Category: art/design

visions

I have successfully acquired the signature of the Fencing professor and am now in the McDaniel computer lab with an hour to spare before my next class (Shakespeare). I could go listen to the news podcasts I downloaded this morning or read the feminist theory book a prof lent me (actually way more interesting than it sounds), but instead I shall tell you about my trip to Baltimore yesterday. But first, I’ll show you.

Baltimore

That’s Connor, Gabe, Ben, and Cassandra. Missing from the picture are Jancey and Julia.

Anyway, we went to Baltimore yesterday to visit the American Visionary Art Museum. My parents go there occasionally, so I’d heard of it, and even quite a bit about it, but I’d never been myself. There was a big part of me that would have preferred to sleep through the afternoon, but the sister convinced me it would be worth it, and so we embarked.

It was worth it, no question. The range of quality is greater than in most museums I’ve visited, but the cool stuff is *really* cool, and there’s a fair amount that’s cool in a mind bogglingly absurd kind of way. Like the 16 foot model of the Lusitania made entirely out of toothpicks. Or the matchstick man, whose creator said things like, “Each matchstick represents a human being.” There is something beautiful about that idea, but it’s not your typical art museum fare.

My favorite piece was a seven panel painting by James Franklin Snodgrass which, from a distance, looks like two (very abstract) reclining figures, and from less of a distance can be seen to be comprised of zillions of tiny detailed smaller figures. Some of them are just faces and bodies floating there, but others are doing things, like bathing, drowning, assembling in groups, etc. I could get lost in it for days, I think, but I’m not sure I’d come back with my sanity intact. Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be any pictures of the piece on the net (not that it could even come close to capturing the awesomeness). So you should go and check it out for yourself.

All of the art I mentioned above is in the museum’s permanent collection; the current exhibit is “Race, Class, Gender ≠ Character”. Some of the exhibit was excellent, some was mediocre, and some was…eh. It’s accompanied by some interesting text, but you can read all of that on the exhibit’s website. It’s certainly worth visiting, though, if only to see some of the interesting things people are doing — like phenomenally intricate pictures from cutting and pasting colored papers, or the hundreds of dolls made from pipe cleaners. Also, some work by Rosie O’Donnell. I didn’t know she was an artist.

The current exhibit is there until September 3, 2006, but the Snodgrass painting is there all the time and it alone is probably worth the price of admission.

untitled

The Untitled Project is a series of photographs of urban settings accompanied by a graphical text layout. The photographs have been digitally stripped of all traces of textual information. The text pieces show the removed text in the approximate location and font as it was found in the photograph.

It’s really interesting to me what we can fill in on our own, and what our eyes keep looking for. I went through looking first at the image alone, then at the text, and then the two together. I think adding the words made the biggest difference on this one.

Rethinking roads

I thought I blogged this the last time I read about it, but if I did, I can’t find the post. But today Wired has an article about roads gone wild — an interesting new theory in traffic engineering.

The basic premise is that if there are no signs telling drivers where and how to drive, they’ll slow down and think about it themselves. In other words, “Build roads that seem dangerous, and they’ll be safer.” Wired says this is counterintuitive. I guess that depends on your mindset.

What I think is interesting are the possible implications not only for traffic patterns, but for changing societal patterns as well. Someone recently commented to me about how strange it is that we don’t look at each other as people when we’re in our cars. We’ve built huge parts of our lives around them, but they aren’t integrated, they’re separate, and they separate us.

I love my car, and, despite what the article says, it is a symbol of freedom for me. But more in a sunset-chasing, random-roadtrip-taking way, not so much in a day-to-day way. In a day-to-day way I hate traffic and how far away everything is. For that, I’d like to see communities similar to the idea apparently being encouraged in New Jersey mentioned at the end of the article.

Culture

Last night Kevin, Ben, Johanna, Jon, & I set out to get ourselves some culture, Harrisburg-style.

We began the evening at The Design Museum @ Fathom where they currently have a Chindogu exhibit. I like the idea of Chindogu. I enjoyed the exhibit at Fathom. The humor quotient was good. The art quotient was low. But if you need a bit of a chuckle and happen to be downtown on a Friday or Saturday evening, it’s worth the price of admission (which happens to be $0) and the few minutes it’ll take to peruse the items on display.

After checking out some of the crazy things the Japanese create, we headed across the street Miyako (nee Tokyo Express) to consume some of the wonderful things the Japanese create. While no sushi around here is of the blow-your-mind-delicious variety, Miyako is nearly as good as Sapporo East (my local favorite). They even gain a few points by being the only area sushi place I know of to also hold a liquor license. Despite the sluggish speed of the service we managed to dispose of an inordinate amount of fish and rice and left the restaurant ready to explode with culture.

