Idea Post #7: Spring Semester

Idea Post #7: Spring Semester

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Music

Quotes:

"Music helps to relax you and your child and can improve his memory development and sensory coordination."

 Source: http://www.child-development-guide.com/music-and-child-development.html

"There are many benefits of surrounding your child with music. Music assists in the development of his speech. Singing nursery rhymes and simple songs teaches him how language is constructed and assists with the acquisition of language. Singing songs with him will also teach him about tone, beat and rhythm." 

Source: http://www.child-development-guide.com/music-and-child-development.html

Annotated Bibliography: Greenberg, M. "The Development and Evaluation of a Preschool Music Curriculum for Preschool and Headstart Children." Psychology of Music, 2:1 (1974): 34-38.

I was led to this source through a few scholarly journal articles about the effects of music played to children at an early age. This source talks about just that. It shows examples of what effects music can have on young children around ages of 3 to 5 years old.

Relation: I have recently been interested on other types of media that affect children at a pivotal age.
 In general, I have been talking about media and indirect influence as a whole, but I have decided to look into more specific types of things that affect a child growing up. Music is something that affects a child as early as in the womb and there are plenty of articles written on the effects.

Artist Post #8: Spring Semester

Artist Post #8: Spring Semester

March 28, 2011

Kiran Kumar

  
Bio: Kumar is a Mumbai-based Kashmiri Indian actor. He has worked in many Hindi and Gujarati films. He has been the main hero in most of the Gujarati movies. Kumar starred in Do Boond Pani in 1971, and went on to play the villain in several films.

 

Relation: Kiran Kumar is actually an actor who does fine art photography on the side.  What I am really drawn to about his work is the times when he merges images and text.  He uses local theater performances or debuts of plays as inspiration for art pieces he creates and then uses as promotional material as well. I like that he is very much in the commercial world, in his career and his hobbies, and he uses a combination of commercial occupations, advertising, photography and text to create visual pieces that rival graphic design.  I relate to the way his text works overtop of imagery.

Quotes:

"I always want to play shades of humanity and not larger than life characters."

Source for both: http://www.indiantelevision.com/interviews/kirank.htm

 

Links:

Interview

Website

Idea Post #7: Spring Semester

Idea Post #7: Spring Semester

March 24, 2011

Child Development

Quotes:

"Positive behavior in a child is possible if a positive environment is maintained. A positive environment is one in which the frequency and intensity of negative interactions are substantially outweighed by positive interactions. However, a positive environment is also one in which parents maintain realistic expectations; and a structure of enforcement, reinforcement, and consequences."

Source: http://nacd.org/journal/article4.php

"Within a structured home environment, a child often performs the day’s routine tasks without objection. However, it is not unusual for discipline to fall apart a little when schoolchildren are on summer vacation. Lacking the routine and structure of a set school schedule, children may turn once undisputed chores into the objects of a running battle."

Source:  http://nacd.org/journal/article4.php

Annotated Bibliography: Doman Jr., Robert. "Child Management ." NACD Journal n. pag. Web. 24 Mar 2011. <http://nacd.org/journal/article4.php>.   This source is great in learning how to "manage" a child during the key years and important moments in early childhood development.  This is a journal article written by a child psychologist and referenced on the NACD (National Association for Child Development website) so it is a reliable, authentic source.

Relation: My whole project has been about child development in general for the entire semester, but I somehow overlooked researching the actual term.  When looking into child development from a medical and psychology point of view, it all seems to perfectly mesh with what has been going on in my head the entire time about how a child is influenced, etc.

Artist Lecture: Laurel Nakadate

Artist Lecture: Laurel Nakadate

March 23, 2011

1. In interviews conducted with you, it specifically says that you "collect men" and are interested in exploring a specific archetype of the male.  What is the reason for being drawn to making work about a specific gender role that isn't your own?

2. In some of your other video projects, you don't involve specific types of people at all- you actually do the opposite- you find strangers on the street to include in your videos. Is there a reason for this starch difference in approach?

Response:

Favorite Quotes:

"I didn't understand the world I was living in- but I was trying to make sense of it."

"I think there's something really powerful about being turned on and dismantled at the same time."

"It's slapstick, funny, sad, melodramatic, interesting, and at the end of the day, nessecary."

Three Words:
Collaborative
Performance
Genuine

What I really found interesting and amazing about Laurel Nakadate and her work was her mix of bravery and stupidity.  She was a young girl picking up random older men in parking lots and Home Depots and going back to their homes. As Nakadate said, I am shocked she came out of this alive. The fascinating part, other then her making it out alive, is the strange collaboration she established between herself and these random strangers.  I found it very interesting the way their opinions, their look, their actions, their stance, and everything about these random strangers didn't just become a part of her piece- they became collaborators with her, and she gives them that credit.  The pieces she created involving the strangers are my favorites.

Artist Post #7: Spring Semester

Artist Post #7: Spring Semester 

March 21, 2011

Lorna Simpson

Bio: Lorna Simpson was born in 1960 in Brooklyn, New York, and received her BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts, New York, and her MFA from the University of California, San Diego.  Simpson felt the need to turn the photography world on edge, and examine it in a new way. She first became well known for the image-and-text pairs she produced in the 1980s that questioned gender and identity.   This is the work I am most drawn to because of the element of text added to the images. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Miami Art Museum; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. She has participated in such important international exhibitions as the Hugo Boss Prize at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, and Documenta XI in Kassel, Germany.

