Experimental and Media Arts Spring 1601 - 003

Pipilotti Rist -Kat

2011-05-03T17:55:17Z

Pipilotti Rist is a very interesting artist, much like most all of the artists we have seen this semester. Most of her art was very straight forward and it is easy to understand her point. An example of this was the piece where she smeared her face all over that type of glass, rubbing her makeup off and all over the glass. To me, it portrayed how difficult it is to overcome the societal stigmas there are for men and women (obviously she specifically focuses on the stereotypes on women). As she struggles to smear her makeup off, I can see that it is really uncomfortable, much like it would be if she had to break out of the norm and break free of stereotype.
On the other hand, she does some work that is semi-difficult to understand like her piece I'm Not a Girl That Misses Much. It was interesting to me that she says "girl" instead of "woman". Along with that, she changes her voice to sound high-pitch and almost child or girl like. I did not understand the aspect of the video that showed her chest exposed... it did not seem to match the girl like theme she originally had. However, maybe that was her point. Has has moments of abstractness and of clear messages. I enjoyed learning about Rist.

Paul Pfeiffer

2011-05-03T17:47:56Z

Paul Pfeiffer's work was very interesting to me because sports are a big part of my life. The piece where just he has the solitary basketball player in the middle of an arena was simply amazing. By taking out all of the other players the ball the hoop and the markings on his jersey, Pfeiffer made it possible for you see just the essence of athletic form. Athleticism is the root reason why people watch sports to this day, but now the sports world is overrun with advertisements and all types of other distractions. Paul uses this piece, as reminder to the American public of the way sports should be. Now a days we have people like LeBron James taken control of the NBA and made everything about the star. Pfeiffer is telling us that we to go back to the way things once were in the world of sports.

Paul Pfeiffer

2011-05-03T17:39:49Z

I really like Paul's work because I thought it connected the most to the class itself within it's media aspects. I like that he took away some of the athletes bodies, or the basketball to really outline the significance of the sport or the player to really define the movements and how incredible they really are. I really like his intent because he is also trying to illustrate what we have made the sports world.. which is essentially an advertising campaign if you take the celebrity out. I like how it asks the question of whether or not we create the world of sports, or if it creates us and I really think it creates us with all of its hype and advertising, as if it matters. My favorite thing he did was getting rid of the basketball because than I could really focus on the complex movements of the basketball player and I could really what he was doing with each body part and how out of the ordinary the player was.

Paul Pfeiffer

2011-05-03T16:39:37Z

Paul Pfeiffer does some very interesting works of art. The way he uses videos to create works of art is cool. My favorite piece was the piece in which he recreated a house form a movie to to show the existence of an unknown being and the existence of the people living in the house. I liked this because it kind of showed how the being living in the house was also the people living in the house. Since the people looking into the hole were looking up at the stairs and at the same time they were the thing that was looking down the stairs. I really found this piece interesting. I don't think there would be anything I would change about this piece. I thought his other piece were kind of boring they did really interest me much. I didn't really like his works that had to deal with sports and repetition. Another piece I really liked was the sunrise and sun set piece. I thought it was cool how he was able to capture the something we take for granted and turn it into something amazing.

Paul Pfeiffer

2011-05-01T18:50:30Z

I really enjoyed learning about Paul Pfeiffer and his work. I loved the way he set up his projects to revolve around the relationships between objects and people, especially in his "Horror Project" based off of the film Amittyville Horror. His sports projects really caught my attention; i thought it was interesting how he chose to take clips of single players or images, and then remove everything else around it. He always chose to use players that had a distinct emotion, or players that were in the center of thousands of people with bright lights all around them. I liked that he still always left the trace of something when he took it away, like a player's jersey number. It reminded me why we are really interested in these events in the first place, and that sometimes we may forget about the real reason why we're watching it. I especially had this notion while watching "Morning After The Deluge". I loved the way he put two different videos of the sun set and sun rise together and played them at the exact same time, i felt it expressed the simplicity yet beauty of life.

