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Wolfgang Staehle was born in 1950 in Stuggart, Germany. He attended Freie Kunstschule in Stuttgart and then in 1976 he attended the School of Visual Arts in New York (BFA) where he studied many different forms of art from painting and sculpture to video and Art history.

Throughout the 1980’s he had a successful career in New York and European galleries. During 1991 he founded “The Thing,” an online forum for artists and cultural workers. The site has now grown into a diverse online community with many features including web hosting services, community studio, and mailing lists.

In 1996 he began to produce continuing series of live online video streams. The first of his series – Empire 24/7 – is featured within Christiane Paul’s “Digital Art” categorized under Digital Technologies as a Medium - Film, Video, and animation. Empire 24/7 features continuous live view of the top half of the Empire State building. His other works include various landscapes, buildings and lower Manhattan before and after 9/11 are featured in his live video streams. Today he continues his work on his video series and serves as the Executive Director of The Thing. He is currently represented by Postmasters Gallery, New York.

Empire 24/7 is a work of his that I like best - three stills of the video are featured in “Digital Art” displaying the differences in lighting as the day progresses. His work inspires me to try other types of digital mediums in producing my work and helps me open my eyes to other art forms besides photography.

Links:

Wolfgang Staehle’s Website
http://www.wolfgangstaehle.info/

“Eastpoint” – One of Staehle’s Video Series
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/mmedia/entertainment/092304-10v.htm

Postmasters Gallery – New York
http://www.postmastersart.com/

The Thing
http://post.thing.net/

ARTIST: Casey Williams
STUDENT: Kimberly Halverson

Casey Williams, from Chapter 1 (Digital Technologies as a Tool; Digital imaging: photography and print) of Christiane Paul’s "Digital Art", is a Texas based artist. Holding a B.F.A from the University of Texas, and an M.F.A from The San Francisco Art Institute, this 59-year-old artist has participated in my national exhibitions, including showings at The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

For Williams’s process, he is introducing straight traditional photography to digital editing, then combing it with paint on canvas. Most of his art from the past 20 years centers on the balance of “tension and tranquility” of the Houston Ship Channel – specifically, the character of a worn ships hull against soothing patterns of water below.

I am especially drawn to the worked entitled "Toyokaze II". (http://www.artnowonline.com/galeria/Holly_Johnson/Casey_Williams/Casey_Williams_Details.php?tCodArtista=A200601001&mObra=O2006010001 ) I love how the soft, almost monochromatic colors play off of each other, and I enjoy the obscured subject matter. It is personally more interesting when everything isn’t presented in an identifiable manner – you can just let your eyes appreciate the aesthetics of the work. I also like that Williams can use the very basic principles of photography – like the rule of thirds – and make it work for him in his own unique way.

Casey William’s works are simplistic yet beautiful and I shall aim to achieve the same effect with future projects of my own. I am also going to stay within the bounds of his hazy color palette to get a similar emotional effect as in his works. An investigation into his layering techniques would also be worthwhile.

2 other works by Casey Williams:

"Akmala"
http://www.artnowonline.com/galeria/Holly_Johnson/Casey_Williams/Casey_Williams_Details.php?tCodArtista=A200601001&mObra=O2006010002

"Untitled (281.23)"
http://www.hollyjohnsongallery.com/html/Detail.asp?WorkInvNum=1827&whatpage=artist

Artist: Jochem Hendricks
Digital Imaging: Photography and Print

1959 - born in Schlüchtern, lives in Frankfurt am Main

Background:
1988 - Frankfurt Artist Aid scholarship
1990 - Recipient of the City of Nuremberg scholarship for drawing
1993 - Villa Romana - Prize, Florence
1995 - Travelling scholarship of the Hessische Kulturstiftung
2000 - Studio scholarship at Burgdorf, Switzerland
Hendricks has done over 20 exhibits from 1990 – 2007 mainly in Germany and surrounding countries.

