Lauren Semivan

Lauren Semivan
Image from metrotimes.com

I have to admit, Lauren Semivan's work is pretty compelling.  I'm a high-contrast black and white junkie, so this sort of photography really appeals to my tastes.  In general, though, I feel somehow offended when people enter the frame.  Especially the blurry ones.  Blurry people really turn me off to photography.  But look at this.

"Still Life with Fox and Lemons" by Lauren Semivan
Image from bonnibenrubi.com

This here is a direct reference to the vanitas painting style of the Dutch Baroque period.  And I really love the Dutch Baroque.  I'm nutty for all those half-dead flowers.

"Still Life with Fruit and Insects" by Rachael Ruysch
Image from dpcdsb.com

They're called memento mori, reminders of the inevitability of death.  They can be anything from cracked-open shells to rotten fruit to a very un-subtle human skull.  The symbolism in those works is rich.  "Still Life with Fox and Lemons" is the only one of the works featured online that I really love for this reason, but that and the high contrast grayscale was enough for me to feel a special connection with Lauren.  It's like we're both Lawrentians or something.

"May" by Lauren Semivan
Image from bonnibenrubi.com

Works like "May" definitely have some non-human movement in them.  One of the signs of a brilliant composition is implied movement (blurry people don't count).  The twigs and branches in "May" did grow that way, moving slowing into position, but that movement is still there, as long as the photo can be seen.  As for the drapery, I don't know how she does it.  Trial and error?  A good eye?  Even the drapery moves in the still images, and I respect that.  Without the human form in Lauren's work, the set that she showed us is spot on, meeting my standards for a photographer's body of work.

A Video

An experimental video:  "Echoes through the Galaxy"

This is a video about existentialism. The Galaxy will continue spinning as we form our strange harmonies around it and through it.

Sandy Dyas

Above all, Sandy Dyas values connection to place throughout her photography.  The one statement that stuck with me the most after I had talked to her is that “you don’t understand a place until you leave and come back.”  I extrapolated this to apply to her use of color:  she first worked in color, taking photo commissions for weddings and babies and the like, and then she spent the majority of her time developing a black and white portfolio.  Then she came back to color, much more aware of it than before.  I suppose I did the same with painting, coming back to it after a long period of working with dry media, and the “aha” moments became more frequent upon revisiting the medium.  Thanks to Sandy, I will now more than likely continue to see this pattern in my life and work.

My favorite part of Sandy’s lecture is that she whole-heartedly gave credit to the photographers who inspired her work along the way.  This is something that artists don’t do enough.  So many people contributed to who Sandy is, and she gave credit to as many big, personal inspirations as she felt she could over the course of her lecture.  She even quoted the book she was currently reading.  If everyone is an artist, it makes perfect sense that Sandy would also reference the people who are affecting her now, whether or not they are photographers.  Again, this is something that artists don’t do enough.

Thank you for visiting, Sandy.

Commentary on Marshall McLuhan & Quentin Fiore's "The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects"

The following is a list of partially-organized thoughts on The Medium Is the Massage:  An Inventory of Effects, the 1967 book by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore.

- I have given The Medium Is the Massage the nickname of The Medium Manifesto because, like The Communist Manifesto, it makes only predictions, yet no prescriptions.  It is definitely no more a hand-guide to dealing with new technology than The Communist Manifesto is Communism for Dummies.  The reader is given a set of facts, observations or predictions, and he can only nod his head, given nothing to agree or disagree with.  For instance, it suggests that "our 'Age of Anxiety' is, in great part, the result of trying to do today's job with yesterday's tools--with yesterday's concepts."  But what are today's tools and today's concepts?

Pages 8 & 9

- Alternating between text and images in the book itself serves multiple purposes, such as A:  creating Ted Nelson's parallelism (as in his Xanadu GUI) in a physical form, B:  providing relief from text to appeal to the visual mind and, C:  in a way, both demonstrating and satirizing (making fun of) the twitchy, distracted, quickly bored readers about whom the authors make so many predictions.

No Page Number

- Because parents are no longer the main source of learning for children, it is time to expand responsibility to complex systems like the Internet and accept that it is made up of countless "experts."  "All the world's a sage."

Page 14

- A new form of politics is emerging, as I see it.  We vote now with our interaction with media and our participation with its spawn.  We vote by clicking what we want to see, selecting our future.

Page 22

- Is rediscovering the concept of the vanishing point a form of new technology?  Although I feel I understand the message of this section of the book, I don't follow the authors' metaphorical use of the Italian Renaissance.

Page 53

- Like Ted Nelson, the authors notice a preoccupation with how people want to perceive their space.  I predict that this will be a common, recurring theme as I continue to study the written work of artists.

Page 57

- I agree that "electric circuitry" is helping to bring back our "primitive" senses, but I disagree that it is "recreating" anything.  To me, new technology is new, and that is that.

Page 56

- The authors predict an electronic future void of private guilt.  Is this possible?  Perhaps privacy of all sorts is losing popularity, but no emotion can simply disappear with time, as I see it.

Page 61

- We finally live in a world of "simultaneous happening," one of no notable time or space.  I think I like it.

Page 63

- Yes, "we have now become aware of the possibility of arranging the entire human environment" (no matter if we understand the process), but I feel that, to say we are arranging it "as a work of art" is a big stretch.  I doubt that many people think in that way (but the authors, of course).

