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.