Final Artists Research Paper

The two new media artists that I found particularly interesting were Porpentine and Emilie Gervais.  Propentine is an artist who considers herself to be a trash woman and creates video games as well as interactive fiction that is created through the text software Twine.  She is a transgender woman that currently lives in Oakland, CA, and has included many forms of harassment and difficulties that are experienced by transgendered people, such as abuse, escapism, and other forms of violence into her works for she has been harassed and abused for the majority of her life and was kicked out of her home by the age of 14 (Hudson).  In multiple interviews, Porpentine has described her work as something like a diary and as a way of getting around her weaknesses because she puts so much of her own experiences into her works, specifically these works of interactive fiction.  These works of fiction and her other games focus on what society may think of as trash or is worthless, so she often includes a lot of trash, slime, and sludge in her games (Hudson).   She is best known for her work Howling Dogs in the gaming world and this work is a good example of how one may feel like they are free when in fact they are very limited in what they can do and where they can go. 

Emilie Gervais is a freelancing internet artist who currently lives in Marseille, France and explores the correlation between art, network culture, and the internet.  She has created multiple GIFs and websites for other artists and her own projects. The way that she creates these GIFs are rooted in the 90s by having an 8-bit look, but the content of her work is not.  These Gifs and her work are meant to be interchangeable in a way so that the content can be changed in order to view the different dynamics of life from different angles.  She compares it to being more like what sociologists do rather than a piece of performance art that created an approach to different types of social dynamics from different points of view (Rourke).  She believes that play is a structural component of life, which then allows for the opening of space for experimentation.

The piece of work that I really loved of Porpentine’s is her 2014 interactive fiction game With Those We Love Alive, which tells the story of love in a world that if rules by an Empress who is adored and reviled as she oppresses her subjects.  There is a main storyline to follow in this game, but there are many details that can be controlled by the player, such as the set up at the beginning of the game when the player is asked to answer a few questions.  For me, the results, of my questions gave me the name of Casende Jandet.  When playing this game, the player is brought into this world created by Porpentine by giving them a unique name and having them draw small images on their skin throughout the game. When Porpentine makes you draw on your skin as you are playing the game she is beginning to blur the lines between the digital and physical world.  These sigils that she makes you draw are what Porpentine sees as being a part of love and by drawing them on the player’s skin, the game and love have now left its mark on you.  This game is meant to show how love can be oppressed and expressed in a dangerous world as well as how dangerous love itself can be as these two characters in this story flee for their lives in an oppressed world.  The language that she uses in this game and her other pieces of fiction is also very powerful and meaningful.  She gives just enough detail for you to begin to imagine the world you are meant to be in and surrounded by, but there is also enough missing that you can fill in some of the blanks on your own.  There is also preexisting music that is used in this game by Brenda Neotenomie, who Porpentine came across when looking for music to add to the game after finishing it.  Porpentine mentions in a video interview how she was glad that she was able to find this music and how it fits so well in her game (Porpentine, Sup Holmes? Ep 84 with Porpentine).  The music used is more abstract and possibly would be considered as that of electronic or techno music, yet it is able to set the tone of what the player should be feeling at a particular point in the game just like other more visual video games. 

The most distinguished detail that this story is based on Porpentine’s life is that when you enter this world you enter the life of a transgender woman who is living in a strange and alien world and is continuously mistreated and oppressed, just like Porpentine has been treated all her life.  There is no dreaming in this world, but there is a dream distillery that seems to be under construction for the first half of the game and when it does open the player can go and take a sip of some sort of liquid that will make you feel better for a little while.  I feel that this is meant to show that in a harsh reality, as most Trans people experience, dreaming can only do so much before you have to come back to reality and face life.  Towards the end of this game it also shows that you can chose to follow the crowd or stand alone and a part in order to help yourself have a better life and be treated better, and the ending of this game does suggest that you can get out of a terrible situation and make things better for yourself. 

