Octopi With Spikes!

Where would art be without computers?  Really, where would be we without Photo Shop??  With the development of our technology and our access to it, the face to modern art has changed drastically. 

When I read about Karl Sims, with his computer program that allows organisms to “grow” and mutate, I was instantly fascinated.  To me, the images themselves, without the political and technological sides, are lovely.  A little frightening, more than a little disconcerting, I grant you, but beautiful none the less.  

But what really makes me pause and think about Sims is the computer program he uses to create his artwork.  The ability of the program to diagram mutations is a spellbinding idea.  Stemming from the teachings of Charles Darwin, the program interprets the  ‘electronic DNA’ of the creature it depicts and then changes it,  makes allowances for natural mutations that could occur, changes that evolution probably never meant for those creatures to obtain.   

I look at this as a fantastic combination of science fiction and fantasy.  The images don’t look like any creature that we’ve ever seen here on earth, but the fact that the program works through the genetic mutations makes me think….  Is it possible that such creatures possibly could exist?  Who knows if the program that Sims developed is just art software, just a neat toy to change and re-mix what we already know and understand…or if the program has more to offer towards the prediction of genetic and evolutionary developments.  Personally, I would love to think that Sims created a program that can predict genetic mutations.  Not only would that be seriously cool and Nobel Prize worthy, it would be so much easier than waiting millions of years for nature to show them to us!

Wish I Lived In Beijing!

I saw the Water Cube in the book and I instantly fell in love with it.  When I look at structures like the Water Cube or the Bird’s Nest stadium or the Buckminster Fuller U.S. Pavilion in Canada, I cannot help but wish that we were able to walk down the street here in our town s and just see buildings like that all over.

These buildings are the epitome of style.  Just look at the Water Cube.  With the translucent outer walls shaped sort of like cells or water droplets, it gives you a clear idea of exactly what the building is holding, in a new and classy way.  Looking from below, inside the Cube, all you see are “drops,” surrounding you, letting in the light and making it almost refract, giving the appearance that you are standing in the center of a water droplet.

Or look at the Bird’s Nest stadium almost right next door to the Water Cube.  Crazy, interlocking steel beams from every direction heading off into every other conceivable direction!  It’s lopsided and wacky, with a major hole directly over the middle of the field…  You might think “who in their right mind designs such an outlandish structure??” 

Well, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, from Switzerland, can take credit for the Nest, but its neighbor the Water Cube sprang from a co-op of Australian and Chinese engineers… I would call them geniuses!  By creating two utterly unique buildings for the Olympics, they have created a must-see block in Beijing, but also opened fun new avenues of design, where you can dream what you want, and create that dream!

Stagnation Breeds Contempt

Does it ever strike you that man only really learned to fly one hundred and twelve years ago??  Then only seventy years later, we put a man on the moon!! 

Sometimes I like to look around the room, watch people pass in the halls here at school, whatever…  I like to really examine all the technology that we use every single day, for the smallest of things.

For example, a handicap press-opener on a door.  A combination of many small factors to make one very useful product!  Or take a look into one of the lounges or into a classroom before class begins.  How many people are on their cell phones, laptops, or iPods?  Or I count the number of computers in my own home!  Not too many years ago at all, people had to type out term papers on their (electric, if you were lucky) typewriters, learn how to spell for themselves (no spellcheck??AHH!) and had to know how to do research from books from this magical place called a library (Google search: what is a book?)

I’m a little surprised that the Humanities book includes a section on the development of technology and the information age, but it’s a pleasant surprise.  Social change and controversy is one of the strongest driving forces for art and very few times in history has there been as much controversy as in the past century or so.  Every new development, theory, practically every decade comes with new ideas.  Those new ideas always have those who staunchly oppose them.  It is the opposition and the firm supporters that allow for the ever-changing, ever-evolving face of the art world.  Without turmoil, there can be no meaningful changes, and we’d all go around reproducing Picassos. 

Sadi-what now?

I am so glad people over the years have taken the time to document “alternative lifestyles.”  So many people will talk about Sadism or Masochism or any of their particular variations/expressions as if they are something to be hidden, repressed.  Or look at homosexuality; think about how many fear it, avoid those who are homosexual as though it was some dread disease they could catch!  But it is ignorance, a refusal to look at it from the other sides’ view that breeds their fear.

Sex is a simple, natural biological function.  That doesn’t mean that any changes to the original version are ‘unnatural.’  Quite the opposite!  For many, pleasure is interwoven with pain; they cannot feel true pleasure without a sting.  There are entire communities devoted to providing the safest, most comfortable environments for those who wish to experience that but any lifestyle that doesn’t fit the ‘norm’ is always a matter for controversy, debate, misconceptions, and disgust.   

