twenty two

This is an envelope from a letter that was mailed to. I think there is so much to be said for letter writing over emailing or texting. Letters show real care and time and attention that nothing else really parallels. I like this because I know where it was before it was with me but I don't know anything about the process. I can picture the sender placing it in the mailbox and from there nothing-until I pulled it out of my mail slot here. You can envision the change of hands and all of the places that this little envelope traveled. 

twenty one

This is a grocery list from some time over spring break when I went to the grocery store to buy ingredients to make my mother soup because she was sick. I think it is interesting to look at an old grocery least because, at least for me, I remember everything about that day when I wrote those things out on the paper. And grocery lists are so mundane and useless after you go shopping, but it is so cool to look at something and know everything else that preceded it. 

twenty

A few weeks ago my friend picked a flower for me and left it in an envelope hanging on my door. I saw it and thought it was cool but sort of just forgot about it until I noticed that it was turning into a pressed flower, which I didn't think could just happen, but I guess that makes sense. I left it there a little longer to see what else would happen. I like how the color is still vibrant even though it is dead. Usually, when you imagine something that is dead you think of pale or no color, or maybe black, grey, or white. 

nineteen

I found this by the crescent townhouses and I think it is so cool. It's a friendship bracelet in St Mary's colors. Friendship bracelets using this string braiding strategy called Chinese staircase are a staple among college kids and more specifically my friends. It's fun to sit around making them and trading them and wearing them on your wrist or ankle until they get stretched out and fall off. After a while, they start to become a part of you and you stop noticing them. This bracelet probably fell off of someone's wrist while they were walking because the place where it had been tied was weak because they had had it on for so long. It is probably creepy but I am going to start wearing it.

eighteen

I found this by Goodpastor. What really drew me to it was the pigment on the creases; I found that to be especially interesting. Also, the paper is almost soft. It seems like someone carried this in their pocket for months, so long that the dye from the jeans colored the creases. And I wonder why someone would do that. Maybe they forgot it or maybe it was something that brought them good luck. 

seventeen

I found this green square in front of my dorm and I'm not sure what it is. It feels almost waxy, which is strange and possibly gross. I like that it has an even rhythm of vertical (or horizontal depending on your perspective) grooves. It isn't art but it is interesting.

sixteen

I found these on my desk at school. They are menthol patches that I wear almost every day. I started saving them for no particular reason; I guess just to see how many I could amass in a short period of time. I noticed them because they look kind of interesting, almost like the beginnings of something else when they are put together like that-and they smell very strongly. I think sometimes that this is how the process of art making begins. You notice something that you'd never noticed before or you see something differently than you'd seen it before and your mind works over it until you've got some sort of concept. These menthol patches remind me of Steven Holl architecture because of the smell. Not that Steven Holl works with menthol, but because he sometimes gives his buildings an atmospheric feel by coating the walls in beeswax or something like that. The idea of making something that controls the viewers experience so thoroughly that even their sense of smell is engaged is really interesting to me.

fifteen

I saw this gum wrapper on the path and I couldn't resist picking it up. I don't know why it looks like that but it looks like something that is decidedly not a piece of paper with the sole purpose of containing gum within a package. The colors of the wrapper are so vibrant and I'm sure it looks better than the gum tastes. So I wonder whose idea it was to design the wrapper to look like that, who gets paid to have ideas like that, and if the person who sat on a computer creating this design dreamed of doing that sort of thing when they were young. 

fourteen

I chose this piece of plaster to go along with the shells because when I saw them sitting near each other on my desk I mistook the plaster for a shell. Plaster is an interesting medium to me because it is so tactile and also kind of annoying. If plaster is a material through which art is made, does it connote art itself in the same way that dried paint on a palette references painting? Or, because plaster is a more widely used material, does it have no meaning on its own? 

thirteen

I found these shells at Church Point. I was drawn to these shells because they look really cool. Two of them even have holes that would make them perfect for putting on a necklace. I think it's interesting that things like these occur naturally in the world because they look almost too cool to have been created by anything other than a machine. I think that shells and art have something in common but I'm not sure what that is. 

SMP presentation response

Today I went to some of the Art and Art History department SMP presentations. I was especially interested in April Morgan's art history SMP. She studied the way the curriculum of the AAH department changed over time and how this can be tracked through student work in the teaching collection. I think it's always good to be introspective and I would be interested in knowing more about what she found. I think that changes in society over time can be mapped through art curriculum. There was a time when women weren't allowed to go to art school, and if they wanted to they would have to agree to model for male painters. Art movements have been met with resistance before being accepted into the art world and this is also important to note.

