See the world through ART

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Words on the Street

Linda L. Davis

Project #5, 2019

This project was about “taking inspiration from Holzer and Montgomery and a series of individual pieces that also function as a stylistic whole”. I took the assignment and came up with the literal “words on the street” and decided to print my sayings on magnet paper and post on my truck. It is the best way to move the words around and get seen in public. I came up with the three sayings, however, the saying “Look beyond What You See” has been used before. It is funny how so many people can think of the same sayings. The other two sayings are original I believe.

Look Beyond What You See

Seeing Within Is To Not Go Without

Visions Become Clear When You Choose To See

I also decided to post each on Facebook on May 10th (3 days ago) to my business page and as of now I got the following likes: Visions - 54 people, Seeing - 10 people, Look - 26 people.

[realsurrealfeel]

Art by John Speaker

[4directionsheart]

Linda L. Davis

Reading #5, 2019 Part 2 of 2

Thoughts about the following article:

http://the-talks.com/interview/robert-montgomery/

The first thing in this article that catches my attention is that Robert makes a very important statement “you should be able to make money publishing poetry books”, and I really back this idea. I am frustrated with the current value system (or lack there of) that writers/artists do not get paid much and that sports figures get paid a lot sometimes millions.

Robert also has a good point about using advertising real estate to fill with words that start conversations with people instead of speaking to them like advertising does, creating a place where people start talking and thinking. Excellent ideas.

He also mentions how feeling sad is a part of the process of creating poetry, and I would agree, I think the sadness opens many doors for feelings that are ready to be put to some expression and form.

[4directionsheart]

Linda L. Davis

Reading #5, 2019 Part 1 of 2

Thoughts about the following article:

https://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/jenny-holzer

This article helped me put a face to someone that along with others are making statements in which we read and see on a daily basis, and not necessarily know where the thoughts come from. Places like t-shirts and marble benches. This article was helpful in getting insight into why people post in public like she does. It was inspiring to read about a woman who was one of the first people to use the new technology (LED lights) to create public expression. I found it also amazing that she chose to use redacted government documents to express her thoughts artistically and the article brought to life that during war times, people did or do turn towards art to express the deep feelings inside. The government redacted documents struck me in this article because of how much talk time in the news right now covers documents that are redacted.

Are we facing another surge of artistic expression in these times?

[visual-poetry]

by anna gray & ryan wilson paulsen (+)

[4directionsheart]

Performance Art

Linda L. Davis

Project #4, 2019

One Minute Performance Art

Theme: To Burn

The theme of this self-performance is “To Burn”. The music I used was a song called “Burn” by Ellie Goulding. I filmed it in my back yard within my labyrinth. At the beginning of the video I showed the contrast of light and dark and had the fire burning in focus. I then filmed the remainder out of focus purposefully to give the feeling of being in a different state of mind. I wore white to demonstrate the purity of this event. I danced in celebration to pay homage to the fire, then burned some papers that I had for several years, “a letting go” of the old. As you may have detected at the 40 seconds mark, I have a few frames in the video that looks like I was stepping out of role of celebration into the role of letting go by tossing the papers. For this assignment I filmed over 2 hours of me starting the fire and keeping it burning and tossing more of my old things into the fire. I had filmed most of it in focus but this piece seemed very representative of what it feels like to make changes in my life by using alchemy. I was pleased with my performance.

[4directionsheart]

Exercise #4 Performance Verbs

[4directionsheart]

Response #4

In Performance: A Hidden History by Roselee Goldberg

Roselee pointed out what may be obvious, however I never thought about it this way -  that it invoked contemplation about how art tends to emerge during the political and social times. Roselee talked about the “unexpected combination of events” and I think that really is the key to live performance and it really is the key to living our life every day. We dance to the unexpected events in our life. I found that most of this essay was hard to read, but I understand the essence of it as it talked about history of performance and the lack of official art as compared to “live art”.

[4directionsheart]

Response to movie about Marina Abramovic

The movie was very intense. It demonstrated many different ways of being in the world. You could feel the emotion from each of those that sat across from her.

The key that I came away from this is that performance happens in the moment. It takes preparation of doing nothing in order to allow art to emerge from us. This video opened my eyes to seeing that art is ever changing and it can be about the artist and the audience being vulnerable.

I understood one of the do’s and don’ts that she mentioned, one being “don’t copy other artists”, this really gives us an opening and invitation to be authentic.

Marina states so many people have so much pain and when she said “it’s not about me anymore, cause very soon I’m just a mirror of their own self” struck me as being very profound...

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Vanishing and Becoming

Linda L. Davis

Project #3, 2019

Theme: Abstraction, Duration, Light, Sound

Technique: Premier Pro

This video was created in Premier Pro with numerous texts, video lights, and effects. I pulled in Amazing light show from YouTube at the very beginning to get the feeling set and then added a graphic Starry Sky to get the visual of outer space. The song is Goodbye Milky Way by Enigma. I used so many effects including the following: Stylize Roughen Edges, Strobe Light, Emboss, Lightning, Lighting Effects, Luma Key, Ultra Key, Twirl, Color Key, VR Projection and many other types.

The inspiration came from Sean Cubitt as it relates to the projection. I decided on objects in the sky and universe to incorporate the feeling of being way out of one’s element and understanding. In the universe do we really know what is real and what is not? Is it all real?

[4directionsheart]

4D Art Class Video Editing/Music

Exercise #3 2019

Linda L. Davis

Technique: Creating/Editing Music Video

I used Adobe Premier to put this video together. I used the song Circle of Life and clips from Native American, Aztec, Mayan, Peruvian, Hawaiian, Ulukhaktok, and Australian dancers. My intention was to make it inspirational with the sense of community and diversity.

