art and fear

Revisited Art and Fear when trying to invent new meanings to the shelves without the cubes, particularly of finishing art that doesn't appear to be finished.
Making art ABOUT making art is pretty ambitious but I think is similar to my poetry class in which a few people wrote their weekly poems about not having ideas for poems. Making art is such an emotional thing for me, so by inserting emotions into art I'm facing fears about them. I wanted to persevere in the face of defeat, and without the cubes this piece still needed to make sense.

emotions as minimalism

That emotions are such complex subjective experiences is why I wanted to pair them with minimalism. A lot of my art lately has been about trying to regain control over things that are lost. By not having any representation of emotion present in the artwork, it's saying two distinctly different things: that you can see through emotions, and that you can't see emotions at all. I've been doing a lot of reading about areas of the brain associated with different emotions and found that the neurocircuitry is pretty chemically regulated for a species with extreme highs and lows. The physical energy is discharged by neurochemicals dopamine, noradrenaline, and serotonin to allow us to emotionally react as expected.
The experience of emotions can't be seen between/among social groups unless we choose to share them, however they can share the same physiological responses through social cognition which generally develops in adolescence.
The emotions' presence on the shelves is showcasing them as something organizable and displayable, which also works in psychotherapy through categorizing and regulating. Also the instruction typically given in minimalist art is comparable to instruction given in psychological assessment.

Emotion/Pain Charts

 

Range of expressions for emotions. The only way we can measure them??

 

If emotion/pain detectors rely solely on facial expression, what happens when that facial expression is absent?
It's our way of making something abstract into a concrete thing we can see and analyze. Without asking someone how they "feel", their faces often give it away.
Additionally, this pain chart indicates that something as intangible as pain is easier to assess when paired with different degrees of frowns.

Breasts

Lastly I did some research on breasts in determining how many forms to present in the final piece. I learned that there are 15-20 lobes per breast, which essentially separates the female chest from the male's. I also read about their sexual characteristics and milk produ ction. I accidentally found a correlation between the ice cream toppings (a dairy product) and lactation.

Project Inspiration

maybe Commes des Garcons?

medical drawing of a wound

Robert and Shana Parke Harrison

Meme:

a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena as defined by Richard Dawkins. Memes spread through the behavior that they generate in their hosts. A meme can be modified through replication. An internet meme is a concept that spreads rapidly from person to person via the internet.

Lauren Kaelin

Kaelin paints stills from reproducible, shareable, and recognizable internet videos and images. They challenge the theories of Walter Benjamin who, in a popular essay The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction, argued that a work of art lost its true value when reproduced. Her art straddles the border of fine art and internet virality.

Eva and Franco Mattes

This sculptural work is a copy of a cat internet meme with the caption "Don't Ask" below the image. The fact that this was made for a gallery show in which the couple imitated the work of another artist provides a double entendre to the concept of meme.

Francis Alys

Alys works from reproductions with commercial sign painters. As the imitative process continues, it asks questions about artists' relationships with painting and authorship. An infinite potential is implied, with the concept of memes reproducing and multiplying throughout the process.

Fashion Trends

It's hard to ignore fashion trends when researching reproduction through imitation in art. These Jeffrey Campbell shoes are semi-affordable designer knockoffs, which in turn are imitated for an even more affordable price. Other imitations in fashion follow seasonal trends that can be grouped and divided into categories like Typography and Slogans.

Mathew Zefeldt

Zefeldt uses clip-art style copy and pasting in his artwork with techniques reminiscent of MS Paint. His paintings invite viewers to consider the crisis of individuality in an era of instantaneous image sharing and replication. Like the other artists in this category, Zefeldt's time and skill put into his pieces juxtapose the effortless ability to share an image with a single click of a button. 

Slippage:

slipping away from a secure definition of art. In contemporary art, slippage can refer to the fusion of art and science, art and music, art and "real life", etc. Slippage can also refer to uncertainty within art (identity, authorship, relational aesthetics). The following artists exemplify the ambiguity of these definitive terms.

David Thorne

Thorne labels himself as a humorist and satirist, but many of his works are strikingly comparative to that of contemporary performative artists. 

10 Formal Complaints

Shannon Eats Lunch

Gilbert and George

Gilbert and George, two men functioning as a single entity, is a living sculpture. Every moment of their lives is dedicated to their artwork; they've established a rigid daily routine that exempts them from all activities unrelated to this artistic calling. Their "sculptures" are usually classified as the work of writers and performers, so the intention is what provides slippage in defining their art.

