"A Cheeky Fellow": The World of Collage

The article, "The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin," by William S. Burroughs, made me realize how so many things in our lives are the end results of cut-ups. Patch-works, scrap books, video clips, writings... So many things are indeed fusion of multiple things. What one would wonder then is, when it become your own, your original ideas and works.

"Fountain"-urinal- Ready made
1917
by Marcel Duchamp

 As shown in the powerpoint in class the other day, there are many artworks where an artist would  take something found, whether it is an already-existing artwork(s) of others,or everyday objects, and turn it into something else and claim it their own artwork. Take Marcel Duchamp's works, for example. A toilet urinal. You would find it in any other person's household. Take the urinal and place it in an art gallery and claim it an art work if you are an already known artist. It is no longer a dirtly little toilet pot. It is art. As the Sunday Times says, there has been quite a number of urinals that were "sculptures" of high expenses just because Duchamp has claimed it as "art". A few of these Duchamp urinals are installed in museums. Some are bought at the auctions with a high-price tags on it. Some were lost and some were stolen. Some were added later into the collection. Isn't it interested how, one day, it is a urinal, and the next day, it is an art work worth 2.5 million dollars? Where is the line that divides one urinal to the special urinal? It wouldn't be the same if a random person took their urinal found in their house and sold it at the gallery or auction. Is it worth that much because it is Duchamp's? Because it was the first bizarre found object that became a famous sculpture? Is it merely the crowd of obsessive collectors that make the urinal so special? Well, urinal is an object. Things get a little more complicated and more-so controversial when an artist starts taking other artist's works and call it their own.

Take Duchamp's other famous work "L.H.O.O.Q."-a mastache added to Mona Lisa-for example. A few pen marks in mockery around the mouth of the world's madonna, Mona Lisa, soon drew people's attention. Duchamp never took the time like Leonardo Da Vinci to paint that woman. Instead, he put a few pen marks on a great artwork. Is it so great because he did something that nobody would dare do?? Would his work be as influencial if Duchamp cut Mona Lisa in pieces and rearranged it like the shift puzzle shown below, as suggested in The Cut-UP method? Is it really about the mustache, or is it the modification on a great artwork? 

L.H.O.O.Q.
by Marcel Duchamp



Mona Lisa Shift Puzzle

The question is raised to the next level when the artist whose art was stolen by another artist is still alive. What I mean here is, that Leonardo Da Vinci did not exist when Duchamp took Mona Lisa and mocked it and claimed it his own work. It is a different case for Richard Prince's series of Cowboy photographs: Untitled (Cowboy). Prince went ahead and took a series of photos of photos of an American cowboys in Marlboro cigarette ads in a magazine. Prince's beautifully edited photos decided to jump out of the magazine  and brought fortune to Prince. Prince did not take the time and money to travel down to Texas to shoot real life cowboys. He did not hire and pay models to be cowboys in the wilderness. He simply took pictures of an already existing photographs. I was very curious in how the original photographer felt about all this, and was able to find a short clip of Sam Abell, the original photographer of the Marlboro cowboys. It is interesting to see his reactions on Prince's photos of the cowboys. "I'm not angry, of course...I'm not particularly amused...I'm thoughtful about it," says Abell in the interview. Calling him a "cheeky fellow," Abell is very curious in what was going on in Prince's mind when he decided to copy his works and make money out of it. He also states that it is a plagiarism. He talks about the reality of the Art World-how his works will never make that much fortune and will never make it to famous exhibitions and galleries. It's because he is an editorial photographer. Not a famous artist like Prince.

Here again, the question of what "good art" means is brought up. What determines a good art? Is it the newness of the idea? The creative idea that makes it "good"? The movie, Decasia, by Bill Morrison is a chain of decaying films of random, once lost footages. By carefully combining them in well-planned order, by having a reoccuring theme (wheels and spins), and by putting it over a carefully composed music by Michael Gordon to add effects, the 67 minutes films composed of short decayed footages successfully grasped the art world's attention. Who would have thought of such an idea? Fresh and new! Creative! 

What is "good art"? Today, borrowing and lending bits and pieces of artwork is inevitable. It just happens due to the accessibility of eachother's artworks. If the artist claims it an art, and if the world buys it, you become famous. If you are not famous already and your artworks get stolen, you just have to live with it. However, I strongly believe that it is problematic if the artist fails to acknowledge the sources of where the original came from and if the source, especially if he/she is still alive, is not happy about it. Then, famous or not, it is a plagiarism.  

