Final Project

       For the final project, I made a 3D dinosaur model and let it walks through several background pictures that displayed by stop-frame video. The background pictures represent the environmental change and the environment is worsening step by step. The dinosaur could not adapt to the changing environment because their living environment was becoming worse and worse. The project intends to arouse people to think about the extinction of dinosaur and the importance of ecological balance. 

Exhibit 2: Tehching Hsieh: One Year Performance 1980-1981

       Tehching Hsieh’s art communication media is his own life rather than text, sound, and paint. Each his performance include a specific statement, a specific constraint, and a specific way of being. They are recorded with gravity in the form of relevant content. Although Hsieh never states the creation reason in detail, every work implicitly put forward some profound problems about life, art, existence, and the meaning of life in the world that we live in. One of his one-year performances Time Clock Piece was created in 1980-1981; Hsieh put the working time card insert the time clock to record the time and punched a time clock every hour in a day. The performance lasted for a whole year and an observer confirmed his every day’s time card. Hsieh used a 16mm movie camera to document himself at the time clock. He got a haircut before started the performance and then let his hair naturally grow during that time to show the progress of time. Hsieh explains that people consume time until they die because life is sentence, passing time, and free thinking. The time is always very different and changing. His intention is the basically passing time rather than the pass time concept. The work breaks the boundaries between daily life and the art gallery system.

       The Time Clock Piece focuses on the nature of time. Essentially, people are a drop in the ocean; however, we rarely pay attention to the passing of time. We tend to consider time according to the activity of filling time or passively think about time when we want to get something immediately. Hsieh abandoned all of the content and circumstances in his performance in order to experience the process such as the pure passage of time. The work finished through push habit about the time is equal to work to excel in our society. He used the time clock to divide the time into accurate equal parts through the measurement of time consumption to assess person's performance ruthlessly. He treated punch clock as his work rather than measured various types of work by time. Eliminated the process of any special content time passing become the only goal of his work. Hsieh re-explained a kind of inner experience of time, a pure, peaceful, and continuous feeling. I think Hsieh explores all kinds of the existing situation of human beings with extreme experience of life. His work has the striking representation form, which causes philosophical consideration for people’s own existence.

       

Exhibit 1: Nick Van Woert: Pink Elephants on Parade

       Nick van Woert’s art practice originates from his interest in architecture, nature, ancient history. He was born and grew up in Reno, Nevada where makes this artist in the city between garish construction and plain natural scenery of the surrounding desert. Nature creates things and city creates things are two fairly distinct ways. At the same time, it provides Woert a symbolic and conceptual inspiration. His works are closely linked with abstract expressionism and often create classic sculpture’s busts by using all kinds of plaster and other material such as oil paint that give his work with meaning and height. The contemporary sculptures in the exhibition Pink Elephants on Parade that produced by everyday materials and mixed by the classical forms and references.

       Woert studies architecture during the university, which has a significant influence on his artistic work. His greatly interested in the architecture construction which including the “Primitive Hut” proposed by the Roman civil engineer and architect Mrcus Vitruvius Pollio. The modernism emphasizes the faithful to material and do not hide the structural strength. He also focuses on the evolution of building materials and uses this evolution to develop a dialogue between the materials. He even borrows the material formula from eco-terrorism. For example, the materials like polyurethane, steel products, fiberglass, hair gels, and other ingredients. When you mix some of materials together, it could be produce the destructive effect. In most of his works, Woert creates a combination of new classical aesthetics and the use of extreme contemporary materials. For instance, the use of ancient bronze statue re-assesses the standard of the classical sculpture. He explores the contemporary moment’s conditions and terms. The past characteristic simply fade away by Woert, he gives them a strange and timeless characteristic.  He regards our body as a reflection of the environment because he believes that we are influenced by the surrounding environment and things.  

Lecture 2: Tehching Hsieh

       Tehching Hsieh is a Taiwanese American artist who creates several stunning performance art works. These works are called One Year Performance. Hsieh’s works are known as disintegrate the boundary between art and life, which are not escapist entertainment. Although he never tries to integrate into the art system, his works has continued to provoke academic reflection and discussion as well as to become an important coordinate in the field of performance art. Hsieh’s influence and reach cannot be questioned. His performance art plays a crucial role in the development of contemporary Chinese art in the 1990s that has profound and enlightening meaning. 

       In 1983, Hsieh’s fourth one year performance Cage Life had been working with Linda Montano. They were connected by a rope, at the same time; they tried to avoid the actual contact in order to retain a feeling for their own spaces. Hsieh locked himself and Montano in a cage that built in the attic for a whole year. The cage seems like a prison. There were no one talk to them and they were not communicating with each other. They could not do anything such as listen and read except thinking and count the days. Every day, Hsieh marked on the wall and took a picture of him by himself to record the suffering. An assistant provided him with his daily food and emptied the garbage, but they never talk. 

       After the performance ended, they made an agreement to stop seeing each other again and have no any connection. The two people live together for a year who back to each other's life without any change. The result is cruel but real. The link between people sometimes is far-fetched and the relationship between people sometimes is fragile. The rope’s moral is so profound because I realize the value of freedom through it. The connections between people are bound to violate the privacy of each other. The infringement is not obvious in acceptable range. However, it is the cruelest deprivation when everything is naked. This one year performance art makes people think about how human relationships dose works. It explores the intimate boundaries, what makes two independent people become a couple, what means to them about keep close contact for a long time. 

Lecture 1: AfroFutures: Creative Media and Black Visions of Liberation

       Terry Marshall is a social justice activist and community organizer who works with the Healthcare Education Project, the Hip-Hop Media Lab, and the Boston Youth Organizing Project. He turns to the struggle of social justice and talks about the social media impacts on racism and activism against police brutality in Ferguson, New York. The project Black Body Survival Guide is about the race relations in America, which satirizes the problem of black inequalities or unequal treatment in a humorous way. Marshall believes that this is one of the best ways to reveal racial injustice in a post-racial world in America. The project arouse people to become conscious of the racial injustice of the American society because the violence against black people exist among the society. He states that we all know life is hard these days and how to survive in a black body in the project. He gives some black body survival tips to guide themselves for survival when they are being abused and policed such as “only wear a hoodie at home”, “keep your hands, eyebrows, feet visible and raised at all times”. 

       Marshall also mentions Obama campaign as a symbol of changing terrain. Obama campaign reveals the leadership position and competitiveness in the black community as well as the racial relations in the American society. Obama’s represents the new black middle class and his success quietly changing some deep-rooted features about the lower position and racial discrimination within the black community. Marshall created Intelligent Mischief which is a hack lab to solve social problems. He discusses the activism against racism and police brutality that has developed through storytelling and social media.

Project 2: 3D Vignettes

       For this project, I created a small 3D printed house as a prop in the stop-frame animation. The story is about a boy plays soccer, results crashed into the house. There is a little bird take interest in the house and coincidentally perch on the house when the ball hits the house. I added two bird sounds to represent the bird’s reaction on the ball. The sounds are different because the bird is frightened.