Liana Berzins: ADAD1001/1002

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Experiment: Speakers

For our group task we need speakers which are small enough to hide and are capable of connecting to our phones, while using the microphone and Speech Jammer app.

From top left, clockwise order: UE Ultimate Wireless, Logitech Z200, Liana’s speakers, Vision AV-1000

Results:

1. UE Ultimate Wireless - Could play songs from music app, but not compatible with the Speech Jammer App

2. Logitech Z200 - Worked perfectly with app

3. Liana’s speakers - Bluetooth meant sound was choppy, but was able to connect

4. Vision AV-1000 - No output

For now, we plan on borrowing two sets of the Logitech speakers, using Liana’s speakers and are looking for more speakers at home.

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(Extremely loud audio!)

Attempting to distort sound still further - playing a recording of dogs barking directly from one speaker into a microphone, and then repeating the process with each new recording until the sound becomes horrifically distorted. The sound may be too grating for our intended result, however it is an interesting recording nonetheless.

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Trying different ways of experimenting with distorting sound - this was a small recording of some bird sounds that was put through some basic sound filters, such as boosting bass and treble and amplifying reverb.

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Group Project: Research

As a group, we are planning on creating a work that utilises sound to transform the ordinary, everyday space of the classroom. Some artworks that have used sound to transform space in the past include Adam Basanta’s ‘The sound of empty space’ (2015) [image 1] and Alvin Lucier’s ‘I Am Sitting in a Room’ (1969) [image 2 - 2017 re-performance]. Basanta’s work features a rotating microphone passing over a number of speakers, picking up subtle pieces of feedback that are almost reminiscent of wind chimes or a glockenspiel. Lucier’s work, meanwhile, utilises the effect of space upon his voice to influence the way in which the recording of his voice is picked up and played back again and again until it becomes unintelligible noise, as opposed to ordinary speech. Both works contain interesting uses of playback, which I think could be incorporated into our project.

Sources:

Adam Basanta’s ‘The sound of empty space’ (2015), documentation found at: http://we-make-money-not-art.com/the_sound_of_empty_space_sound/

Alvin Lucier’s ‘I Am Sitting in a Room’ (1969), original recording found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jK29EArK3w

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Week 8: Experimentation

On Photoshop I tried out the collage technique on another of the world’s most expensive paintings - Cézanne’s The Card Players (1892-1896) - and have found that I like the results of the image more than when I first attempted it. The ability to resize and re-orient parts of the image allows for greater control over the outcome, and I would like to complete all my final images like this for the end product. I also found that I was able to print out, cut and then re-scan the man on the left to achieve the look I desired, which made the work a mix of both digital and traditional collage techniques. As I work, I’ll see if I shall redo the da Vinci lookalike using this technique, or if I’ll touch it up with digital means.

(I am compiling all sources of the images found into a final bibliography)

Image 7 Source: Paul Cézanne’s The Card Players (1892-1896), found at: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/most-expensive-paintings-ever-sold-including-157-million-nude-modigliani-2018-5?r=US&IR=T

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Week 8: Experimentation

Before starting on my final work, I wanted to test whether the collage effect works as well on photoshop as it does in physical form. For this I once again recreated Salvator Mundi, but this time I used images found on the websites of the world’s most popular magazines and publications. Overall, I feel that whilst the results are quite different, the general feeling the images produce are very similar. Furthermore, the digital database associated with each publication is quite significant, which is easier for me to work with.

I am hoping to create at least 6 of these images, and may further refine that of Salvator Mundi before the final submission.

( New image = bottom right, old image = bottom left )

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Week 8: Research

After my experiments last week, I wanted to look at more collage artists to investigate how cutting and re-contextualising images changes meaning. I found the works of John Stezaker to be very interesting in their simplicity, yet it is this simplicity that gives each of his works an interesting quality.His splicing of faces is often ‘imperfect’, yet it appears that he has intended it to be so as a new ‘character’ and feeling arises that tends to distort the atmosphere of the original photographs.

As I am hoping to further pursue the ‘recreation’ of the world’s most expensive paintings, I feel that creating a new atmosphere with each work will be essential to my final product.

