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.