Hendrick’s digital work draws a fine line between science and art, or maybe more accurately connects them with a line. He has explored the potential of artistic expression through the patterns of eyesight. He uses digital technology to trace the exact path of a persons gaze. These paths then get sent to a printer where a physical drawing of looking then can studied in all of its sketchy glory.
It’s this sketchy quality that I really like because it gives a new meaning dimension to the idea of an artists’ “mark.” This particular process is seen by many art critics as being completely void of artistic marksmanship, but I think it only expands its possibilities. This is important to me as a graphic design student who strives for an element of fine art in her work, because it refuses to deny this possibility.
In his piece EYE a girl sits reading a news paper but all that is seen on the paper is the path that her eyes have made as they ran along the pages. I like this because this process that he has creates not only work that can be hung on a wall, or printed in a magazine, but that can be photographed in an interesting way successfully tying in this new form of digital art with the fine art of photography.

http://www.jochem-hendricks.de/englisch/w_augen/index.htm

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/augenzeichnungen/

http://www.shanelavalette.com/journal/2007/07/31/jochem-hendricks-eye-drawings/

Comments

Charles Csuri, Digital arts and animation designer.
Born: July 4th, 1922
Csuri completed his MA in art at Ohio State University, and is now a professor there teaching in the center for Arts and Design. During his time teaching he founded the Computer Graphics research group, the Super Graphics project, as well as the Arts and Design department he teaches in. Csuri received the 2000 Governor’s Award for the Arts, for the best individual artist. His work has exhibited all across the world, from New York to London.
Csuri’s field of work is digital art and computer animation, which he tries to create as realistic as possible. Here is a quote from Csuri how he starts creating his 3D artwork. “My approach to planning is non-linear and unpredictable involving a great deal of experimentation. I like to play with combinations of form, color and movement. It is a mixture of insanity and algorithmic thinking. I don’t have the tools I really want. But I do have tools, which work within certain limitations. Sometimes these limitations force me to be more inventive in finding solutions. This is where a sense of the ridiculous helps.”
He also keeps in mind space and what Paul Cezanne called “the passage shape,” being an abstract shape combing two adjacent objects. One of the hardest things he needs to consider as an artist, in his opinion, is to think of nature as symbols and numbers.
One of his digital art pieces I really like is “bird flying in a circle” (1966), because the simplicity and beauty from the outline of the hummingbird. Yet it is still very eye catching the way the shape of the 22 hummingbirds repeats, overlapping one another into two perfect circles. There is no color involved and none is needed because it is more about the lines he uses to create the bird. It also gets the viewer some what lost in looking at the overlapping pattern to which bird is on top and, which is on bottom.
His work makes me keep in mind of all the potentials a simple, natural object like leaves or a flower can be created into something else much bigger. Because of this, artists should widen their scope towards the big picture when looking at something, and to think of all the different possibilities one thing can have. It also influences me to how important line can be. Fewer details and focusing more on the outlines and shape can make a more interesting artwork. For his 1966 piece, as well as many others of his first digital images, Csuri was very fascinated by the idea of being able to do transformations on a drawing, which also had an influence on the analogue computer art.

Links:
http://www.csurivision.com/
www.csuri.com
http://www.siggraph.org/artdesign/profile/csuri/