I used a sunrise video and duplicated it and reversed the movie to have it look like a sunset. I had 2 layers of video and 1 layer of audio. I had fun experimenting with the transition effects too. It was a very fun exercise.

[4directionsheart]

Lion King - Circle of Life Parody (Virtual Life)

I was searching for material and songs for my assignment and came across this. Thought I would share!

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Vanishing and Becoming

Author Sean Cubitt

Reading Response #3 by Linda L. Davis

The author Cubitt begins his writing by giving us insight into ways in which reflections and shadows played a part in art from stories/tales/myths from the past. He discusses that a form of artwork was created from the shadow cast upon a wall and traced from the outlines. He discusses a story about the Buddha in which he was supposed to be painted but the light (enlightenment) was so bright coming from the Buddha, the artist could not look directly at the Buddha, instead, they went near water where it created a reflection and that reflection was captured in art. Another story brought to the surface is about Plato and the Cave in The Republic and how the people only were given the ability to see the projections instead of the actual people or things and to them it was reality, but is this true?

Cubitt inspires us to contemplate shadow (without light) and reflection (projected light). This insight of projection can be visited with the ancestors and their art forms. Within psychology is the metaphor of shadows and reflections as it deals with the emotions and how we project things (our feelings) onto others that may be our own inner desires or fears. Is the shadow an illusion or reality?

This reading brings to mind what it feels like to be in the “dark night of the soul” where life feels all grey and deep shadows within us emerge. Some of the most profound insight comes from those times where it feels close to death and yet it is life, and it is another place where art and ourselves can be birthed. And… it is when we project light on the darkness that we can really see.

I find this very statement to be very thought provoking and worthy of contemplation, Cubitt states “The absence of the subject is as profound a consequence as the disappearance of the object in projection”.

[4directionsheart]

Time & Motion

Reading Response #3

By Linda L. Davis

According to the author Berrett in Making Art Form and Meaning, the chapter on time and motion encompasses new ways to consider time. We all know the time in which we have to be somewhere. In our everyday lives it is considered something we do. Barrett awakens us to another way of thinking of time in terms of art and media. He defines time as “the continuum of experience in which events actually or apparently take place…use to specify events”. The “apparently” part of this statement that he discusses can be very abstract. Do events happen or do we perceive that things are happening and they don’t? Is it all an illusion? Some people have theories about every event that is happening is happening all at once, in this moment. Time can be shown in art as chronological events or a sequence of events or as a narrative. Barrett talks about actual time as measured by a clock, and scope being what we can see can happen in time with a sequence of events presenting themselves so we can think about the events. He gives us something to contemplate as time being in sync with the events that can happen in nature. Environmental events in nature change from moment to moment, things grow, wind blows and moves things, snow melts, all consider a duration of time. We can take a snap shot and say -- that happened.

In the digital age we can now use what is called storyboards which are used in film and video to tell stories. Storyboards convey ways to say this happens, now this happens, and this is the next thing that happens, a sequence of events in time chronologically referring to as implied time and using media to convert the events of a storyboard to recorded time as represented by a digital story or event in time. It can be depicted as slow or fast as a passage of time. There are many techniques that can represent time with digital images and it is up to the artist to convey this meaning with any of these aspects of time.

[adavlantes]

The Loop Project (#2)-

I decided to do these GIFs on various weather types (and one fire) because I didn’t want to do any movie GIFs because I thought a lot of other people would do that subject (and I also couldn’t think of a good movie to get GIFs from). I also really value dynamic weather because I’m originally from California, so something other than sunshine is just really awesome to me.

I also included one of fire because it can be really beautiful to look at, but super destructive if not contained. I honestly think that might be really metaphoric about certain things in life, but that’s not the point of this assignment to get into that.

I also thought these GIFs would just be really nice and calming to have on my computer. Most of these GIFs are from calming sounds videos.

[desjroberts-blog]

This is an interesting and different subject matter than what I’ve seen anyone else do, I like how you still got the repetition of this wind blowing aspect to show in every GIF.

[4directionsheart]

I think your series is beautiful. I also enjoy the weather and your choices evoke calmness and some some anxiety about our weather patterns. Well done!

[deborahson4d]

[timelytea2000]

I enjoy the stillness of the cup and the pouring of the drinks. It gives an oddly satisfying and somewhat calm feeling.

[4directionsheart]

I love this series! I would have never thought of it.  It is mesmerizing.

[taylorcozart]

Haunting of Hill House Gif Series

For this project I wanted to make gifs that stood out from the rest and spoke for themselves. With this being said, I chose a great TV series in my opinion to help make this project beautiful. Haunting of Hill House I think is the perfect oxymoron of beautifully sorrowful. Making a forever looping gif is the perfect way to capture a feeling, a moment, or a scene of something that you want someone to internalize. I feel as if gifs can be viewed a memories good or bad. To me sometimes I have good memories that will loop over and over again in my head and the same goes with bad memories or even thoughts and I feel as if this gif series captures these bad thoughts/memories. Along with this I think that Haunting of Hill House’s scary scenes make for amazing and thought provoking gifs. Ultimately I feel as if I have not become a part of a beautiful new series of art a new movement that I never thought of before. Making gifs is such a unique and beautiful art. 

[timelytea2000]

Great series! I have yet to watch the series, but from what I do know I believe you captured the creepy and eerie mood perfectly!

[4directionsheart]

These are scary! I like what your choices. The rocking chair is brilliant!