Idea 6: Perspective

Perspective

–noun

1. a technique of depicting volumes and spatial relationships on a flat surface. Compare aerial perspective, linear perspective.

2. a picture employing this technique, especially one in which it is prominent: an architect's perspective of a house.

3. a visible scene, especially one extending to a distance; vista: a perspective on the main axis of an estate.

4. the state of existing in space before the eye: The elevations look all right, but the building's composition is a failure in perspective.

5. the state of one's ideas, the facts known to one, etc., in having a meaningful interrelationship: You have to live here a few years to see local conditions in perspective.

6. the faculty of seeing all the relevant data in a meaningful relationship: Your data is admirably detailed but it lacks perspective.

7. a mental view or prospect: the dismal perspective of terminally ill patients.

 Perspective is a way of viewing a particular object or scene. With linear perspective objects appear differently and as they become further away they appear smaller because their visual angle changes.  In my project recently I have changed the way I have been viewing the way I am looking at the women in their spaces as well as the way I am looking at the women with the dollhouse as a playful element.  By changing perspectives I feel that I am making my project have a more unique angle and making it more personable.  

Quotes

“The process begins with a pre-visualization of the subject and how it relates within the realm of its environment. Once this is achieved, the next step is to commence the process of finding a perspective that defines you. There are different ways to express the relation of the subject but the important thing is that it is meaningful to you.”

“Firstly, to express perspective effectively there is a need to arrange the subjects in terms of spatial qualities. To do this, one needs to emphasize cues in the landscape that signify depth.”

McNeal, Kevin.  Perspective In Photography. PSA Journal. October 2008. <http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.vcu.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?hid=108&sid=ba39c727-d224-4ef1-b68a-f95944ce9303%40sessionmgr114&vid=3>.

This article is about the importance of perspectives and how it can define a photographer’s style. Perspective in photography is defined as a style of shooting and the view (angle) in which one photographs from.  The author of this article discusses the creative side of photographers and the importance of their style.  

Perspective. Wikipedia. 5 February 2011.  9 March 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_(visual)>. 

Artist Post 6- Janine Antoni

Janine Antoni is a contemporary artist who was born in Freeport, Bahamas in 1964.  Antoni studied at Sarah Lawerence College in New York, and earned her Masters of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design.  Antoni has had her work shown in a vast variety of museums including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Irish Museum of modern Art, and many more. 

Antoni’s work consists of sculptures, performances, and installations and often uses her body to perform everyday activities to create her artwork.   For example, in 1992 Antoni created the piece “Loving Care.”  For this piece, Antoni used her hair as a paintbrush to resemble mopping; traditionally a woman’s chore and loving care hair dye to paint paper on the gallery floor.   Antoni explored femininity and power through this project as she does with many of her projects.    Another piece where Antoni used her body to create a sculpture was “Gnaw.”  “Gnaw” consisted of a three-part installation of 600 lbs of chocolate, 600 lbs of lard, and lipstick tubes and chocolate box packaging.  Antoni used her mouth to literally gnawed at the chocolate and lard blocks; melt down the lard and chocolate that she spit out to recast into heart-shaped packaging for chocolate candy and lipstick.  “Then I made this display, trying to imitate a department store to put all my products in. I was sort of interested in how you were overcome with desire for the chocolate, you were kind of disgusted by the lard, and then I would turn around and take that very material that was disgusting to you and make it into lipstick which we use to make ourselves attractive” according to Antoni.

One thing that inspires me about Janine Antoni is how she tries and tries again when it comes to her work, if she does not get the right reaction from her audience she tries to display it in another way.  Antoni stated in reference to her “Loving Care” piece, “The first time I did Loving Care, it was not a performance; I did it as a relic and I showed it that way. It didn’t work! I realized that it wasn’t like Gnaw where the history was on the surface of the object and a viewer could re-create how it was made by looking at it. While making Loving Care, I realized that the power was in watching me mop the floor. The audience is the wild card. I am collaborating with them and I’m never sure how they will respond.”  I recently took photos for my project and knew once I saw them that they weren’t quite what I wanted them to be.  Therefore I re-shot looking from a different perspective and am very pleased with the direction my project is moving in now. 