The Global Camera Eyes: 21st Century Panopticon

The concept of surveillance originally revolved around the idea that the authorities were watching over the inferiors in order to spy or control them (e.g., government spy, panopticon prison, etc.). However, with the rapid technology advancement today (such as camera on cell phones and web 1.0 to Web 2.0), surveillance seems to extend beyond that relationship between an authoratative figure watching over the oblivious inferior. It is what's happening everyday to everyone. People's activities are itemized and can easily be tracked down.

What really amazes me is how easy it is for one to track the other down, not just within one's own town or country, but to do so across the universe. This is so conveniently done today, especially on the web such as facebook, twitter, my space, blogs, etc. Being an international student, I have found this to be so convenient, as it makes it so easy to be connected to my friends and family all over the world, but at the same time, it gives me the creeps. They know almost everything about what is going on. We don't have to see each other for 5 years, but it's like we never separated because we keep track of each other on a regular basis. 

For this project, I tried to capture 3 levels of surveillance of 10 different people from very different backgrounds, countries and cultures- the Netherlands, India, Jamaica, Vietnam, U.S.A. (NY), Bulgaria, U.S.A. (IA), South Korea, Bangladesh, and Zimbabue.  

First, I took the eyes. Yes, taking pictures of eyes may be cliché for panopticon project. But I just wanted to make a point that our eyes function like cameras, no matter where we were born or where we grew up. Our Camera Eyes enable us to surveil. Because we are "visual creatures," because we rely on what we see, and because we like seeing what is going on, we post videos and pictures. And then we "facebook stalk" others in return. Our eyes are like cameras.   

camera 02

camera 06

camera 08

For the second set, I tried to extend my view on a global scale. Like I said, we are constantly Watching Neighbors. By neighbors, I don't just mean nextdoor neighbors. Instead, I am talking about other countries. Yes, with Web 2.0, news, gossips, and (almost) everything we need to know and we want to know is passed back and forth across the borders and oceans. It's as though we are standing right against a person, watching. If you flip through the 10 pictures, you will notice that they are all connected in a chain. You think you are watching others, but you don't know that others are watching you in the mean time. Notice that the last person is being watched by the girl who was being watched in the 1st picture. The cycle represents the globe. 



02nd Neighbor





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03rd Neighbor



 

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09th Neighbor



Last set brings one back to the concept of Self Surveillance. With the globalization and ability for one to watch others, you often forget that the person who is serveiling you the most is, in fact, yourself. The shadow is an analogy to this concept. It could be our consciousness, or the voice in your head. But it's nobody but you, who is controlling you in the end. And you will have to live with this one forever.  





Me & Myself 10




They're All Interconnected!!!



Motorola Dyna TAC
Mobile Phone in 1983

"There's no single thing anymore. They're all interconnected!!" Rachel Crowl claimed in response to Julie's question on what Web 2.0 is all about.  

Rachel Crowl had a lot to share to the class. Her life-story was so intriguing to begin with. She was a young confused drug-addict at the age of 19. Soon, she found herself in a world of acting which lasted for 20+ years where Monday night was her only day off. Then she was in the world of IT, building community websites, programming, managing, etc.  



au Summer Collection 2010



She described the technological advancement and being in that world as though riding a train that is going downhill at an extremely fast speed---forever changing and forever accelerating.



I have only lived for 23 years. Yet, I see that so much has changed in that time span in terms of technology. I remember my father carrying one of those gigantic mobile phones when not many people carried them around. Soon, it was everyone in Japan that had cell phones. Not only did they consist of the functions to giving and receiving calls, but they also enabled people to e-mail (not even texting!!), watch TV, navigate, and use internet! It is quite enjoyable (and creepy??) to observe people on the train in Japan during my short term return for vacations. They are all in their own world, glaring at their phones. This "they" is not just young adults. It's everyone ranging from elementary school kids to 80 year old grandmas. Because talking on the phone is not allowed on trains and subways in Japan, they glare at their phones, and communicate with one another on blogs, message boards, commenting on other people's entries, etc. They tweet all the time. They constantly update their status on the blog called mixi (or so-called "Japanese Facebook").