I really agreed with what April said about the importance of merging art studio and art history. I don't think you can call yourself an artist if you don't study art history or if you can't write about art. You have to get into stuff and figure out what you like and what you don't like, and how to discriminate between the two without solely relying on personal aesthetic values. I think it's imperative for artists to be able to articulate with words as well as images and other media. 

la grande jetee

This film completely blew my mind. I expected to be bored by the fact that all of the action was occurring in still pictures but after the first five minutes you really lose sight of that. The plot was so engrossing that it was easy to lose track of the fact that it was all being narrated. The ending was great. It was uniquely one of those moments in film where everything comes together and fails to make any sense at all, at the same time. 

olia lialina

Olia Lialina is the artist responsible for "My Boyfriend Came Back from the War," a website created with basic gif images and html code that tells the story lovers reunited after a war. It is "among the first works of New Media art to produce the kind of compelling and emotionally powerful experience that we have come to expect from older, more established media." Lialina calls MBCBFTW a "netfilm." I think this is an important piece because of the way, thematically, it split with ideas of what new media art is and can be by adding evocative emotional elements to relatively simple code and text. 

alexei shulgin

Alexei Shulgin is the front man of 386 DX, the "world's first cyberpunk rock band" featuring an old computer and MIDI software. The use of antiquated technology is intentional as Shulgin is satirizing contemporary technological culture in part. 

keith obadike

Keith Obadike is a "sought after sound designer" on the hip hop scene. Obadike attempted to auction off his blackness on eBay as a performance art piece. The idea that heritage or ethnicity is something that can be bought and sold is new but this piece recalls Glenn Ligon and Adrian Piper, artists who both created self portraits "exaggerating [their] negroid features." Pieces like these show how discussions about race as it relates to identity aren't over just because the sixties are over. 

robert frank's "the americans"

I really enjoyed seeing the Robert Frank exhibit at the National Gallery. In my art and studies, I am interested in American identity and iconography and that is what I liked most about Frank's work. He is a foreigner, so in coming to America and creating this body of work, one might expect for it to be covered in commentary and the photographic "hand of the artist." I don't think it's like that at all. I feel as though Frank truly captured the essence of the American spirit and let the photos offer commentary on themselves, not the other way around, making for some very effective photographs. 

julia scher

Julia Scher's work "explores issues related to electronic security." Scher creates installation pieces based on the idea of surveillance and then digitally alters the data that she collects, thus illustrating the way in which surveillance can be both faulty and altered.

Of her own work, Scher says that she first saw surveillance "in terms of looking at landscape." I find this to be interesting because landscape is often a subject in traditional painting or drawing, however, in appropriating this subject into digital media with an entirely new purpose, Scher really is making a statement about contemporary art.

john klima

John Klima, a photography major from SUNY Purchase, created "Glasbead." "Glasbead" is an interface that "exemplifies the convergent nature of new media art." It is an interactive online artwork and can be found here. Klima was inspired to create this piece by Herman Hesse and his novel entitled "The Glass Bead Game." Klima's work is considered to be interdisciplinary in that he employs techniques learned from being a software designer as well as attending art school, but also that he incorporates literature into the meaning of his work. Having all of those influences allows for his work to be multi-dimensional in a way that can often be true of new media artists.

art 21

SALLY MANN
immediate family-pictures of her 3 kids
landscape pictures
use art to express spirituality
the pictures of her kids, especially the ones without clothes, appeared shocking and exploitative to some viewers

MEL CHIN
SPAWN- Detroit houses burned down, plan to use this as a way to represent rebirth via devil's night crawlers
video game representing arabic tribes by use of real rug design and patterns
planting special kinds of plants into toxic soil that leeches metal so that other plants can grow and then can be burned for metal

JAMES TURRELL
roden crater-place where you can feel rotation of the earth
live oak friends meeting house
work is about the experience of being one with the universe, being part of the atmosphere, the closeness of the sky, and the way we experience and interact with light

GABRIEL OROZCO
photographs what he sees, show communication and interaction
reconstructed car with new vanishing point
pottery-clay
doesn't consider himself an expert in anything, uses basic forms
games

twelve

I found this picture at home one weekend.

My dad is seventy years old now. This is a picture of him when he was in his early forties. As long as I've known him, he hasn't ever looked young like this to me.

