of Gandhi, I was really drawn to the giant sculpture of Gandhi that he created out of cardboard. Understanding from experience, this seemed so time consuming. Especially when art museums around the world ask for him to create a whole new Gandhi sculpture from scratch. How many times was that thing recreated? Three? Either way, with a lot of help from volunteers, anything can get done and it was.

    Overall, the lecture was interesting and kept my attention the whole time.I wish i was able to see more videos during the presentation, but besides that it was really interesting learning about my own professor and his work.

Joe Delappe and Giant Gandhi!

Exibit!

"Listening to Paula Cavums." - Kyle Walker Akins

"The Traumatic Memory Inventory." - Rachel Alger

"Machines built by machines." - Andy 

This was a BFA art show. The three students that presented their work were outstanding artists. First of all, I knew Andy from one of my book art classes and whenever he would turn in a project, the rest of us would feel bad about our work since his was so amazing. 

     The first room was Kyle Akins work. It was something different. He wasnt someone who used drawing utensils, but actually cut out pieces in fabric and burned them. I believe he colored them as well. Honestly, when I first walked into the gallery I walked right past his exhibit because it looked uninteresting to me. Eventually I came back around and actually gave the gallery a good look. The images he had created were very beautiful up closer. Some scenery looking images burned into these pieces of fabric. It seemed to be very original and creative. I think my favorite piece of his was the one above in the photo. My least favorite was the big USA flag. Personally, im not a fan of patriotic work. It was nicely done, though. 

     The second room was Rachel's exhibit. This was a lot more entertaining because the viewers can interact with her work. This had major appeal to me seeing as I like touching everything I see. She had put up flowers covered in wax that hung from the ceiling. The point was to run into them and tangle all of them together, just for fun. The other pieces of art she had were these lantern type images with silhouettes of fairy tale stories such as Rapunzel. These were very amazing because you can literally walk around the whole lantern and it feels as though it tells a story. The silhouettes were pieces of the main plot from the tales, mostly main characters or symbolic images. Overall, I really liked her exhibit and would like to see more works by her.

    Last was Andy, whos last name escapes me. His work was outstanding as always. He draws these amazing pieces that i have never seen before. So detailed and beautiful. He also presented one of his books from our book arts class, which was absolutely amazing. It is hard to describe his work when they are literally just drawings. They're so amazing, you'd have to see them yourself. Also, he had little pieces of paper with a drawing on it for people to take. He hand drew every one of them and there were about 50 if i remember correctly. There wasn't one of his works that I didn't like. I would definitely like to see more of his work in the future. 

     Overall, I thought that the exhibit was a success and I really enjoyed all three exhibits.

pepakura project!

I really enjoyed this project. I think it was something totally different and a new experience for me. My controller ended up looking pretty good except for some of the pieces in the front. It seemed as though some of the pieces didnt fit properly which made it look pretty bad near the joy stick area. Besides that part, it all came out looking like the design. If i could do something different, i probably would have put the logo on it.

Assignment #2 bust

My final bust did not come out the way I wanted it to. It looks like a shitty blob. It looked different on the program i used, so i was surprised it came out this way in the first place. I believe the hoodie and beanie looked the best it was just mostly the face that didnt really look so great. It seemed to be a class joke, in a sense... So, it was kind of upsetting. Riki and I took pictures of each other about 10 times total. We uploaded all and most times it didnt upload the pictures. we used both the computer program and the phone program. Finally, we decided to do it at home with other people since it wasnt working at school. I finally got mine to upload. I edited it for a long time in two different programs. It was extremely difficult to get out all of the bumps. Almost impossible. I just think the pictures failed to look good when it was uploaded. I also tried it again. I was not allowed to print another since she knew i already printed one. I redid the assignment, but it wasnt my fault that i wasnt allowed to print it again. Unless i had 100 bucks. I worked on this for more than 6 hours especially redoing them and editing the busts in the program.

Assignment 1: Survival

 

This is my final. I thought it came out perfect, including the little hologram. I wish i could have painted it better, but I think that it still looked pretty good. I also liked the stand i used for my model as well. 

This is my final representation of the 'futuristic, environmental friendly suit.'
It's all black to look super stylish. It has a helment to block any unfortunate weather conditions, including hail storms, rain and snow. Also, the helmet helps communicate with people like with phone calls. (It's more or less like the ironman suit. It can can people from inside the helmet and also detach itself when necessary.)
Comes equip with a SUPER jet back which can also transform into an object to ride on top of water if needed. Kind of like a jet ski but smaller. 
A laser gun which can either be attached to the suit or the jetpack. This gun can easily kill anything in someone's way. For example, during the future zombie apocalypse, this gun will destroy all of them (up to level 20, the you have to shoot them twice... Lame video game joke).
 Finally, the hologram device. Can be used to see people when communicating or to view certain objects, or what have you.

In the article, 50 years from now... He says, "We just didn't realize our addiction to carbon would come with monster storms, epic droughts, Biblical floods, wildfire infernos, rising seas, migration, starvation, pestilence, civil war, failed states, police states, and resource wars."

Made me think of an army type suit. Which is why he looks like he is from call of duty. I thought that since there might not be anymore oil, cars would be inefficient. So, they would use jetpacks that run off of water. (This is already super unrealistic!) And also, i thought the suit would help against all these weather conditions and war type dilemmas.