Page 68

- The following statement pretty well characterizes the book so far.  "Print technology created the public.  Electric technology created the mass."

Page 68

- I like the imagery in the statement, "we march backwards into the future."  Walking backward is a slow, steady, short-sighted way of moving forward.  I think of instances such as a new Apple product being released.  A lot of people will choose to stick to what they have, not trusting the new device, until the new device is familiar--old news.  Then the mass finally warms up to it.

Page 75

Commentary on J. Hoberman's "Direct Cinema"

The following is a list of partially-organized thoughts on Direct Cinema, a 2012 article by J. Hoberman on Stan Brakhage's Mothlight (1963).

- In all media, there are standard conventions, such as size and length, that are often overlooked.  Hoberman mentions "the arbitrary standard length of a 16-mm camera roll" at one hundred feet, causing me to consider more in depth the arbitrary standards associated with cinema and what movie artists face when they call their medium into question.

Page 481

- Mothlight takes "animation" literally.  I'm a fan of puns and word-play in general, so this was a piece of the article that particularly caught my attention.

Page 482

- Why would Stan Douglas feel that photography is any more "a scaleless medium" than drawing or painting.  After an image has already been recorded in a different scale and set of dimensions, it can then be resized using new technology.  Photography is no exception to this, as I can see it.

Page 483

- To me, Mothlight is an interesting thought process because it is the only film "in which you actually see exactly what you're looking at," with the exception of scale (as the projected image is necessarily larger than the original.

Page 483

Commentary on Claire Bishop's "Digital Divide"

The following is a list of partially-organized thoughts on Digital Divide, a 2012 article by Claire Bishop on contemporary Art and new media.

- Claire Bishop complains that new artists who use digital media aren't responding to their media any more than by simply using it, but is it truly an artist's responsibility to respond to the media that he uses, or is that a modern, unrealistic expectation, a high standard that we now hold artists to in a time in which not knowing or not participating in something is a sort of social offense?

Page 436

- Wherever there is new stuff, there are always hipsters, it seems, the inevitable "nostalgic reuse" of old media.

Page 436

- In this age in which we vote with page visits and "likes," the separation between consumer and "prosumer" (those who coproduce content) is certainly imagined.  What is the Internet but a product of constant revision by its millions of users?

Page 437

- To refer to the images's position "in the age of mechanical reproduction" as a plight is short-sighted, in my opinion.  The image is simply in a state of evolution; digital art is still so young.

Page 438

- Bishop fights the building of "new files from existing components" as Kandinsky fights the use of forms in his work.  It is, in fact, impossible to create anything from scratch.  To strive for this is like striving for perfection.  As a thought exercise, try imagining a new animal, but without using any parts from an existing animal.  You'll find yourself stuck, or needing to re-define what an animal is in order to proceed.

Page 438

- Hal Foster sees "human interpretation" versus "mechanic reprocessing" in the same way that I see what I call technology-assisted art versus machine-assisted art.  He and I both appear to see a separation between subjective and technological.

Page 438

- Bishop at first seems to complain that artists aren't responding to the new media that they put to use, but she also makes reference to "a tendency to include more work than the viewer could possibly see" in a gallery set-up.  Is this not a direct response to "the possibilities of Internet searchability," an essential part of the use of their new media?  Creating a work that includes more than a viewer can handle may be a good experience for the artist creating the work, as the artist is reflecting on an immense new network of information, but works made up of 600 hours of video or 305 postcards, for example, simply overwhelm and intimidate viewers, further alienating the modern artist's audience from modern art.

Page 440

- "The digital[…]is[…]inherently alien to human perception" in the same way that life on our moon (and eventually Mars, for instance), is alien to the human body.  Like operating in gravity in which our species's body did not evolve is like adjusting to instantaneous communication and the vastness of the Internet, also features of our being with which we did not evolve.

Page 441

- I will adamantly defend a positive view of the "digital revolution" as "a new dematerialized, deauthored, and unmarketable reality of collective culture."  I see this as the Internet's bight future, and at the moment I am indifferent to "the impending obsolescence of visual art."  In this way, the message of the author's last couple of sentences was somewhat lost on me.

Page 441

A Painting

At a tiny 24 by 12.5 centimeters, this oil painting is a source of great pride for me.  It is my first oil painting, and it depicts a view over Puget Sound, recreated from my memory the day after I first saw the ferries skating across the water.  Seattle inspired me more than anything has before, and I predict it will be an essential part of my life as an artist in the future.

A Build

The World of Minecraft is a natural extension of my personality.  It allows me to be organized, creative and spontaneous.  This enormous build (best viewed with 3D glasses) is a testament to my obsessive need to create.

A Portrait

Art never really developed a meaning for me beyond being an aspect of myself that I share with family and friends.  It is much more common for me to take a commission from a family member (this picture is a chalk portrait of my cousin on her family's horse) than to advertise my work publicly.

A Drawing

To me, Art is an illusion-based field.  Some people choose to emphasize creativity, but I am happy to recreate what already exists, in a slightly more fantastical way.  For instance, this chalk-on-pavement bacon is approximately eight feet long per strip, making more real any carnivore's dream.