"TV Show"

Created by Antoine Catala, "TV Show" is an exhibit about the death of television. Brian Droitcour explains in his review of the show that the "demise" of television has come quicker than expected, especially with the conversion to digital broadcasting eliminating some of the population from the television stream, especially the elderly. Using TV Blobs, which are three dimensional objects that distort live feed, Catala turns television into art. In these blobs are news anchors, shows, even sound which is demonstrated through his Spongebob Squarepants blob that sings. Using both the physical television set as well as the "broadcast stream as readymade sculptural material," Catala puts these on display as historical "artifacts of the industrial age." This show "underscores television's identity as an industrial product" through comic like stills of television broadcasting.

Quite surprised that television is considered outdated, especially with the surge of HDTV's on the market, Antonie Catala makes an interesting statement through his work "TV Show". On the artist's website, there are video's of his TV Blobs which make more sense than just seeing a still picture of them. The blobs make the image both scrambled and decipherable. He doesn't discriminate from any image, including advertisements, news broadcasts, cartoons, etc. Instead of the typical two dimension images from the television set itself, Catala uses these three dimensional images to project the images onto the exhibition walls. It was an interesting take on t.v., especially since a three dimensional image makes more of a presence. Incorporating both television images and the physical body of the television is clever. People are familiar with television as more than an image, and Catala takes that into account in his work. Over all "TV Show" is quite an interesting subject, but in the world today, you are in one moment and out the next.

Charles Cohen Interview for Project 1

In an interview with Charles Cohen, the famous artist known for his "cut out" series Buff, the audience learned just what was behind this and other works of his art. According to Cohen, there are three elements when it comes to "cut outs." First, the viewer has an immediate recognition of the void. Second, there is an "abstract effect" and third there is a "reflective effect." The viewer's reaction is an expectation of the piece. The viewer then starts to question the type of imagery and the "effect of the imagery in general" which is the "abstract effect." The "reflective effect" is when the viewer understands the work through dissecting the experiences and possibly "assumes co-authorship with the artist" Cohen also talks about how Buff is an intellectual exercise to dialog with the viewer about expectation and imagery in general. Analogtime, which is related to Buff, is about issues of attachment and lack there of. It is an emotional narrative where Buff is more lust than emotion. Cohen also expresses how the white spaces in his cut outs "allows the viewer to project thought into both cases [both pieces of art]."

Not only is Cohen's art good but it makes the viewer become involved. For most art, people just look at it and walk away. Cohen makes the viewer really get attached and makes the viewer really try to understand what is going on and what the message is. What is nice about his work is that even though Cohen might have had a particular meaning in mind when creating it, the viewer may have another interpretation which is just as correct as Cohen's. This makes the viewer part of the art experience and the art itself. Taking images we already recognize, like porn or even pictures of couples and cutting out key pieces of them, gives the audience a whole new way of thinking about things they already know about. It is all about perception of what people see and what they don't and Cohen does a great job incorporating the audience into making that decision for themselves.

Damien Hirst

The article I read about in the Art section of The Independent was about a famous artist, Damien Hirst and hie fued with a another artist. It all started when the younger artist, named Cartrain, borrowed a very specific idea from Hirst and proceeded to have the pieces of art sold on a art collection website. Hirst contacted the website and the art works were taken off the market. In return, Cartrain went to Tate Britain where Hirst's Pharmacy was on exhibit and ran off with a pack of pencils. According to the article, the pencils taken from the sculpture are worth millions of pounds. Hirst has taken legal action and Cartrain was arrested and awaits trail. If he is convicted, this will be one of the "highest value modern art thefts in Britain."

This article was quite amusing. I am sure that Damien Hirst is not amused but obviously people will go to great lengths to save their ideas. I understand that what Cartrain did was stealing, in both Hirst's ideas and his physical artwork but I am sure this whole situation could have been avoided if they had only talked to each other. Like the article said, now a days there aren't that many art thefts in the world but they are always fascinating. If Hirst thought of it this way, the theft got his sculpture more publicity than it ever could have.

