In relation to our graffiti discussion..

the cops don't even like non permanent writing..

Play'doh in class

My friend told me about his teacher who brought a bunch of small Play'doh containers and passed them around to the class without prompting what to do. Here is his account of it:

Play-Doh?- Marcus Schulz
Yesterday at 11:30pm
The first thing I noticed rushing into class was the Play-Doh. Most of my classmates around the large conference table had some, and a half-full bag of small tubs lied on the table. Excited, I set down my bag and curiously asked the girl closest what the Play-Doh was for.

"Take one," she said passing the bag.

Just then Judy Polumbaum, my commentary & column writing professor, shouted that everyone should take some Play-Doh. Next to me Brandon molded a stick man, but most everyone else had theirs set in front of them.

I lunged at an orange tub and quickly crafted a miniature dog. I was surprised by the Play-Doh in class, and shocked that no one was taking advantage of the situation. Figuring the Play-Doh would be used for something specific, I left the dog sitting in front of me, while one girl complemented my sweet sculpture.

Soon everyone was pulling and rolling their Play-Doh into shapes, some simply smashing it on the table while the teacher was talking. Professor Polumbaum, or Judy, was editing with meticulous precision columns we had recently given her. She has a special ability to find every error or imperfection in a paper. I've never had a teacher who could move, change or cut out every word in an article until her. Her favorite advice is that we "must OBSESS over word choice!" Therefore, she had plenty of criticism for us.

Most everyone listened attentively, while their hands were busy creating sculptures of their own. Two students chucked over their black-spiked, red monster singing into a microphone. That prompted Judy to order that if anyone makes something cool, we have to show it to the class. One girl had spelled Ack! in green, an incredibly precise, black lobster sat across from me, and a snake and cat were being crafted down the table to my right. Some people were rolling balls or smashing the Play-Doh on the table. I thought of how silly this was, especially when I realized, while we circled the table discussing editorial ideas, that we weren't using the Play-Doh for anything class-related.

A Dr. Seuss quote came to mind: "I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities."

Play-Doh is nonsensical, especially in class, and that nonsense was awesome. While we learned, the Play-Doh kept people's hands occupied, and their minds awake. Everyone had intelligent comments to make during discussions about serious topics. Though, no one seemed too distracted.

I'm glad I have a passionate professor who is exciting and innovative enough to bring Play-Doh to class. Everyone should get to play with Play-Doh during class. Tell your teachers. Tell your friends. And if they don't understand, just go buy a bunch of Play-Doh and take it to class.

2 mid-week self-promotion links

1. I had mentioned in class a friend of mine who is interested in Fashion Photography and I thought I would give a link to his work. Here are two photos from his Fashion and Music sections.





CelebrateNothing.com - Matthias St. John Photography


2. I also brought up my production company, which we have recently gone more by 'a film & design collective.' Here are links to our blog, homepage, and YouTube. Currently the homepage
is only our reel, but we are working on a new website, something I may try to workshop in class. Here are some images (with clickable-links to their co-ordinated blog entries) from our blog:

Dr. Lakra

A Mexican tattoo artist who draws tattoos on pre existing images and objects. For one series, he drew tattoos on antique Japanese woodblock prints.
More of the Japanese prints here and a few miscellaneous works here.
-Brendan

Joseph Grigely

Click on the far left image for the write up on Grigely (the deaf artist who displays his conversation notes). They can all be clicked to be made bigger.
The book its in is Vitamin D: New Perspectives in Drawing. Its at the public library (call # 741.9242 Vitamin), and there are tons of artists in it, and its worth checking out, but you can't right now because I had to check it out to scan it for this post.
-Brendan

Warhol & Jenkins.

Andy Warhol- I found a clip from Chelsea Girls on youtube, which was an interesting film because he used a split screen to contrast different footage of people.

There's some clips from some of his others like Kiss, Eat, Empire, & Blowjob. Oh, and Poor Little Rich Girl with Edie.

But if you're really curious about his films and have about an hour to spare there's an interesting documentary on UBU called Warhol's Cinema- A Mirror for the Sixties. It was a pretty good highlight of some of his important works. Some commentary from people that hung around with andy which I liked (Billy & Brigid).

Mark Jenkins- His work is fairly simple with hilarious effects. His website has a bunch of his work with some links for video of people's reactions to his public pieces. There's a separate site with how -to instructions and things other people have made.

How babies are made...


