This experiment is to take an everyday activity and turn it into ritualistic art.
I chose brushing my teeth.
For this I had to buy an everyday toothbrush, I normally use an electric but that would hurt doing it this long. The experiment went pretty well, very boring and I cut it short since my gums started to hurt. So nope, no full two hours, about an hour and a half. Plus I was drooling pretty bad during it so I had to keep wiping my mouth.
I did have someone else photograph me so i had an audience for this one. It did change how i did things, I had to try not to talk to her and tried to appear as if I was into what I was doing. This got easier once I got really bored. For this process an audience is not wanted, I got pretty self conscious and was trying to "act the part" when the camera was about to go off. I also skipped alot of pictures since we had almost 90 and a lot of them had me laughing or wiping drool, things that have little to do with the subject matter.
SO...
My performance is not art because art is an expression of an idea or concept and unless this is an experiment in monotony or some larger statement on grooming habits it really doesn't say much of anything. I doubt any two critics would come up with any substantial relative ideas without some mission statement being attached to it. I really think art should be able to stand on its own without further explanation.
Art is... Well I started to delve into it before but Art is an expression of an Idea through a chosen medium. Not the most popular of definitions but i have a hard time calling a lot of "modern art" art. If you take Michaelangelo's David for example you can look at the form and technique of the nude and appreciate it for its raw difficulty, its lifelikeness, and its proportions. You can look at its differently formed right and left arms and with little foreknowledge understand what he was trying to say about Gods place in art and science and its rightful place in humanity. It would stand on its own. You can add that it was one of the first Greco-roman style nudes done in centuries, you can talk about how its stance is natural and how this goes back to old styles while improving on them but it doesn't require a whole lot of extra explanation. Performance art seems to me that it either needs three pages of extra info to tell you what it meant or it makes its point like a political cartoon, with a sledgehammer.
The difference between life and art is... Art is a single statement whereas life is dozens of confused ideas and priorities. You can try and limit life to one statement for a given amount of time but you cannot force it for very long or do art exclusively. Pretty much like the argument that you can fool some people for all the time or all people some of the time. So you can create art for a while or you can somewhat make art for a long time but not create pure art for a long time. I think art should is best kept an abstraction from life that helps you reflect better upon life when they are mixed the message of art is mixed with the mundane of life.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Triptych Self Portrait
This self portrait was hard...
I thought for a long time trying to find three things, be them historical, mythological, possessions or whatever that described me. Moreover I had a hard time just finding things I thought described me. When I asked other people I just got answers which I thought were missing quite a bit.
What I finally settled on, and am still not too satisfied on, was a series of pics of me on my bike, with my dog and working. Thats when I reread the description of what was required, and noticed that they were to be linked in some form. Not easy.
What I settled on were pics where you could not see my eyes and with sparse uninteresting backgrounds. I did this mostly because the people who may be looking at this are most likely not going to be meeting me face to face and even if they did will likely not know we were i the same class.
Overall i don't think these pics were very inspired and I wish I could think of something better to put in there places.
Title: Me in Three
The first photo is of me with my pup, I tried to show this as my calmest time mostly by taking it in a relaxed position and trying to have a serene look on my face. My pup however was pretty interested in the camera and wouldn't calm down. Oh well.
The second photo is of me on my bike. A big part of my life is my love for the outdoors and of traveling. bike riding lets me do both letting me explore nature and be able to stop at any time to admire it. I didn't want to take an action shot since neither of my other shots were going to be and I didn't think it warranted that big a distinction. Besides, for me, its more calming than exhilarating.
The last photo is of me at work. Very exciting. but it is a big part of what I've been doing for the last few years and still have yet to go. I take my studying seriously something I tried to show with all my books and stuff out and with me buried in it. Pretty much the pose I always have nowadays.
Thematically I put everything in black and white, in boring poses and with little background or flourish since thats pretty much how life is right now.
I thought for a long time trying to find three things, be them historical, mythological, possessions or whatever that described me. Moreover I had a hard time just finding things I thought described me. When I asked other people I just got answers which I thought were missing quite a bit.
What I finally settled on, and am still not too satisfied on, was a series of pics of me on my bike, with my dog and working. Thats when I reread the description of what was required, and noticed that they were to be linked in some form. Not easy.
What I settled on were pics where you could not see my eyes and with sparse uninteresting backgrounds. I did this mostly because the people who may be looking at this are most likely not going to be meeting me face to face and even if they did will likely not know we were i the same class.
Overall i don't think these pics were very inspired and I wish I could think of something better to put in there places.
Title: Me in Three
The first photo is of me with my pup, I tried to show this as my calmest time mostly by taking it in a relaxed position and trying to have a serene look on my face. My pup however was pretty interested in the camera and wouldn't calm down. Oh well.
The second photo is of me on my bike. A big part of my life is my love for the outdoors and of traveling. bike riding lets me do both letting me explore nature and be able to stop at any time to admire it. I didn't want to take an action shot since neither of my other shots were going to be and I didn't think it warranted that big a distinction. Besides, for me, its more calming than exhilarating.
The last photo is of me at work. Very exciting. but it is a big part of what I've been doing for the last few years and still have yet to go. I take my studying seriously something I tried to show with all my books and stuff out and with me buried in it. Pretty much the pose I always have nowadays.
