1st Light, 2005

Paul Chan
1st Light, 2005
Projected digital animation

Institute of Contemporary Art

Paul Chan’s 1st Light is a parable of religeon and politics for a post 9/11 world. A wedge of light is projected on the floor as if it’s streaming though a big window. The shifting colors from the projector make the animation looks as though the sun is rising and setting through the window at times. Silhouettes appear against the grey-white light making it look like light from the early morning. Tree branches and power lines anchor the scene making it look like it projects the city. Most of the shadows are familiar at first but as the animation changes it starts to look a little strange and creepy. Ojects such as cell phones, sunglasses, cars, clothing - ascend. Meanwhile shadows of bodies start falling downward as if they are falling into hell. Some religeons believe the faithful will be transported to heaven when they pass but in Chans inverted Rapture he reflects an era of consumerism and violence which often appears to favor earthly possessions over human lives.

All in all this was a great peice. The projection of the piece of to the floor was a good idea as well.

VanDerBeek @ MIT's List

I really enjoyed my visit to the List gallery to check out the Stan VanDerBeek exhibit. I'd never visited before but now I'm compelled to keep up to date with their other exhibits.

Thoughts: My favorite part of the exhibit was definitely Poemfields and the Movie Mural. It reminded me of a Marta Minujín show I saw recently. At her show there were small rooms to walk through and one had projections on each of the four walls and even the floor and ceiling. (A piece photographic evidence below from a different room at the Minujín exhibit.) VanDerBeek's projection of multiple images in the Movie Mural was truly immersive. I was very happy with the use of space-- the very high ceilings really added to the experience.

The Poemfields were also very cool. I thought it was awesome that he used a technique that involved punch-cards to make those films. I also really liked the trippy feeling of the exhibit-- especially noticeable in Poemfields and the Movie Mural.

Art that involves or includes the viewer always interests me. It makes it more personal and you feel a deeper connection to the work.

In one of the videos VanDerBeek discussed the future of computers and television in art and he made some interesting predictions. For one, he said that one day art schools would teach computers and programming along with more traditional classes. He also predicted 3D televisions and the use of holograms that people would be able to control themselves. He was right about the art schools and 3D televisions so perhaps he will be right about the holograms, too. ((I think Wolf Blitzer hologramed-in Will.I.Am during the last presidential election.))

Field Trip: ICA Boston

So I decided to go to the Institute of Contemporary Art with Nikia last week. I've been to the MIT art gallery in the past but haven't gotten a chance lately to visit the ICA. There weren't as many things currently on view in the exhibitions as I had last seen it, but nevertheless there were still some interesting pieces. Many of the art installations were abstract and heavily conceptual...thank goodness for the exhibit descriptions! Mark Bradford was one of the featured artists, where most of his work consisted of abstract, oversized paintings with mixed mediums. He uses many bright bold colors and all of his paintings have repeating motifs like grid-like patterns and adding several layers of different mediums. What was interesting was each new layer was dissolved or cut away at certain places to reveal what was underneath it... it was an interesting way of showing "class, race, and gender in American urban society". He also had a video on display where he was wearing MC Hammer-esque pants with a giant tube wrapped around his waist and he was attempting to play basketball. By hindering his own movement he said it represented society's expectations/stereotypes as pressure for weighing people down from what they do...

There were several pieces in the galleries that interested me, including Shepard Fairey's artwork (it was amazing to see the collection of artwork, I just wanted to have them all for my personal space). Another piece that I found interesting was Christian Jankowski's "The Hunt". It was a short video which followed Jankowski over a course of one week where he shopped at a grocery store and only bought/ate the things he shot with a bow and arrow. It's quite humorous but it also made me think of nomadic tribes hunting for food, meshing primitive hunting traditions with current methods of obtaining food, and the male's role as the "hunter".

Stan VanDerBeek's Visual Arts

I went to the Stan VanDerBeek exhibition last Friday, and was amazed by the works he had done. He's not only an engineer but also an artist in Visual Art. Some concepts are really refreshing, for example, he uses the swimming pool and steam to produce a 3D projection on the wall, I spent like half an hour on reading his notes and drafts and got the basic idea. Now I really hope I can have a chance to view the 3D motion graphics, especially when I swim, though I am still confused with it a little bit.

Yup, I love the surrounded, overlapped montage, or whatever it is called. It's compelling when so many frames appearing in front of your eyes simultaneously, especially they have connections somehow. Sometimes I even felt there was fewer frames on one screen, I knew that was illusion though. Really smart idea! I was amazed how he arranges the clips and frames. Woo... What a genius!

About the posters or images, I also like the nude woman one. But I really want to talk one of his drafts in the other exhibition room. It's a draft or something, looks like a drawing or a sketching on a paper. He used simple horizontal straight lines, with vary little turns or bents in each, to create a embossed and 3D appearance man on a flat paper. Remember, that was created decades ago, and far before computer graphics were invented.

