Sound experimentation workshop

Here is a link to some photos from the sound experimentation workshop some of us did with Lyndon Blue on Monday night. It was really interesting to visualise sound vibration. We experimented with coloured sand, water, goo, and paint on a plate on a speaker. It was pretty cool, I didn't get any shots of the sand but you could see the shapes of different notes. awesome!

Semester 1 work

Series of photos from my final video installation played on three monitors. They were mixed media animations composed in Flash using drawings, text and edited photographs (using a mixture of glitch art and various options in photoshop)

my plans proposed

last semester i looked into soldering circuits for LEDs which i enjoyed so I thought I'd approach a project that involves multiple functions like sensor triggers, movement, sound, and having them programmed to work together. So in looking over things iv done previously that i would have liked to pursue in making it move somehow, I made a fortune cookie shaped 'thing' that I glued my own hair to (pictures of 'thing' above). This 'thing' looks quite a bit like a vagina, so in embracing the two themes i wanted to see if i could make latex flaps that would cover a gadget that would move when someone walked past this hairy vagina thing, also because of the shape id likely have to make two of these so its nice and balanced. As the flaps are moving (to incorporate the fortune cookie element) and try to program sound into the movement I'd like for it to tell whoever has walked past and triggered the sensor their fortune. With the audio I was thinking of exploring concepts of shamans, oracles, prophets and general spiritual 'meaning of life' advice in a way that follows the random non personal predictions of a fortune cookie. I don't want the 'oracle orifice' to be taken seriously, and I'm not sure why anybody would, but the experience of being addressed by an ambiguously genital looking object with apparent spiritual insight i thought would at least be interesting.

Researching 'talking robot vaginas' has been nothing short of strange but there's Jamie McCartney's 'Great wall of vagina' which is approx 400 casts of vaginas from women of all different backgrounds and ages. It's quite a confronting piece of work with how many there are, they're to scale in white plaster with lifelike detail and they're all uniquely different. In an interview McCartney says its to show the diversity and beauty of the vagina, which i think is great but for my work i might need to be careful to not portray the vagina as a degrading joke.

• Ladies feel free to comment on the topic im curious about your how you respond to vaginas being used in humour.

So in trying to find a family friendly video to post that would relate to my work i found a bit of an 'everyone loves raymond' episode where Marie (Raymond's mother) accidentally makes a huge vagina in her art class while trying to make an abstract. The characters in the show react in different ways that  I thought worked well with my concept when relating art with the ambiguous vagina as an icon and humour.  

Unit Proposal - Megs

This is a link to my past semesters works and influences in Media Arts.
http://www.tumblr.com/blog/mediaartsmegs

This semester I want to combine my previous semesters works, working with sound and video.
I enjoyed working with the theme of 'obsolete' technology, and want to make use of the vhs mixer in my studio. The machine can mix two VHS machines playing together, almost the same way a mixing desk works with sound. The effects available are almost limitless, and I want to create a video that's awkward, clumsy and slightly scary for the viewer. Creating images of distortion, I want to video to be almost unwatchable. I want to be able to use these visuals and sounds for exhibition, in some ways i am inspired by Bruce Naumann in this respect. Also I hope to use the visuals for live shows.

The dadaist movement has a large influence on my work, citing artist's like Raoul Hausmann and a newly discovered sound and dada inspired artist Henri Chopin.
Salvador Dali influences my surrealist take on the work. Also the video work of Marcel Duchamp.
The written works of Freud also comes into play, looking at the philosophy of the thought behind the work.

Henri Chopin - Audiopoem
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abkuwqW06TE

Marcel Duchamp - Anemic Cinema
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXINTf8kXCc

Fluxus Films- 1963 - Wolf Vostell - Sun in your head - television decollage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5krhw54oqs


My 30 second sound file homework  -  Entitled "The Laws of Noncontradiction"

Sound art workshop with Lyndon Blue

So this is the thing I was trying (and failing) to explain.

From the PICA website:
http://www.pica.org.au/spark_lab/view/Lyndon+Blue/1310/

Lyndon Blue

Sound Workshops

6 August - 16 August 2013
At Your School

$10 per student, limit of 25

Exhibiting sound artist Lyndon Blue will lead students in an interactive workshop crossing the boundaries of music and visual art. Blue's work often aims to collapse the distinction between the worlds of art and pop music. He is interested in "pop" formats and structures being used to uncanny effect, as well as allowing more esoteric approaches to enter vernacular, inclusive settings. Key influences in his practice are Joseph Beuys and David Byrne. This workshop will involve experimental, lo-tech approaches to sound making, and audio-visual interactions, exploring various approaches to visualizing sound, and sonifying images, taking cues from artists such as Norman McClaren, Mary Bute, Kandinsky and Alexander Scriabin, and the phenomenon of synesthesia.