Gallery: Most recent gallery exhibition was 2006, “Lore and Other Convergences,” at Live Art Development Agency initiative, in London.

Website: Janine Antoni does not have a website.

Interview: http://bombsite.com/issues/66/articles/2191

Art21.  Janine Antoni.  5 March 2011.  <http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/antoni/>.

MoMA. The Collection: Janine Antoni. 6 March 2011. <http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A8292&page_number=1&template_id=1&sort_order=1>.

Myers, Katherine.  Press Release: Antoni works Day and Night in Performance at Mass MoCA.  26 September 2000.  6 March 2011. <http://www.massmoca.org/press_releases/09_2000/9_26_00.html>.

Janine Antoni, Loving Care. Performance (unknown size), 1992

Janine Antoni, Gnaw, Installation of chocolate and lard, 1992

Janine Antoni, Gnaw, Installation of chocolate and lard, 1992

Janine Antoni, Moor, 2001 handmade rope 280 ft.

Janine Antoni, Coddle, 1998, Cibachrome print and hand carved frame,

 21 1/2 x 16 inches

Artist Lecture- Kathy Rose

Questions

I noticed that you put yourself in most of your video performances,  do you always perform in your videos or do you make film and video projections with just other dancers?

I see that you make videos, animations, installations, performing art, and photographs which medium do you find that you enjoy the most or find the most interesting?

Response

Guest lecturer Kathy Rose is a video filmmaker, performance artist, and creator of animated films.  I found Rose’s techniques she employs and utilizes in creating her animations and films fascinating, surreal and moving.  Kathy Rose spent most of her lecture showing us excerpts from videos she has made over the years.  I was surprised that Rose did not talk specifically about her individual projects or her process for making them. However, during the lecture it was asked what order Kathy Rose created her work, whether she made her animations first or created her dance and motions first.  Rose responded that each piece is unique and has different demands, and it is most important to have a distinct opening and closing for any projects development.

Rose seemed to answer one of my questions during her lecture.  Rose mentioned that the figures in her animation videos are a mixture of her students; people who volunteer to help her and herself.  Rose declared that she is interested in puppetry and that in many of her videos she creates puppet like figures of her subject. Just as a puppeteer manipulates the strings of the puppets Rose directs the actions of the characters in her films.  In many of Kathy Rose’s films she portrays her characters as very stiff yet flimsy giving them an eerily puppet like quality. Although Kathy Rose did not answer my second question during her lecture, one can assume that she enjoys mixing multiple mediums to obtain the effect that she projects in her work. 

Kathy Rose at the conclusion of her lecture expressed how costume design was a key component and crucial to her performances.  Rose commented on how remarkable it is to create sculpture on oneself and disguise one’s face. I found this to be intriguing because I also feel that costumes plays a major impact transforming characters creating illusion and an enduring impression.  Overall, I found Kathy Rose’s lecture to be very enlightening and compelling.   

Idea 5: Rituals

Rituals

–noun

1. an established or prescribed procedure for a religious or other rite.

2. a system or collection of religious or other rites.

3. observance of set forms in public worship.

4. a book of rites  or ceremonies.

5. a book containing the offices to be used by priests in administering the sacraments and for visitation of the sick, burial of the dead, etc.

6. a prescribed or established rite,  ceremony, proceeding, or service: the ritual of the dead.

7. prescribed, established, or ceremonial acts or features collectively, as in religious services.

8. any practice or pattern of behavior regularly performed in a set manner.

9. a prescribed code of behavior regulating social conduct, as that exemplified by the raising of one's hat or the shaking of hands in greeting.

10. Psychiatry . a specific act, as hand-washing, performed repetitively to a pathological degree, occurring as a common symptom of obsessive-compulsive neurosis.

–adjective

11. of the nature of or practiced as a rite  or ritual: a ritual dance.

12. of or pertaining to rites  or ritual: ritual laws.