Emilie Gervais’ collaborative piece Blinking Girls is an “anticlimax movie poster website for the Blinking Girls happening” (Gervais) that was a part of Apache Project in 2012, and included a series of artworks by Emilie Gervais and her collaborative partner Sarah Weis.  This installation occurred as Mother Neff State Park in Moody, Texas, in a cave that was once used by the Tonkawa Indians as a shelter as well as a burial site, creating a lot of controversy over using the site as an art installation.  It ended up happening in the form of a photoshoot in GIFs were displayed on tablets, smartphones, and laptops that were placed in the cave and documented (Rourke).  It was originally meant to be more of a physical installation with actual bubble machines and light effects, but was disapproved at the last minute and was even cut short when they were documenting the installation that was actually put on.  Due to the installation only lasting for a short period of time and occurred once, it has been called a happening as well as an installation with the official name being Blinking Girls Cave.  The girl used in the online poster is based on the character Tasha, as she is seen blinking in the Leisure Suit Larry Land of the Lounge Lizards trailer from 1987.  The text bubbles next to her are meant to show that she is always open for business by saying “Come Inside.”  Due to this being an online website movie poster, only so much can be shown to entice people to come in, so the act of blinking is used as a more sexual act that is meant to make you feel welcomed and want to come in and see the show(Warren-Crow).  Gervais and her collaborative project partner Sarah Weis sat that through this use of blinking and what this image is taken from, they are empowering women and embracing how they are typically seen online, which is that of a gaming character.  The Blinking Girls Cave installation show the current collaborative work by Gervais and Weis, but people could submit their own blinking images that may “have to go through cosmetology treatment in order to ‘make the cut’”(Warren-Crow).  Therefore, even though they are trying to embrace something about the female figure, they are still willing to adhere to society’s norms in the sense of how one should look and what is considered to be beautiful in society.

These works are similar in the sense that each artist is making a statement about some aspect of what comes with being a woman, even a Trans woman in Porpentine’s case.  They are embracing something that the world doesn’t necessarily want to look or what is already being seen of the feminine aspect. Each artist is also bringing technology into a physical space rather than just showing these works online, which Gervais has done with some of her work in which they were a part of a solely online gallery exhibition.  I also noticed that the artists themselves have a greater presence on social media, specifically tumblr and Twitter in order to share news about their work and responses to previous work.  The difference I found between these two works and their artists is that one is based on more personal experiences that are used in her work and the other is trying to embrace something that already exists and is more accepted in society, even if some people may disagree with it and its continued use in advertising when using a female figure.

In conclusion, I really enjoyed researching these artists and their work, especially Porpentine’s work with her interactive fiction.  I read multiple reviews for her game With Those We Love Alive, and most mentioned how great and powerful is and I agree with most of these comments.  They also mentioned her use of language in her writing and what drawing on your skin does to you as you play this game, which I also completely agree with.  Emilie Gervais’ stuff was also interesting to look at and research overall and how she used Blinking Girls as a way of giving the installation an online presence as well as a physical one.

Works Cited

Gervais, Emilie. Blinking Girls. n.d. 2016. <http://emiliegervais.com/blinking-girls/>.

Hudson, Laura. Twine, the Video-Game Technology for All. 19 November 2014. December 2016. <https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/magazine/twine-the-video-game-technology-for-all.html?_r=0>.

Mother Neff S.P, Blinking Girls happening. 2011. <apacheprojects.tumblr.com>.

Porpentine. n.d. <slimedaughter.com>.

Porpentine. Sup Holmes? Ep 84 with Porpentine Destructoid. 19 November 2013. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Mw7vWr9wyM>.

Rougeau, Michael. Making "With Those We Love Alive," A Game That Leaves Its Mark On You. 4 December 2014. December 2016. <http://animalnewyork.com/2014/making-love-alive-game-leaves-mark/>.

Rourke, Daniel. Artist Profile: Emilie Gervais. 18 April 2013. <https://rhizome.org/editorial/2013/apr/18/artist-profile-emilie-gervais/>.

Warren-Crow, Heather. Girlhood and the Plastic Image. Dartmouth College Press, 2014.

