Video Art

Beall Center

So the Beall Center was pretty easy to find. We just followed the directions and sure enough we ran into the red building. When I walked in my first reaction was "why is it so dark?" Yeah I'm scared of the dark! Then the tall bubble human came to life! and i thought "yeah that was cool, but I want to see something else." So I walked all the way inside and realized how tiny the gallery was. And there was no one there. okay then i saw the birds moving and i thought it was so beautiful! I have mentioned it before I really like birds. When I was looking at the performance I could just imagine real birds following each other. The Inner Space performance was cool too. I really did enjoy that sounds that it made along with the movements. I wish I could have taken video!

Artist 10 - Bruce Nauman

 

Bruce Nauman is a contemporary artist from Indiana. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, and video. His art is characterized by his play on words.  Many of his pieces are neon and bright.

In the picture above it says: The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths. Well he hasn't helped me by revealing any mystic truths personally, but i still consider him a "true artist." I think his works are very beautiful and bright. I will do some further researching on Nauman because i think his works are interesting. I'm really interested to find out how he got into playing with words!

Artist 9 - Vaneeesa Blaylock

Vaneeesa is a performance artist in SL. She is famous for her piece "Veinticinco Mujeres" which is translated to "Twenty Five Women." In this piece she has 25 avatars in a gazebo type place and they are all naked and wearing the same shoes. This is supposed to represent individuality and identity. This performance was approximately two hours long!

 I liked the idea of this performance like the whole individuality thing. I was surprised to see that a lot of the avatars looked sort of similar. Most of them were pretty thin with big boobs. So I think that maybe in RL people are struggling to be so different from one another that they end up the same in SL. I don't know if that makes sense.

Artist 8 - Jennifer Ringley

The website JenniCam all started when 19 year old Jennifer Ringley decided to install a web cam in her dorm room. Images would be posted onto the website and the website would automatically refresh after three minutes. So you could see everything she was doing all the time. This was basically a video diary or a documentary of her life; which was boring for the most part, except for the times when she would engage in sexual activity.

I think that back when JenniCam first started in 1996 people were shocked that they would expose their lives in such a way. After all, the internet was pretty new back then.. not as advanced as it is today. So i think Jennifer Ringley was kind of a dare devil! I found it fascinating to learn that on average she would have 2-3 million viewers a day. Its crazy to think how many hours people spent watching Jennifer right from their own computer just waiting for something interesting to happen!

Artist 7 - Stelarc

Stelarc is a performance artist. His performances often involve robotics or other relatively modern technology integrated with his body somehow. He allowed his body to be controlled remotely by electronic muscle stimulators connected to the internet. He has also performed with a robotic third arm, and a spider-like six-legged walking machine. He has gained a lot of attention from his suspension performances as well.

I thought Stelarc's work was interesting and some of his works look pretty painful. I like how he is able to view the body as as something that can be shaped and molded, just like clay. I've always thought your body is your body and you can't really do much to change that. I don't mean like loosing weight or plastic surgery either, because even the "best looking" people are going to find something wrong about them. But Stelarc sees the body like an object that could be redesigned.

Artist 6 - Scott Blake

 Scott Blake has taken advantage of the boring barcode image that we know and love and created art based upon the patterned code. Blake has truly turned the barcode into an art form, using it to create portraits of iconic pop culture figures like OJ Simpson, Charles Manson, Oprah and Jesus. He also creates barcode stencils that he calls ‘word paintings’, and barcode graffiti, like an image that simply says “Scott Blake was here."

 

His form of art is very inventive and interesting. My favorite part from the video above is the part when they scan the different barcodes that make up Elvis Presley's face. Its amazing how Blake was able to do that. I think that its very simple but unique idea that he had.

Artist 5 - Tony Oursler

Tony Oursler is a multimedia and installation artist. Tony Oursler has created some amazing video installations for his exhibit at the Lisson Gallery in London and all around the world. Throughout the 1990’s it was popular to work with video projected over forms. This exhibit focuses on the obsessive need and irrational desires of the human condition.

“Liquid” is a video of a woman attempting to take in an impossible amount of fluid. The video is played in reverse objectifying the action into the form of a fountain. Watching the video "liquid" made me think about gluttony and how people just take and take from anything and everything with out really caring about other people or even themselves. 

Artist 4- Bill Viola

Viola uses video as a form of contemporary art to explore the phenomena of sense perception as an avenue to self-knowledge. His works focus on universal human experiences—birth, death, the unfolding of consciousness. Most of his videos are silent and play in slow motion. i think this so that we can see and appreciate natural phenomena such as a drop of water falling.

The Crossing (1996)

 When i first saw Bill Viola's work I just kept thinking... I want the big exciting thing to happen already. But as i kept watching more videos i started to pay closer attention and i really got to feel  the big exciting thing when it happened.  I like Viola's work because i feel like it captures true emotion and i think the slow motion effect builds a lot of suspense. The Crossing was my favorite video because i liked the scene when the water starts to fall on the man's head. It stirred the most emotion in me. I don't know how to explain how i felt except that it made me feel new. like my mind went blank and the water was the only thing i was thinking about.

artist 3 - Gracie Kendal

Gracie Kendal/ Kris is an artist on second life. She did the famous "1000 Avatars Project" which was pretty amazing. She explains how the project was supposed to be about diversity, individuality, anonymity, and equality. But to her it was more than that. She said that with this project she learned more about herself.

I think the "1000 Avatars Project" is really neat, but i find the person behind the flawless Gracie remarkable. I think there is so much to say about her. I know that a lot of people believe she's being "fake" and hiding behind a computer but i think she's using Gracie as a type of therapy. She has a lot of weight issues and she thinks she's ugly. In her blog she says that she is trying to look more like Gracie which means that she is using Gracie as her motivation to loose weight. I think that with Gracie's help Kris will eventually become the person she wants to be not only on SL but in RL too.

artist 2- Four Yip

Four Yip is an artist on second life. She's been on second life since 1997 and she has become very famous for her art on second life. She looks for different avatars and takes screenshots of them then she puts them in a program like photoshop and alters them to make them into"imaginative portraits."

 This is a portrait of Kean Kelly. What Yip did is transform this flawless avatar and turn her into someone that "suggests a story and a character behind the avatar."
I think what Yip does is really interesting because in reality you can kinda tell a lot by how people dress or the accessories they wear. Whether you wear a really short skirt or a really long skirt, it says something about you. Yip takes those cues to capture the soul behind the avatar.

Artist 1 - Eadweard Muybridge

Eadweard Muybridge was an English photographer who lived most of his life in the United States. In 1866, he started to  become successful in photography, focusing principally on landscape and architectural subjects. But perhaps what he is known for the most is his zoopractiscope. This was a device meant to project motion pictures.

 It all started when he was hired to settle the question: whether all four of a horse's hooves are off the ground at the same time during a gallop. Muybridge used a series of large cameras that used glass plates placed in a line, each one being triggered by a thread as the horse passed. The images were copied in the form of silhouettes onto a disc and viewed in a machine called a zoopractiscope. The series of photos is one of the earliest forms of videography and is practically the start of cinematography.