Saturday, March 31, 2007

Art Event: Colby Caldwell's "Last Lecture"

The Last Lecture Series is described as follows:

"The Last Lecture Series brings your favorite professors into the
limelight and asks them what they would want to share if they knew
that this was indeed their 'last lecture' (death, retirement..
whatever.. the last)."


Colby Caldwell's Last Lecture was entitled "From Molly Hatchet to Aphex Twin in Four haircuts (kinda)" (he'd changed a lot at the last minute, apparently.)

It was, more or less, about how the veneration of the DJ-- a person choosing already existing music and creating things with it, as opposed to a working musical artist-- and the rise of rave culture changed his views about art. He also discussed recorded sound versus live performance (in the context of music), and how he went from listening to Molly Hatchet, then Pink Floyd, then Joy Division, then The Cure, and then Aphex Twin. It somehow all fit together, I swear; the lecture was incredibly engaging (especially for me, as I relate to music in many of the same ways).

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Reading: "Introduction: Site-specifics"

This reading was rather dense and somewhat confusing. I could understand some points that the author was making, but then he started to compare things to linguistics, which didn't help at all.

I do understand that spaces can be read as different places and locations depending on their use, and how they are used defines them. An artist can take advantage of the means of defining a space for their own purposes.

However, the author did not have to explain it in such a convoluted manner.

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Reading: "But is it installation Art?"

Rather, the best installation art is marked by a sense of antagonism towards its environment, a friction with its context that resists organisational pressure and instead exerts its own terms of engagement.


This again asserts the definition of installation art creates an environment, and that the experience isn't totally about the works that are on display (if there are any works on display) but about the viewer and how they interact with their environment. However, interactivity isn't really defined as the viewer pushing a button or whatever; interactivity with an installation can be as subtle as the viewer having to move around things. (It doesn't have to be, of course.)

I think that this quote is going back to "The Museum Problem" and dealing with the institutionality of galleries, and the writer thinks that installation art should define itself by defying the institution or something like that, but I think that installation art can work as an addition to its surroundings, rather than struggling with its surroundings.

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Reading: "The Museum Problem"



Merzbau, Kurt Schwitters 1923-1948.

This piece creates a more direct relationship to the viewer in that the viewer is not a passive viewer, but immersed in the presence of this room and house. It "activates" the viewer by being made up of many complex pieces that need to be taken in individually, and then taken in in relationship to the surrounding pieces, then in relationship to the whole, then in relationship viewer. It's complex and absorbing viewing that surrounds the viewer and creates an unique experience.

The piece defies galleries and other insitutions by being in the artist's house, and did not require an initial association with a museum. Also by being in the artist's house, it tries to integrate art with the everyday, even though the shapes of which it is made certainly don't look everyday.

Installation art

Embankment, Rachel Whiteread 2005-6




Read about it here and here.

There's a whole list of artists here but I found Whiteread's work particularly interesting due to its scale and relationship the the viewer.

Maybe it's because I'm kind of hungry, but it reminds me of sugar cubes.

Sunday, March 4, 2007

"diorama" on display

The wall text reads as follows:

This piece is an homage to Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and their relationship. Interestingly enough, though these two men were lovers, and did help each other with conceptual ideas, they managed to keep their art stylistically separate. I'm interested in an art work's context, because art is never created in a vacuum. This box appropriates and unites their distinctive imagery: Rauschenberg's "Bed" and "Monogram"; Johns's "White Flag" and "Target".