Reading Response: Peggy Gale & Leslie Hill

I find performance art very intriguing. Granted I don’t always understand it, and usually I’m left relatively clueless, but I still find this use of film quite interesting.  The way artists express themselves through the medium of film, completely changes the dynamic of how viewers can interact and respond with the artwork. I found that Peggy Gale explores that abstractness and talks about the conceptual elements in the use of film for performance art since the mid 1990s. I like how performance art on film has provided that expansion to tackle different issues such as the ones mentioned in the passage: ‘conceptual, narrative, dramatic and social concerns’.

“Video was taken up by individuals for what-could-be-discovered, what-could-have-been-experienced.” Watching Colin Campbell’s ‘True/False’ video was quite enlightening. The whole process of taking what you see and interpreting it gave this whole interaction between the artist and the viewer more intense experience overall. It really can change your perspective based how how you present yourself on screen, from the position of the body to the pronunciation of each word. Leslie Hill’s breakdown of how performance art became what it is gave me more of an understanding to the medium. Although the content of certain performance arts may leave me more on the unclear side, there is that slight increase in the appreciation for performance art as the process artists goes through to create that sense of control on the viewer through the medium of film is something that every artist should aim to achieve.

Reading Response: Michael Rush & Dan O’Sullivan.

It is interesting how technology has developed so rapidly over the past 50 years. Reading the two texts has raised interesting points about how the integration of technology into our daily lives and art in relevance to it becoming an actual medium. If we think about it, technology such as the invention of the camera (photography and film in particular) has opened new horizons to expressing our ideas and emotions within the art spectrum. To think that we have barely scratched the surface of what we can manipulate in terms of what we want to express and create is very exciting notion to take on. However, it is slightly worrying that, because of the ever-growing popularity of technology, will the integration of technology into modern art make the more traditional and older mediums obsolete? With that thought in mind, O’Sullivan’s passage explores just that.

What is technology actually doing to us?

Technology has become such a substantial part of our lives, that it seems that sometimes we can’t function normally without it. This dependancy may be the result of how the developments in technology have generally centred around the theme of making our lives ‘easier’. There has been that argument that a lot of the technology that is created nowadays provokes that sense of laziness; letting technology do all the mundane tasks that we find ‘so hard’ to do ourselves. To a certain extent, I do agree. But at the same time, there are ways to manipulate that design and utilize it for other purposes; similar to how an artist pushes those boundaries to search for their sense of expression. None the less, both texts left me with the notion that technology has played a vital part in helping artists push both our personal expression and technical innovation in our work.

For my film strips I initially wanted to create a little narrative, but I actually found the film difficult for me to work with. I realized that in order for me to create something really intricate and planned, I would need a lot more experience in the medium, but I didn’t have time for that. So I decided my piece would be me experimenting. I’m not very pleased with the result, but I do think it was a learning experience. Although the medium was hard for me to work with, I did enjoy the result and the scans. I would want to use it again, just with better scratching materials and also make use of the clear film.

http://webspace.ocad.ca/~ed11lk/emily/homepage.html

The concept behind my website is the idea that online personas or the representation of oneself online are often made to look more interesting than reality. In reality a lot of people (myself included) are a lot more boring than the aspects of themselves that they chose to include online. I wanted to really exaggerate that in my website, and show how badly people often crave attention and crave acceptance through online media in order to feel validated in life (or art).

Essentially my website is making fun of myself and the way I often portray myself on the internet. A really blatant and honest way of trying to maintain someone’s attention.

I used my film strips for additional visual interest on my pages. They didn’t play a key role in my narrative because I didn’t place much thought or weight into the creation of my film. The film was more experimental, but I feel it did add a lot to my site.

The poem I had written includes links, each link individually relating to the line of poetry that it can be sourced from.

http://webspace.ocad.ca/~jw10sj/Site/Home.html

http://webspace.ocad.ca/~hL11so//Hendricks_Site_2012/Home_Page.html

Narrative Poem —>  Time Based Media assignment 2

http://webspace.ocad.ca/~sd11rk/Sabrinas_Site/HOMEPAGE.html

http://webspace.ocad.ca/~ps11jk/Exploring_Nature_and_Self_by_Peter_Seibert/HOMEPAGE.html

The basic idea behind my website is multiple haiku poems one after the other. Each page is 1 line of the haiku and each small image links you to the next line of the poem. Pages with multiple small pictures link to different variations in the poem so feel free to explore how each one is different.