Karla Mardon @karlamardonadad-blog - Tumblr Blog

ADAD1002 Concept Statement

Cindy, Karla, Coco and Alicia

Desire is engrained in our human condition and it controls most if not all of our thoughts and actions. It mobilises, changes and adds to daily life. We wanted to explore the pervasiveness of desire and how it influences our daily activities, through the creation of a collection of video diary entries. These clips are based on the clinical trial of products that are designed to eliminate our ability to process emotion. The company producing these products believes that emotion distracts people from completing tasks and being productive. Through the use of these products we are no longer distracted by our human tendencies and ultimately are stripped of our emotive capabilities.

Inspired by Black Mirror, our video questions the effects of our dependence on technology and our consumerist inclinations. These impacts are not far from what artificial intelligence and smart assistance technologies could be doing to humans.

The documentary ‘Human’ (2015) by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, reflects aspects that we seek to question in our video, particularly exploring what it means to be human. The clip with José Mujica highlights his perspectives on consumerism and why we have the need to collect material items.

In our video, desire is both being eradicated and brought to fruition. By letting these products remove our desire, are we not falling victim to the company’s desire for perfection?

José Mujica, Human documentary

[group assessment] Inspiration

https://www.forbes.com/sites/karlmoore/2017/06/26/for-millennials-thinking-and-emotions-are-equals-more-or-less/#a9c867b76f23

[group assessment]

initial concepts

Event ideas?

- Advertisement?

- Video-based

- Annihilation film - as in desire, beauty and dystopia

- Playtest - Black Mirror (Netflix) - Stimulation

- “Have you ever desired something so bad?”

- Framing desire as an addiction

- Wanting something that we can’t have

- Incorporating an advertisement

- Recovery groups

→ Start with a rolling TV of advertisement

→ Everyone tell their stories

Weekly Concepts

- Affect and body politics

- Context and time

- Value

- Static, noise, interference, glitch

- Desire

- Reflection

- Desirous objects??? → Objects that we desire, list.

- Beauty, money, attention

Definition of Desire:

In other words, desire makes things happen. We can think of desire as the movement towards something (an object, idea, image) that it brings that something into being. Art and design often explore this productive potential of desire, playing with the idea of desire as something that mobilises, changes, and adds to daily life.

- Desire can allow a person to forget the ‘real world’ [hyperreality - inability to distinguish simulation from reality, particularly in technologically advanced postmodern societies]

Inspiration *to watch*

Annihilation

Black Mirror Season Three “Playtest”, “San Junipero”

Gucci x Frieze ‘Second Summer of Love’ Video Series (Aesthetics, Creative Direction)

Maniac - desire to find happiness [Hyperreality]

- ‘Ad buddy’

- Desire to find a pattern, get away from chaos

- “The only thing that matters is what’s real”

Description of miniseries

Annie Landsberg and Owen Milgrim are two strangers who are drawn to the late stages of a mysterious pharmaceutical trial. Each has a different reason for participating in the experiment -- she is disaffected and aimless, fixated on broken relationships with her mother and sister, while he has struggled throughout his life with a disputed diagnosis of schizophrenia. The radical treatment, using pills that the inventor claims can repair anything about the mind, draws Annie, Owen and 10 other subjects into a three-day drug trial that they're told will permanently solve all of their problems, with no complications or side effects. Unfortunately, things don't go as planned.

Episode 2 25mins 45secs - video sequence of scientists explaining the pills [introduction of reality turning into a hyperreality]

- Desire for change in oneself

- Scientists desire to ‘fix’ others with the pills, so they can eventually fix themselves

Concepts

Infomercial

- talking about ‘desire’ as a product

- advertising an event to promote this product

- desire within a hyperreal context?

Utopia

- Collection of objects

- Advertisement/spokesperson roleplay? Or play?

1. What is our Utopia about?

2. What are our roles?

3. What are we promoting/advertising?

4. What objects will we create?

→ Expand our understanding of desire

beyond consumerist frameworks to

something that drives cultural and social

formations.

- Trial subjects

- Company trying to build a new utopia, building technology to… suppress desire?

- Desire is a distraction to a human’s purpose in life

- Each of the objects can be examples of ways objects can work in different scenarios

- Objects essentially sedate the subjects not to feel desire

VIDEO PLOT

- Subjects are desensitised, robotic, mundane, low energy levels

- As days go on the subjects lose their emotion and become more emotionless we become more reliant on the objects

- Video diary of subjects using the objects [shot over the period of a month] - can edit to only need to show a few days over that timeframe

cindy8750

Broken Magazine perf.

cindy8750

Broken Magazine

[ASSESSMENT TWO] final work

CONCEPT STATEMENT

My project revolves around the research question ‘Can creative acts be rebellious when rebellion has become canonised in art, design and media histories? What would a contemporary creative rebellion look like?’. Usually when we associate a rebellious act to something it tends to be intense. Rebellion, especially in contemporary context where it has become a canonised concept, can be quite powerful. In turn, I took a step back to take a different approach to that.

