Sarah Katt's Weblog for Art & Electronic Media

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sarahkatt — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:52:51 +0000

Rhizome Gallery ala Skatt – Digiart

http://rhizome.org/art/?tag=johnsimonseveryicon

Bobby Emmons?

Results vary by country :

woman

21 years old

5′ 4″ tall

undisclosed weight

from the following :

poland – $1.92

panama – $1.44

china – $.64

france – $4.63

australia – $4.40

http://rhizome.org/object.php?47754

http://rhizome.org/object.php?47702

http://rhizome.org/object.php?47780

[[ life takes... art ]]

sarahkatt — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 04:54:27 +0000

Everyone has seen all the ridiculous Visa commercials with their latest ad campaign of “Life Takes Visa” but what most people don’t know is that Visa also hit the streets with actual artists to reach a broader audience outside of tube viewers. So in searching for art in advertisement, or was it advertisement in art (it’s so hard to tell these days which way it goes since lately they’ve been going hand in hand) I stumbled upon this mural in Greenwich Village by Trish Grantham endorsing… or sponsored by Visa claiming, “Life Takes Expression.”

Clearly, it’s a piece of art, as Trish Grantham is a ‘whimsical contemporary artist’ from Portland Oregon who was commissioned by Visa to paint a mural in New York. Aside from that however, what more can be said of it? There is the “Life Takes Visa” message clearly and boldly displayed but does the mural have anything at all to do with Visa? and why exactly are they (Visa) targeting an audience in the Village? What kind of consumer base even exists there? To the marketing folks over at Visa, stick to the choreographed videos set to synthesized music because it looks like they must have not known where Greenwich Village was, or who resides there, because they definitely goofed on a proforma somewhere.

Below: one of the ‘Live Takes Visa’ Choreographed ads.

jim o’rourke – eightminutesandelevenseconds

sarahkatt — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 01:18:20 +0000

Jim O’Rourke – And I’m Singing

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bells, and alarms, the trains,

stuck in time, slow motion,

going backwards, repetition,

soft glows, growing sensations,

faster, speeding up, slowing

down, suddenly changing

being followed or chased,

having everything close in

around you, nowhere to go

looking turning, nothing there,

finding a way out, It changes

up again, faster beat, more

sounds not being alone any

more, feels like the hustle

and bustle of being in

downtown New York.

Everything working together

just constantly moving,

never stopping, never

taking a breath, steady,

reassuring,constant,

slowly coming apart,

things/different sounds

become easily distinguishable.

taking it apart, breaking

it down. changing, adding

something new – something

foreign – and completely

different from before –

painfully drumming.

Sudden stop and switch

to an echo like barrage

of sounds, constantly

playing back and forth

off each other – its like

being on the subway

going somewhere familiar

- change again calmer

soothing – stepping

off and emerging from

it to a place where you

belong – everything is

familiar…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I took my brochure from class and copied exactly what I had written when we were listening to Jim O’Rourke’s “and I’m singing” in class here. When I was done I realized that i had written my own narrative of terrible lyrics. I don’t know what O’Rourke had in mind when he composed/created this compilation of sounds but I do know that what I took away from it is something completely unique to me. Being a fan of instrumental music, I guess I am used to coming up with my own stories for music that I hear… while listening and jotting things down I could see the exact pictures in my head of where I would be and what I would be doing, it was my own soundtrack for a journey to NY. At one point, there is a period of additions – where O’Rourke starts with one simple sequence of sounds and keeps building on it, most definitely reminding me of somewhere like Penn Station, where there are so many people just is coming in from different places all going somewhere, always more and more people. I remember turning to Edyta after listening during class and saying that it hadn’t even felt like eight minutes had gone by. I couldn’t have imagined that I would have been able to get lost in the music like that — but there was something about it that I was able to connect with.

Is it art? It is if I say it is.

sarahkatt — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 02:07:16 +0000

Life is delayed, its, slow, fast, constant. We conceptually captured this on video using a friend of ours just through experimenting with the time difference on the camera of a Mac (we couldn’t use a PC because there wouldn’t have been a delayed reaction ) The point is, we had been trying it out on different people all night, too see the reactions of people seeing themselves watch themselves. By looking at the camera and then looking away really fast and then looking back again, when you see it on tape it freaks you out because you are in essence watching yourself… watching yourself.

is it art? or is it not. and bruce nauman.

sarahkatt — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 16:40:19 +0000

what conceptual art is : art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns.