In The Singing Sculpture, 1969-, Gilbert and George stand on a pedestal in the middle of a gallery space and sing "Underneath the Arches" over and over again.

Their art also represents sordid scenes of loathsome behavior- the tragedy of the human condition. They subject themselves to excessive alcohol consumption and record the experience with multi-panel photographs. In these works the viewer is intended to question whether being drunk can be considered art.

Vito Acconci

Acconci regularly stretched the boundaries of traditional art definitions by becoming the object himself. In Following Piece he followed people around New York City until they went to a location he couldn't go. In Telling Secrets he told incriminating secrets about himself until he ran out of secrets. In Trademarks he sat on the floor of a museum and bit his body until marks were visible on his skin. This slippage provides a question of what exactly is the artwork. The skin? The photograph? The performance?

Psychology experiments

How do these differ from the aforementioned artists? Both provide information and insight for participants/viewers, and both elicit emotional responses.

Violinist in the Metro Station, 2007

The Milgram Experiment, 1961

Allen Kaprow and other Happening artists

Happenings were literally just things that happened and for this reason they are great examples of slippage. These question the art as object and the art as made by an artist, and whether or not these needed to be present in order for the work to be successfully deemed "art". In 18 Happenings in 6 Parts, 1959, Kaprow organized a large room with people inside and the situation would switch at the ringing of a bell. Happenings could be as seemingly random as someone peeling an orange or people playing musical instruments.

Sophie Calle

Calle is another artist who provides an example of slippage by questioning art as object. Here are some descriptions of her "artworks": follows a stranger to Venice, hires a private investigator to follow her, invites strangers to sleep in her bed, sends her bed to a lonely man in California, finds a man's address book and contacts every person in it, and gets a job as a hotel maid and takes photos of peoples' stuff. She uses a narrative photography format to document her process.

Food Arrangement Inspiration

jk

pro-anorexia research

Search "pro-anorexia" and find websites devoted to "thinspiration" in the form of photos, quotes, sets of rules, and ways to conceal symptoms (see previous post), but search "pro-anorexia research" and find a whole new set of information about these destructive sites.

Since deciding to include some information from the websites in my installation, I've been plagued with the words that I saw. Images of them literally flashed in my mind like a '90s movie montage. So today I devoted my research to the pro-anorexia websites and their effects.
Girls (or anyone really, but the forums I read were mostly girls) who use these websites view eating disorders as a lifestyle choice rather than a disease. It's correlative with the idea of a dinner party; strange that they're just on different spectrums of social gatherings. The support and admiration gained from these websites could be compared to any celebratory gathering.

One research paper I read discussed the political content- as if there is some  hidden agenda to purposeful starvation. I think that's where the set-up of my installation comes in.. and why I chose to use nice plates and glasses to signify that the cause of hunger was far from poverty.

Even completely sane and mentally healthy people shouldn't read these disturbing and delusional websites.

It's good because I finally figured out what my project was truly about, but it's bad because this kind of thing even exists at all.

sources:

https://bir.brandeis.edu/bitstream/handle/10192/24532/BeliveauThesis2013.pdf?sequence=1

http://www.ucs.ac.uk/SchoolsAndNetwork/UCSSchools/SchoolofAppliedSocialSciences/Virtually%20Anorexic.pdf

http://www.sirc.org/articles/totally_in_control2.shtml

things that should be banned from the internet

I've been putting off researching this because I knew how dangerous it could be- but I was unaware of the disgust I would feel when reading these websites. I've been looking for foods to serve and wanted to use an anonymous online food diary for meals... like I had the idea to find someone who posts their meals online and serve that to my dinner party guests.

I found a lot of online food blogs and also found a set of rules to follow; rules that would surely kill anyone who responded sincerely. I just can't believe this is online at all.

I'm considering reading or having them listed at the dinner party to increase shock value.

Please NO ONE click these. I used them in research but highly recommend NOT reading them:

Rules

Safe Foods

Food Diary

hosting a dinner party

As a few more elements of dinner parties have been brought to my attention than originally foreseen, I've been researching "how to host a dinner party" on search engines.