This fever of Web 2.0 is seen not only in industrial countries, but in almost everywhere in the world. My point in bringing up the advancement of cell-phone is to emphasize the point that social media is so readily available for the public today. Julie is right in saying that seeing a laptop next to cell phones in a photograph almost makes you feel nostalgic---everything can be done on the cell phone! It's no longer about professional artists. As Lev Manovich in "Art after Web 2.0" suggests, this participatory/social media involves everyone (even though they may take ideas from professionals, such as embedding professionally made music videos on a blog, or using professionally made blog templates as their bases, etc.).   

I strongly agree on Rachel Crowl's opinion on copyrights. Yes, if the artists truly hope to avoid copyright violation on their artworks, they are safest not to publish their works. Once they are exposed to media, especially in this era of social media, you are better off expecting some pirating and copyright violations. I remember in high school where I found myself opening the yearbook at the end of the year, only to find many of my pictures in the book. The yearbook team members have gone on facebook and took pictures from the albums that I have uploaded without asking for my permission. Is it my fault in uploading those pictures on a public space? Or should they have asked me first before using it in something that will remain physically forever? (It's YEARBOOK!!) I am no professional artist, but I believe many artists probably experience such similar incidents. The dilemma here is whether an artist should reserve their art pieces by not exposing them in social media. However, not promoting their works and themselves on the web today is equivalent to not being bold enough to make themselves known as an artist to the world. Should they accept that sharing their works to the public is the way to success today? (...that we are all interconnected??)

What we must keep in mind, is that this is a train going down that neverending downward slope. It's not a linear line, but rather a curve. We must keep up with what comes next and adjust according to what is normal today and in the future. The train will not stop for us.

Lastly, watch this short video clip. It has no verbal explanation and has annoying music, but the simple animation explains how Web 2.0 is the "21st century", and that it is a participatory media. After reading Lev Manovich's article and hearing Rachel Crowl's explanation on what Web 2.0 is, I think you will find this clip useful to visually summarize what it actually means!

Living in Photography

A Lawrence University alumni, Dan Leers ('02) came back to Lawrence campus 8 years after his graduation to give a lecture. He talked about his experience of how he got from being an Art History major at Lawrence to curating in different museum and going to Columbia University, and finally got a job at the world-top class museum, MoMA. He then introduced us to the Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004)'s photography exhibition. As you can see from this MoMA's official website blog entry, At Home Everywhere: The Travels of Henri Cartier-Bresson, that Dan Leers himself wrote, Leers put a lot of effort and time in researching about Cartier-Bresson and his works of photogerapy so to gather information and place Cartier-Bresson's works in the chronological order.

As Leers got more involved with the research, Cartier-Bresson's works and his life were revealed. He was living in photography. In the blog of MoMA's website, Leers quotes Cartier-Bresson; “It is through living that we discover ourselves, at the same time as we discover the world around us.” Sure enough, he was everywhere. He was not only discovering himself, but also the world. Not just the "world" you live in, but I mean the WORLD.

In the lecture (also mentioned in the blog), Leers listed some of the places and moments Cartier-Bresson captured---and he happened to be at the places where historically critical events occured; King George VI's coronation in England; Nehru announcement of Gandhi's assassination in India; Indonesia's independence from the Dutch, etc. Then he was in China, then Russia, then Japan, and the list goes on.

The video clip below shows a short excerpt of Cartier-Bresson's idea of photography. He talks about life, and how pictures are taken in the moment of life.


The intuition tells us to capture the moment through photography. What is captured in a photography cannot be erased the moment you capture it. If mistakes are made, you just have to take another one. This is the idea of photography way before the digital world. This clip reminded me of my photography class. Being too used to the digital world, I had hard time getting used to the idea of not being able to see the "moment" I just captured, and not being able to click the "erase" button when pictures came out badly. You just have to capture the right moment at the right time---and Henri Cartier-Bresson had done that so successfully.

Being a big traveller myself, I was truly fascinated by Leers lecture, and learning about this legendary photographer, Cartier-Bresson. As Leers said, Cartier-Bresson was never at "home. He was restlessly crossing borders and luckily being in the right places at the right time-capturing and document moments that will remain in history forever. This inspired me to urge to take more "good" photos whereever I go, not just photos of tourists' sites, but the photos that capture the "life" of the place. 

Who's Naughty or Nice

Surveillance



           It means watching over.



                         It means watching over intensely.

Panopticon

Panopticon was designed by Jeremy Bentham in 1785. This ring-shaped building was designed in a way so that one observer placed in the middle of the architecture could watch over all the inmates. What was unique is that the observed remained oblivious of the surveillance.

