Week 10 Final | VR Robot Avatars

Week 10 Final | VR Robot Avatars

Click to view Project Proposal: VR Robot Avatars

Event 3 Blog Assignment | Broad MFA Exhibit

Event 3 Blog Assignment | Broad MFA Exhibit

For my most recent artistic venture, I had the pleasure and perplexion of visiting the MFA Exhibit hosted by UCLA's very own graduating masters seniors in Broad Hall back in late-April.

To say the least, the exhibit was quite minimalist. Nonetheless I tried my best to interpret the concepts at-hand and create meaning for myself out of the very abstract pieces of art.

During my visit to the gallery I decided to focus on a single room dedicated mostly to art pieces by the student/artist Catherine Ahearn. Her pieces, "Eating and Shitting" as well as "Untitled", were very simple on the surface, and I attempted to gather what they meant beyond the unassuming first glance.

Peep the exhibit below: 

 

 

 

I interpreted the displays of wood in the first four snapshots of the exhibit to represent the ambiguity between consumption and expulsion. In her pieces, Ahearn showcases fixtures that look like they can be assembled into both an outhouse or used as cutting boards in the kitchen. In this way, the pieces represent potential for utilization as tools for "eating" or "shitting" as the title suggests. I take this to see how Ahearn blurs the lines between ingestion and digestion - both being a part of the same process and the meeting place is visualized through the blend of materials that exemplify both the place of consumption (the kitchen) as well as the place of expulsion (the restroom).

One of the smaller facets of the installation included a grey mold that resembled both a conglomerate of cups as well as a urinal. To me. In the same vein as the wood pieces in the piece, I found this grey mold to strike me as a middle ground representation of both ingestion (of liquids) as well as a release (of those same liquids).

I believe Ahearn to have tackled the idea of a meeting ground between the ideas of consumption and expulsion coming from the mutual focal point of deconstruction. Just as food is decomposed during the process of eating and remains decomposed until it's expulsion, so too does Ahearn deconstruct the physical manifestations of human consumption (the kitchen) and expulsion (the restroom) by bringing them down to their common ground: places made of wood and plastic.

In essence, the places in which we as humans choose to consume or expel are made of the same materials though they are experienced for two different purposes, which is interesting because it says to me that the way we experience a space is clearly not defined by the materials with which it was made, but by our preconceived notions and expectations of the space to start with.

Overall, however, I wouldn't recommend this exhibit to those not fond of hyper-modern art. You won't find any background to what you see or much history here. But if you enjoy straining your mind and a good challenge to apply meaning to things, then you will at least find some very pleasant exhibits to eye while you interpret them on your own.

Because this was not an employee-manned event (since it is put on by the students), I've documented my visit to the gallery with two adequate selfies below: one with a peer and one with the schedule of MFA exhibits from this quarter.

 

Event 2 Blog Assignment | The Fowler Museum

Event 2 Blog Assignment | The Fowler Museum

In a recent trip that I made to the Fowler Museum on UCLA's campus, I had the pleasure of visiting the Delhi-based Sahmat Collective: a visual display of arts hailing from India that the Fowler is showcasing between April through early August. 

After reading through a few of the summaries on the walls of the gallery, I learned that since 1989 this Collective has given artists, writers, poets, musicians, and actors in India a platform to artistically express themselves and promote pieces that surround artistic freedom: the gallery itself is a celebration of secular and egalitarian values. After scanning the pieces in the gallery once more after learning the background, it surprised me that the entire exhibit remained religion-free, especially for a culture so rich in deities as India, and focused solely on art for social activism and change's sake.

In context to the disciplines of our course, the exhibit merged the concepts of contemporary visual arts from India across a variety of media from over sixty artists with older, though still innovative technologies such as the motorized rickshaw, which caught my attention the most (below).

 

The section of the exhibit that showcased this rickshaw detailed its use in 1992 as part of a campaign across Delhi which featured rickshaw drivers banding together to paint on slogans that spread messages for commucal harmony across the city. 

I found it clever that this piece of technology, used for transportation and functional purposes in India to this day, could be designed artistically with a purpose for sending a message in a similar vein as an advertisement, but with a more rallying cry.

The exhibit was also keen on turning the old rickshaw into a more technology-friendly installation by attaching a television screen inside the rickshaw, which played a slideshow of different slogans from rickshaws all throughout the peace movement of 1992. 

Overall, I thought that this section of the exhibit did a great job of merging technology, not in the digital sense, but in the manufacturing sense, into an art that is meant to uplift a community. From there, the collective took an adaptive step further and made the art piece more readily understandable in relation to the digital media and helped the viewer engage with all of the different slogans though only one rickshaw was physically present in the room. In this way, the piece was able to paint a holistic experience of the different rickshaw art-slogans via the screen inside the vehicle, while not dismissing the physicality of the experience by keeping a physical rickshaw on display as well and merging the two together. 

