The most interesting lecture

This weeks lecture was given by Melinda Steffy, a jack of all trades in the art world. The main topic she spoke on was Esty.com, a place to buy and sell hand made arts and crafts. Before the lecture started the G-Man, Gerard Brown ask the audience if someone could help the squid through the door. A kid in a giant squid costume was trying to fit through the door, he made it in and plopped down in the back, the costume still touching the ceiling. The lecture wasn't too bad, Melinda has some good points. She mentioned that you need a website, she told us how a lady at this one craft show Melinda was at didn't have a website and people didn't take her as seriously. Then half way through the lecture a kid ran to the front, covered in full super villain garb, and threw down a black circle and yelled "The infamous hole strikes again!". If I had any doubt I was in an art school it is now gone. The lecture continued after a few jokes, Melinda Steffy was not phased.

The Tenth Lecture

I chose to go to the Superflex lecture this week and was happy I did. It took me a little while to understand what Jacob Fenger was saying because of his accent but once I understood I really started to enjoy the lecture. Superflex is a group of Danish artists that work all over the world. What really interested me in this lecture was what the artists where doing with their talent. Instead of just wasting time and making art for art's sake they were making art for the sake of common people, for farmers, for the unprivileged. One of Superflex's main projects is Guaraná Power, a soda pop that is made from the guaraná berry. The farmers who now produce berries for Guaraná Power were being screwed by a big corporation that monopolized the guaraná industry, but because of Superflex the farmers are now getting fair pay for their work. Because Superflex is using their talent to help people and not just make art for galleries is why I was so interested in the lecture.

Number Nine

This weeks lecture was given by Tyler's very own Doug Bucci, a metals and CAD CAM teacher. Doug went to school wanting to be a painter despite his rich 3-D heritage, his dad was a carpenter, mom was an interior designer and his grandpa was a blacksmith. He took a metals course as an undergrad and got hooked on it. His work now is done almost all on the computer using 3-D rendering technology. A few years back Bucci had a wake-up call, he was reading an article about two artists he admires and found out they had recently died from complications from diabetes. Doug has diabetes and was living a raucous life, he decided it was time to get serious and his art reflected it. His art now is somehow drawn back to his diabetes. His latest conquest is quit an advantageous journey. The medical devices that keep him alive are now also feeding his art. His blood sugar meter sends its readings to the insulin pump and to his computer, after enough info is gathered the 3-D printer goes to work and makes something. If Doug has a good day health wise the piece will be aesthetically pleasing but if his blood sugar is a crazy coaster then the piece will be grotesque. Doug Bucci is on the cutting edge of technology based art.

Another Lecture

This weeks lecture was given by Eileen Neff. She is a photographer who challenges perspective and space by installing huge prints that give you a sense of being inside while the image happens outside. This lecture left me livid, her work is so simple and elementary but yet she is a recognized artist who makes a living off her work. I feel that she is taking advantage of one good discovery she made. The work she did collaging the still tree over the blurred background is great but the piece "Horizon" is less than mediocre. I don't see how she can get away with a snapshot of woods and then put a strip of blue and green next to it and then get it in a gallery. What makes that different than my ten year old brother doing the same thing? What if I did it and had the same thought behind it, could I quit school and make a living of work like that?

NYC and the Met

This Saturday my art history class took a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. We spent a good bit of the day in the museum but I had some free time to go walk around the city. I got a few pictures of the art in the museum and some of people out in the city. Here's a link to my picasa slideshow http://picasaweb.google.com/DaveFauvell/NYC#slideshow/5397654799660274002

Lecture number seven

This weeks speaker was Sharon Louden, she dabbles in drawing, painting, film and installation but just considers herself just an artist. All of her work except the installations are very simple and bland. Throughout every piece of hers there is an elongated curve that she says is a figure or representation of a person. Her installation work is very awesome, she incorporates fiber optics and glow in the dark paint in most of her work. Her pieces are so popular that people actually buy parts of them after they run their course in the gallery. One family bought part of a piece and installed it in their living room. She was commissioned to make a chandelier and the finished work was very good. Her newest conquest is in the realm of film and animation and she is failing. The piece she showed, "The Bridge" the picture above is a still from the movie, was meant to make you feel as if you were in a drawing, I felt like I was watching a cheap bowling alley animation. Trying to stay true to her minimal style she avoids the bells and whistles and the eye catching effects. She needs to embrace all aspects of technology to advance her animations because right now they come across as poorly thought out and cheaply made.

3-D class

So this week the lecture was just an advising meeting so I decided to write on my 3-D class. As of now 3-D is my favorite class because its new and I have never done sculpture work before. I like the freedom to make pretty much anything and just really explore sculpture. My most recent project is a treat to work on. It is made of 2X4's and cardboard and is as tall as me, 6'5", and has multiple moving parts. The lecture last week reminded me a lot of my sculpture, art and engineering fused into one, granted my piece isn't as advanced as Brad Litwin's but the underlying idea is similar. A reason I really like this project is because I was and still am a tinkerer, I enjoy taking apart and putting back together things that are too complex for me to understand. My favorite thing to dismantle are remote controlled cars and from that I got a rudimentary idea of how you can get linear and circular motion from one rotating source.My sculpture is basically a stick figure with moving arms and a spinning head that are all powered from one crank near the base. So far my creation is coming along and should be finished by crit time but is nowhere near finished, when it is I'll have another post about the finished piece and how the crit went and i'll include a few pictures.