Sources:

Image One - John Stezaear’s Blind I (2006), found at https://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/john_stezaker.htm

Image Two - John Stezaear’s He (Film Portrait Collage) III (2008), found at https://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/john_stezaker.htm

Image Three - John Stezaear’s Marriage (Film Portrait Collage) XLV (2007), found at https://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/john_stezaker.htm

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Week 7: Experimentation

For this experiment I wanted to combine what I looked at with regard to collage and to also further explore the idea of intellectual property and art. In my last experiment I began naming the images I came up with after famous western paintings, so for this experiment I wanted to take it a step further and attempt to recreate a famous painting in my own way, with other people’s images.

For this I chose the painting Salvator Mundi (c. 1500) attributed to Leonardo Da Vinci, because it is the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction to date, which I believe raises a number of interesting questions about ownership and rights on its own. I then selected another bunch of magazines that I found around the house and cut out the images from inside that I thought would help me to create a collage work that mimics Da Vinci’s original. My final product is a sad, wispy reflection of the painting, but it draws unmistakeable similarities which point to the fact that the idea is not my own.

For me, this raises more questions that I would like to explore. To what extent does a collaborator have to be another person? Can it be an idea or an inanimate object? Once an artist has passed away, to what extent is their art still their own intellectual property? I hope to unpack these questions through my work.

Image Source:

- Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi (c. 1500), found at https://www.christies.com/features/The-last-da-Vinci-Salvator-Mundi-8598-3.aspx

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Week 7: Research

Since I am still interested in the way that collage affects the aesthetic and meaning of an artwork I wanted to look at how collage artists have worked in the past. I found the works of German Dada artist Hannah Höch to be incredibly interesting, especially in terms of composition. I am thinking of employing a technique similar to this in order to cut and paste together a number of different images from different owners in a very loose form of collaboration in order to create a ‘new’ artwork of my own. With some more experimentation, I will see where this takes me next.

Sources:

Image 1- Hannah Höch’s Grotesque (1963), found at https://theartstack.com/artist/hannah-hoch/grotesque

Image 2 - Hannah Höch’s Die Starken Männer (The Strong Guys) (1931), found at https://theartstack.com/artist/hannah-hoch/die-starken-manner-str

Image 3 - Hannah Höch’s Untitled (1930), found at https://frieze.com/article/hannah-h%C3%B6ch-0

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Week 7: Experimentation

Taking inspiration from my research, I tried creating a set of ‘artworks’ using the images I found in some old magazines lying around my house, and then splicing them together and renaming them in order to create a new work that I can attribute to myself. For each of the images, I chose the title of a famous artwork and pasted it onto the frame so that they visually referred to one another. As a result, I’ve created a very loose ‘collaboration’ with both the original artists of the images and those of the titles. The fact that I have not cited either on any of the images, however, pushes the work more into the territory of plagiarism than collaboration, however it would be interesting to note other people’s opinions on this. 

For my final work, I would like to see how I can incorporate other people’s reactions to my work as a way of determining exactly how far I can push the definition of ‘collaboration’.

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Week 7: Research

This week I looked into the art practice of Richard Prince, who actively attempts to create works that blur the line between plagiarism and appropriation, which is what I would like to achieve in my next assessment. Although his reactions to the complaints being filed against him have been morally questionable, I find the concept behind his works to be relevant to me. His use of other people’s photographs, altering only their captions, in his exhibition New Portraits (2014) he essentially used and repurposed photos from his Instagram feed and, whilst not denying that the photos were not his, did not properly credit the owners either. This led to discussion surrounding the extent to which one owns an image, and also in a manner of speaking stretched the definition of ‘collaboration’ to breaking point, which I am working towards through my experiments.

I would like to see what materials I can work with to achieve this same effect, if not perhaps in this same manner, for my final work.

Image Source:

- Richard Prince’s New Portraits (2014) at the Gagosian Gallery, found at: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/richard-princes-instagrams

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Week 6 Task: Context and Time

Recreating the environmental works in the style of Andy Goldsworthy using rubbish inside the dumpster - a collaboration with space and the environment, and an indirect collaboration with others using their rubbish.