Pipilotti Rist

2011-04-28T21:11:05Z

Rist was an artist who did a great job at altering viewers perception in order to portray an idea. Her work was very strait forward, which I loved. The first piece evoked a lot of emotion and was almost painful to watch. I feel like the key to the piece was her make up, it emphasized her point of how women are forced to put on a figurative mask in our society. The plexi glass added emotion to the piece adding a mask like staple to the piece. It seemed as if she was trying to push her face through the mask that society.

The piece that was the most aw inspiring was the piece in the museum projected on the walls. She took very stagnant clips of different natural settings and added movement to the pieces, giving the projections very human like qualities. I felt she did this to show how nature and the human body are more similar than we often think.

I felt that the last piece viewed was attempting to show the discomfort that societal pressure causes women. I felt like the child like voice was supposed to mimic the high pitch 'nice' voice that we like to picture the perfect woman having. Her actual movements and actions in the video represented the rawness and bottled up feelings that women get from molding themselves because of societal pressures.

Pipilotti Rist

2011-04-28T21:06:55Z

I wish we would have spent more time figuring out what Rist's motives were behind each of her pieces, whether they all had something in common, etc. She seems like an interesting artist, but her projects were lacking in purpose and direction. My favorite was the first video presented, in which Pipilotti rubbed her face all over a clear board, smearing her makeup all over her face and the board. I thought it send a clear message about how far gender roles have been taken and the pressures put on women to look a certain way. The last video where Rist was jumping up and down, while the tape continued to run faster and faster really made no sense to me. The message was unclear and it ran for a ridiculous amount of time, only making me more annoyed, rather than more interested. The one thing I feel a piece of work really needs to include is a message. And this artist, I feel has a little ways to go.

Pippilotti Riso

2011-04-28T19:37:30Z

She was one of my favorite artisits presented yet. I think all of her motives for her pieces were very meaningful and intreasting. For example our discussion in class about her pieces really showed me the true meanings of her pieces. The fact that some people thought that the where she was whipping her makeup off on the mirror was supposed to show that women shouldnt feel like they have to wear makeup, also that shouldnt feel like they have to hide behind the mask of makeup. Another main point that i really liked was with the 3rd piece that we saw how it symbolized the fact that women have not always been looked at as strongly or important as mean so that would be why her face was a blurred out and you could only see her mouth talking.

Jeff Thorstad - Pippilotti Riso

2011-04-28T19:24:42Z

I enjoyed watching the spontaneous visions of Pippilotti Riso. I think she has a very trong message to convey, probably mostly with the female population. The first video we watched was interesting because I think it encased her entire theory of female perspectives. It is clear that she has a purpose to her art, and that's to portray the female or female figure as a work of art. In the video we watched of her installation in New York, one of the people that was interviewed said something that really captured her art as a whole. The person said, "Serenity", which in the context of the art we saw today could be interpenetrated differently. But overall, with the entirety of her work, showing that female perspectives are serene and valuable. The final piece was much of a contrast in my opinion, although it has some of the same ideas as the first clip we saw. For some reason, while a watched her wiggle around on screen I had a feeling that this was not legitimate. It confused me because it had an obscure effect on what I previously thought of her art.

Paul Pfeiffer

2011-04-28T03:04:58Z

For me, I had a different impression of Mr. Pfeiffer's works than the conclusions we arrived at in class while discussing his works. Keeping in mind his third piece titled "Morning After the Deluge" as well as his comments on the second piece regarding the process in which he made "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" and "The Long Count," I was given a more contemplatively artistic, meditative impression as a motif of his work. I felt that that was a little bit overshadowed by the overarching biblical theme (which is indeed prominent and important, but maybe a little overemphasized considering his Amityville Horror piece as well as his later works tend to deviate from that theme.) His remarks regarding the editing process of his Horsemen of the "Apocalypse piece portrayed a relaxing, meditative process that may not be present in the piece, but overt in The Morning After the Deluge" and I felt that accordingly. His work is clever, insightful, and snide all at the same time, and that is something I aspire to do with my work.