I began to look at the idea of role reversal and perspective within rebellion. On a smaller scale, we perform rebellious acts all the time, which is as simple as having an opposing view on an idea. With rebellion being described as resistance and/or opposing ideas that are mainstream or more widely known, I wanted to approach the work on an Australian context, taking popular ideas of our country and its history, and therefore reversing the roles within that. Taken from the original painting by J.A. Gilfillan, - which portrays Captain Cook and the First Fleet ‘colonising Australia’ - I wanted to use that idea of changing the perspective of the work itself as a point which then changes the perspective of the audience. I used Illustrator to play with this idea, first by quickly outlining the original painting and repurposing that on the application with the paint tool. In the work I then depict the Indigenous Australians in the role of the British, and Captain Cook presenting the drinks to them. I kept the image quite simple by using block colours to focus on the meaning behind the artwork, and allowing the audience to interpret it succinctly. The use of digital art is a contemporary way of portraying artworks and visual ideas, so I wanted to use that binary of portraying a historical context in a contemporary medium format.

By considering the other perspective and interpreting that in a visual manner allows the audience to reconsider the parameters of the original work and the ideas that are presented. This work is then an act of rebellion in terms of presenting the question ‘what would happen if the roles were reversed?’. The 26th January is a day that most of Australia want to celebrate, however, when you think about the idea on which it is based upon, it isn’t necessarily a day to celebrate at all within the Indigenous Australian community - who have been living on this land thousands of years before the First Fleet arrived. When first discussing this idea of rebellion in contemporary practice, Alex and I agreed it is difficult to consider what is true rebellion and what isn’t in contemporary practice as there is so much ‘rebellious’ content being produced. With this in mind, contemporary rebellion in art and design practice can be more concerned with aesthetic rebellion, so I wanted to solely focus on the meaning behind the work more.

The key concept that I am attempting to achieve is breaking down separation and an ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality. One moment in history and/or one action can entirely change the way we see our own history and the way we live in today’s society. There is no way to change the way that history occurred, because we can’t physically go back to it, but by acknowledging the grounds we live on, considering the other perspective and creating conversation, we can come to a consensus and live on common ground. This idea can also be a metaphor on a global context, as an ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality is still prevalent around the world.

My work isn’t entirely about ‘solving’ the major problems of the world, but rather bringing them to the surface and presenting ideas that we sometimes look over because it is a taboo topic. These ideas then allow a change in the audience’s perspective on ideas that we may see to be the norm and day-to-day life. Exploring these properties is as valid as creating one piece of work that attempts to solve the major problems of the world, as it allows the audience to interpret the work themselves and in their own way, producing unique ideas, aesthetics and solutions on any particular topic.

Key artist inspiration

Justin Richburg

Places historical and contemporary ideas in his artworks, creating something that gives a shock factor to the audience, and recognise what it is that we do, whether as an audience, as part of the digital age, pop culture movies and celebrities, politics

Campbell Walker

Digital artwork about pop culture, putting popular ideas as visual artwork - is satirical, however also allows audience to think about our current surroundings, noticing things and ideas that we wouldn’t usually see

Jess Presley, Blood Money

Placing Indigenous Australians on currency

Mary Edelson, Some Living Women Artists/Last Supper

Placing notable female artists on the famous Da Vinci painting ‘The Last Supper’

[assessment two] process

screen recording of digital drawing process on Illustrator

[assessment two] process

outlining drawn sketches

[assessment two] process

original painting - J.A. Gilfillan, 19th century

quick outlines of space and people

References for images - final work

http://time.com/4275901/australian-university-unsw-english-invasion/

http://content.skwirk.com.au/content/upload/images/Secondary/VIC/year_10/sose_history/becoming_aus/tp1/ch4/image6_reserves.jpg

https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/explainer/explainer-what-treaty

[assessment two]

After some and brainstorming, I have decided to take a different approach towards my final work. In some ideas that I have written down I thought of the idea of role reversal, which can be rebellious in the sense of creating a different perspective on topics that are seen taboo and controversial.

Particularly inspired by Ryan Presley’s 'Blood Money’ that Biljana reblogged

Mary Beth Edelson ‘Some Living Women Artists/Last Supper’ 1972

[assessment two] experimentation

putting the heads of the Trump family on top of the Kardashians bodies - role/power of reality television

inspired image of Kardashians

rough sketches of Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump

[assessment two] exploring ideas

[assessment two] inspiration

JUSTIN RICHBURG - Political satire and combining politics with pop culture

instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justin_richburg/?hl=en

Richburg’s work has been considered controversial due as it raises issue typically considered ‘taboo’ to the rest of the audience, particularly on topics of African Americans and pop culture . This can also be an interesting take on the idea of ‘rebellion’, where the message in the work can make the audience feel uncomfortable if it allows them to rethink their own approach to situations and topics.

[assessment two] Inspiration and Experimentation

Changing perspective

Morphing two ideas as they become one

In the idea of changing perspective and morphing ideas, I thought of President Donald Trump, and his commencement speech at Liberty University, where Jimmy Fallon - in one of his monologues - showed a video of similarities between his speech and character ‘Elle Woods’ on the movie Legally Blonde. As well as this, Melania Trump proposed a speech at the Republican National Convention (2016) that sounded so similar to Michelle Obama’s Democratic National Convention (2008).

Trump commencement speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSLyFiHOC5I

Comparing Michelle Obama and Melania Trumps speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcbiGsDMmCM

[assessment two] research

After the class work with Edward, I decided to explore the idea of sound further. I am going to take on the idea of perspective [inspired by Charrière’s work], and continuing with my previous focus on news media and entertainment, highlighting the ways it can be ‘rebellious’.

Perspective in rebellion is quite prominent, as ‘manipulating’ or creating a different view towards something or someone is a rebellious act.

In thinking about this, I thought about the way that news media and entertainment media is portrayed towards the same audience. If you look at it closely, news and entertainment media operate in the same manner, where they only tend to show what they want you to see.

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