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Week 6: Experimentation

This week I played around with the idea of indirect collaboration with written/published texts a bit more - I took two of the books from my bookshelf (The Count of Monte Cristo and Anna Karenina) and read their blurbs, and then took the first page from each of them, taking out all words that were not included on the blurbs. This way, they ended up incredibly garbled and without a linear story. I found it interesting, however, to compare the general ‘story’ being told by the edited pages - The first page of Anna Karenina, which is about an unhappy family, starts with the words ‘happy --- happy--- happy’.

I’d like to continue looking into the way this type of indirect collaboration can actively warp meaning.

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Affect and Body Politics: Class activity

Exploring the relationship between chairs and the social constructs of the body.

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Assessment 1: Final Work

Chosen Question: How does collaboration create communities in Art & Design? What challenges to collaborative approaches face and what are some of the solutions?

Statement

Collaboration in some form is unavoidable in Art & Design. The act of ‘collaborating’ forms the basis of every art practice. Collaborating with another inevitably creates a connection or bond – a sense of ‘community’ in a loose sense that is recognised by the viewer. I am exploring the challenges and outcomes of indirect collaboration – the way in which both the freedoms and constraints surrounding the term ‘collaboration’ interact.

One of the most prominent challenges posed by collaboration is the prospect of reconciling two different visions into a final work, and the threat of a disjointed product. My poster is an exploration of this idea. In constructing it, I looked through magazines and newspapers and chose the images and words that I believed the editors were attempting to make the most noteworthy. According to my interpretation, this was the colour blue, and two words from separate headlines: ‘front’ and ‘sight’. I crafted the poster from bottom to top, starting with the shapes from the pages at the front and working my way towards the end of the newspapers. As I ran out of pages, I also left blanks toward the top of the poster. I then pasted the two words in order of perceived importance from top to bottom.

In this way, I worked in pseudo-collaboration with the editors, writers and photographers of the newspapers by attempting to glean meaning from their publications and interpret it for myself. This in turn raised questions regarding ownership of the content I used. Is it fair for me to claim the work as my own, when the images themselves and any meaning behind them do not originally belong to me?

I believe that these questions are not resolved so easily. My experimentation and research so far display that they are an integral part of collaboration, and that the realisation of a collaborative artwork is dependent on the interaction with and resolution of these issues.

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Week 4: Experimentation

For this poster experiment I tried approaching it with a more solid vision of what I was trying to achieve in mind, however without neglecting the ‘randomness’ of selection provided by the use of newspaper and magazine cuttings.

I started by choosing a newspaper that was A2 in size, and then (taking inspiration from Kurt Schwitters’ works) cut the frame from around it so that I had a solid template within which to work. I then selected a number of newspapers and magazines from my recycling bin and began to cut out chunks of every plain or mostly plain blue section from the pages.

I chose blue due to it being the most prominent colour I saw on the front page of the Australian, and I wished to give the paper, and therefore indirectly its authors and editors) a ‘say’ in the direction of my work. From here I arranged and taped the different pieces of paper together, trying to make them resemble images commonly associated with the colour blue - the ocean, the sky, waves, clothing - but deliberately leaving the form vague and entirely up to interpretation.

After this I picked two pages from my pile at random and cut out the headline-words that stood out the most to me: front and sight. I placed these within the collage of blues first and foremost to create contrast, but also to create a false sense of meaning within the work - the viewer will now look at the poster and attempt to decipher the combination of words in conjunction with the form when there is essentially no true meaning behind them at all.

I think that this has finally allowed me to achieve the idea that I am working towards for assessment 2. I am attempting to challenge ownership, as well the problems of clarity and cohesiveness that can arise from collaborative works, and so my decision to ‘collaborate’ indirectly with the editors of the newspapers by selecting and using the main focal points of their publications raises questions about the nature of collaboration as a whole. Are we all ‘collaborators’ in the sense that we continuously reference and reuse and borrow the ideas of others? If this is the case, can meaning be drawn from the original intentions of the editors in my work? This raises further questions considering ownership of ideas, of content and also of intention, which I am interested to pursue further as I keep working through to the next assessment!