Charles Ray

Is the toy firetruck really that big?, Why does he take the mannequin to the next level of realism, is it neccesary?

I find it funny that the author of the book seems to not like the fact that Charles gets so much attention, sensing a bit of jealousy/hostility. Another thing that I find intriguing about this blurb is that the author is using complicated sentence structure and higher level vocabulary words, whilst talking about a simple "kind of " guy. Ray seems like a very open fellow with nothing to hide. I admire that he uses himself as a model in a number of his works, not my style but respectable. The way his mind works is what sticks out the most to me, he takes things that are mostly obsurd/mundane and puts a spin on it. He makes tabletop objects move with his mind. What I mean is that he uses his knowledge to build machines to move the objects therefore fulfilling the statement just in a different way. The life-size toy firetruck is awesome, enough said. The mannequin is a recreation of charles' body, therefore almost serving as a self-portrait. However, he uses this object to symbolize the union of commerce and art, he does something that is taboo in our society and succeeds. Let us think for a moment, what if we hit a dark ages time, and records are lost, computers destroyed and cities burn. A couple thousand years later some new civilization finds our shopping malls, they assume that it is like a castle or hotel something like that and mannequins are sculpture pieces, are they going to assume that everyone was bald and lifeless looking with no reproductive parts. He is brave.

Overall I like the ideas that he is portraying and feel like he is taking on a daunting task by taking our society and turning it over on itself.

Guest Speaker: Sonja

Sonja is an interesting person who has experienced many new places and stories throughout her life. Seeming to live from one artist residency to another, she has made her way across a good portion of the globe. That part of her inspired me greatly, to travel for life creating artwork, yeah I am a fan. She showed two videos during the lecture, sorry, but I didn't really pull much from those. The map made out of sand was awesome and I completely respect the time it took to create something like that, but the video of her walking through amsterdam with the camera pointing at the ground the entire time. It's basically like a book that has a decent intro, and you could pull some rising action but then, once you see it is not going anywhere, you discard the book and never pick it back up. The pieces of hers that I really enjoyed were the snow walking circles. I recognized them from the McCol Centre, the discipline used to create something like that is quite respectable. Sonja is very creative and has a pretty abstract mind as far as I can tell. I would like to adopt some of her thinking into my artwork, but not all of it.

Faculty show speakers.

Today we went to the Faculty show. I didn't really enjoy or understand the two pieces that were talked about, even after they were explained. The machine (I forget the artist's name) just didn't do anything for me nor did i take anything away with me from examining it. You once asked me in class about my first project "Do you think that people will get all of that from this image?" and after the artist explained her piece I ask, Do you think that I am supposed to get any of this content from this work?

War photographer,

James Nachtway

"I have been a witness and these pictures are my testimony. The events that I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated." = awesome

I, being a photo major, Thoroughly enjoyed viewing his work. It sucks that we could not get the video on him. His pictures and his willingness to photo these subjects is incredible. He definately inspired me to new ideas about what photography can be.

Class notes: Guerilla Girls+ Guillermo Gomez-Pena

October 14: today we talked about our art & activism project(all thoughts on matter are in the project notes blog.) We also watched a video to get an example of an artist that uses politics in his artwork. Guillermo is a mexican-american that basically sets up a vocally interactive booth where himself and his assistants sit with props acting out different situations that are supposed to make the viewers slightly to extremely offended. He wants to get a reaction and evoke emotions. He brings to light ideas about race and class in our society that most people would like to not think of. I am a fan of what he is trying to accomplish, his concept. But what I don't particularly enjoy is his form, the installation pieces are not my interest, viewing or creating.

Project 3 notes Group project

At first I wasn't thrilled about the idea about a group project. Set meeting times, assigned responsibilities that you have to trust that the other person will do, et cetera. After my group was assigned I was pleased with the members in it and they basically promoted me to unspoken leader. Which is fine I enjoy delegation. Our group; Marlon, Jerau, Ben, Angelique, and myself, had a great time overall. We joked and laughed out way to an idea that is practical in everyones life within our culture. Bitching and Moaning is what we came up with. We met up a couple times, one day to work on the project and another to film us giving it out. We became friends used our seperate skills as artists and as people and put them together into a final project. Angelique was our film star Ben took pictures, Jerau found quotes and starred, Marlon did the template for the brochure, and I wrote the text. Nobody complained about their job and everyone completed it without fault. Typically I am not a political person so when the idea of a political project came up I wasn't too excited, but we worked with it and succeeded I believe.

Project 2 final notes

For my final product from the consumption project I ended up with a video showing that everyday I am consumed by others that don't know that I have a handicap(being deaf in one ear) and those that I do tell don't remember long enough for it to matter. I used video to convey my idea. The video used a boring mundane image of pretty much nothing for the left side of my face to show the side that I cannot hear out of. The other part of the video used music and active images to show how even though I am half-deaf I don't it interfere with my life nor do I get angry at those that don't understand.

I felt that the video came out rather well. I used a mixture of pictures and video with another image on top of the whole layer. I used final cut express to edit my video.

Final thoughts include; that I had fun with this project.

(I tried to upload the video but it wouldn't do it, i think that the file size is too large.)