I don't think this picture is art. I think my older sister snapped the shot to finish off a roll of camera on her film; I think my dad was there and I think his pants coincidentally match the drapes and the light coming in through the window lights him up like that by mistake. But I love this picture. So even if it isn't art, it is still valuable.

eleven

I am kind of obsessed with drift wood. My friends and I went camping once and we all found pieces of driftwood and wrote poems out on them as displayed them at an art show at a community college by my house. I found this one at Point Lookout State Park and was drawn to its shape, the curve, and the way it feel more tactile than others that I'd seen.

Driftwood is interesting because, by nature, we don't know really where it came from. Or where it's headed. We can hold onto to it temporarily but eventually it will get to be somewhere else. Eventually it will warp and shrink and the words we've written upon it will fade, get soaked into the wood, evaporate. It is symbolic of everything that's worth anything in this world. What I like about art is that sometimes it is more permanent than other things. We look at cave paintings and we study Ka statues and all of that has outlived its creators and will outlive us.

ten

I found these guys in the parking lot behind Caroline. Again, I am not sure what they are supposed to be but they look like abstracted human torsos. When I found the first one, I thought about collecting all of the ones I could find, filling up an entire shoebox and keeping them under my bed for the next few years. But, I didn't find any others for a long time.

Then the other day, I found another one and decided to scan them in for this. I am interested in the way I see them as pieces of a human form, but that is only because I look to make things human. I think all humans do that. I wonder what a dog or a bear or a horse or an alien would see. Also, I really like that the guy on the left has a chest cavity.

nine

I found this keychain at Point Lookout State Park. I saw it, golden, glinting in the winter sun on the side of the road, bent down, and picked it up. It is the exact keychain that my grandfather gave me to put my car keys on when I was fourteen years old and incidentally had no car keys. A week after my grandfather gave this keychain to me, he passed away and I will always think about the last thing that ever passed from his hand to mine. A Trump Taj Mahal casino keychain from Atlantic City, given to him as one of the many gifts to regular patrons who reguarly lose money.

I lost my keys in a movie theater in Washington DC a year ago and with them, this keychain. To find something that could be it and is exactly like it made me feel strangely in touch with the memory of my grandfather. Like maybe I was meant to hang onto this thing. This time, I won't lose it.

eight

I found this in the parking lot behind Caroline Dorm. I find it interesting because of the way it looks somewhat like a feather from an animal, but actually it is manmade material. I am not sure what it is used for but I think it has something to do with the parking lot.

It is really interesting looking, which I why I chose it. I wouldn't consider this object to be art but if it was used or taken in a different context then maybe it could be.

seven

Cigarette butts are probably not art. But they are everywhere. Even on a campus that prides itself on sustainability, efficacy, and worldliness, these little pieces of trash are everywhere. But they're more than trash. It's a living, unintentional work of community art that is added to and subtracted from every day. The presence of these things speaks to our own sense of entitlement as well as laziness and a disregard for our own health. There are cigarette disposal bins on the side of literally every building.  So why do they all end up on the ground? And it's not just here. Cigarette butts have become a fixture of the American landscape. If Thomas Cole was alive today, I'm sure they'd be included in his paintings. 

six

I found this light on the way down to Church Point. I think that the light is not necessarily art by any means. It may be interpreted as beautiful, but alone, it isn't art. To me, art is something that is intended and a sunset is some kind of natural instinct. But, this image drew my attention to things that exist in nature that can easily be sources for art.

Artists often depict the sun. Lightsource is one of the most important considerations in drawing, painting, photography, and other media. However, it can't become art unless someone intends it to be that. Maybe. I am still trying to come to terms with this idea.

mark napier

Mark Napier is the creater of "Shredder 1.0." This is an interactive work of art that allows the viewer to enter a web address into the system and watch as it jumbles the site. Shredder "literally deconstructs the site, slicing and dicing its text, imagery, and source code to form abstract compositions."

I got super carried away and shredded every site that I go to (my blog, friends' blogs, school website, email, etc.). It was really fun but after a while it kind of freaked me out. It's like when you're a kid and you see someone dressed in a suit of one of your favorite characters. You might know on some level that it's not real, but once you see the zipper, you're crushed. This is like seeing the zipper on all of my favorite websites.

five

I found this street sign on the way home from the beach. I found it significant enough to pull over and take this picture because of the Bruce Springsteen song "Thunder Road."