Since the theme is pretty fancy, I thought this article was really helpful. (Yes, it's from the website of LC from Laguna Beach.) I'm thinking maybe of playing music and making name cards for place settings? Also this one was helpful in my research of what would normally be expected at a dinner party.

Dinner Party

Google image search dinner party inspiration:

I want the setting to seem extravagant and contradictory to the food being served. I like the idea of extra utensils and unused plates. 

Notes on A Natural History of the Senses

Taste:

• the powerful social component associated with eating
• foods eaten symbolically:
• Catholic communion
• rice as the inspirational center of lives
• Jewish horseradish dish to symbolize tears of ancestors
• the intimacy of taste
• the meaning of taste as "trial" or "test"; food as thrill-seeking
• food and sex, food as pleasurable
• the delicacies of other cultures:
• Masai drink cow's blood

• Italians eat deep-fried songbirds
• Aztecs eat roasted dog
• "diversity is our delight" and the privilege of an array of foods
• the history and taboo of cannibalism pages 136-138
• New Guinea cannibalism/sex ritual
• "the tongue is like a kingdom divided into principalities according to sensory talent."
• salt, sour, sweet, bitter, others?
• negative effects on taste buds
• toothpaste breaks down phospholipids on taste buds, causing orange juice to taste bitter
• heredity of taste; mood and diet in relation to taste
• the relation of smell and taste
• "...in England during the eighteenth century... the idea arose that torturing an animal made its meat healthier and better tasting"
• eating the goose while it's still alive :( :( :( :( page 147
• cravings and emotional balance
• carbohydrates for Seasonal Affective Disorder
• sweets as rewards
• drifting from "real" taste and preferring artificiality
• discussion of specific tastes
• chocolate, vanilla, truffles, ginger
• taste makes the horror of killing to live palatable

Privacy

"He lives without privacy in a lidless room." - Sylvia Plath

I think the most compelling restriction I've placed on myself is lack of privacy. When considering things I took for granted it was towards the top of the list - something that's just understood as a right in our society, yet something that we like to think we have control over.

Aside from the obvious last restriction entitled "Privacy", the aspect of privacy is unintentionally everywhere in this project: the photos and videos offer insight into my life that I didn't necessarily choose to share. 

I'm intrigued by the idea of "audience" for banal occurrences. For this project, my exposure threshold was exceeded. Why would anyone care to watch me eat? Sleep? Put on makeup? Take off my clothes and get in a river? (Well that last one is quite unusual, actually). 

I think I became interested in the idea of privacy when I started thinking of it in terms of alienation and control - something I take way or restrict. I hope this comes across in my videos and photos. It was my choice to live without privacy in my own lidless room. 

updates

I was talking about "masochism" over the weekend and realized I'd been incorrectly using it as a synonym with exhibitionism.

Then I started questioning these experiments I'm doing. I had been comparing my work to other famed performance artists (not comparing in an on-their-level way, but more of an influential/research-based way), but it technically can't be classified as masochism because there is no pleasure involved? Is pleasure derived from art? From the audience or the performer?

I suppose it doesn't matter because the outcome is the same but I was just interested to learn the true meaning of the word.

Glue and Paper

I've been researching paper and glue that will work in the book. So far I've run into problems with too much moisture in the glue, which causes the thin paper to buckle and wrinkle.

I'm simultaneosuly trying spray-adhesive and thicker paper. I've ordered two different weights of paper from Talas (a book-making supply company) that my Artist Books professor recommended.

Teeth

My "teeth" representation is created from nails and wood and glue, all of which I wouldn't want to come in contact with my food.

I found a variety of food-safe silicone sealants on Amazon intended for caulk guns. I was able to find the equivalent at Menards. Instead of injecting it through a caulk gun, I painted it on thinly and it seems to be drying verrrrry slowly.

________________________________________

In other advancements,
I've finalized the 6 restrictions for my project:
The 4 physical restrictions (tools of the body) are teeth, vision, warmth, and thumbs.
The 2 social and mental restrictions (tools of the mind) are privacy and decision-making.

super awesome new idea

I've been really into the idea of keeping the objects ever-changing - a sort of interactive experience.

I thought of the free libraries around town and what if they held something besides books? Those are the quintessential cabinets of curiosities and I can't believe I hadn't thought of that before!

There are building plans for them, and as of right this second I'm leaning towards keeping my sculpture open and accessible.

above-ground tombs in New Orleans