Student Art Work Reception - Julio Art Gallery 12/8

On Friday, December 8th, I went to a Student Art Work Reception at the Julio Art Gallery. There were many artists who discussed their works. One of the artists photographed women and made the photographs appear to be from a magazine. She was attempting to poke-fun at the typical magazine pictures of women, similar to the Victoria Secret models, who appear to have the perfect bodies. The wording on the posters were, however, not the words you would expect to see on a magazine. The poster on the top said "VIXEN heavenly bodies. treacherous minds." From left to right, the posters below that said, "what are you looking at?" "not for sale." "piss off." "not yours" and "'Time to heal our women, be real to our women' -Tupac" These words show what the women in the photographs are actually thinking. The first poster says, "heavenly bodies. treacherous minds." which shows that these "beautiful women" who are being photographed have more to them then their bodies and the clothing they are wearing. 

 

This artist photographed some of her best friends. She wanted to represent each of her friends for who she was through color mostly. She surrounded each figure with flower pedals, which she described as the "fingerprints of nature." This was very interesting to me, because it meant that each woman being photographed then had nature's fingerprints surrounding her. Fingerprints are unique and individualized to each person, so by putting flower pedals around each person was interesting because it meant that each woman was her own person, showing another message of feminine power. 

Tis next artist attempted to show three different types of love. One of them had to do with an ex, one of them had to do with her witness of sexual violence, and one of them had to do with friendship (I believe). Each of these portrayals were very individualized to the experience of the artist herself. She wanted to make it something so she would never forget about the experiences she was involved in. She used the circles to represent the fact that everything goes around in a circle. This presentation was very interesting. 

Art Opening in Library 12/7

On December 7th at 5:30 pm, I went to an art opening in the library. This was about Fore-edge Painting of books. Fore-edge painting is when the author, or someone else, of a book paints the edge of the book something that has to do with the book itself. In an Art History class at Loyola, students worked all semester to work on this project. They each did research on books that already had fore-edge painting and learned about the history of fore-edge painting. They learned about how people would do this as an art. Often times, the paintings on the fore-edge of the books would be landscape paintings. These paintings had to be displayed in a very specific way. The book holders displayed the books in a way that allowed the fore-edge paintings to be shown and presented.

The students from Loyola worked alongside some people at John's Hopkins. One man from John's Hopkins volunteered to make individualized book holders for each of the fore edge painting books that the students at Loyola had. This took a lot of time because each book was a different size, and each book required the things holding the books up to be a different height, and in a different way. In some casings, the books are being held vertically, while others are being held horizontally.

Each student had to research one book, and through the research done on this book, they had to paint a fore-edge painting for that book. Their paintings had to relate to the book and what the book was about in some way. Many of the students did landscape paintings, and many of the students did paintings that related to them and their interests. Each student talked about how much detail had to go into each painting, and they recognized the artists of the old fore-edge painting books as talented and dedicated.

 

The Art of Data Visualization Video

            This video begins with the quote “every single pixel should testify directly to context,” by Edward Tufte. He believes that design is about the viewer and how they reason with the content. If the words aren’t truthful, then the piece would not be valid. He believes that all products or art, whether beautiful of not, should represent some form of the truth. It is about showing information. He talks about how some of the first forms of art and information are written in stone, and how we see them today in Google maps. This is interesting to think about. It is interesting to think about how something so old and what seems to be outdated can be influencing out information today. He says that the development of real science is one of the most important things. Galileo, through his telescope, drew pictures of the sun and where the sun spots were. He says that the history of visualizing data is very similar to and connected to the history of science.

            Data visualization designs depend on what you, the artist, have to say about the topic. It also depends on the reader, who comes with their own context and biases. Third, is the data itself and what it has to say and that it informs the truth. A lot if information can be communicated very quickly because our brains work so quickly and that are designed to recognize patterns. There is also an emotional impact on the piece of art. Presenting the information with the visuals will impact how a person feels about the work.

            Josh Smith in the video said that truth changes. There is so much data that is a “clue to the truth.” The first step is to dig really deep into the date and the information and find each key point and create a hierarchy. Once everything is put together, the information should make sense. It is supposed to translate data from something that is complicated to something that is simple and it communicates a message that would have taken someone hours to digest and understand. Visual data makes it easier for the viewers to understand data and connect it.

            Data visualization is also supposed to be a revelation, to show us something that has never been seen before. It is about showing people something they have never seen before in a way that they have never seen it. Part of it is leaving it open to interpretation, and part of it is not knowing exactly about the system. The creator of the visual data may have ideas about how the system may be growing and changing, but they are just sharing their ideas and putting something together. It is important to respect your audience. Its purpose is to learn something not to confirm something.