Art 346 Final Presentation- Porpentine and Emilie Gervais

Links:
Porpentine's Website: slimedaughter.com
Emilie Gervais' Website: emiliegervais.com
Blinking Girls website: blinkinggirls.club
With Those We Love Alive game: http://aliendovecote.com/uploads/twine/empress/empress.html

New Media Art in Context- Art 346 Fall

Jonty Horwitz is from Johannesburg, South Africa, where he studied electrical engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand.  He is considered to be an artist, engineer, and entrepreneur and his artwork focuses on the aesthetics of art in the context of human perception.  His work such as the nano sculptures are meant to show that there are almost no boundaries between science and art due to the latest creations of technology.  The fact that these sculptures can only be seen with the naked eye is what Hurwitz was so fascinated by and motivated him to create these sculptures, even though they were eventually destroyed within seconds due to an unfortunate accident in the lab.  Hurwitz's catropic and oblique anamorphic sculptures are digitally stretched before being created and each one that he creates has a specific story behind the piece. His Savoy Cat was inspired by a story of superstitions and his first piece, Seven Generations,  is meant to make us think about the choices we make in our loves and how our actions can be determined in a way other than just looking at pure genetics.  Overall, Jonty Hurwitz loves to bring the concept of new technology and art together, as well as bringing a more personal experience into the artwork.

Steve Lambert's work includes street, internet, and performance art.  He has been an artist since about 1999 and made international news in 2008 for his replica of "the paper of record", the New York Times, which announced the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other good news. This paper was released after the 2008 US election.  Lambert's work revolves a lot around the work of advertisements and aims for his work to create a mutually meaningful exchange so that it reaches the people outside of the gallery walls, and he tries to make his work fun pieces of art to look at and enjoy, even though there is a more serious message behind the work.  In the world of advertising online, ads tend to cover the sidelines of a webpage, Lambert's solution to this was to create Add-Art, which would replace advertisements with actual contemporary art when downloaded.  In addition to not wanting to see these ads, Lambert would also get distracted from other social websites, so he with the help of Charlie Stigler, he was able to create Self-Control.  This app is currently only available for mac users, and what it does is it blocks any specific website that may be distracting for someone, for a specific period of time, that once it is started cannot be undone.  Both of these apps are free to download and do with whatever the user wants to do with them.

Nick Yulman is a Brooklyn based sound and interactive media artist in which his work tends to revolve around 3 different contexts: installation art, oral history, and music.  His work aims to investigate the musical potential of everyday objects and mechanically manipulated instruments.  His work "Song Cabinet" is an interactive media piece that users can activate by opening and closing the drawers of the cabinet. This piece is a great example of investigating music's potential because people have control over how the 'song' will sound and these are ordinary objects being used. The objects used are meant to represent a specific location, which is labeled on the drawers, giving the piece a biographical feel since the objects are of the artist's personal collection.  Yulman's work "Animal Magnetizer" is an interactive musical installation that uses spatial sensing and automated acoustic instruments.  People can collaboratively control the mix of instruments activated through the presence of their hands and bodies. For this piece specifically, the interactive aspect if meant to inspire a playful collaboration among viewers and the arrangement of the objects in the space requires multiple people to work together in order to hear the entirety of what has been programmed for the mix to like as a whole.  For many of his musical installations, such as "Animal Magnetizer", Yulman uses the mechanical music system Bricolo, which allows digital music makers to incorporate robotics into their performance and recording setups.

A Different Kind of Cat

 

         Ever since the more recent version of Alice in Wonderland came out, I have been wanting to draw Tim Burton's Cheshire cat.  This picture took me about four days total to finish.  I started this piece a few days before I went on vacation with my family and as soon as I got back, I was able to finish the rest within a day.  My favorite thing about the Alice in Wonderland movies is the phrase "We're all mad here" and am really glad that I was able to make it a part of this piece.  This piece was done with only the use of colored pencils and was free handed with the use of another picture found online for reference in the placement of facial features and color patterns.

Hawaiian Sunset

         These sunset photos were taken with my IPhone during one of my family vacations to Hawaii.  Sunsets of any kind any where are beautiful, but there is something about watching the sun disappear below a horizon of water as the light reflects off of the water and cast shadows onto anything in front of it, such as any boats or clouds.  These types of sunsets are my favorite to capture any time I visit the beach.