“If I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art. At this point art became more of an activity and less of a product.”

The debate continues. Toe to toe artists and critics step up to that fine line that defines what is art and what isn’t. Is there even a line there anymore? Who can say really what art is, there are so many different forms of it, it truly is in the eye of the beholder and what each individual personally considers art.

Today, conceptual art seems to be the rage, as more artists, musicians and film makers are popping up under this category more and more than ever before. Anyone who picks up a video camera or a paint brush with a mission and a message becomes a conceptual artist, and with the venues available today to reach a mass audience, everyone’s a conceptual artist.

Bruce Nauman is once such artist.

Having embraced the contemporary atmosphere of art, his exhibits and videos culminate into a brilliant (or depending on your perspective just a waste of space) display of …. art. The following is one such example of his conceptual video… or is it just a man walking in a square wasting 10 minutes of his life? you be the judge.

Another example of his art that doesn’t involve video is below. I just find it particulary interesting how someone can come up with stuff like this and how other people can consider it … art. Where exactly is the beauty and uniqueness? This truly is conceptual in nature.

“One Hundred Live and Die”
1984

“I’m surprised when the work appears beautiful, and very pleased. And I think work can be very good and very successful without being able to call it beautiful, although I’m not clear about that. The work is good when it has a certain completeness, and when it’s got a certain completeness, then it’s beautiful.”
— Bruce Nauman

nothing else matters.

sarahkatt — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 22:58:32 +0000

I’m not a huge fan of music videos, I never was. I am a fan however, of Apocalyptica and their adaptations of some heavy metal music into much more classical sounding tunes. For instance, in this video, the group of four cellos plays Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters”. It is interesting to hear a completely instrumental version of a song you have heard that has lyrics from heavy metal be completely instrumental. With the scenes that are used in the music video, you have to use your imagination in trying to connect what the band has interpreted the song to be, with the additions through different parts it had divided the music into among the four cellos, and if you know the lyrics, to try and follow the story.

The lyrics from Metallica are as follows:

So close, no matter how far
Couldn’t be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
and nothing else matters

Never opened myself this way
Life is ours, we live it our way
All these words I don’t just say
and nothing else matters

Trust I seek and I find in you
Every day for us something new
Open mind for a different view
and nothing else matters

never cared for what they do
never cared for what they know
but I know

So close, no matter how far
Couldn’t be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
and nothing else matters

never cared for what they do
never cared for what they know
but I know

Never opened myself this way
Life is ours, we live it our way
All these words I don’t just say

Trust I seek and I find in you
Every day for us, something new
Open mind for a different view
and nothing else matters

never cared for what they say
never cared for games they play
never cared for what they do
never cared for what they know
and I know

So close, no matter how far
Couldn’t be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
No, nothing else matters

Just reading the lyrics before or while you’re watching the video changes your perspective and really challenges you to try and see what the group had felt about Metallica’s original.

101001 danger; the future awaits. 101001

sarahkatt — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 21:14:56 +0000

and

Through Burning Chrome, written by William Gibson and The Futurist Manifesto by F.T. Marinetti, it seems most think the future will be dangerous, or involve danger in some way shape or form. For Automatic Jack and Bobby Quine the cowboy, their lives revolve around danger and the illegality of hacking and manipulating programs that would end in certain death if they were caught. Their objective? To pull the biggest business off of Cyberspace, “Chrome” they call her, and retire having succeeded with this one last job. Their inspiration? A girl called Rikki, whose questionable dealings with the two hackers can only be accounted for as someone trying to get ahead in the world doing whatever it is that needs to be done to get there. Is this what the future holds? Having no sense of pride or dignity in doing “whatever it takes” in order to get ahead? Her devil may care attitude certainly rewards her, we think, in the end as she heads off leaving Bobby and Jack with their stolen goods. To F.T. Marinetti, the future will only be what you want it to be. And he wants it to be something of a dangerous nature.

MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM

1. We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness

Speed and irresponsibility go hand and hand here with danger, as the similarity of opinions is evident to Gibson’s “whatever it takes/stop at nothing to get where you want to be” kind of attitude. Marinetti points out, what is the point in looking back? I recall seeing something once that said “The past is over and done with, you can’t change it, so what’s the point in looking back?” I have to disagree here with not only that statement but also Marinetti’s sentiments. Many great and wonderful things have happened in the past, and if we don’t look to it to learn and use it for the future, what kind of future will we have? One that is dangerous such as those laid out by Gibson and Marinetti? Or one that is better and more knowledgeable having learned from the past? Marinetti expects challenges, in fact, welcomes them and ushers them in from the future. Trying to embrace the many new and wonderful things he hopes will happen which don’t involve the rudimentary life style we currently adhere to by visiting those crummy museums and universities!

Douglas Davis // Walter Benjamin

sarahkatt — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 21:33:52 +0000

Is art lost? In the simplest form, an artist’s masterpiece can be replicated, duplicated, or reproduced by means of technological, digital or mechanical reproduction. Can one really tell the difference between the Mona Lisa that hangs in the Musee du Louvre in Paris, France and the one in every art history text book owned by Robert Emmons? There is no difference between the color, and the portrait of a lady, or the landscape. The difference comes, claims Benjamin in the “aura” surrounding the one that hangs in Paris France, and the atmosphere around the one in your classroom. Since everyone can see the copies, there is no sense of admiration or wonderment in looking at the original canvass that Leonardo Da Vinci labored over. This fact Walter Benjamin accepts to be true, in his essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936)” where he acknowledges a loss of authenticity and magic in the copies from a look at the original. That sensational feeling is gone and here is where the debate over the aura of an artist’s masterpiece begins.

Douglas Davis writes in his evolving thesis “The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction” (1991-1995) of the ability to see art without the former hassle of having to see the original, that people are now able to see a copy of the original and not miss any affect or ‘aura’ that Benjamin writes about. Douglas strives to make the point that the aura Benjamin wrote of is not lost in the digital enhancement or reproduction of an original, in fact, that it’s not an important element at all. He claims that it is each persons own interpretation or feeling when seeing either an original or replication that is the true ‘aura’ of a piece and there is nothing lost from seeing a copy than being fortunate enough to see an original. It depends I think on your own personal point of view, if you really think that seeing a copy of the Mona Lisa is sufficient to satisfy your desire of looking at one of, if not the most, famous portrait painting in oil then there is no reason to travel all the way to Paris to see the original.

Here, there, and everywhere… buy a PC.

sarahkatt — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 04:05:31 +0000

I left class last week with the odd feeling that I’d be scrambling to put something together for this weeks blog assignment. Here I sit, at 2:30 the morning it is due trying to imagine having seen art anywhere around me. Reflecting on my coming and going I realized I don’t stop enough to look around and even consider if what is around me is art, or could be art. Fortunately for me, I just bought an awesome new PC and recalled a little debate we had started in class regarding the inferiority of Macs to PCs. On top of which ironically enough the TV in the background was playing the latest Justin Long vs. John Hodgman commercial, immediately I was hooked.

I “ctrl + t” for a new tab and googled “mac vs. pc” and was lost for the next couple of hours in the world of Apple’s campaign and their attempt at brainwashing people around the world into the click of what has become Mac users. I say around the world because as showcased by this easily accessible “YouTube” video, Apple took it’s campaign across the Atlantic to the UK and Japan.

I reasoned, if a marketing team could put together an assortment of commercials to grab the attention of viewers, couldn’t one consider this a form of art? While it may not have been as painstakingly time consuming as a traditional artist, who spent hours staring at a blank canvass before unveiling their masterpiece at a gallery, the feeling of accomplishment must be somewhat similar.

I further recollected having seen such ad’s not only on the tube, but popping up on the internet, such as seen below, ingeniously utilizing multiple ad spaces on a website (in this case, the NY Times) for their MacAttack.

International Mac vs. PC

sarahkatt — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 00:41:09 +0000

My favorite of the UK commercials.

“the naughty step is always serious”

RIP; I. Mac & I. PC, after much deliberation amongst the marketing “geniuses” at Apple, International Mac & PC are no more. Feedback confirmed that UK Mac came off as too snobby and thus was counterproductive in endorsing PC’s over Macs. As for Japan, well, they just like PC’s too much.