The Sixth Lecture

The speaker this week was Brad Litwin, a kinetic sculptor for 30 years and was "tickled to be here". This was the best lecture so far, Brad grew up alongside technology and watched it develop so he had a full view of technology. He had many jobs involving technology, he was a computer beta tester, a program designer, graphic designer, an artist, and an engineer. He started off as a kinetic sculptor 30 years ago and took a break for a while to raise a family, but he is now back creating wicked awesome machines. It was really interesting to get a quick, full history of computers from the eyes of an artist. Mr Litwin now uses computers to do blueprints for all of his creations but thirty years ago when he started off he didn't bother with blueprints and just built. He made one machine that way and realized how insane that is. The next machine had full blueprints and schematics hand drawn up and he continued to hand draw until computers could handle the complex ideas he weaved into his art. I liked how he fused art, computers and physics all into one great kinetic sculpture.

Lecture Number Five

The speaker for this week was Kate Cuffari, she works as an art conservator for the Philly Art Museum. She focused her lecture on materials and how technology has helped improve the longevity of materials. This lecture was better than the last two, its was easier to understand than Philip's and a lot more focused than the guy from Basekamp, and as an added bonus it was on a relevant topic. I really never thought about what materials I have used and hearing Kate talk about paintings that go through such drastic metamorphoses that museums decide to never show them again made me think more about what materials I use. She mentioned how her and her colleges have to work within the boundaries of the artist's intent, they can't restore something that an artist wanted to decay, it would ruin the meaning. She also mentioned how conservators are tasked to produce replicas that are used to display in place of the original to make sure that the original stays safe. As I was finishing up a 2-D project last night I was looking at the paper, glue and other materials and seeing if they were acid free and if they were light-fast all because of Kate Cuffari's lecture, I wanted to make sure that the work i spent too much time on would last .

The Fourth Lecture

This lecture was full of big aristocratic words that left me bewildered for the most part. The speaker was Philip Glahn, he expounded on art and technology's relationship, giving some examples from history of artists using technology to improve their art. Philip claimed that a devision of art and tech is a myth and that they have always been and will always be intwined. According to Glahn, when art and tech are separated a de-skilling occurs. The longer people try to separate the two the less skilled they become. I don't see how that is true, if an artist relies on only his hand to make a straight line instead of using a ruler he will become more skilled. I do agree that you cannot separate art and technology, the smarter we get the more ways we invent to produce art. Cavemen didn't have cameras and if we refused to allow cameras into the art world we would loose a major facet of art.

Illustrator

So in class on Monday we were being taught how to use Adobe Illustrator, I had some background knowledge of the program and decided to create an epic fight scene.

The 3rd Lecture

I was let down by this lecture, the speaker was not all too good. The information he was trying to relay seemed useful but was hidden in all of his side stories. From what I gathered, the organization he is with, Basekamp, connects with artists all over the world via skype. They help with brainstorming and getting people to work on huge projects. I think what they are doing is not a necessity but is great for networking and getting familiar with other artists. I wish the speaker would have talked more on what projects they have done and are planning on doing. Like the previous lecture the main use of technology was to network and communicate, I am hoping that the next lecture will be on how technology is used in art not how artist use it to talk to each other.

Walk, Ride, Adventure

On Labor day I decided to adventure through Philly, and it was a successful journey. On my way to meet up with my navigator, Katie, I was approached by a gang of segway-riding McDonald's promoters. They offered me coupons for free food and I gladly accepted. I met up with Katie and the adventure started. We got off the subway right under city hall. We circumvented city hall searching for the source of the soprano sax we were hearing. We found the musician, he was playing in the middle of city hall, the acoustics amplified his music so that the whole building could hear him. We then set off to find the love sculpture. We found it and we were disappointed. I knew it wasn't some giant monument that most people think it is, but it was still a let down. We decided to adventure to Rittenhouse Square and do some sketches. Again we were serenaded by a lone musician, this time it was a trumpeter. About and hour after we started sketching we heard another musical group, we decided to find them and continued our escapade. The group of musicians turned out to be a family band just jamming. It was mostly a brass and percussion ensemble, and they attracted a big crowd. We agreed the day was done, get on the train and went home.

The first real lecture

We had our first real lecture on Tuesday and it was alright. The speaker was Peter Hanley, who is the tech support manager. He focused the lecture around the internet and how we can use it to get our name out there. He stressed the importance of social networking and using sites like facebook, myspace and twitter to inform people of what you are doing as an artist. He also touched on the topic of selling our work. Sites like "lulu.com" and "etsy.com" are available to sell work and they are well known so you know people will see your work. I thought the lecture was informative for the most part but think he stressed the importance of selling online too much. Personally I think selling things to people in person is the best networking because you can interact with them in ways email will never let you do and build a relationship that will keep them coming back.

The first lecture

Yeah so it looks like Gerard set up a good series. It was just introduction today and it seems like the lectures will be informative. I am interested to hear what all the artists have to say about technology and what role it plays in art and design and how much they rely or abstain from it.