So yeah, Monday 26th August, 6.30pm probably in the Hummerston Room. It's $10, just bring it with you on the day.

Unit proposal - Danni McGrath

This semester I'm investigating different communication media on a DIY scale. In the ASAP unit, I'm looking specifically at print media (think newspapers, posters, flyers) and in AVR I'm going to be looking at radio and potentially television media. 

So, why communication media? Two reasons; firstly it's because I'm really interested in making connections to people (whether I or they know it or not). Now I'm either sympathetic and quote Beuys talking about distribution of multiples:

"You see, all those people who have such an object will continue to be interested in how the point of departure from which the vehicles started is developing. They’ll be watching to see what the person who produced these things is doing now. That way I stay in touch with people; just as you have come to me, because of what I’ve made and we can talk about it, I can talk to just about anybody who owns such an object. There’s a real affinity to people who own such things, such vehicles. It’s like an antenna which is standing somewhere and with which one stays in touch. There are also cross-connections between people, or deviations." (Interview with Joseph Beuys by Jorg Schellmann and Bernd Kluser. 1980. Joseph Beuys: Multiples.) 

Or I get all cynical and quote Hennessy Youngman:

"Basically Relational Aesthetics is when someone with an MFA wants to meet new people but because they spent all that time pursuing an MFA they don’t know how to talk to people normally, they’ve got really poor social skills and they can’t find no other way of meeting new people other than forcing them into odd activities at their own poorly attended art openings" (http://youtu.be/7yea4qSJMx4)

Secondly, I want to make and distribute my own communication media because I feel weird about the way that much mainstream communication media seems so far removed from the interactions we have on a daily basis, despite often talking about similar things. I think this has to do with slick, highly polished production values and 'artificial' people in presentation roles. This also has something to do with New Journalism.

Anyway. Re: this class, I'm want to learn how to produce and distribute internet radio (and potentially also television, but I'm going to start with the radio stuff and see how that goes first). Some inclusions/considerations I've thought of so far:

• I'd like the radio (and television, if I get that far) to be broadcast live and not as something that can be streamed later or downloaded. I think this has to do with my desire to retain the human-ness; listeners will actually be listening to a live human talking. It's about some other things too I think, but I'll elaborate on them later.
• To include conversations with other people (i.e. not just me waxing lyrical about SFA)
• Tone is important. Conversational, not newsreader. But there's different types of conversational. Breakfast radio is considered conversational but I don't want it to be like that.

I'll be posting things on my uni tumblr, dannimcgrath-uni.tumblr.com but also doing weekly summaries on here, so like, you can follow the tumblr if you want but there might be some repetition.

Ok. Cool. Bye.

The New Aesthetic _ James Bridle

http://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2012/03/13/godhelpus/#sxaesthetic

The New Aesthetic

Joanne McNeil

editor of Rhizome, spoke about the history of new aesthetics,
on new perspectives, technologies and art.


Ben Terrett


Aaron Straup Cope,
artist and developer, on drones, data and human geography.


Russell Davies, reckoner of this parish, on the New Aesthetic and writing.

HARD WORK CLUB

Online space and Collective curated by Carla Adams. 

HARD WORK CLUB on Facebook. 

Submission forms here

Here is a link to my media art tumblr from last semester; http://mediarticus.tumblr.com/, and a picture of my installation at the end of semester exhibition.
Last semester's work was quite sculptural and focused on obsolescence (see blog for more detailed thematic exploration). This semester I plan to develop of the aspects of nature vs technology that I have touched on previously.
I have designed a small scale city in collaboration with my friend Tessa Darcey, a set and costume designer, which she is currently building for me. I have worked with microscopy in previous years of media art studies (see video below), and plan to use my microscope camera to film bugs and spiders walking through the tiny city looking gigantic and alien. It's an idea that has been stuck in my head for a while, so I am going to experiment with it and see what happens.
I will be posting new works on the same blog. Stay tuned :)

What Relational Aesthetics can learn from 4Chan.

A great article that talks about online communities and how they relate to relational aesthetics.