Making the head..

interweebs

make sure you watch the behind the scenes when the director mentions the 100000000000000000 gillion gigs necessary to store all the photos



http://www.avclub.com/articles/scott-pilgrim-movie-casts-evil-exes-others,22887/

for anyone pumped about the movie coming out about the graphic novel scott pilgrim they released abunch of actors the other day

and finally

to get your daily warren ellis filth

http://www.freakangels.com/


goodnight sinners

Greg

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/orozco/
I posted this link to Gabriel Orozco's site because I really like the visuals that he creates and the objects that he chooses to work with. The way he is said to "distort reality" with his objects I find very interesting and somewhat surreal. I really enjoy the visual side of things a lot and I found Gabriel Orozco very interesting when we mentioned him in Int. 1, hopefully you will as well.

Macintosh turns 25 today

2. Macintosh turns 25 today



http://www.macrumors.com/2009/01/24/apples-macintosh-turns-25-years-old-today/
Mac Rumor's blog post on one of the first small, affordable personal computers to hit the market. I am embarrased, proud to say as an Apple Geek, I teared up a bit at the end of this video as I could tell Jobs was gaining the recognition he very well deserved.

1. Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!- Live Performance Review

This weekend I had the privilege to attend a sold out comedy performance at Chicago's Vic Theater. The performers were members of the cast of the Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, with a duration of only eleven minutes, this television show airs on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. A close friend of mine bought the tickets after I had spent the last year and a half indoctrinating her with their absurd comedic stylings. One thousand, four hundred fans and newcomers to the charades packed the venue and were presented with a multimedia program consisting of scripted skits, pre-recorded sketches, and medleys of humorous songs they had performed on the show.

The stars of the show are the Pennsylvanian duo Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim. The have accumulated a cast of what seems like public access television and grungy lounge act rejects. There is the inspirational ventriloquist David Leibe Hart (Brief documentary on his actual Public Access career: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kc-mZVPGKSk ), the socially inept impersonator James Quall (fan recorded video of him on the 08 Tour: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dID0djivHyE ), and barrel-chested comedian and crooner Sire Spicer, all of who were all in attendance. The Chicago audience also had the advantage of having guest star John C. Reilly, reprising his role of Dr. Steve Brule a not so qualified doctor who gives health tips via a news broadcast on the show. This was apparently one of only two shows that he appeared at, and it was exhilarating to see him perform live.

Their comedy on the whole can be described with one word: awkward. The continually attempt to push the line between what is funny and what is either too taboo, bizarre, disgusting, or abhorrent to be found humorous. Heidecker and Wareheim began their television career with another on Cartoon Network, Tom Goes to the Mayor. Produced by comic-veteran and personal hero of mine, Bob Odenkirk, the show followed an eager but passive citizen who every episode started a project with the hair-brained and ill-intentioned mayor of the small town. Awesome Show!, also produced by Odenkirk, continues the staple of casting higher profile comics in quirky roles. The show has recently had guest spots from David Cross, Zack Galifianakis, Patton Oswalt, Rainn Wilson, Weird Al Yankovic, and Jeff Goldblum. What is incredibly interesting is the way that these people are written into the show with in the same way that the aforementioned ‘rejects’ are. This materializes in an amazing fashion; the fans of the show begin the thread a hero complex for the non-celebrities. Which is almost unsettling in an eighties hair metal sort of way. When James Quall came on stage, the crowd erupted in ferverent applause. Quall, who must be in his fifties, seems to be a drawn to live performance, but in all logical arenas he would not be considered a very competent performer and would not likely be considered entertaining for entertainment’s sake. But in this limelight, and for absurdity’s sake, he shines.



My two gripes for the night would have to be the brevity of the show and their continued reliance on fecal humor. On the length, we arrived within the first minutes of the show, and it was over within 90 minutes. Which was enough to justify the moderate ticket price, but I knew they had more up their sleeves, but they must be saving content for future shows or not recycling material from past shows to maintain freshness. I would never say their humor is high-brow, but most of it does take a seasoned appreciation for absurdity. But one continued trait theme that they use is talk about, playing with poo and pee. The fecal humor typically manifests itself through their satirical songs (“I sit down when I pee” & “I’m never-ever-ever going to wipe my butt”) and through parodies of infomercials (‘The Poop Tube” which enables you to emit your feces into a urinal), but I get frustrated by why they go there. Sex is primal enough, and they go there a lot in, and often in inventive ways, but feces has been done before and I would hope they would understand that a chunk of their audience is a little past poo-humor.

What I am interested in asking the class is about how to classify their work. It is without a doubt multimedia, they continually use tropes of digital and analog technology and a large percentage of their material relies on green-screen composition. What I am curious about is the ‘performance art’ merits of their endeavors. They are often being edgy, but rarely do they use the public as an audience.

