Studio Art Spring 2019

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Elements of p4a1 process to finished work

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Final Response - Scott McCloud "Time Frames"

In the chapter “Time Frames,” Scott McCloud delves into the mechanisms at play in comics which can be used to show time and motion. Although we have a tendency to assume that one panel or one single image is illustrative of a singular moment, there are methods that comics artists use to change perceived duration. Repetition of panels, different panel shapes and sizes, use of dialogue/captions, and different formatting among other things can all change the meaning of the story for readers. The manipulation of these different components can completely shift the timeline of a comic in part because reading comics requires some degree of imagination, like when readers perceive motion because of closure they get from multiple panels. Basically any aspect of a comic can be altered to change the intended meaning of the panel, and this in turn changes the viewer’s understanding. This allows for a lot of creative freedom in illustration to ensure that the moments of a comic are interpreted as they were meant to.

One of the things I found most interesting about McCloud’s explanation of these methods in comics was the way that he describes memory as a tool. Every panel as it is read is representative of the present moment, and yet memory of previous panels remains as the reader moves forward, and this can be compounded with certain stylistic choices. Unlike other media, comics show time as they are read but the past and future remain visible on the page. Even while interacting with “now,” the before and after can also be seen and this can change how we read the images. I love the idea of memory as playing a role in the composition because while I have read comics before and have probably subconsciously participated in this, I have never been totally aware of it. Memory in comics can give context for the panels to come or just enable readers to identify where and when they are through an interaction with multiple panels.

While doing this reading, I thought a lot about how I could implement some of these ideas into our final project for the course. I did not seriously consider how much the composition of the piece as a whole would affect the story-line, but I think this could be a really interesting and powerful tool in creating the narrative of the final piece. I love the idea that a story could take on multiple meanings depending on the way it is read, and I want to push that idea further in my exploration of nine images. McCloud complicates the notion of linear time and visibly linear progressions by messing with shape/format in a way I found really interesting and refreshing. This reading definitely gave me a lot to think about with regard to time, space, and viewer interaction for the last project.

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Response to Dangerous Border Crossers

Throughout this excerpt of Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s work Dangerous Border Crossers, he explores the different realms in which art (and artist) exist and interact. He describes borders, both literal and figurative, that create divisions many struggle to navigate. Performance art for Gómez-Peña is powerful because of the freedom that comes with uncertainty and lack of restriction: “a conceptual territory that grants us special freedoms (aesthetic, political and sexual) often denied to us in other realms…” (51). His descriptions of performance pieces characterize the actual performances themselves as border crossers, facing different challenges from members of the art world than from "involuntary audiences." One of the main intentions is to step outside of the art world entirely, and in this way, “venture into unfamiliar territory” (51). The work itself interacts with audiences differently in different contexts partially because of the people who occupy those spaces, but also because of the social/political meaning of the locations themselves. In this sense, the shifting of setting shifts the meaning of the piece as well, and the work takes on its own meaning from what Gómez-Peña calls “the friction created by these overlapping worlds” (52).

In the description he gives of “The Cruci-Fiction,” one of his famous public interventions, Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Roberto Sifuentes symbolically crucify themselves on wooden crosses in front of an invited audience in San Francisco. Dressed as “undocumented bandito” and “generic gang member” respectively, the crucifixion was representative of the actual lived discrimination and abuses against Latinx people. They performed this piece to spark a media buzz, but actually endangered themselves in the process by remaining on the crosses for three hours. The interaction from the audience with the work was meant to be the realization that they had to take action and get the men down but this became evident much later than the performers had expected. While it was provocative, Gómez-Peña recounts his doctor pointing out his “heroic stupidity” (53) in coming close to death for the sake of the performance.

When reading the descriptions Gómez-Peña gives of performance art in general and of his own pieces, it is difficult to reconcile the intrigue and discomfort that I feel. While I think that the importance of the work is obvious theoretically, it is hard for me to swallow the horror in imagining these men dying in front of an audience in the name of art. As a political performance piece, “The Cruci-Fiction” was successful in creating international publicity, but at what cost to the performers? At what cost to the audience? Though they escaped relatively unscathed, Gómez-Peña and Sifuentes had put their lives in the hands of an unsuspecting audience whose inaction had almost made them spectators to the death of the performers. This brings up a lot of questions regarding complicity and responsibility for me, and while I understand the symbolism, I cannot shake the feeling of disturbance this leaves me with. Performance art is clearly compelling and complicated, especially in the navigation of the different spaces it occupies. This being said, Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s piece leaves me unsettled. Does the end justify the means? Does he even know?

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Final Reading Response

The final reading concerned how comics display time and motion. The work was written by Scott McCloud who is himself a cartoonist. When it comes to displaying time one of the major focuses was on the usage of the panels themselves. Spacing the panels differently from each other or from the edges gave different lengths of time, with closer panels suggesting more urgency. Additionally, panels could be repeated to show long durations of time. The size of the panels also contributes to the reader’s sense of time. A larger or longer panel may convey more time passing. Multiple scenes could also be shown in one panel to show the passage of time. As western Audiences tend to read from left to right the actions would follow that sequence. The author explained that issues of time can also be issues of motion and showed many ways in which a moving object is displayed in a comic. Something the object itself is blurred and sometimes the background is. Other times after images are used to suggest transit. The same character might be shown in different location sin one environment to display movement.