Thematically I put everything in black and white, in boring poses and with little background or flourish since thats pretty much how life is right now.
Monday, June 4, 2007
A bit late
Sorry about this post being late, my apartment complex felt I really didn't need the internets so I had to run home to post this.
Comparison b/n Sappho Translation and my poem.
I read several versions of a Sappho translation and a couple things stuck out. There were versions such as Lord Byrons which were endlessly entrenched in imagery, version which tried to get form and rhyme spot on (very hard to see if they got it right, hard to see the meter in the Greek), and my favorite, the literal translation with no flourish at all. Between all the versions there was some recurring themes (mostly the ones asked for in the assignment). But the form, even some of the imagery was up for grabs.
So I chose in my poem to follow a repeating Renga format (variation on haiku), though I missed some important pieces (not too happy with the way it turned out, but then again I wasn't writing for myself necessarily and we are all constrained by the images and general format of the Sappho) I wriggled it into a form I could live with.
Imagery wise, the Sappho had more broad, tactile images whereas I chose a more spare storytelling use. Also in the Sappho the grass tends to be used to compare her skin color to, whereas I used it literally.
We both try to show a loss of control over the body by treating the parts as outside entities.
I chose a more tragic approach by showing the love to be moving apart.
Now about the translations; as i said earlier, with poetry you have to make priorities in translation. Whether you keep form the same, sacrificing imagery, possibly flow or you try and get the message correct, but lose some form. Also the problem arises when you try and figure out the original intent of the words used, in a live language like Greek you really cannot be sure of a words connotation at the time the poem was written, there may b subtleties you miss, even jokes you don't get. Also there arises the problem of the new language not having a word or not the specific word needed (Japanese has something like 15 ways of saying "to kill" whether by stealth, trickery,honorable, etc). All of the these lead to the conclusion that translation is necessarily flawed and the best version is up to interpretation. Personaaly I feel the best is a version which is true in meaning to the original and can stand on its own as a poem. I don't feel that keeping the original metaphors exactly the same nor even the same order is necessary so long as you are reading a well written poem that is an homage to the original.
Lastly, Gender.
In my poem gender is expressed in the terms used to describe the beloved. Using words like lithe, sweet and soft are pretty typical representations of the current female ideal. I stayed away from things like demure or firebrand since they seem more like a personal ideal at this time. I think a great deal of men idealize women who are of the same size or smaller, have relatively common looks (though physically fit) and not strongly outspoken. I know I would be wrong saying this for every guy, but at least it seems to fit the bill when it comes to what advertising companies think.
Ultimately I didn't do very much with gender in my poem, especially in comparison with some others I've seen posted, I think it could do with some more work especially the break between lines 10 and 11. If I do get a version I like more I will post it next to the original.
-Trev
Comparison b/n Sappho Translation and my poem.
I read several versions of a Sappho translation and a couple things stuck out. There were versions such as Lord Byrons which were endlessly entrenched in imagery, version which tried to get form and rhyme spot on (very hard to see if they got it right, hard to see the meter in the Greek), and my favorite, the literal translation with no flourish at all. Between all the versions there was some recurring themes (mostly the ones asked for in the assignment). But the form, even some of the imagery was up for grabs.
So I chose in my poem to follow a repeating Renga format (variation on haiku), though I missed some important pieces (not too happy with the way it turned out, but then again I wasn't writing for myself necessarily and we are all constrained by the images and general format of the Sappho) I wriggled it into a form I could live with.
Imagery wise, the Sappho had more broad, tactile images whereas I chose a more spare storytelling use. Also in the Sappho the grass tends to be used to compare her skin color to, whereas I used it literally.
We both try to show a loss of control over the body by treating the parts as outside entities.
I chose a more tragic approach by showing the love to be moving apart.
Now about the translations; as i said earlier, with poetry you have to make priorities in translation. Whether you keep form the same, sacrificing imagery, possibly flow or you try and get the message correct, but lose some form. Also the problem arises when you try and figure out the original intent of the words used, in a live language like Greek you really cannot be sure of a words connotation at the time the poem was written, there may b subtleties you miss, even jokes you don't get. Also there arises the problem of the new language not having a word or not the specific word needed (Japanese has something like 15 ways of saying "to kill" whether by stealth, trickery,honorable, etc). All of the these lead to the conclusion that translation is necessarily flawed and the best version is up to interpretation. Personaaly I feel the best is a version which is true in meaning to the original and can stand on its own as a poem. I don't feel that keeping the original metaphors exactly the same nor even the same order is necessary so long as you are reading a well written poem that is an homage to the original.
Lastly, Gender.
In my poem gender is expressed in the terms used to describe the beloved. Using words like lithe, sweet and soft are pretty typical representations of the current female ideal. I stayed away from things like demure or firebrand since they seem more like a personal ideal at this time. I think a great deal of men idealize women who are of the same size or smaller, have relatively common looks (though physically fit) and not strongly outspoken. I know I would be wrong saying this for every guy, but at least it seems to fit the bill when it comes to what advertising companies think.
Ultimately I didn't do very much with gender in my poem, especially in comparison with some others I've seen posted, I think it could do with some more work especially the break between lines 10 and 11. If I do get a version I like more I will post it next to the original.
-Trev
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