Street signs are a part of everyone's lives. They are something that we rely on, look for, and use even if we don't know where we are going. But, when a place becomes familiar enough, we no longer need to look for the names on the signs. In that way, street signs become unnecessary to many of us.

Street signs are definitely not art, but they can be something more than street signs. I don't know who named this road "Thunder Road" and I know that it probably has nothing to do with the song. However, because of this allusion, it becomes something worth looking at, or at least serves as a reminder that sometimes street signs can be more than just street signs.

raqs media collective

Raqs Media Collective Operates on an online platform that allows artists to upload their work. Then, work is mixed together to create what they call a "recsension," or a sort of remix of many artists work into one, new work. Raqs Media Collective operates on the principle of appropriation, that is, the borrowing of already existing art to create new, different art.

"From Dada to Pop, and from found footage film to hip hop, appropriation has become an increasingly important strategy for artists of all stripes."

four

I found this tree by Church Point. This tree was interesting for a lot of reasons. What first drew me to it was the way in which it seems to allude to Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights and her description of a tree outside of the manor that looks as if it is "taking alms from the sun" which is how this appeared to me. Additionally, because of the time of year and the lack of leaves on the tree, it seems to be stretching towards the sun for nourishment.

I also like this tree because of how it is somewhat conventionally ugly. I love things in nature that are ugly. I love that nature makes certain things ugly, or that we perceive things as ugly. I think "ugly" also usually means "interesting." This tree is sort of sad in that way, too. You wouldn't take your wedding pictures under it and you definitely wouldn't want to have a picnic under it. You also wouldn't be particularly drawn to hang out by it because it doesn't function as much more than a scar on the face of a picture of an endless sky like this one. 

after life response

In class last week we viewed "After Life," a film that deals with the idea of life after death. I found this portrayal of after life to be intriguing. Unlike other movies I've seen that are about similar topics this one was able to deal with this idea without being all about pathos or religion or something. It really reminded me of Waking Life, another movie that deals with sort of similar themes. It's not the easiest kind of film to get into, but once you do you sort of forget that there isn't much action.

Watching a movie like "After Life," you find yourself trying to catch onto someone else's conversation. It's like standing on a train platform and trying to hear what someone else is saying without them knowing that you're eavesdropping. There is a sense almost that you're not supposed to be hearing this, and that quality is what I liked most about this film. My favorite part was when they were all sitting in the movie theater about to view the recreated memories and you know that once they do they'll be gone, but there is something really beautiful about it anyway.

I tried to think about what my memory would be if I were to die with only the memories that I'd had so far. There was one day over winter break, the day before New Year's Eve, when my brother and I got into the car and started driving. We were headed, vaguely, to Atlantic City, a place where we'd spent childhood summers with our South Jersey Italian-immigrant family and one that holds a lot of sentimental and vernacular value to us. We left our house by DC around noon and drove, switching drivers once in between. We stopped in Cherry Hill, where my family had lived before I was born, had pizza at a restaurant that my father used to eat lunch at every day (seriously), and then got back on the highway. We stopped at the cemetery to put flowers by my grandparent's graves. Then we went to Atlantic City--it was late by the time we got there--and had dinner at a mall that my grandmother had taken us to when we were kids. My brother won back the traveling cost at a casino and we got back in the car to head home around nine. What's really significant about all of this is that I drove the whole way home while my brother slept in the passenger seat. It's never like this. I am younger and so, by default, the one being taken care of. This time it was not like that. I remember most vividly the way it felt to emerge from the Baltimore Harbor tunnel, music on, Jeremy asleep, and seeing all of the times we'd made this trip flash before my eyes. And to really feel like I'd gotten somewhere. To really feel like I was headed in one certain direction. I touched my palm to the cold window and smiled as the highway signs pointed me in a direction that was decidedly home.

®TMark

RTMark is a website that "serves as a portrait of the internet" or "socially conscious sabotage." The makers are a group of new media artists who choose to remain anonymous. They choose sites to parody, such as George W. Bush's presidential site, or a the Backstreet Boys homepage, and make their version very close the real thing, so that it would be possible for a viewer to not know what they're looking at.