Robert Mapplethorpe’s Lisa Lyon is one image that I really feel shows the contrasts of pain and pleasure, as well as the public’s antagonism towards alternative lifestyles:  The model’s face is veiled, hiding her identity, keeping her safe in anonymity and equality.  With one wrist grasping the other, it makes you imagine restraints, a clear representation of restricted actions, but also a restriction on emotions.  What most people don’t understand is that when the subject is helpless, forced to give over their will to a controller, he or she can find safety and shelter in the care of their subjugator.  The shared bond from the trust given and accepted is more satisfying than any pleasure derived from a momentary pain.

Dark and Dingy Scene

"We real cool" by Brooks.  For some reason I can’t really explain, this poem really appeals to me.  Maybe because of the pattern of the words, the way Brooks uses the word "we" to tie the stanzas together in a unique and vaguely disquieting way.  But I think that the way Brooks uses her words to create a vivid mental scene, one that i can see almost as if I’m there is what attracts me so much to this dark little ditty.

In my own mind, I see a bunch of young people gathered around a pool table, just as the poem says.  The tavern is dim, but weak light filters through the grimy front windows.  The men are dressed in stained white shirts, dart pants, newspaper boys' hats.  The women in the flapper dresses of the twenties and are slinking around the men, watching them.  The men watch the women with a dark glint as they take swigs from their glasses and mugs.

The whole scene, to me, is a fake-glitz, dark, angry place, sort of a not-all-that-glitters-is-gold scene.  This poem describes a life, if you can call it that, that is a sad one, without much purpose or direction.  I think this poem sort of is a metaphor for the way African-Americans were feeling about their oppressed lives in 1959.

 Brooks uses her literary abilities to fashion a world where there is no meaning or ambition because no one has ever cleaned off the windows to let the light come shining in.

Sick of Sweet & Sappy Heros?

Alright, I’d like a show of hands please: who out there gets tired of reading happily-ever-after stories?  The hero always is a brave fellow who sets out with the courage of a man who knows that he is defending the honor of king and country.  He is usually insufferably good, with no devious bone in his body.  When confronted with a moral dilemma, there is never any doubt which path our hero will choose. 

But don’t you agree that these unfailing paragons, lovely though they are, get boring?! Well, any of you who did agree, you are in luck. There is another sort of hero that has been portrayed between the pages of many a book: he is the existential hero… the antihero.

The antihero is a character who is engulfed with all the qualities missing from the generic cookie-cutter hero.  He is not normally a brave and courageous soul.  He has no moral compass or conscious, or if he does have one, he will probably choose not to listen to it.  He allows himself to be selfish and greedy and conniving.  His one saving grace is that when his plans backfire or he regrets his choices, he blames no one but himself.

He also is a character of utter absurdity.  Samuel Beckett’s theater production Waiting for Godot is a perfect example of the existential mindset, with seemingly random ideas spouted off at the actors’ whims…truth be told, I loved it! As I read this excerpt, I was nearly rolling on the floor, picturing two completely serious actors discussing if they could hang themselves with a belt and wondering how, if one hung onto the other’s legs, who would hang on to the other’s?

The illogicality that the existentialist portrayed is a wonderful contrast to the sappy romance of  the other movements that came before.  Let me end with this:

            “Well? Shall we go?”

            “Yes, let’s go.”

(They do not move.)

Dippy, Trippy Dali

When you think of Surrealism, or see a Dali painting, what words come to mind for you?  Me, I think "trippy," "illogical," "morbidly interesting, " but mostly "dreamlike".  I do not like Surrealism, at least in a visual arts setting; the entire dream-scape that they portray is disconcerting and very unsettling for me, but I know that it appeals to many people. 

I went on a cruse a couple of years ago and that was the first time that I was introduced to Salvador Dali.  The art director set up several lectures and one of them was over the surrealist master, Dali.  We saw a video that Dali and Walt Disney worked together on a very long time ago, but had been locked in the Disney vault ever since the two mega-minds of art put it together.  Destino is a crazy, jolting trip through baseball and visual poetry and star-crossed lovers, all managing to be conveyed with nothing but music and fantastical images.

  Destino, by Dali and Disney

I researched Dali for a class once and read that one method Dali had when painting was to eat a very large meal then go sit outside in the sunshine, with the intentions of falling asleep.  He would put a metal bowl on his lap and hold a spoon in his hand and hold it slightly upright.  As he drifted off, his muscles relaxed and his arm would drop, causing the spoon to clang against the bowl.  Because he did this, Dali was able to paint what he saw in his dreams and create the twisting and illogical scenes that we find in his paintings.  I think that this technique is possibly the coolest idea ever for exploring the dream world, I just don’t like Dali’s dream world!

But Dali is by no means the only Surrealist out there.  We move on to Frida Kahlo, a Mexican woman who suffered, among other things, an obsession with artist Diego Rivera.  She often created self-portraits with exaggerated honesty about her looks and a variety of odd headdresses or other truly unexpected accessories, like nails, only serve to reinforce my dislike for this style of art.

Even though I do not like the surrealist movement, I can accept that it has played a part in moving the art world into the modern art styles we find now….even though, to me, it will never be as good as A Rock On A Stick!