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sunny day derive

music: sky blue sky - wilco

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Adrian Piper – Notes on Funk, I-II

Adrian Piper is an American conceptual artist and philosopher. During the 1980’s she staged a series of events that she called Funk Lessons, which incorporates various participants into an area to learn about the cultural relevance, history and dance style of funk music. The article pertains to her thoughts, analysis, intention and experience of the project. I thought the article was extremely intriguing and compelled me to learn more about her artistic background and more about funk music in general. I thought it was interesting how Piper began the article by discussing and giving a brief background of funk, which is a certain branch of black music and dance that has been an imperative aspect of black culture since the 1970’s. I was curious about the section where Piper stated how this medium of expression has been historically unavailable to white culture because of the disparity between white and black dance and music. In white culture, Piper states that, “it is often viewed in terms of achievement, social grace or competence, or spectator oriented entertainment,” (Piper, 130). Historically, in black culture music and dance, “is used as a collective and participatory means of self-transcendence and social union, (Piper, 130). Piper’s main goal of the project was to integrate all people regardless of racial background where they could learn and mingle with one another while having a good time. During the lessons, Piper would break down the dance moves into their essential components, which made it easy for the participants to feel a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.

One of the main reasons for developing and performing the project was to overcome cultural and racial barriers and to deconstruct the term “high culture”. Along with lessons, Piper would also host dinner parties with an array of people and play the music in the background to examine their reactions while she discussed the structural aspect and personal connotations of the songs. This allowed her to draw conclusions about how people internalized the music differently and the reasons why they were intrigued or not by its sounds. After Piper staged the performance at different times, she made notes and dialogue where she was extremely compelled with her white friends reaction because after being exposed to the music genre they felt “less alienated from this aesthetic idiom,” (Piper, 134). On a personal level, this project allowed Piper who is a women of color to overcome her own alienation from white and black culture because she is consistently misidentified as white. Overall, I think this project does constitute and art form even though it is in an abstract medium and it motivates me to diversify myself as an artist, come out of my comfort zone and attempt different forms of art. I think Piper’s ability to incorporate relevant political and cultural issues in our society into her art intrigues me to do the same in class.

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My knowledge of comic writing greatly improved after reading the piece Time Frames. The author effectively conveys how we perceive panels stuck in time with a deliberate break from one to the next and this is predominately perpetuated by rectangular borders. Our minds then try to fill in those gaps between frames to produce a story and we try to imagine what has occurred during that transition. Words are also an imperative aspect of a successful comic because they provide relevance and crucial information that evokes emotion and tells a story. I thought it was interesting when the author stated how there is a strange relationship between time depicted in comics and how the reader actually perceives it. Humans perceive time spatially, which suggests time and space are the same thing and the author tries to illuminate this distinction within the frames.

It is evident that comic art is an intricate process and has more to do with viewer interaction than other forms of art or mediums we have studied. I also enjoyed the section of the piece where the author discusses various ways and alterations to the frames to change how the viewer articulates the comic. This can be done through the content of the panels, number of panels, closure of the panels and the shape of the panels. By altering the size of the border or completely eliminating the border, this can change the viewer’s perception of the piece and redefine it’s meaning through time and space. A frame can allow the viewer to see it in the past, present or future depending how the author orients the words, images and emotions. We have been conditioned to read from left to right and top to bottom, however based on the artists discretion they can place the frames in a unique manner that may force the reader to scan them in a different way. For thousands of years we only had static mediums and Topffer did not introduce motion into static images until the 1800’s. Once this occurred artists began using words, tactile creations and visual images to portray motion within their panels, which effectively altered the viewers perception. Additionally, I enjoyed the section that discussed subjective motion, which is when the artist creates the image to provide the reader with the assumption that it is moving. A certain variation of this is called polyptych, which is where a figure or figures is imposed over a continuous background. By doing so, the artist can more effectively create a story over a predetermined time span and location. Overall, I have realized how complex comics actually are and I now understand how artists skillfully create intriguing stories.

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I found the Time Frames article really interesting to read. It calls into question a lot about how the viewer interacts with the piece. The piece is a lot more about viewer interaction than the other types of art we have looked at. In particular, I found the conversation about the “present” very intriguing. The present in a comic is a space where people can see both the past and the future at the same time. Additionally, it is always changing. This view of the past and the present allow the reader to view motion within static images. Another aspect that I found very interesting was creating a slow down of time. In the example shown where the man talks about Mary-Anne, the size of the panel affects how long the viewer things the response is. I particularly like making the frame wider with more of the scene in it. Another trick that I thought was a good pause of time was the “unresolved nature affect.” I like the perception of timelessness because it is a good way to set up the scene in a way that doesn’t need to be indicated in every frame.