Posted by: Marla Peterson | September 24, 2008 10:25 PM

For some reason my third link didn't post:
http://www.csuri.com

The artist I have chosen is Erwin Redl. This artist was born in Australia in 1963 and currently resides and works in New York City. Redl started his career as a musician with a BA in Composition, and then continued to receive an MFA in Computer Arts, from the School of Visual Arts in New York. Redl’s work is shown comprehensively in North America, Europe and Asia. Redl’s work consists that of what is quoted as “large-scale manifestations” or “light installations of archetypical grid structure”. As the book well puts; “these installations often present themselves as enormous ‘curtains’ consisting of a vast number of strings of LED light bulbs.” His work, throughout my research is displayed outside or indoors of large institutions. They hang from the top of the certain structure as if a blanket of lights covers an entire section of the perimeter of the building. These grids of light also can change color, which enable another experience for the viewer in a more “virtual” way. The book, in which Redl’s work is displayed on the front cover, categorizes Redl’s work as “ a very different approach to an architectural exploration of space in its connection to light as a structural element.” My favorite work done by Erwin Redl is that once mentioned on the cover of Digital Art by Christiane Paul, named the Matrix II, from the year 2000. This exhibit of LEDs, draws in the curious audience and convinces them to stay and truly feel what Redl wants them to feel. This exhibit enhances the simplicity of minimal supplies used and gives the viewer a spatial yet physical environment. I chose Redl indeed because of his simplicity, and yet his success with imprinting an impression to view things differently. He uses minimalism in such a way that could be influential to those wanting to pursue a career in this field.

Erwin Redl works:
www.acegallery.net/artistmenu.php?Artist=20
www.paramedia.net (Redl’s personal website)
www.flickr.com/search/?q=erwin+redl

David Rokeby is a Canadian Digital Artist from Toronto who has been creating interactive installations since 1982. He’s focused on pieces that directly engage the human body, or involve artificial perception systems. His work has been performed and exhibited across Canada, the U.S., Europe and Asia.

David’s digital art is usually interactive. One recent exhibit of his showed the recent history of activities of people and pigeons on the Piazza of San Marco Venice. This piece is basically an interactive long exposure time-lapse picture. The pigeons are just small worm like lines that travel throughout the picture frame, where as the people who move about are larger, and the tour groups look like rivers flowing around the Piazza. This image has layer upon layer of traces building into a rich and complex image that is very painterly and find many resonances with the history of Art and the history of the piazza itself.

David’s work is shown in Chapter 3, Themes of Digital Art. The piece shown in the book is The Giver of Names. Christiane Paul goes on to talk about how David’s work is connected to showing the way computers and machines think, or the way we make them think.

I personally really like San Marco Flow. The way he has shown the inner and outer workings of the life in the city makes me think about how often people are moving, and how often there is someone in a certain place, even though everyone of them has different lives.

I’ve never really thought about time-lapse photography before and I am really interested and would love to try something drastic with it.

Links:

http://homepage.mac.com/davidrokeby/mftt_fdl.html

http://homepage.mac.com/davidrokeby/gon.html

http://homepage.mac.com/davidrokeby/smf.html

Casey Kunkel
Artist: Michael Rees, Sculptor
Michael Rees is a fifty-year old “new media” sculptor from Kansas City. He uses rapid prototyping (RP) on the Sculptural User Interface program to experiment with how body parts and anatomical organic forms can make sculpture. One RP technology used by Rees is stereolithography—a three-dimensional printing process allowing an object that exists only virtually to become physical. Rees believes that body parts are transformable and clonable and it shows in his work because the parts are not represented as functioning as they would in the body. For example, in his Anja Spine series (1998), he combines a spine and ears; this work is found on pg. 62 in Digital Art. For his sculptures he uses translucent epoxy resin material to create a white bone appearance. Rees also makes animated “movies’ with his artificial sculpture by taking many process shots.
My favorite Michael Rees sculpture is Large, small, and moving at the Bitforms Gallery in New York. I really like that he takes two body parts; the leg and torso, and creates a free-standing form that is entirely unique and does not look like a typical human body at all. But, the most interesting part of this work is the animation of it called Putto 2.2.2.2 because it shows all the possible positions, bends, movements, etc of the piece. In Putto 2.2.2.2, the piece wrestles with itself representing the timeless idea of the inner-human struggle and relates to the ancient story of Jacob wrestling with the medieval serpent eating its own tail. After researching this piece, it definitely became my favorite because I like the idea of creating art for a reason, whether it is to represent a greater idea like Rees has done or for simply self-expression. Overall, I think Michael Rees’ digital work could inspire me to use objects out of their norm to make something entirely new and to have more meaning behind my work.
Rees Work:
http://home.earthlink.net/~dadaloplop/michael_rees.html
http://www.michaelrees.com/indexT.htm
http://www.michaelrees.com/Putto2x2x4/texts/42A12DDA-2222-4966-951E-BF5E3B2C4B7B.html

