2020 Foundations

The Last Word by Illegal Art was the work I was inspired by for my Tiny Monuments film. In a way, the artwork is also a ‘paper monument’ since it is made out of a lot of paper (and board). It consists of a board with numerous rolled up pieces of paper, either blank (indicated by the white end being visible to viewers) or with something written on it (indicated by the red end being visible).

The description of the artwork told viewers they could write (or draw) anything they wanted, whether humorous, meaningful, or sad. Tell a joke, a love confession, or just random thoughts; it’s the ‘last word’ in that once you return it to the board and walk away, you probably will not be able to find it back since another viewer will have viewed and moved it.

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Illegal Art is a collective of artists that creates public art that involves participation to encourage self-reflection and human connection. For this reason, participation in each work has been simple like writing a thought down.

I think they are interesting to look at for our public art intervention project as well. I’ve added below two more works from them. The first is Incomplete, where anyone can use chalk to finish the incomplete sentence. The second is To Do, where people can come up and write on the post-it notes their to-do list. It is important to note that while the following two are public art and accessible to all, The Last Word requires payment to view and is thus private art (at least currently).

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I saw this step by step of a handwashing guide amid all of the virus happening… reminded me of our ikea manual project with the simplicity. Also did not notice the quirky comments underneath almost seeming to mock the importance of the subject

I found this website while I was researching and was amazed by some of the work. Some of the installations are very powerful and if you have a chance I encourage you to take a look.

10 Best Urban Art Interventions

I came across this article that I thought was very interesting especially in today’s day and age with technology. It features a work of art made by AI (artificial intelligence) and how it looks and sold. What I find interesting is that sometimes what we love about art is not its perfection but its imperfections and when it comes to this does it have to make intentional imperfections?

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20181210-art-made-by-ai-is-selling-for-thousands-is-it-any-good

Stories are not all told alike. I always love the short films before Pixar movies, or Wallace and Gromit (if you haven’t seen this incredible example of stop-animation, please look up the one where they go to space with cheese), and the past few days, I have been falling in love with shorts again.

Two of these are filmed using yarn/felt (Lost&Found and A Love Story), and it’s inspired me to ask, “What more can paper do?”

Japanese artist Tanaka Tastuya started a project back in 2011 to create pocket-size scene of everyday life daily. I was blown away by his creative perspective of everyday objects and turning them into a scene.

In high school, I worked with a lot of film, and there was always one problem we faced: finding quality royalty-free music to enhance our films. Everyone has their own process when it comes to filmmaking, but for me, sound was always an integral part of my inspiration process. I typically look for sound before I even start the editing process (as I personally love to cut footage at key points in the sound) and sometimes even let a sound inspire the whole idea of my film. That’s why it can be so crucial to find the perfect piece.

That’s where Kevin MacLeod with Incompetech ( https://incompetech.filmmusic.io ) comes in. If you visit his site, you will find THOUSANDS of royalty free audio files ready and able to download. When entering the website, you first will want to click on Royalty-Free Music. Then, you will see a series of genres grouping the many different files. This is super helpful, making the process of finding the kind of music you want that much shorter as you can simply click on the mood you or going for and refine by instrumental or musical style.

I hope this helps!

In the spirit of using code to make art, I want to share a project I did last semester in FNAR 220 with Kayla Romberger. (Highly recommend taking that class!)

I used a script to scan the 150,000+ iMessages stored on my laptop to create a kind of self portrait. If you want to see more on this project check out elinathan.com/My-Texts!

Mel Chin is one of my favourite artists of all time so I’m glad to be able to post about him for a relevant project. He’s a conceptual artist whose works are commentaries on different aspects of human life such as nature, the environment and various social justice issues. Conceptual art is art where the concepts and ideas involved in the work take precedence over the traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns.

His art has explored a variety of locations and settings including popular television, destroyed homes, toxic landfills, and even NYC’s Times Square.

These two works by Mel Chin titled Wake and Unmoored were both displayed at Times Square and used very different media. Wake commented on the city’s complex history of trade, commerce, finances, including the shipping of guns and slaves; consequently, the form of the sculpture resembles a shipwreck combined with the skeleton of a marine mammal.

Unmoored used virtual reality to comment on global warming, such that if viewers looked up at the sky using the Unmoored virtual reality app or a then provided headset, they could see ships and boats floating above them to indicate the exponentially rising sea level.

Two Me was a part of Monument Lab and built in Philadelphia’s own City Hall courtyard. It was composed of two seven-foot-tall granite pedestals with fully accessible ramps built for both. Each pedestal was inscribed with the word “Me.” According to Mel Chin, the purpose of the monument was to invite any person to ascend onto the pedestal to pose as living monuments themselves. This challenged the American value of individualism since there are two “Me”s, reminding viewers about unity and being part of a collective society.

Mel Chin’s Revival Field is more on the conceptual art side rather than monument, yet it deserves to be mentioned for its unique process and implications. Mel Chin began this as an experiment in collaboration with agronomist Dr. Rufus Chaney to test on-site, low-tech remediation methods on contaminated soil in a fenced landfill area. They used special plants called ‘hyperaccumulator’ plants to try to extract heavy metals from the soil. To Mel Chin, he conceptualized the work as him ‘sculpting’ a site or area’s ecology using the scientific process, to ‘carve away’ at the pollution.

I think Mel Chin is an amazing and very intriguing artist and I encourage everyone to check out more of his work!