Postmodernism Visual Analysis

            This piece uses the analogous color scheme. I used mostly blues, greens, whites and blacks in this piece. This brings the theme of unity together. The piece is split up into a diagonal composition. The denotative message is based on what is actually in the piece of art. In this piece there are two main figures that use negative space to make another shape. The two shapes are similar shapes and sizes. One of on the upper left side of the page and the other shape is on the lower right side of the page. There are shapes of puzzle pieces that are scattered throughout the painting. There appears to be butterflies coming off of the shapes and getting smaller as they go to the next shape. Inside the shapes, there is a butterfly, a person jumping, two hands intertwined, a running brain, a key and a chain. The connotative meaning is that a person needs to find who they are and figure out what to do with themselves if they are once liberated from something, or anything.

            The quote I used to do my postmodern piece of art is, “It is always the same: once you are liberated, you are forced to ask who you are.” When I thought of this quote, I thought of freedom and a person finding who they are. Often times, a person has to go in circles to find out who they are. They end up doing the same things over and over again until they find out who they are. Every time something happens in someone’s life, they have to rethink who they are, and sometimes they feel as if they have to start all over. The centered theme of this piece brings the ideas of unity and a person’s center into it. The butterflies getting smaller and bigger (growing) symbolizes a person’s journey to find themselves. This ties into the ideological message; everyone has their own journey. Everyone has to start somewhere, and there are so many things that can push a person to being something different, but in the end, most people don’t change who they are as a person, and will always be the same person they always were, with a few changes along the way, and maturing into who they really are. Dealing with the events of life force a person to deal with it and question who they are.

Postmodernism

"Citizens of the Middle Ages and members of pre-modern tribal societies could live out their years without encountering anyone with another god, a contrary worldview, different folktales, dances or myths." If they did meet anyone with opposing or different views, they would conquer them and to convert them.In the Postmodernism world, everyone has different ideas, cultures and beliefs. Everyone's different ideas and beliefs are everywhere to see. You can't go on any website or even walk out of your house without seeing differences in people and how people think, act, look, and are. "We live increasingly in a world of interconnected differences-differences amplified and multiplied at the speed of electricity." There are now so many more ways of thinking now, and it is mostly accepted to have different opinions than other people.

All of the cultures are intermixing. It is interesting to think about this and how it affects people in everyday life. One person believes so many things, and it is interesting to think about where all of those ideas stemmed from. There are so many different shared beliefs now, in the Postmodernism world. We are forced to think and know about all of the different ways of thinking,. which, in my opinion, is a good thing.


"According to Jameson, Postmodern city-dwellers are alienated, living in hallucination, an exhilarating blur, a reality evaporating into mere images, spectacles, strange new warps in time and space, fixated on commodities, on products, on images... on bottles of Coca-Cola, collages of identical images of Hollywood stars such as Marylin Monroe, all sameness, all surface-all deathlessness." Today, everyone tries so hard to be different. People don't focus on the things that really matter. People focus on things that are materialistic and have no depth. People rely so much on the false images that the media and the world around them gives them. people don't think for themselves, according to this article. I disagree with this. I think that people do have depth. I think that these days, people are in a way forced to have depth and are forced to think for themselves. Yes, everyone is doing the same thing, but some, if not most people choose to think for themselves and do think for themselves. There is so much emphasis today on self-reflection, which is where people find out what they truly believed. In a way, people do have a hard time thinking for themselves because so many people are told what to believe. Also, everyone tries to be different, which is where I agree with this piece. Everyone tries too hard to be different, which makes everyone even more similar. I think that people should stop listening to what society is telling them to be and believe what they truly believe and live off of that.

Podcast Blog

In the radiolab podcast, they talked a lot about the colors that people can see and how it is possible for organisms to see color. They discuss the differences in how different animals and organisms see color. For example, humans have three color receptor rods, and see variations of red, blue and yellow. Humans see the colors on the ROYGBIV scale. For example, dogs only see blues, greens, and yellows. Butterflies have more color receptor rods that humans. different animals have a different amount of color receptor rods and therefore see different variaions of colors and in a different amount of detail. 

They talked about how they did experiments on monkeys. They took red pigments from something and put it into the eyes of the monkeys. At first, the monkeys saw no differences, but about twenty weeks in, the monkeys started to be able to see the difference between the colors, and could then see the red colors. This is interesting to think about. After a little while, the monkeys could see the single color that was different from all of the others and clearly point it out. It shows how much the eye can change how you look at something. Colors have so many layers to them, but certain eyes can only see some layers of colors, while others can see color in so much detail. 

It depends on what the animals and organisms perceive as the colors. There was one woman who they were testing to be a "tetrochromad, " which means that she can see many more colors than the normal human eye can. The could tell the different color in the set of three colors every time. The control for this experiment, however, was a male painter, so he could not be a tetrochromad. This man saw all of the colors and got all of the answers correct, as the woman did. The man must have also been a tetrochromad as well. On the other hand, when the people involved in the experiment all looked at the sky, the woman said she saw pink in the sky, where everyone else saw a deep, turquoise blue. She saw the pigments of red and pink in the sky, which is interesting and could also prove that she is a tetrochromad. 

Photoshop