  

Unity Game

       For this project I chose to create a simple maze in which a character would begin in the middle of the maze and they had to try to find their way out.  My underlying theme to this game is depression.  Depression is often considered to be an invisible kind of sickness, which is why there seems to be nothing wrong with the player or within the game itself.   I tried to show this sense of depression through the background music used within the game.  The music starts slow while the player tries to navigate through the maze, but once they exit the maze the music immediately becomes more upbeat, as if the player has finally overcome their depression.  This project was pretty challenging, which is also why I kept the game pretty simple.  I had the hardest time in finding the right script and then getting it attached to the correct GameObject and working correctly.  I had never scripted anything before this project, so I was able to just write it myself, I continuously had to try and find a good example on line for what I was trying to achieve in my game.

Drawings

My drawings are mainly done in the medium of graphite(pencil) with a few having been done with colored pencils.  I am still practicing mixing/blending colors with colored pencils. I have drawn multiple portraits, usually for and of the family, as well as other photos that I have turned into drawings, such as family pets(3rd photo).  Most of my drawings are free hand, but the perspective drawings (2nd photo) are done with a ruler in order to get the straightest line possible and some of the portraits are done using the grid method to make sure that everything is in the correct space and correct proportions, since I am still learning just where to put certain features relative to everything else, even if it may look weird in the photo or something.  Again these are only a few examples of my drawings, I also have a physical portfolio containing more drawings.

 

 

  

 

Henna

        I have always loved henna, or Mehndi, designs that are used in India and a few other middle eastern countries.  All of the designs shown here are done by me and on myself.  I have mentioned  the Mehndi culture in a previous post with a little more background on the use of henna. The first photo is of a fresh henna stain while the last photo is a fully darkened stain.  The other two photos are during the drying process of the henna paste before it is removed to reveal the fresh stain.  When I do the designs I am often using at a reference photo, I may not copy the design exactly but it at least will get me started on drawing the design and going from there in doing what I want to do in order to make the design more of my own.

Real Life Video Game- Mario IRL

     In this class project, a total of five games were chosen and based on the popular Nintendo game Mario Party and its mini-games. My group consisted of three people and we chose the mini- game Hot Rope Jump to bring to life and renamed it as Jumping Over Poverty.  These games that we recreated were recreated in the sense that they brought more awareness to certain things going on in the world, ours being about the poverty line and how hard it can be to stay above it.
   Shown above are our characters that participants of the game can chose from and to wear while jumping and trying to stay above the 'poverty line'. These characters that we choose are Podoboo, Thwomp, Baby Bowser, and a Koopa Shell.  As the hosts of the game, my group members and I wore a green or red shirt and blue painter's suits as overalls to resemble the Mario brothers, Mario and Luigi.
   Below the characters to chose from are a few pictures from the event and a few of the groups of people that participated.  We were surprised that we got anyone to play because we began to spread the word of the event so late and close to the date of the event.  This event of Mario IRL was actually quite successful, with each group getting a few groups of people to play their games.
   Overall planning this event and getting the costumes and game materials put together it took a lot of time and patience in order to finish everything well and on time, but in the end it was worth it because the event was actually successful in getting people to play and join in on what we were doing.  I know that some groups had issues with their group members and working in the group as a whole, but I believe that my group worked well together, and because we worked well and each did our part in the project we were able to finish all of our pieces and obtain everything we needed for our mini-game.

Photography

These are a few photos that I have taken over the years. I don't necessarily consider myself to be a photographer in any way because it's not a main focus of mine when it comes to my art work, but I do have a good handful of photos that I have taken that I really like and are proud of, and these are just a few examples.  Some of them have been run through a filter through apps on my iPhone.  I like to find photos that maybe don't have the greatest composition to begin with and then add the filters to add to the photo and make it look better in its overall composition.  I love flowers in bloom, these are a main focus in my photographs when I do take photos that aren't for the sake of capturing a memory on a family trip or day with friends.  I mostly take color photos, I don't really create black and white images, mainly because these photos are taken with my iPhone and by putting them through a b&w filter, any sort of color captured in the photo that made it beautiful, for me, is now gone and it becomes something of a simple photo rather than what the original coloring and lighting brought to the photograph. As seen in the first picture though, I will create photos where the background is black and white and the foreground of the photograph is kept in color.  These photos can be very powerful when highlighting something specific in the foreground, or even background, of an image.
When I do take photos, good or otherwise, I like to take them of just about anything even though a primary focus does tend to be flowers, because they are just every where and so beautiful when in bloom and I really like to capture that moment, especially on a sunny day.