The idea of this harsh discipline of not knowing when being watched, leading to careful observation of our own actions was addressed by Michel Foucault's "Discipline and Punish."

Are we puppets tied up to the strings? When are they, and when aren't they watching us? Is the government a mass organization of Santa Clauses, checking whether we've been naughty or nice?



When I first read Livia Bloom's article "Regarding the Pain of Others," an interview to Errol Morris about his film, "Standard Operating Procedure,"my curiosity and shame on ignorance made me look up the picture on the internet right away. Immediately, I felt sick. Who? What? Gross... Human? I went back and reread the article. The heroin in the article, to me, was Sabrina Harman. She was the one who thought something was wrong. She was the one who wanted to document all that she saw, to keep a record of all the horrible things that went on behind the prison gates. She was forced to do things and was used by male authoritative figures.



Then I watched Errol Morris' "Standard Operating Procedure."
I was wrong. She was one of them. She may have felt horrible at first, like how she wrote in the letters to her lover. Well, she was nonetheless taking the pictures with them. There were 2 other cameras coexisting with hers. She was posing with them. In front of the tortured-to-death body.

No matter how much they claimed to have felt emotionally when they first got to Abu Ghraib, in the end, they were equally degrading people. No matter how much camera flashed in front of their eyes, they never thought that such digital surveillance was going to turn into public surveillance. Being a woman is not an excuse. Being so young is not an excuse. What fools. Whatever they said in the film, is merely nonsensical excuses. All is done, and it's a public surveillance now. People shall look at the so-readily-available pictures and shall judge them forever in the history of human stupidity.

"It Happens to be the Historical Battle between Flesh & Steel"

...says the man in "The Brain Center at Whipple's."

The rapid upraise of technologies and computers in the 60’s and 70’s excited many people including Douglas Engelbart, who, in “From Augmenting Human Intellect” (1962), proposed a conceptual framework on how technological capabilities could work hand-in-hand with human capabilities to enhance and augment human intellect, improving the overall capabilities. Ted Nelson, too, was very much eager to promote this advancement of technologies and wrote “Computer Lib/Dream Machines” in 1974 in hopes to spread awareness of these computers to the public. They all envisioned an unbelievably convenient future ahead of them. Their prediction was not at all a mere illusion.

At the same time as hopes and excitement came “fear” from many who lived through the evolution of technologies. An example of this is seen in one episode of The Twilight Zone, “The Brain Center at Whipple’s” (1964), where a large machine took over the jobs of many who worked at the cooperation and made the “entire production facilities totally automated.”  Imagine yourself back in the 60’s and 70’s. If all people talked about was machines and computers that has human brain-like functions that did not exist before, they must have felt threats behind all the exhilaration, especially those who were employed at a place where computers could easily take over their jobs.

This technological advancement, and the mixture of excitement and fear, were not limited to the United States. In Japan, too, was a rapid progress of technologies which seemed too fast for people to catch up, leaving people with a sense of amazement as well as fear. Evident was the battle “between the brain of the man and the product of man’s brain.” One episode of a classic manga, “Black Jack” by a world famous manga/anime film maker, Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989), touches this issue over and over again. Many of the storylines of his manga talks about the controversy of technology and the future it brings to us. His questions of whether the brain that we created with our hands (technology) could be controlled under us, or whether there will be a time where such man-made brains come to dictate us, is explicitly indicated in an episode titled “U-18 Knew” (1976). [You can either read the description of the episode below taken from official Osamu Tezuka website or watch the clip.]

114, U-18 Knew It
Publish: March 10, 1976
Introduction:At a gigantic high-tech hospital where diagnosis and operations are computerized, the main computer "BRAIN" that controls the entire hospital revolts by taking patients as hostages. "I'm sick. Bring Black Jack here," signals the main computer. BJ is called up, rushes to the hospital, and starts to perform an operation on the computer.

          So what have we got today? Are we living in a bright future that people dreamed about back in the 70's? Is the technology eating us up? No, maybe the exaggerated sense of threats that people felt back in the 60's and 70's are not so evident in reality. I would say we are still controlling technologies, and we have learned to live with them, not over them or under them. Computers, internets, cell phones, etc. etc. etc. have made our lives more convenient than they ever were, and it is probably impossible to imagine going back to the life without them in this generation. It's just that, it's not so much a battle anymore. We live in a mutual existence.