Leigh Champagne Summer 2011

Although stressful, I thought today’s lego building class was interesting and completely relatable to the K-12 classroom.  It was fun to get cams and cranks working with legos after yesterday’s challenge of building them out of found materials.  My mind tends not to think naturally in this manner, so trying to fit pieces together until they moved proved to be a challenge for me.  However, I think the programming piece of it and being able to attach a motor to the lego creations is awesome and students would love it! I’ve really enjoyed being forced to think outside the box over the past few days and I know that being exposed to this new media will only benefit my teaching and my art making.

I had a blast experimenting with the ins and outs of using cams to get objects to move in particular directions today.  It felt so good to spend an entire class period doing hands on work and attempting to make my paintbrush move up and down.  I ended up using cardboard, masking tape, bottle caps and hot glue and eventually got two cams working to move the front tip and back of the paintbrush.  Although sometimes frustrating, for the most part I found it fascinating to have the opportunity to open my mind to this type of thinking and to begin to understand how and what it is that allows objects to move.

I found todays conversation on automata and the abilities of cams and cranks to be quite interesting and enlightening.  I loved the work that used the music boxes and strings to make certain parts of the illustrations move.  I think that it would be exciting for me to learn how to incorporate these elements and this kind of movement into my abstract paintings to allow for different shapes to move around in different directions and at different times.  I thought for tomorrow’s class it would be interesting to attach a horizontal laying paintbrush to a cam and have it dip down and then up tip first so that each time it goes up and pulls down it makes a mark on a little canvas that will sit at the tip of the brush.  The mini canvas could even have a cap full of paint under it so that as the brush pulls down it makes a line on the canvas then re dips into the paint and repeats the process.

This paper discusses the conceptual reasoning behind found and appropriated art.  The work of artists Marcel Duchamp, Daniel Canogar and Cory Arcangel, exemplifies statements made regarding the intellectual art world, society and culture through the use of found and appropriated art. The relationship between found- objects and appropriated new media materials and the transition from how the materials were used in the past to how they are currently used today is discussed.  The first statements made through the use of found art, the transition into the artist response to contemporary societal issues and eventually the combining of both artistic and societal statements through the appropriation of new media materials is analyzed.

Diagram:  Ideas:

How do diagrams work as objects?  How can diagrams be objects to think with?

When deciphering this reading on diagrams, it seemed easiest to refer back to the two questions posed in the first two sentences of the reading.  How do diagrams work as objects?  How can diagrams be objects to think with?  It seems to me that diagrams work as objects because they provide a way to organize and create space.  Objects need to sit in space so therefore the diagram either represents the object itself or the arrangement of the space that the object sits within.  On 2D surfaces such as paintings, diagrams create and organize space.  On page 29 it reads, “Our understanding of diagram expands Barthes’s ability to read across a variety of plates.  We do not focus on individual images or localized groupings, but emphasize improvised visual comparisons among them.  Such correlations, which leap across categories and break out of the discrete parcels of plates in related groupings, test the limits of Barthes’s treatment.” To me this seems to go along with the idea that diagrams keep the eye moving because of the in- between space that is created in between the placement of objects. This in-between space keeps our eyes moving throughout the page, creating movement between each object and satisfying our need to compare multiple groupings rather than narrowing in on one alone.

I found this reading dense and difficult to fully comprehend but each time I go back to it I come out with the same overarching themes and understandings that diagrams allow for space to be organized so that objects can be placed within space allowing for in-between space to be created. This organization keeps our eyes moving throughout the 2D surface rather than stopping and staring at one point.  I think that a diagram can be seen as an object in the sense that it is a tool to help us organize space as well as in the sense that sometimes a diagram represents an actual object.  Diagrams are objects to think with in that they help us to visualize, organize and understand 3D space on a 2D surface.  Both visual catalogs and tableaux organize space, keep our eyes moving and order objects according to an order that we as humans are used to experiencing and understand.

Who: Marek Tomasic (Born in 1976, Press Illustrator since 1998)

What: Built a cabin (walk in sculpture) out of 300 old discarded computer parts and electronics, titled “ You Sometimes Have to be Open” (Will eventually be part of a larger project).  He is a graphic artist, illustrator and sculptor.