I was drawn to this work because of the comparison to Marcel Duchamp's readymades. I think that RTMark has similar motives as Dada artists did but with a slightly more obvious message. When we are forced to consider things art that we normally would not, it effects not only our perspective on art and culture, but also on the society in which we live, and ourselves.

twenty lines

I really enjoyed this project. I have been trained in drawing, painting, and photography that meaning is inherent in art, that art isn't art without some kind of deeper meaning. Understandably, I was not excited for this project. Drawing 20 lines on PhotoShop felt like copping out. However, once I started, I began to feel differently about meaning as it relates to art. I tried using different thickness and hardness in the lines. I thought of words like "lost" or "beautiful" and focused on them as I drew the line. I tried to convey those concise meanings into each line. What I have learned is that meaning is inherent in art, but there are more ways to get to that kind of meaning that traditional ones.

I was impressed by my classmates' projects. A lot of us had similar kinds of lines, but everyone's was unique. I think you can tell a lot about people's personalities based on the colors and kinds of lines they drew. It was hard to pick one line out of the group that was most beautiful, most fun, or most non traditional because for the most part they were all of those things.

jodi

Jodi is a web interface that "can be seen as a formalist investigation of the intrinsic characteristics of Internet as a medium." When a viewer sees the webpage, it is just a jumble of fragmented code and what looks like a glitch. However, if they know HTML, they can enter it in to see a plan for an atom bomb, conceptually close to exploding the internet. Jodi.org gives viewers the opportunity to experience a "disconcerting" view of the internet.

This reminds me of other art that lets you see into its process. For instance, painters who leave some parts of the canvas unpainted and unprimed, or media artists working with electronics that allow you to see the plugs and cables. When this happens, the process becomes the art. Art has traditionally been known as something that should be experienced from the surface, but new media artists force you to enter into the experience of the making of that art in addition to the finished product.

three

Shortly after the capture of the ice cream sandwich wrapper, I found this a little ways down the path. At the time I was walking with my brother. He was criticizing me for collecting garbage. Then I saw this.

This object is an envelope with writing on the back and a piece of tape--still sticky--hanging off the top flap. The top section is a series of names and initials. On the bottom, in red: "Discuss... Trip to Grand Canyon" and "is it possible to lead nice happy life w/ so much suffering? do they worry about it? Springsteen says yes. others?"

I was struck by the text. That it was written on the back of an envelope, that it discussed ethical and philosophical issues. And whose names and initials were being checked off up top?

My brother and I kept walking. I'd folded the ice cream sandwich wrapper into the envelope and put it in my pocket. After a few minutes, Jeremy said that he thought it was his envelope and as it turns out it is. Maybe the reason I was drawn to it was the familiar handwriting on the envelope that I hadn't identified, but knew somehow, that it was my brother's. And it means more to me because it's his and I know it's his. 

google earth placemark to come

two

This image is a piece of found garbage. I was walking past campus center last night and the repeating pattern of the ice cream sandwiches caught my eye. And I immediately though, "Oh, Andy Warhol." It occurred to me what that said about Andy Warhol, garbage, and art as I peeled the sticky wrapper from the bricks and dug through my pockets for a place to store it. This is definitely not art--but that it seems to allude to a famous artist and his work could suggest the way in which Andy Warhol's pop art has become completely ingrained in our culture. A repeating image in and of itself is not remarkable. Rather, the image of the ice cream sandwich is probably an advertising technique. But in this context, it seems to reference cans of soup, brillo boxes, flowers, and all of the other icons that Warhol used.

There is also something disturbing about this image when separated from its original context, most specifically the fake toothmarks. They give you a clear idea of what you are supposed to do to the product wrapped inside. But without the rest of the wrapper, you can draw your own conclusions about what is being said about the product.

google earth placemark to come

one

This is a picture of iced tea in a pitcher on my windowsill. This drew my attention a few days after I'd made the tea. The sun was coming through the window in such a way that the glass reflected all different colors. I was struck by the color of the tea, the colored shadow on the windowsill, and how it is transitory, and what that means about colors in general. Generally, a person would not really notice this sort of thing unless they were looking for it, which is why I would not consider it art. The light, the glass, and the tea itself only were remarkable in combination with one another. 

google earth placemark to come

nam june paik

Nam June Paik is considered to be the first video artist in America. He participated in the Neo-Dada art movement that, like its predecessor, strove to challenge certain views of what constituted art, to tear down "art with a capital A."

I was drawn to Paik after seeing a particularly powerful piece at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The piece is called "Electronic Superhighway." It features all of the states in America outlined in neon lights with television monitors broadcasting different things in each state. The audio is largely Martin Luther King Jr. and Lyndon Johnson speeches from the sixties, a formative decade in the history of racial conflict in the US. The piece is touching; it pulls at some emotions in a precise way. I've been to see it multiple times and often observed viewers moved to tears.