Rituals are most commonly performed for their symbolic value.  Most rituals are based off of traditions within and family or culture.  Rituals may be and are often performed on specific occasions.   Most commonly referred to rituals are associated with religion, spiritual, or social.   I am most interested in the ritual of space and performances. 

This semester I am photographing women in the environment that reflects them in some way.  I am taking pictures of women with a dollhouse in the background representing the ritual that these women used to be engaged and would role-play with the characters in the dollhouse.  

Articles

http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.vcu.edu/ehost/detail?hid=111&sid=736d5adf-432d-484b-92d4-7a690187ea9f%40sessionmgr113&vid=18&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPWlwLHVybCxjb29raWUsdWlkJnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=a9h&AN=57194714

Quotes

“Manipulation of the dolls within selective, gendered architectural spaces allowed the dollhouse owners to visualize the ideal Dutch home and "perform" their appropriate role within it as productive, disciplined, and orderly wives, mothers, and domestic managers.”

--- Michelle Moseley-Christian

“The use of toys in the seventeenth-century Netherlands as didactic tools to enforce moral and social order for children is well established, and has been linked to textual sources such as emblem books and household manuals (Durantini 1983: 178-99). Other examples of toys in didactic and ritual contexts throughout medieval and early modern Europe, and the location of these objects within an adult, female domestic sphere, suggest that these dollhouses, modeled after toys on a lavish scale, may have fulfilled a similar admonitory function. It is the location of these role-playing objects within an adult, female domestic sphere that suggests the instructive function of toys was adapted to a wider audience, including women.”—Michelle Moseley- Christian

“There are hardly any limits to the kind of actions that may be incorporated into a ritual. The rites of past and present societies have typically involved special gestures and words, recitation of fixed texts, performance of special music, songs or dances, processions, manipulation of certain objects, use of special dresses, consumption of special food, drink, or drugs, and much more.”—wikipedia rituals

Annotated bib

Moseley-Christian, Michelle.  Seventeenth- Century Pronk Poppenhuisen: Domestic Space and the Ritual Function of Dutch Dollhouses for Women.  Home Cultures; Nov. 2010

http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.vcu.edu/ehost/detail?hid=111&sid=736d5adf-432d-484b-92d4-7a690187ea9f%40sessionmgr113&vid=18&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPWlwLHVybCxjb29raWUsdWlkJnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=a9h&AN=57194714

This article is a study that investigates the nature of surviving dollhouses of the Seventeenth- Century Pronk Poppenhuisen that are agreed to be the ideal domestic identity for Dutch mothers and wives from the Netherlands.  The dollhouses that this article specifically studies were owned and collected by rich women collectors. 

Rituals.  Wikipedia.  1 March 2011.  2 March 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual>. 

Artist Questions: Kathy Rose

Kathy Rose questions

I noticed that you put yourself in most of your video performances,  do you always perform in your videos or do you make film and video projections with just other dancers?

I see that you make videos, animations, installations, performing art, and photographs which medium do you find that you enjoy the most or find the most interesting?

Artist Post 5: Julie Blackmon

Julie Blackmon

Julie Blackmon is a photographer who was born in Springfield, Missouri on 1966.  Blackmon studied art at Missouri State University where she became interested in photography.  Growing up in a large family and having a family of her own has inspired Blackmon when creating work.  Numerous different galleries including Robert Mann Gallery, Fahey Klein Gallery, and Gail Gibson Gallery represent Blackmon.

Blackmon’s first important project, Mind Games consisted of black and white images, which looked at childhood and how they play with real objects as well as using their imagination.  In Blackmon’s next series Domestic Vacations Julie switched from black and white to color photographs, and also started working using digital technologies.   Domestic Vacations is a series of photographs of family life how they are both disorderly and playful at times.  Blackmon created digital collages with this series to visually display the chaos throughout this series.  Blackmon’s new work is consisted to her Domestic Vacations work, it is heavily collaged influenced and contains a sense of chaos in the household. 

Overall, Blackmon’s work relates to mine I am thinking of  continuing with my project from last semester. i want to take my subjects out of the doll house and add chaos to the family images to display how each family is different and unique.   Blackmon adds chaos and disorder to her images adding another involvedness to her images.    