When: Over a three year span (the life span of modern day computers) dedicated solely to its completion, ending May 28, 2011

Where: A historic castle in Swiecie Poland in a 16x13x15’ high room.

Why: Tomasic was outraged by the amount of discarded electronics that we throw out each year, he needed a solution for what to do with them.

How: Constructed by hand out of old metal, wood, discarded computer parts and electronics.

‘He treats those abandoned and waste objects as some kind of our reality notes. A kind of jotting which are written unconsciously by human beings in passing of their true life.”

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20071358-1/amazing-room-made-of-old-pc-parts/ (accessed 8/9/2011).

http://www.instalacja.oksir.eu/ (accessed 8/9/2011).

http://www.geekosystem.com/discarded-computer-room-art/ (accessed 8/9/2011)

http://www.recyclart.org/2011/06/incredible-dead-computers-room-installation/ (accessed 8/9/2011)

I find both Canogar and Tomasic’s work to be fascinating and significant to contemporary art making in that through their choice of materials they documented and made statements about the time period we are living in and the impact that electronics and technological advancements have had on society, nature, human beings and in return on art.

Artist as Bricoleur

Bricolage is a term used in several disciplines, among them the visual arts and literature, to refer to the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things that happen to be available, or a work created by such a process. The term is borrowed from the French word bricolage, from the verb bricoler, the core meaning in French being, “fiddle, tinker” and, by extension, “to make creative and resourceful use of whatever materials are at hand (regardless of their original purpose)”.

Environmental Artist

Who: John Dahlsen

What: Environmental Art and Contemporary Painting

When: Has been working and exhibiting for the past 20 years.

Where: Australia

Why: John Dahlsen makes sculptures and paintings out of the washed up debris he finds on the beach in Australia.  His works speak to the excessive waste and pollution that is currently threatening our oceans and planet.

How: Constructed by hand out of objects, trash and recyclables found on Australian beaches. His choice of materials creates the content of his work.

http://www.johndahlsen.com/john_dahlsen.html (accessed 8/9/2011).

New Media: Discarded Electronics

Who: Daniel Canogar

What: Fuegos Fatuos (wildfire)- A show of five large-scale sculptural light installations constructed from discarded electronic materials such as colored cables, thousands of burnt out and discarded light bulbs, videotape and old slot machine screens.

When: February 7^th-March 15^th 2009

Where: Madrid, Spain

Why: Daniel Canogar creates sculptural installations with discarded electronic materials.  The installations explore the short life-expectancies of the electronic devices that we throw away and their relation to natural death.  Canogar says that his installations “appear to free the energy stored in the electronic waste, awakening in it memories of its past”.  “Through my work I try to bring dead materials back to life, reveal their secrets, revive the collective memory they bury to construct an accurate portrait of a society and an age”.

How: Constructed by hand out of computers, telephones, electric cables, burnt-out light bulbs, DVDs and old slot machine screens. His choice of materials creates the content of his work.

Exhibited at: the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Reina Sofia, Madrid; Kunstverein Ludwigsberg, Germany; Palacio de Velázquez, Madrid; Galería Max Estrella, Madrid; Galería Filomena Soares, Lisbon; Galerie Guy Bärtschi, Geneva; Caprice Horn Gallery, Berlin; Mimmo Scognamiglio Arte Contemporanea, Milan; Centro de Arte Santa Mónica, Barcelona; Museo Alejandro Otero, Caracas; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio; Offenes Kulturhaus Center for Contemporary Art, Upper Austria, Linz; the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein Westfallen Museum, Dusseldorf ; the Hamburger Banhof Musuem in Berlin, The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh and the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.

PUBLICATIONS

2002   Canogar, D, Ingrávidos, Fundación Telefónica, Madrid, Spain

2000   Spanish Pavillions, Sociedad Estatal Hanover 2000, EXPO 2000, Hannover, Germany

1997   Daniel Canogar, Biblioteca de Fotógrafos Madrileños del Siglo XX, Caja de Madrid, Madrid,Spain

http://www.art-agenda.com/shows/fuegos-fatuos-daniel-canogar-at-matadero-madrid/ (accessed 8/9/2011).

http://www.danielcanogar.com (accessed 8/9/2011).

http://www.bitforms.com/artist-news/359-daniel-canogar.html (accessed 8/9/2011).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4Yo7A5eTPk (accessed 8/9/2011).