Photography 2017

I have some photos posted from March of 2016. These photos are from my recent travels and activities.

Being Connected

Paper on cardboard

3' x 8'

2017

With today’s technology everyone can stay connected with any one person or group around the world.  We can know what is happening on the other side of the world in real time by watching news broadcasting stations on television and then read the full story in the newspaper the next day.  People read newspapers and magazines, and watch the daily news on television in order to stay connected and become aware of what is going on in the world and the society that we live in.  As society becomes more adjusted to the use of technology and things being digitized, more and more newspapers and magazines are being offered online while still being able to receive a physical copy in order to keep up to date on events going on around the world.  However one receives their daily news of events that are happening, we are still able to stay connected as a society with each other around the globe and our advancement in technology allows for this connection to be kept.  Represented here are the two cities Chicago and San Francisco made from newspaper and magazine pages that can be found both online and in the physical format that includes stories and information going on in multiple parts of the world.

This piece was a part of the one night student exhibition, Wall Works Summer Exhibition, that took place in Reno, Nevada on June 8, 2017.

Digital Paper Craft

This Paper craft was made with the use of the 3D application Maya and Pepakura Designer.  This figure stands about 16 inches tall and took a total of about 5-6 hours to put together after being printed and cut.

 

Geographic Location Project

Water and Silence Have a Melody of Their Own

For this project I specifically chose the beach Sand Harbor of Lake Tahoe.  Sand Harbor is a popular location in the Tahoe area for swimming, boating, and other activities. It is the largest alpine lake in North America.  Although I chose this beach specifically, it could really be any beach anywhere.  I love being near and to swim in bodies of water, whether it be a small pool, pond, or a large ocean.  Sitting on a beach next to this body of water is so relaxing and calming that every worry I my have during a point in my life simply washes away as the waves role in and out of the shore.  To be able to swim and simply float in water is also just as relaxing to me than sitting on a beach listening to the waves and any animals nearby.  Being able to feel the breeze that often comes with wide open water and sandy beaches gives me a feeling of comfort by being able to take in my surroundings.   

In addition to this being such a relaxing and calming experience, there are some very healthy benefits to listening to the sound of water and other natural sounds when meditating or relaxing that can lead to some other very healthy benefits in one's life.

"Meditation and water are wedded for ever" 

- Herman Melville

Water is often thought to be a symbol of serenity, purity, and clarity of thought.  This can undoubtedly be experienced simply by listening to water, without having to follow any specific kind of meditation with the sound.  Water meditation can relieve stress, help gain mental control and clarity, connect with true yourself, and many other things that will have a positive effect on you and your body.

link to main map: http://arcg.is/2pxqcqX

An Earful

This ear shaped pillow is meant to show how we take in everything around us, including the current news and other advertisements on the television, radio, etc.  Due to the media constantly telling us stuff such as recent current events, the weather, sports game scores, etc, there are some things that we will listen to and respond to while there are other things that we may be more likely to ignore because we have no need to in a specific moment of our lives.  These things that we choose to not listen to as closely as others simply sounds like background noise, or so much is being said that all you can hear is "Blah Blah Blah" as the media tries to tell you what to think of different things and how they are viewed by society.  Printed onto this pillow are two specific news anchors, Keith Olberman and Bill O’rielly, but the possibilities are endless for who could be printed on it with the speech bubble that says “Blah Blah Blah”  to show how much speech is thrown our way whether we want it or not.

40 Years in the Future- A Dying World

In the year 2057 people have all but forgotten what it means to take care of our home and the world we live in, resulting in most of our natural resources and materials being used up at a constantly faster rate than we can replace and make more to the point where many living organisms have died for the most part outside of the city.  Due to the lack of plants there is now a lack of fresh air supply and is toxic to anyone that goes outside the city walls for too long.  If they were to go out they would need to wear a face mask or gas mask of some sort over their nose and mouth so as to not breath too much of the toxic air and it is required of everyone to wear heavy duty boots so that the spoiled dirt won’t get into shoes and touch the skin.  In addition to the poor air quality, the sky has become permanently dark so that the sun can no longer be seen, although its UV rays are more harmful than ever and requires extra protection.  Technology, however, is more advanced than it has ever been and we no longer have a need for physical screens.  Sensors are placed into the wall in order to become a computer or television screen.

Linoleum Block Prints

These are some photos that I took and turned into linoleum block prints. They are 5" x 7".  

The image was first taken into Photoshop and turned into a bitmap, before being taken into Illustrator and using a laser engraver to cut/engrave the image into the linoleum blocks.

An Assemblage of Consumerism

I made a 3D Sculpture of a coffee pot pouring out multiple things that we take for granted as well as items that are a necessity to function in today's society. Consumerism has become something of an addiction just as most people become addicted to coffee in order to make it through a single day. Some of the items I have chosen to include are video game consoles and controllers, a cell phone and ear buds, sport cars, soda cans, and multiple food items such as: apples, bananas, hamburger (fast food), small candies (addiction to sugar/sweet things), and even a jar of Nutella.  This sculpture was created in the 3D software Maya.

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