The last stop of the evening was Shady McGrady’s where we took it upon ourselves to create some culture of our own. Meet Cigarette Man and his pet camel:

As you may or may not be able to see, he comes complete with argyle socks and curly chest hair. We’re artists, I tell you. Full of culture.

To kill or not to kill

I arrived home from dinner this evening to an email from Marty.  “Tonight at 8pm, they’re messing– or YOU’RE messingwith a piano, playing or kicking or draggin’ down to theriverside…interactive performance thang,” the email said, among other things.   I got the message at 7:40, but since I’d just walked in the door, I was already all set to walk right back out — so I did.
 
I didn’t know what to expect.  I know very little about The Mantis Collective, the gallery holding the event, and, as Marty pointed out, they seem to do very little publicity.  The one opening I had previously attended there was unimpressive, both in terms of the artwork and the organization, but I have heard great things about other exhibits they have done, and I’m all for any kind of art in Harrisburg.
 
Due to traffic on I-83 I didn’t get to gallery until ten minutes after 8.  When I arrived the piano was situated in the middle of the small room that is The Mantis Collective with an assortment of tools placed just inside the door.  The piano had been beaten a bit but was largely intact at this point.  I was relieved to see Rusty Baker, director of the Susquehanna Art Museum, as a familiar face is always nice when you don’t know anything about an event.
 
As the crowd watched from the sidewalk outside the gallery individuals from the audience would walk in the door, select their tools, and proceed to interact with the piano.  Rusty hit the back of it over and over with an axe and a sledge hammer, creating a deep resonant sound that vibrated through my body, a rich and discordant noise.  One girl picked a flower from a planter down the street, ran her hands over the body of the piano as she circled it, then gently placed the white blossom on the splintered top.  Someone asked, “Can we do a duet?” and two men walked in, one with the axe, the other with the sledge hammer, and they alternated slamming their tools on what was left of the keys in a strange and destructive rhythm.  I used the prying end of a hammer to strum the now exposed strings of the piano, then silenced it with my hands before using the same tool to carefully remove even more of the keys.  It was interesting to see how people approached it — most used brute force and the biggest tools they could find.  Very few people acted with any appearance of deliberateness or purpose, instead looking very much like they were simply acting out their aggressions on the instrument.
 
I wasn’t sure whether or not the folks from Mantis would be okay with me taking pictures of the destruction so I didn’t pull out my camera until Marty arrived shortly after 8:30.  After I spoke to him for a few minutes I handed it to him.  He’d only taken a couple of pictures, though, when they announced it was over, at an apparently significant 8:44.  We took a few mroe pictures of the wreckage and the building and I heard one of the gallery employees say, “Oh good, someone has a still camera.”  I wish I’d pulled it out sooner.
 
I’ve posted the pictures I did get here, and Mantis is planning to send DVDs to everyone who participated, so it has been documented.
 
The thing I keep coming back to is that I don’t know if I consider tonight’s destruction to be art.  Could we pretend we were making some great statement as we walked up to that piano?  Sure, but I don’t think anyone with a sledge hammer in their hands was thinking about splintering the wood as a symbol of the silencing of creative voices or the destruction of traditional values or any of that.  Was it cool?  Certainly, because it’s always fun to smash things that are supposed to be sacred.  Somehow it almost feels like this could have been art if the piano weren’t already ruined, which I heard one of the Mantis folks say it was.  If the gallery, or some eccentric billionaire, commissioned a master piano maker to create the perfect instrument, had the best pianist in the world perform one song on it, then unleashed the crowds with their axes and sledge hammers and saws, then I would more easily be able to see it as art.  As it is, I like seeing stuff like this being done because it does push some people’s boundaries, but whether or not it’s art depends on one’s definition of art — as, I suppose, is the case for many things.  I don’t have a highly developed definition of art or Art, but what I keep coming back to is that it just doesn’t matter.  I had fun tonight, as, I think, did everyone else.  And that’s all that does matter.

Antique Porn

1001Nudes.com

This is a very interesting site, but not work safe. It’s erotica/porn/general nudity since the invention of photography. It’s amazing how what we think is beautiful has changed over just 120 years or so. Not only are the body shapes very different, but even many of the faces would be considered ugly by today’s standards.

Other random shots I thought were interesting:

Nature Nudes

Nature & Bondage

Nude Reclining