The Oval

A blog for who thinks there is a connection between Art and Science. The mind which works according to scientific laws is the one producing the art.

[edithlaviandante]

If a human being was alone on desert island, without remembering the existence of other people, would he or she produce art?

[edithlaviandante]

The Chinese artist Xu Bing (徐冰) has been exploring the implications of written language for 30 years.

With his first large installation, Book from the Sky, Xu creates a language similar to written Chinese in its complexity and reference to a long history and tradition (literary writing holds, in Chinese perception, a distinct role and higher position compared to the communicative counterpart, consisting in a sort of high rank language within the language itself), but devoided of its primary function, the meaning. Xu carved typesetting blocks reproducing the characters of his invention -derived from modified existing Chinese characters-, manufacturing books by means of the traditional block printing technique. The artist evokes in this way the dissociation between language and communication, making a classical text that cannot be read by "anyone on Earth".

The disassembling of the written language into its units continues in the creation of a Squared English Calligraphy. Here, the artist collects the composing features of written Chinese, its gathering a word into a single symbol (character) which can in turn be disassembled into single components repeating across different symbols, and applies them to the English language, using the Latin letters as the units of a "character", which reproduces a whole word. For example, the three characters in the picture above read "Friend of Peace".

His investigation of the distinction between the means of writing and the concept expressed is carried on with "Birds Flying". The regression is that of the elaborated character 鸟, bird, to its original pictographic form, portraying the bird itself, through the taking of and flight of a flock.

Xu makes an attempt to create a language of communication comprehensible to the largest possible number of people, relying on a base of knowledge and experience that is shared by most, in the Book from the Ground. The language is composed by worldwide used icons and should thus cross the bridge between language and live experience, at least eliminating the time gap between the drawing of the word and today's use that exists for classic languages.  “Book from the Ground is a novel written in a ‘language of icons’ that I have been collecting and organizing over the last few years. Regardless of cultural background, one should be able to understand the text as long as one is thoroughly entangled in modern life.” 

[edithlaviandante]

Year of the Dog, 王玉琦 (Wang Yuqi)

Realism, especially in painting, though beautiful it does not usually strike for all the parallel meanings running beneath the subject. As a first look, then, you would be impressed by the skills of technique displayed in this work. However, if you look at the details hidden inbetween the folds of light, there are the hints to understand further.

A surprising fact about the artist is the almost complete lack of information and comments about his life and works. A part from being portrayed as one of the major painters of 20th century realism and member of the main American and Chinese painting societies, almost nothing is said about him in the web. Born in 1958 in China, now mainly exhibiting in his own country and in the US, where he lives, he follows the influence of pre-raphaelites, Rossetti and Burne-Jones.

http://maherartgallery.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/yuqi-wang-1958-chinese-portrait-painter.html

[edithlaviandante]

Priming

Something I had often heard about is "priming". Basically, it's the induction of a memory in an individual despite him or her being unaware of the cues. The most interesting factor is that this memory is not a rigid piece of notion inserted into the mind, but it can trigger specific actions (probably through the associations it arises in the mind). This is why it is widely used and loved by the artists of commercials (have a look at this: https://www.fidelityworldwideinvestment.com/middle-east/news-insight/behavioural-investing/detail.page?whereParameter=the-power-of-priming ). But their effect could be much more interesting. Dijksterhuis and van Knippenberg, in 1998, conduced an experiment in which the gave participants cues (they "primed" them) of one of two stereotypes:professor and hooligan, supposedly associated to intelligence and, let's say, low intelligence, respectively. When the participants then played a knowledge game, similar to Trial Pursuit, those primed with the learned stereotype performed better than the second group. However, when a similar experiment was conducted (again by Dijksterhuis, 1998) using Albert Einstein and Claudia Schiffer, two "extreme" examples of the two cleverness stereotypes (not Claudia Schiffer as a hooligan), the result was opposite. 

There is a range of implications that can follow from these considerations. First of all, on an individual level, the boundary between intelligence, knowledgeability, stupidity and ignorance is less obvious. The cues a person undergoes during their life influence their behaviour and personality and their life, in a circle, influences these cues. The influence acting on the cues works both selectively on which ones will be encountered (the where, what, who in life) and on how they will be -unconsciously- interpreted. On a higher level, these cues might work on wider ensembles of people -such as societies. Cues that are stronger in a culture will tend to perpetuate and those who are newly, diffusedly introduced will tend to introduce new patterns of behaviour. An interesting point to look at cultural differences from.

[edithlaviandante]

Reality and Perception

Let's refer to space as our perception of the environment we move and act in. As different people are prone to isolate different details and give differing overall readings of a situation, the "real" environment, after passing through our senses, must also pass through our mind. This is where the set of information just received is more likely to be interpreted in different ways by different individuals, more than it would be diversely organised by what we call our "five senses". So, what actually influences our perception?

[edithlaviandante]

L'ARTE DELLA FELICITA (THE ART OF HAPPINESS) - Trailer HD (Italian/English, 2013) - ANIch

http://www.animationsfilme.ch - Zwei Brüder. Zwei Kontinente. Zwei Leben. Eine Seele. Unter einem düsteren Himmel voller apokalyptischer Warnungen in einem d...

The film is now running in the "Director of the Year" category at the Cartoon Movie Festival in Lyon.

[edithlaviandante]

L'Arte della Felicità_L'incontro tra Sergio e lo Speaker radiofonico

L'Arte della Felicità di Alessandro Rak (84', Italia, 2013, Animazione) Facebook Fan Page: https://www.facebook.com/ArtedellaFel... Twitter: #ArteFelicita ww...

The Art of Happiness:

Full length animation film born from the idea of the producer Luciano Stella and the comic writer and video maker Alessandro Rak, but created together with a team of independent Neapolitan talents. The start point of this production is an intercultural discussion event organised by Stella in the Southern Italian city, where many world secular and religious intellectuals are welcomed every year for a common reflection on existentials themes, under the title of "The Art of Happiness", "L'Arte della Felicità". The overall idea of the theme, without many more specifications or limits, was then handed over to Rak, who developed the film. 

[edithlaviandante]

wayne krantz - specific people,places,things or ideas

1993 Long to be loose Wayne Krantz

Although I've just started with jazz, this album has been the soundtrack of my last few days. No pattern in a piece of jazz.

[edithlaviandante]

The first post in this blog will be of my favourite building in the city of Beijing: the NCPA, National Centre for the Performing Arts, by French architect Paul Andreu. Its shape is where the name of this blog comes from. And this is a post about space. Space as the right to move and gaze freely as far as your eyes can and to build in that space with your own parameters.

http://www.arcspace.com/features/paul-andreu-architecte/national-centre-for-the-performing-arts/