What Relational Aesthetics can learn from 4Chan.

In print I explored the notion of traces people leave behind in familial treasures, clothes,and mementos.  This arose from moving home and stripping away physical layers of paint, carpet and wallpaper to reveal the underlying trace of previous owners at the same time as sorting, packing and preserving our treasures.  Emotionally it was linked with family bereavement which led to a reflection on history and storytelling. This semester I want to continue a similar exploration- layering of images, reveal of partial images, unresolved or ambiguous images, collage or moving, merging images, coupled with oral history and storytelling – sounds vague but I see it as an extension of my photography (which is where my print starts) and an opportunity to embrace some new technology.  I’m feeling overwhelmed but this is usual. I’m feeling excited as this is my only ‘art-producing’ unit this semester. Art/Artists who inspired my prints are Cornelia Parker and Clare Humphries especially Unfolding and I Believe in the AfterLIfe

Proposal - Sarah Ireland

The idea of creating a new secondary identity for oneself in the online virtual world has been intriguing me lately. The way people adopt a secondary face and how their personality changes online when interacting with other people, be it friends or strangers. I'm particularly interested in the social interactions and notions of identity within the realm of online games, and how the anonymity of the internet affects the people who play them. I would like to use a mix of digital and possibly video art to express this notion of warped and "free" identity that revolves around online gaming, exploring how different profiles of certain people are perceived differently and how the culture works compared with the 'reality' or the non digital life around us.

I will be using this blog http://internetidentities.tumblr.com/ to record my observations and develop my work within this unit.

My m­­ajor is in jewellery and I’m interested in a way of allowing consumers to experience the pieces beyond their physical wearability, using a digital format to take the pieces and their wearers to an alternate reality. 

Video 1.

http://vimeo.com/61520899

Delfina Delettrez : Digital animation of pieces for her last collection. The digital format changes the surface and look of the metal and the pieces themselves. They become objects and sculptures in a landscape as well as wearable pieces.

Video 2.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw0jsjYivZQ&feature=player_embedded

YOUTUBE  :  Dior’s Belledone Island Collection in Second Life.  Signature pieces of the collection were 3D modeled and the collection was launched in the Second Life. Here the pieces become large-scale objects to be explored and inhabited. 

- Casey

http://selfpreservationjewellery.tumblr.com/

The stop motion video above was made last year in Art and Creativity, my first attempt with media art.
In this unit I would like to explore the prospect of making more short videos that can be used as pieces of art to fill these blank and boring screens that fill our living spaces. A TV screen or computer monitor, all display screens really when they are not in use, are sad and quite obtrusive black holes that I would like to see displaying pieces of video art works.
In my other art practises, Print making and Painting I use layers of abstract colour images to create a hopefully interesting visual image, I'd like to do the same with video in this unit.

Unit Proposal - Kristen Jia

Untitled, Kristen Jia, video, 2013

I took Art Visual Research 291 last semester and I made a video.The video is a reflection upon the seemingly unattached but seamlessly interwoven relationship between individuals under the backdrop of urban landscape.For this unit proposal, my initial idea is to continue the discussion over the characteristics of urban life and the collective portraiture of devoted participants in the presentation of video.

http://kuanjia.tumblr.com/
This tumblr functions as a work journal contains the research I did in the process of making the video.

Unit Proposal - Carla Adams

This body of work started as a call out that I posted on the internet to find an online relationship. My aim was to use a relationship with a stranger to examine the tension between the notions of private and public, especially in the context of online communication. 

 

 As the project developed, my interest shifted away from the relationship and I am currently more interested in how the intrinsic nature of the Internet means that it can be described using many contradictions. It is anonymous but personal, individual but collective, everywhere but nowhere, contained yet uncontrollable. Clean yet dirty.

My current studio project examines the ways in which Internet users communicate with one another and how the context of this communication changes when removed from the digital platform. I will be collecting user-generated text from various online sources and exploring how I can change the reading by placing it into a different context. User generated text may refer to comments, status updates, blog posts, memes, fan fiction, forums posts or personals ads that internet users write and post online. 

For this Media Art unit, I aim to create a body of work that compliments my studio work but explores the general notion of user-generated text in a slightly different way.

Carla Adams

www.carlaadams.net 

 

Some Emails, Carla Adams

Carla Adams, Some Emails, 2013. Digital Video (Text read aloud and translated by YouTube Auto captions) Watch on YouTube