Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Mark Iwinski art response

Mark Iwinski is a multidisciplinary artist. Iwinski has created artworks such as sculptures, organic prints, and photographs. Iwinski has taught at Dartmouth, Cornell, and William and Mary. His main interest is creating artworks involving nature. He is fascinated about figuring out the history of the remains or ruins that made up a landscape. He likes to capture ideas or topics such as nature as they are. He’s intrigued by “lost landscapes” meaning how things within a landscape grew and changed over time. For example, redwoods are nearly becoming extinct.

Iwinski moved to Vermont in 1999. A lot of his artworks in Vermont were either sculptures or prints and he used wood as his medium. He was inspired by David Nash and other wood artists Iwinski was also influenced by scientific topics such as cosmonometry (the fusion of shapes and stars) and chemistry (especially electromagnets and electrical charges.) He used his inspirations to create artworks such as architectural techniques out of wood, painted tree stumps or fallen logs to make woodblock prints, re-casted tree stumps, optical illusions and voids, casted shapes such as spheres, squares, cubes, or pyramids. Iwinski’s casts of shapes and stumps were all white because he didn’t add color or anything else to it. I think the effect of all the casts being white makes it appear ghost-like. He also took photographs of his processes of making different artworks or completed artworks.

I found Iwinski’s artworks to be interesting and original to some extent. Although I found it somewhat ironic that he was interested in leaving the natural landscape how it is but yet he himself is changing the landscape by creating his artworks with wood or paint. I think it’s inevitable to create any artwork without somehow altering the nature of it because we as humans are constantly changing and having an affect on the universe in one way or another.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Presentations

This past week or so, we have each shown a powerpoint presentation about the artist we researched. We also each wrote a paper about our artist and the artworks they have done and how we view their artworks. I found my classmates powerpoint presentations to be very interesting as well as informative. Most of them chose artists I have never heard of or vaguely knew about. For example, Kara Walker and David Smith.
I did my presentation and paper on Tony Oursler. In my last journal posting I gave some biographical facts. In this posting I wanted to add a little bit of information about his artworks. Oursler began in his work in the 1970’s and is still currently continuing his various artworks. In the 70’s and 80’s, Oursler did a lot of work making videotapes and installations. In the 90’s, Ourlser fused his installations using video projectors. From 2000-2009, Oursler was involved in public projects in many different cities across the globe using installations, projections, and other mediums. This paper is going to focus on descriptions of Oursler artworks in the different mediums he has worked in. For instance, Oursler videotapes and installations : “The Loner” and “Vampiric Battle”, for paintings: Red “Love Hurts” Laboratory and (Usually) black anythingyou want, for single channel videos: “Synesthesia” and “The Perfect Partner ”, and for public projects : “Five- Take Radius” and “Influence Machine.” Tony Oursler is a time-based artist as well as putting emphasis on presence and space. Oursler artworks emphasize differences in time marked by the movement of the virtual image toward the time and space of the viewer’s encounter. His work explores the exchange of the signs of presence and the self-identity through everyday practices of media consumption. The meaning of this is the media itself has created a new space in everyday life. Oursler’s installations are meant to grasp the viewer’s sense of psychological separation and integrity.
Questions to Consider:

Does a chosen artist to research reveal anything about the person who is researching the artist?

Would it ever be possible to stop time?

I wanted to know more about the effects of slow motion.

I found out that slow-motion was invented by August Musger. The process of slow-motion is where each time frame in a film is captured at a faster rate than it does when it’s played back; this effect can also been known as overcranking. Another way slow-motion can be processed is by playing the film at a slower speed; this technique is known as instant replay. Many film directors have used slow-motion in their movies to create different effects. For example, to show athletic skills, recapture a moment in a game, natural phenomena such as a drop of milk falling into a bowl, and explosions.