Paul Pfeiffer

2011-04-27T01:51:38Z

I thought the re-created house from Amityville Horror was very interesting and creative. All the details he put into creating this house were amazing. I liked how the piece was not just out for everyone to see, but how they had to look through a hole to see it from a different perspective. The sport projects remind me of the artist who took away pieces from video games, but Pfeiffer has a different goal to why he does it, he is not trying to make have a theme of "failure or loosing," but rather having the viewers look at sports and their technique in a different way. The last piece that was shown was with the sunset and sun rising and I found that one very beautiful. I like how he says you need to be patient to view the whole piece to understand what is going on. I know when I am at an art museum, I tend to look at a piece of art then keep walking instead of fully understanding what is going on. After viewing this presentation of Paul Pfeiffer, I will now be patient and really take time to view art. I definitely believe his work is considered art and I would love to learn how to use some of his techniques in my work!

Harrell Fletcher

2011-04-26T18:15:27Z

Harrell Fletcher was an artist I have never seen before, the way he makes art is different then what I have seen before. I almost questioned if it was even art at all. The piece that interested me the most was the one with all the scars. It was pretty gross at time, but it is always interesting to hear how some one has earned their scar. Also you could never see the face which made you only focus on the scar so that was a pretty good part to add to the project. Although all his projects were pretty much the same, like the baby faces and all the things he had in his hands. It makes me wonder if you can really consider that art because all he was doing was taking video clips that he had recorded and just showed them all at the same time. I did really like what I seen from him, i just did not think his work looked very challenging. If was to change one thing that he did, I would add a little bit more to the video to make it more interesting, but other than that I think that he did a good job with his projects.

Harrell Fletcher

2011-04-26T18:12:26Z

I really enjoyed all the videos that we watched of Harrell Fletcher's. I really got into how real each video was. The scar video was so real, because it seemed like I was talking to these people and they were sharing their stories with me. The hand one was real, because it made it feel like it was me looking down at my hand. All three of his videos kept me entertained. I'm guessing it's because you couldn't tell what was going to come next. Sure, there was going to be another scar story, another baby, and another hand opening, but he kept that element of surprise in all three of his works.

Hayao Miyazaki

2011-04-26T18:08:12Z

Hayao Miyazaki's movies are able to draw in young audiences with the presence of the fantastical, but he also able to keep adult audiences entertained by combining the fantastical with a deeper meaning. All of the movies that were shared in class have similar style of drawing along with similar heroic characters. The hero in Princess Mononoke and the heroine in Nauiscaa Valley of the Wind both seemed to have a complete understanding of the problems that afflitcted their communities. Whereas the heroine in Spirited Away who was a bit younger than the other two, didn't have as much of an understanding of the problems portrayed, but her innocence and goodness just showed all of the older people in the movie the proper way to act. Hayao Miyazaki's is clearly a master of storytelling and of the art he chooses to relay his stories.

Hayao Miyazaki

2011-04-26T16:58:47Z

Miyazaki and his films- in particular his early work- generate a lot of key themes and motifs that I personally can connect in visually compelling ways. I think his insistence on using hand-drawn frames brings something more personal to the animation, and gives it a life CGI or other purely technologically derived models could not do. His film work is still quite varied, though the central themes carry- either subtly or directly- throughout. He does use linear narratives, but with great visual and written metaphors, telling his viewers many things about the interactions between man and nature, man and machine, or man and man. His life and influences can be seen overtly in many of his early pieces, though Princess Mononoke stands out as a more obvious example (e.g. the introduction of warfare, the destruction of natural land for "economic betterment", etc). His work does become a bit more softer and readily accessible to younger audiences as his career continues, though in large part I would owe that to the influence of Disney on his work. In either case, Studio Ghibli makes some very powerful statements on the nature of morality. I appreciate that his work does not simplify issues to a base dichotomy, instead showing that people are not simply good or evil, but operate on a broader plane. He shows how perspective can change a villain into a hero and back again.