VanDerBeek Trip

I took a lot of notes while I was at the exhibit. I'm pretty sure I liked more than half of what I saw. I struggled not to over-interpret anything because I hate when people do that to me. I thought some of VanDerBeek's work was nice explorations of texture, like the metal work series and some of his traditional paintings. I wasn't expecting to see traditional media at this show, but I got a Mondrian feel from the wall of paintings on plywood. It also struck me that VanDerBeek was really exploring geometric relationships with circles, orbs, eyes, celestial bodies, etc. I liked most of his collages; I thought they were very Dali. I got an impression of turning people into architecture.

I think the movie showing I caught was "Astral Man". It reminded me a lot of "Dr Who", "The Tomorrow People", and other 60's sci-fi shows and movies. The audio when I first entered the theater was also typical for the genre, odd sorts of underwater-sounding noises, which I think were used in sci-fi at the time to give the feeling of a submarine in space. At this time, the dancers were prone, I think having restless dreams. Then, the dancers stood up and were more active. As the dancers sped up and started interacting with each other, the music changed to a peppy classical violin. I think the movement of the dancers, the music, and the psychedelic backgrounds all interplayed well. The next movie started with some blurry shifting figures and what I think was an audio track from a therapy session talking about an uncomfortable dream. Slowly, the blurry shapes focused into macabre human figures that visually expressed the tension of the voice describing a bad dream.

Unfortunately, several of the projectors in the room with the 360 movies weren't working. Technical/electrical difficulties at MIT. Go figure...
Before reading the description of the project, I sort of saw a historical progress through the movie clip I was watching the most. The entire piece was an attempt to summarize the totality of human history in a multi-movie piece. So, it made sense to me.
The other projection piece, I didn't like as much. I got the idea of "Poemfields" giving a multimedia styling to lines and words of poetry. I like the idea, I didn't like the execution. I didn't think it was visually appealing, and I didn't watch it long.

Wow, this is getting long. I'm going to do a bullet list of the pieces that struck me:

• One of the Dali-esque collages featured a man holding a woman's hand, but her face had come off and was falling. I at first thought this was perhaps about dehumanizing women in romantic pursuits. I looked closer and noticed the man had a watch, and was thus taking her pulse. Now, a statement on the impersonalization of the medical industry.
  
• Variations V - I didn't like the piece, but I like the idea of an audio-reactive environment to play in
• Panels for the Walls of the World
• Audience feedback in ongoing art
  
• Fax machine art!!!!
  
• Nixon & "If no tyrany exists, invent one" - This seems relevant, again.
• "On a treadmill" & a Southeast Asian about to be shot - Makes me think of the 'War on Terror'
• A comment about finding few Communists in Cambodia (which no doubt involved killings during the search) combined with a comment about legalizing abortion made me think a lot about what of many possible messages was being expressed. The hypocrisy of killing some people is bad but some people is okay? That we will always make up justifications for killing another human being if we really want to?
  
• Social Imagestics: Somewhat accurate predictions about Year 2000 culture's use of technology and social media being international and reactive and the resulting lack of privacy. "We will get the future we learn to expect", or, perhaps, are taught to expect.
• Vanderbeekiana: I really liked the still images transitioning into structurally similar but very different content images. My favorite was the nude woman turning onto a landscape with a road and castle, then back into a woman.
• Strobe Ode: Ow! My eyes!
  

Exhibit

I am not too fond of abstract to say the least. But it was still an interesting exhibit. It reminded me of something from the movie The Game. There were a couple items that I did like, however. One of the drawings that I liked was the apple on the table, it was one of the smaller drawings at the beginning of the gallery. I liked the saying on it, which I am trying to remember, um..."You have everything to fear." Which kind of made me think that he was pessimistic, but then I started to think that it reminded me of the you have nothing to fear but fear itself speech from Roosevelt, and it seemed like he was just going extreme opposite. The image that accompanied it was interesting, it was an over size apple on a small table, overwhelming was the apple on the table, kind of brought home his message of fear every thing. The next part of the exhibit I enjoyed was the area where he had some pictures that were created as miniature collages. I had two favorite ones from there one was the naked lady, she was laying flat, and a little body builder man was on top of her. I liked the meaning of it, well this is what I thought, of men conquering the woman's body. Also, the images with the women as part of the cars, made me think of how people refer to their cars as a women, and I thought he was playing on that part, by having the car literally made from part of a woman. The last part I liked was the one of the little montage movies he made, in the other room, not the large ones, but the one that was on the little TV. I enjoyed the part, where it was a montage of guns and violence and you could hear Martin Luther King Jr's speech "We are free at last." It was hilarious, because there was some truth to it. Guns and violence was the way we became free and it is usually how people become free, Revolutionary or Civil wars, or like such events as Cairo...which makes his little montage, relevant even now, which makes it timeless...