Relation: Similarly to the other artists I have been researching, I am drawn initially to Simpson's work because of the use of the text.  Her aesthetic in her actual images is very different than mine, but the principle behind using text to continue to tell the story of the subject is similar.  Many artists think that the story can be told in image alone, or what is left out is also important. While I agree in some circumstances, I think when there is a story that the artist intends to share that specifically changes from subject to subject, text in the voice of said subject is a powerful storytelling element.  The text in these images, or paired with these images, intrigues me as an extension of the story being told by the photography.  With my images, I am also telling a story in the voice of my subjects by adding text to my images.

Quotes:

"The only thing that I see as developing from the earlier work is that the films are even more about language. I was a little trepidacious about the way that text might translate onto film. Once you have someone mouth the words that you have written down, it's completely different than how a reader consumes that text when it is juxtaposed with a photograph."

"In some ways I'm trying to pull back and not make them completely descriptive of the project. But the photographs stand on their own and have their own interest in the way that the image and text relate. I'm trying to maintain a similar content level to what's in the films, but give a slightly different take with the photographs."

Source for both: http://www.walkerart.org/archive/F/B4737D1B1BCC13206169.htm

Links:

Interview

Artist Website

Gallery Rep

Idea Post #6: Spring Semester

Idea Post #6: Spring Semester

March 10, 2011

Environment

Quotes:

"Research has identified the physical characteristics of neighborhoods that significantly influence children’s development. These characteristics include: residential instability, housing quality, noise, crowding, toxic exposure, quality of municipal services, retail services, recreational opportunities, including natural settings, street traffic, accessibility of transportation, and the physical quality of both educational and health facilities."

"Direct effects include cognitive, social, emotional, and biological outcomes. Indirect effects include interactions with parents and teachers, which in turn, influence developmental outcomes such as learning and language development."

Source for both.

Annotated Bibliography: 

 Evans, G.W. (2006). Child development and the physical environment. Annual Review of Psychology, 57, 423-451.  The source here really goes into the physcology behind the environment a child grows up in. Comprised by the results of various medical studies, the source takes into account location, noise level, and other factors in the living situation of children and talks about the environment they need to grow up in to be successful.

Relation:

Over the past few weeks, I have been looking into the places where children are influenced in their actual lives.  The way I have been photographing them has featured the children has the clear subject but also shot in a pulled-back, landscape format to also show off the environment they are living in.  The importance of their location is clear in the image as well as the importance of the child's presence and their text.  The environment they are in plays a big part in where they receive the direct influence in their lives.

Artist Post #6: Spring Semester

Artist Post #6: Spring Semester

Monday, March 7, 2011

Jeffery Wolin

Bio:

Jeff Wolin is the Ruth N. Halls Professor of Photography at Indiana University.  He tends to use subjects that have been survivors of war or some sort of battle in his images and tends to use the pairing of image and text to tell more of the story.  He has used Holocaust survivors and Vietnam War vets for various projects that have gained him extreme notoriety.  He is the recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Relation: 

I am really drawn to Wolin's work first and foremost because I have been researching how artists use text and handwriting directly on images.  Wolin uses text and imagery in a way that allows the subject of the image to tell his or her story more completely.  He uses an abundance of text and puts it all around the shape of the subject so it appears in the background but is actually a separate textured layer.  I am very drawn to the use of handwritten text on image.

Quotes:

"The people I was working with said 'It's great you're doing this, because the stories will reach our children and grandchildren too.'"

Source: http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/15243.html

Links:

Gallery Rep #1

Gallery Rep #2

Artist Website

Interview

Idea Post #5: Spring Semester

Idea Post #5: Spring Semester

March 3rd, 2011

Control

Quotes:

"Congrol is never achieved when sought after directly.  it is the surprising outcome of letting go."

-James Arthur Ray 

"A man with a surplus can control circumstances, but a man without a surplus is controlled by them, and often has no opportunity to exercise judgement"

- Harvey S. Firestone

Annotated Bibliography:  Langer, Ellen and Robert Abelson. The Psychology of Control. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1983. 

This book deals with the psychology of mental and physical control of situations. The book begins with general issues of what control is and how to hold onto it and then shows how it defers from relinquishing control. I think this book is a good reference for the medical and scientific issues with control and lack of control. 

Relation: The issue I have been dealing with over the past week is how to give up control.  I worked hard on my images and now am faced with the challenge of giving up control and allowing children without a sense of placement or design to obtain control over my prints.  I really want to explore this feeling of letting go of control and letting someone else have it, but it also really scares me to let go.  I think this is an important step in my art making process... giving someone else the option to participate in the creation of my work.  Last semester, I struggled with finding a way to get someone else to participate in my project- viewer participation- and I think I have finally found the way to get the most important members of the project- the children- to participate. I am excited, but nervous, about this next step.

Artist Lecture: Kathy Rose

Kathy Rose Artist Lecture

Questions:

1. Do you feel like your animation/drawing background led into your performance work? How did the transition work between a 2-D based media to a dance, film, and media installation based body of work?

2. Do you feel more of a sense of liberation when using film and performance over other types of "gallery-based" media?


Response:

Favorite Quote: "I feel like creating veils in my work provides more dimension and sound makes things more atmospheric.  They are both elements to making an entire experience."

Three Words:
Puppetry
Movement
Performative

I thought the later works shown by Kathy Rose were the most interesting.  What I liked most about her work was being able to see the clear progression of how her worked changed and developed over the years.  I like that she begen with showing us earlier works that just featured hand drawn elements and movements combined. The more pieces she showed, it was evident that her movements became more intentional and more integrated with the projection.  Her drawings became more fluid and more complex until she stopped using drawings at all and began using Adobe Aftereffects and projections on the physical body. You could then see her progression to other parts of the body and even other bodies all together.  Her later works were more interesting to me with the addition of multiple channels and layers of sound, but I really enjoyed seeing the progression of artwork.