Aoshima Chiho - Amazing!

I don't know why, but I really enjoy this artist's work.
His work is so simple and well illustrated, I can't help but be captivated.

I love the way that he includes some darker material (bondage of women) but makes the picture remain bright and cheery through the way he illustrates and colors it.

Thoughts?

-Thomas

Nothing like a little bit of sarcasm!

http://www.theonion.com/articles/national-endowment-for-the-arts-provides-80-millio,35464/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_campaign=LinkPreview:1:Default&recirc=lifestyle

The Onion has an article here on people providing large grants to get novice artists to either improve or quit making art!

If this were proper, I'd be insulted - yet that certainly wouldn't stop me applying for a grant!

What does that say about me as an artist? haha.

-Thomas

DTC 477 Public Intervention

My public intervention just went live on Youtube (youtube being the public forum of which the intervention is being done)!

Here's the video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm9Ab64-rMw

It's a commentary on binge watching and the use of technology by the masses.

People end up spending hours watching pointless videos, such as cute cat videos, compared to learning something lasting or important. 

Leaving the cat video there with my commentary increases the chance of people remaining to watch the entire video.

The current generation, it seems, is disposed to this Binge watching as an innate trait, and through the personal experience of school people know there are more important things happening. 

That's how this intervention connects to Nature vs. Nuture on the public forum of Youtube.

My complete artist statement for the piece:

"My intervention is relatively straightforward. I'm intervening on the Binge watching of an individual on the public forum of Youtube (and Vimeo). I'm doing this by giving the viewer something they didn't expect. They click on a video called "Cute Cat Video!" and what they get isn't what they expected.

I left the video of the cats playing (for hope of keeping the unsuspecting watcher for a little longer) and overlayed the audio with 3 sections of 1 minute each where I talk about a subject.

These subjects are The invention of the Microwave, the Higgs field discovery, and PAC groups. 

So as the people came to the video through a desire to have mind-numbing entertainment, I shake them to realizing (hopefully) that they're wasting time. That my generation is Binge-watching their lives away when there is so much to learn and interact with.

This is why the forum of the internet was crucial to this intervention. To reach the audience I was intervening with I had to be in the place where Binge-Watching is most prominent (Online including Netflix as well as Youtube). 

I'm in the piece through my personal narration and my google account being the author of the video"

Enjoy!

-Thomas

Shanken 193-202

In this section you get a bunch of the personal philosophies of artists.

I think that as an artist it's important to have an idea or an insight to a part of the world that is all your own. Artists are uniquely suited to make such claims without fear of much ramification.

If it's accepted widely it's good for your career, and if it is accepted badly, then it's also good for your career. 

If you were in a different position however, you have your job to be afraid of losing, or reputation. However artists have the strange media protection at being able to say almost anything they like and get away with it. You can't lose your job as an artist because in many cases, you aren't being hired to do it.

Well-received or not, artists are making what they will and saying what they will. In contemporary culture it's almost preferred if, as an artist, you have controversial views or an outlandish personality.

That's both a blessing and a curse, but that's a different subject. 

The good thing is that artists are some of the craziest people, as well as the people socially allowed to present that craziness. 

-Thomas

Shanken 182-193

The opening phrases of Scientists beginning to welcome artists more for their ability to represent data and aid in creativity in the laboratory.

This idea is one that I welcome, and hope to see truth from in my lifetime. I am fond of the sciences and believe each of them has extreme importance to them. But I also am aware that people don't give enough attention and consideration to the things that are being found out each day.

If there was a major break-through in the world of science, say with the discovery of an element in physics that would make string theory obsolete, word would spread. But this knowledge wouldn't be spread as widely and rapidly as the winner of American Idol or the latest episode of Duck Dynasty.

And when this word gets out, it wouldn't be understood. People may be able to say they know the basic fact, but they wouldn't know anything beyond that. And most people don't actually care.

That's where artists can help. With data visualization artists and scientists together can get statistical data into the world in a way that people want to read, that people may understand better without getting them to read scientific textbooks.

It is my hope that scientific knowledge, more in depth than the basics of knowing that tectonic plates cause earthquakes or that stars can be dead while we still see their light, will one day be understood.

I can't help but wonder what it would be like for society if everybody understood the basic concepts of string theory or genetics. Personally, I think some amazing things could happen.

-Thomas

Shanken 166-182

The digital frontier, simulacra, and the blurred line between the real and unreal is a double edged sword for me.

On one hand it can see the demise of important cultural distinctions being replaced by an over-commercialized version. Think of Chinese food for instance. The american Chinese restaurant is not real Chinese culture, or Chinese food. It's a distorted symbol of Chinese food. But when these restaurants have been around so long, they become their own entity. Then there is your own country's food, Chinese food, and Fake Chinese food.

A simulation becomes the replacement of reality or an entity of itself separate from the real.

That in and of itself is a potentially destructive process, with the possibility for the Chinese to one day be having "Chinese Restaurants" in their own country instead of their true cultural foods (for example).

On the other hand, I believe that the virtual reality aspect of simulacrum can be an infinitely positive thing.

Things that have been lost can be recreated, things that cannot be can all of a sudden be.
Within the digital realm there is potential for anything and everything.

This in and of itself has potential for harm, with people preferring the unreal to real, ignoring some of the inconvenient realities of the world. However it does have the potential to offer so much to people, in whatever way people want.

-Thomas

Shanken 140-166

For this portion of the reading, the ending piece of "The Animal, Vegetable, Mineralness of Everything" by Ken Fiengold is what is sticking with me. Regardless of underpinnings, the aesthetic alone is good enough for me.

It's weird, it's unique, and a little bit creepy. Imagining these heads pivoting around having these vegetable "thoughts" about either their own things, their own fears, or the object in front of them, all could lead to some really strange conversations. The work itself seems to me to be a simplification of the human condition, taking IQ back to the bare minimum and seeing similarities between these contraptions and ourselves.

With such a low IQ they're still curious, they're still afraid, and they still have their own obsessions.
Love this sculpture.

-Thomas