All in all, this was one of the best sets of comedy that I have seen, and seeing John C Reilly give an inept breast exam to a mildly-willing hipster was well worth the cross-state drive.

Website: http://www.timanderic.com/
Review from a recent Denver show: http://blogs.denverpost.com/reverb/2009/01/23/tim-and-eric-awesome-tour-the-ogden/

boxeight gallery

http://boxeight.com/boxeight/

Liam Gillick

He was featured in the Ben Lewis-Art Safari vid and i really like his work. http://www.corvi-mora.com/liamgillick.php

Matthew Barney from Ben's Lewis's "Art Safari"

http://www.ubu.com/film/barney_artsafari.html

from - ubu -
" These surreal, visual story fragments are like modern versions of Renaissance frescoes. Every element carries a specific meaning and they all combine to present a revelation of the meaning of life. They are scenes from a new bible, written by Barney himself, but only the initiated understand the contents of that book. Novice monk, Ben Lewis embarks on a journey to discover the secret inner truths of the Cremaster Cycle."

Tape Beatles/Public Work Productions

The Tape-beatles have been making recordings as a group since their founding in Iowa City 1987. Individually, each of the group members began exploring tape art and electronic and concrete music before that time. Lloyd Dunn and Ralph Johnson worked together briefly as The Creature Comforts as early as 1985. John Heck was in the conceptual art group and political party The Less Than Adequate Band. Ralph and Paul Neff were in punk bands, such as Stiff Legged Sheep. Lloyd produced under various pseudonyms, such as 9digit Zip and Cathode Ray. And all of them participated in the short-lived All-Steel Space Weenies.

As early as 1983, Lloyd was editing xeroxed ’zines, beginning with PhotoStatic Magazine (1983-1991), then Retrofuturism (1987-1993), YAWN: Sporadic Critique of Culture (1989-1991), The CVS Bulletin (1991, the Bulletin of the Copyright Violation Squad), The Expatriot (1994-1995) and finally Psrf (1997-1998). It can be truthfully said that these works laid the groundwork for the Tape-beatles’ adopted attitudes toward culture, machine art, and intellectual ‘property’.

Coming approximately once each 3 years, the combined recorded and performed works of The Tape-beatles and Public Works follow consistent conceptual threads. Among these are an interest in making music without the use of conventional musical instruments; using recording technology itself as a creative, expressive medium with unique capabilities; Plagiarism®, or the notion that recontextualization of previously ‘finished’ works can be done ethically and can in itself constitute authorship; and making use of contemporary media to critique culture and social milieux.

The Tape-beatles emphasized the use of analog tape techniques, executed as deftly as possible on obsolete or home stereo equipment. The Tape-beatles sought to use the esthetic language of tape, tape editing, and analog mixing techniques to its fullest possible level of articulation. Public Works have almost entirely emphasized audio production for the digital audio workstation. What they have not given up, it should be emphasized, is their interest in pushing whatever medium they make use of to its widest possible range of expressiveness.

For More - here's their website

http://pwp.detritus.net/

Graphics

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/yt-S7qUKv7XVx4/bob_staake_works_in_adobe_photoshop_3_0_vidfix_3/


http://www.metacafe.com/watch/yt-sL0bI4kFvcw/speed_vector_art/

http://www.artistaday.com/

http://www.posemaniacs.com/

meganjoy ostermann

Links

-thought this was nifty..
gel transfer.

-fun way to get your art in the world without having to be a pro!
sketchbook project.

-Lisa Edwards-

Links

Zeloot - skrol dwn 4 prince

le dernier cri - click around, if you dare...

Hallucinations

Interesting ways to induce hallucinations. HERE

Radiohead

I love Radiohead music videos because they are not afraid to try new techniques. Here's a new video that doesn't use video cameras. HERE

Brendan Wells' Links: Week 1
"without records," by Otomo Yoshihide, 2008
installation

Kraftwerk (a band)
how they presented themselves to the public, how their image and their music worked together, what they were trying to achieve through that, etc.
official promotional photo
1977 promotional video

http://www.philinthecircle.com
I posted this link to Phillip Hansen's website because I really enjoyed looking at his work last semester, and I wanted to share it with you; that is if you don't already know who he is. His stuff is becoming more and more popular these days and I really enjoy his methods, as well as the dedication that he has to his art.

Relational Art

Ben Lewis's Documentary - Relational Art is it an ism?