The messages from some of the different rickshaws that were painted in 1992 were also shared below. These were the different messages found on the digital slideshow installed in the rickshaw.

Alongside the physical vehicle was a wall of different pictures again showcasing a multitude of slogans (below). 

To me, the exhibit really represented the idea of art as something that can be a mobile message. It also tied into themes from earlier in the course surrounding the idea of manufactured and replicable art - art that can be mass-produced. In regards to this exhibit, the piece was essentially taking messages and painting them over and over again. However, I think that this reproduction made the art more powerful rather than cheapened it, which is different than I wrote about in my blog a few weeks ago.

Overall the exhibit was an enjoyable experience. I got to see how art and technology could be merged together with a very political and cultural fusion. It was great to experience such contemporary pieces coming from such a different part of the world.

I would recommend the exhibit to those interested in global arts and culture, specifically with an interest in India itself, as all of the art will revolve around that specific culture. Definitely worth a visit, especially as it is free and on the UCLA campus!

Below are a few other enjoyable photographs of "art on the move" in India, as well as a snapshot of me and some peers at the exhibit! 

 

Week 9 Blog Assignment | Space + Art

Week 9 Blog Assignment | Space + Art

SpaceShipOne - Winning Ship of the Ansari X Prize

This week, as we learned about the intersection of space exploration and art, I found my curiosity peaked towards the idea of a future in which casual, leisure-focused space travel was a reality. 

This idea was first tapped by the announcement of the X Prize in 1996, later changed to the Ansari X Prize. This prize was significant in that it encouraged the average innovator to strive for intergalactic excellence and push to explore space from a non-governmental standpoint [Vesna]. 

After digging up some more research on this event, I found that even John Spencer, the president of the Space Tourism Society based in Los Angeles, agreed that the event was "a milestone for humanity" and "the kickoff of the space tourist industry" [David]. 

Lady Gaga - Planned to have performed the first concert in space.

Fast-forward to 2013, almost a decade after this "launch" of tourist-geared space travel, and Virgin had partnered with the famous musician Lady Gaga for what was supposed to be the first concert in space slated for early 2015 [Harris]. While these plans failed to materialize within the few years after the official announcement, the attempt signified what could have been a very large-scale fusion of the scientific and technology-geared "final frontier" merged with an art form such as pop music, thereby closing the literal and symbolic gap and cold characteristics normally associated with space. 

In fact, Virgin has proven to be at the forefront of tourist-geared space travel and innovations since the idea has skyrocketed within the past decade. Their dedicated branch of the multi-industry giant's many facets, Virgin Galactic, seeks to innovate on behalf of space travel from a non-governmental standpoint. The video above demonstrates a montage of perspectives and motivations from people working within the company [Virgin]. Their whole division caused me to question why people would choose to go into space? What is it about the experience that entices us besides the novelty of it all. In most of the research that I found, I read about how Space Travel was an emerging market, but not necessarily why. 

Their mission page helped make things clear when it stated that "We believe that in the future, life on Earth will be made better by the exploration of space. Children inspired by meeting and relating to astronauts from their communities will grow up to start new businesses and found new companies. Students who fly suborbital experiments while still in school will have an enormous head start on their careers, gaining experience that the current generation of leaders didn’t have until they had been in the workforce for decades." [Virgin] 

In this way, Virgin's goals for exploration as a means to discover seem pretty in-line with governmental goals from my perspective. In that case, I wonder what the draw is for the average citizen to fly also - perhaps a personal discovery that lies within the greater search for knowledge and resources in the cosmos. 

Citations

Cavanaugh, Laura. Lady Gaga. Digital image. ABC News. Getty Images, 11 Nov. 2013. Web. 31 May 2015.

David, Leonard. "SpaceShipOne Wins $10 Million Ansari X Prize in Historic 2nd Trip to Space | Space.com." Space.com. Space.com, 04 Oct. 2004. Web. 31 May 2015.

Harris, Shamecca. "Lady Gaga Confirms Concert in Space Plans." ABC News. ABC News Network, 11 Nov. 2013. Web. 31 May 2015.

Logan, D Ramey. SpaceShipOne Flight 15P. Digital image. Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 31 May 2015.

"Our Vision of the Future - Virgin Galactic." Virgin Galactic. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 May 2015.

Vesna, Victoria. "8 Space Pt1 1280x720." YouTube. UC Online, 29 July 2013. Web. 28 May 2015.

Vesna, Victoria. "8 Space Pt5 1280x720." YouTube. UC Online, 29 July 2013. Web. 28 May 2015.

"Virgin Galactic Portraits Film." YouTube. YouTube, 11 June 2012. Web. 31 May 2015.