Paik's use of video as a media challenges the viewer to accept new media as art. In doing so, works like "Electronic Superhighway" strike a different chord that do contemporary paintings about similar subjects.

what is the purpose of art

Art is a void inside of a mass: windows to look through, mirrors to reflect. An empty room with no sound or light and then someone punches a hole through the darkness and all of this beauty and emotion floods in and it becomes everything that matters and everything that is real and that is art. 

art21 video response

vija celmins

Vija Celmins is an artist who focuses on surface and detail, what she describes as "extremely detailed work." Her work is photorealistic and on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the video, Celmins talked about hating to abandon a work in progress no matter how frustrating or uncertain she may feel about it. I especially liked her painting of the night sky. When you look at it, there is so much depth you feel like you could get lost in it for a long time.

elizabeth murray

Elizabeth Murray is an action painter of "intense color and cartoony shapes." I thought it was interesting that Murray cited William de Kooning as an inspiration because when I saw her work his name came to mind. Murrary also offered the sentiment that "being an artist is one of the most impossible things in the world" and I strongly agree with that statement.

ann hamilton

Ann Hamilton's work was interesting because of the way in which she blended words and new media to create unique art. She represented America in the Venice Biennale, which I thought was interesting because she is not a representational artist. Her piece "Echo" for this show was really intriguing. Also, she named Wallace Stevens as an inspiration and I really like his poetry.

bruce nauman

I wasn't as interested in Bruce Nauman's work as I was in the previous artists. I think this was because the type of art that he creates is so extensive that it's hard to catalogue any of it in such a short segment. 

matthew barney

Matthew Barney was intriguing. His Cremaster film seems interesting but I'm not sure that I understand it. Also, I thought it was pretty cool that they shot part of it at the Guggenheim because that architecture is so awesome and unique, which seems to fit Barney's style. 

class response

Yesterday in class we looked at images and tried to talk about their meaning and connotations and stuff. The group of images I was looking at were all portraits. Two of them were advertisements. It occurred to me how different the pictures could be interpreted if they had words on them as opposed to being solely images. The first image in the set was pretty ambiguous, nearly all whited out with just the facial features showing. Once I got the idea about advertisements this image really stuck with me in a disturbing way. This girl could be the face of a skin care product. Or a crisis center. I'm not even sure that the face is a girl's face. 

The set of images that most interested me was the third set with all of the car pictures. I especially like the United Colors of Benetton advertisement with the car burning. I am really interested in the way advertisements manipulate people, in that it disturbs me. Not that I think that ad was trying to get people to set cars on fire, but that it is supposed to depict, like, what the brand stands for or against or the kind of image you'll have if you wear their clothes. Last semester, I was researching Iraq War protest art and I came across this series of posters. It would be an image of an Iraqi civilian crying or showing some kind of very negative, victimized emotion and then there would be one word like "Liberated" and then in the corner a green tab with the words "United States of America." I knew it was using the Benetton logo but I didn't realize that the store used to advertise with images like these. In context, it's as if the Iraq War images are saying that if you're part of the United States of America, this is what you stand for and this is your image. 

shu lea cheang

Shu Lea Cheang is an experimental new media artist. She works with combinations of video, photography, and what she calls "net-based installation" art. Cheang's work often confronts different sociopolitical issues, primarily including ones of gender and sexuality. Her most prominent works belong to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Guggenheim collections.

This particular piece is called "Brandon." Cheang was commissioned by the Guggenheim to create this piece of new media art based on the life of Teena Brandon, a transsexual who, in 1993, was raped and murdered because of her sexuality. "Brandon" can be found here. The viewer first sees the image of a baby becoming a woman becoming a man, which is a literal allusion to Brandon's life. When the viewer, clicks on the morphing image, the curser can be moved around the screen to illustrate different images relating to transsexuality, and more specifically, Teen Brandon.

As the curser is dragged around the screen, the images continue to change. It is unsettling and the viewer feels confronted or targeted. Phrases from newspaper headlines like "she's a he," "killed for," "romance," "all," "exposure," and "rage" make the narrative undeniably human and from there common. That the viewer can relate to the art is what is most disturbing and sad about the way in which Cheang has portrayed Teena Brandon's tragedy.

hello hello

these are mario clouds

cory arcangel