Project 1

This series is about branding. I took away all of the brand names of the products, the first being the Proactiv label on the bottles along with what the cream in each is. The second picture is missing the Starbucks logo on the chalk board. Finally I erased the "Aeropostale" label from the sweatshirt. Each erasure just makes the product an ordinary product or advertisement, in the case of Starbucks. Labels these days are good for only one thing- making things twice as expensive. Once you look past the branding, every similar type product is the same, whether the label is recognizable or not.

The second series was my erase/replace series. I took pictures of trees I found around campus and replaced the bark of each tree with a commonly used paper product. The first tree is a post-it note with ruled lines; the second is the comics from the Washington Post newspaper; the third is a paper towel. Each of these paper products are used everyday by millions of people and yet they can be taken for granted. By replacing the tree with products that come from a tree, I am expressing that people often forget where things come from and take them for granted. By visualizing where the paper products come from maybe we can start recycling more so trees don't disappear forever.

Louise Lawler Art Review

In this article, Jerry Saltz reviews the work of Louise Lawler, an artist who for "three decades" has been "documenting the secret life of art," or the kind of wacky places people keep art. Finding famous art in collector's homes, galleries, auction houses and even in storage, one can not imagine where or how a famous Warhol or even Mondrain will be displayed. When describing the places where famous works of art live, the reporter describes the experience as "seeing how meat is processed." Described as "breezy and mean," Lawler is known for exposing the art world for what it really is. In one particular show, Lawler photographs some works of art by Richter, Lichtenstein and even Flavin to name a few, while the work's await their fate. Overexposing some of the images translates to how some of these works are already overexposed. Showing ultimately where all of this famous art goes gives the world a sense of what makes up the art industry.

I enjoyed this article because I never really thought about where the art goes besides the museum. I personally thought that if you had the money to buy a Warhol or Lichtenstein, that you would place it accordingly, not just anywhere as some of the photographs documented by Lawler show. I think her idea is quite interesting and something I would definitely go see in an exhibit. The idea that even after the art has been made it has another life afterward is very interesting to consider. People usually don't learn where the art is, they usually learn how the art came to be and when. Lawler's concept of showing the art after the fact is an eye opening experience that can often show the darker side of the art industry.

Computer Games as Art

The article I read discussed how computer games are an art form on the web and how new media theorists are giving this art form a whole lot of consideration. Published on furtherfield.com and discussed by Edward Picot, the article covers different types of computer games and how each interacts with not only with the player, but with the art within each game as well. What most often happens, is that the gamer, or player, gets too involved in the aspects of the game, such as points, levels, or winning, that they ultimately shut out the other aspects, such as the art and meaning of the game. In one example, "The Marriage" by Ron Humble, is considered a computer-art game because the two squares, one pink and one blue that represent a male and a female and they have to keep coming together to survive the game. But as the player gets fixated on reaching the goal of the game, the meaning is lost completely. Some argue that games like "The Graveyard" aren't games at all but it is a great example of art. The goal is to help an old lady to church while crossing the graveyard. No points are rewarded, no levels are completed, just a simple task. While "walking" the old lady across the graveyard, the player is able to appreciate and actually look into the art of the game. With computer games evolving, the juncture between games and art is surely going to continue to cross, but until an agreement on what an example of a computer game as a piece of art is, this discussion will continue.

This article was really interesting because I never really thought of computer games as an art form. Growing up playing Oregon Trail and more recently The Sims, I only went to them for entertainment, but not in the same sense that art is entertainment. I always saw art as being in a museum and you couldn't interact with it, but with computer games, they are purely interactive and were created to be played. I agree that the art of a computer game can be lost once the player gets so involved that their only goal is to win, yet the art of the game is still there. Just because the player ignores it, doesn't mean that the art went away. The whole argument this article discusses about whether or not some games are actually computer games makes no sense to me. Computer games are anything that the creator can make it, and most importantly, what the player can get out of it. Even if the game doesn't have a traditional point system or types of levels, doesn't mean that it isn't an interactive form that gets players involved in it. Usually, these type of abnormal computer games are considered more like art because they stray from the normal. This is true, but if you look at any art in a computer game, art is incorporated into the game even if it doesn't have a deeper meaning. Art doesn't have to be complicated, and when it comes to computer games as art, this is one form of art that can be the most simplistic form out there.