Quotes 


"We live in a culture where we are both “child centered” and “self-obsessed.”  The struggle between living in the moment versus escaping to another reality is intense since these two opposites strive to dominate." by Julie Blackmon


"I believe there are moments that can be found throughout any given day that bring sanctuary.  It is in finding these moments amidst the stress of the everyday that my life as a mother parallels my work as an artist, and where the dynamics of family life throughout time seem remarkably unchanged." by Julie Blackmon

Julie Blackmon, Easy-Set Pool

20" x 20" Black and White, Mind Games

Julie Blackmon, Bratz Dolls

20" x 20" Black and White, Mind Games

Julie Blackmon, Bubble Girl

20" x 20" Black and White, Mind Games

Julie Blackmon, Camouflage

22" x 22" Pigment Ink Print, Domestic Vacations

Julie Blackmon, Birds at Home

22" x 22' Pigment Ink Print, Domestic Vacations

Julie Blackmon, Play Group 

22" x 22" Pigment Ink Print, Domestic Vacations

Website: http://www.julieblackmon.com/index.cfm


Gallery: September 23, 2010, Robert Mann Gallery in New York, NY

Interview: I could not find although I found numerous videos of Julie Blackmon discussing her work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12nxR9_d1bo






Works Cited


 Julie Blackmon.  26 February 2011.  2011. <http://www.julieblackmon.com/index.cfm>.


YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12nxR9_d1bo


Julie Blackmon. Wikipedia. 26 February 2011. 2 December 2010. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Blackmon>.

Idea 4: Environmental Psychology

Environmental Psychology

Environment

–noun

1.  the aggregate of surrounding things, conditions, or influences; surroundings; milieu.

2.  Ecology . the air, water, minerals, organisms, and all other external factors surrounding and affecting a given organism at any time.

3.  the social and cultural forces that shape the life of a person or a population.

4.  Computers . the hardware or software configuration, or the mode of operation, of a computer system: In a time-sharing environment, transactions are processed as they occur.

5.  an indoor or outdoor setting that is characterized by the presence of environmental art  that is itself designed to be site-specific.

Environmental psychology is the relationship between people and their surroundings. .   Most studies relating to environmental psychology contains the examination between the environment and how that environment can affect its inhabitants.   The word environment is broadly defined and divided up as social environments, nature environments and built environments.  With my project I feel that I will be mostly working with preferred environments, were people seek out places they feel comfortable and confidant and a place were they can be engaged with the space. 

This semester I want to study women in their environment. I want to explore and capture women on film in the environment that has the most meaning to them and reflects the chaos or calmness of their everyday life. I want to use the snapshot camera to help capture the present but have the photo reflect a past era showing that times have changed but realistically haven’t that much.

Quotes

“People tend to seek out places where they feel competent and confident, places where they can make sense of the environment while also being engaged with it.”-- D.E. Alexander

“After all, as several scientists have pointed out, it is indisputable that environmental problems are social issues: They are caused by human behaviour, and they affect human lives. What is not clear, however, is the role that psychology can play in addressing the environmental situation.”-- Pelletier

Articles:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~rdeyoung/envtpsych.html

http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.vcu.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?hid=112&sid=e53cbeb5-2656-4545-a145-e1d38284559b%40sessionmgr113&vid=4

Annotated bibliography

D.E. Alexander and R. W. Fairbridge.   Environmental Psychology. 25 December 2010.  <http://www-personal.umich.edu/~rdeyoung/envtpsych.html>.

This article was about environmental psychology and how it examines the relationship between humans and environments. 

Pelletier, Luc Karine Lavergne and Elizabeth Sharp.  Environmental Psychology and Sustainability: Comments on Topics Important for our Future.  Canadian Psychology, November 2008. <http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.vcu.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?hid=112&sid=e53cbeb5-2656-4545-a145-e1d38284559b%40sessionmgr113&vid=4>.

This article is about the importance of psychology for the study of sustainability issues.  This article looks back over the past 20 years, looking at special issues on human behavior and the environmental problems and their consequences for our quality of life.