Artist: Kenneth E. Rinaldo

Kenneth E. Rinaldo was born in 1958 in Queens New York. Eventually Rinaldo went on to achieve a n Associates in Science in Computer Science from Canada College in 1982. Two years later he went on to gain a degree in Human Communications from the University of California Santa Barbara. One year later after gaining his degree he decided to pursue a study of art. Upon making that decision he went on to receive a masters in Fine Arts from San Fransisco states Conceptual Information Arts Program in 1996. He is now teaches interactive robotic sculpture, digital imaging, multimedia, and directs the Art and Technology program department at Ohio State University in Columbus Ohio. His artwork is not so much digitally created but brought into reality. In the book Digital Art by Christiane Paul, Rinaldo's work of the Autopoiesis is shown in chapter 3: Themes in Digital art, Section 1: Artificial Life. The section that Rinaldo is found in talks about how robotics and artificial life are gaining behavior to them. Paul talks about how Rinaldo's artwork does not deal so much with the virtual environment that is mainly talked about, but how artificial life can interact with society. My favorite piece by Rinaldo is the Augmented Fish Reality. This piece is 5 robotic fish bowl sculptures. He allows each bowl to have one fish in it and each fish controls the robotic structure. Rinaldo showed me that I could use my Computer and Electrical Engineering major in more ways then just a computer or electrical field. Rinaldo created a style where he brings what he creates from a digital design to life. I have never thought of this type of art before other then either a artist creating the idea and the designer bringing it to life. Rinaldo does both.

Links

Ken Rinaldo- Robotic sculptures, interactive art inspired by natural systems
http://accad.osu.edu/~rinaldo/

Emergent Systems
http://kenrinaldo.com/

Web Shows
http://mefeedia.com/feeds/22694/

Charles Cohen

Cohen’s stood out to be very interesting to me based on his so-called abstraction of content. In his works he takes pornographic images and abstract them leaving the background as realistic as it is, therefore making the entire image a positive and negative image. In my opinion I think his work is genus, because it creates a curious feeling for the viewer, and I do believe that art should make you either be blown away or ask questions. In this context of abstraction I choose to call it content censorship, but in this case adds value to the image. Cohen was born in 1968.

Daniel Canogar

Daniel Canogar was born in Madrid in 1964. He continues to live and work there. He studied visual communications at the Complutense University, continuing on to receive his Master´s in photography from NYU/ICP in 1990. His work has been exhibited in many places around the world.

A common display of Daniel's work involves bringing the viewer into his work. Sometimes using fiber optic projection allows the viewer's presence interrupt the projections. This casts shadows and gives the audience a chance to interact with the installation. A reoccurring theme is explained through the idea of digital technology impacting our perception of reality in large amounts.

Palimpsesto - Found on his website, this light installation makes use of the viewer to empower them with the ability to unify the light. It's otherworldly and this is where the otherside and our side meet.

I'm attracted by installation like Daniel's because it uses technology in new ways to allow people to interact with it and create meaning and understanding for themselves. I'm a big fan of electronic stimulation installations.

Homepage:
http://www.danielcanogar.com/

artnet:
http://www.artnet.com/artist/3566/daniel-canogar.html

Interview by we make money not art:
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2008/09/interview-with-daniel-canogar.php

Artist: Toshio Iwai

Toshio Iwai was born in 1962 and is a japanese interactive media and installation artist who has also created a few current commercial video games. Some other aspects of his work include television, music performance, museum design and digital musical instrument design. Iwai's work often revolves around relationships between sound and image while utilizing interactive aspects as well as gestural interfaces where human touch or motion causes digital representations of sound and or light. In the book Iwai falls under digital technologies as a medium in the sound and music category, and the example work shown is called "Piano- as image media," and I like this work in particular because as someone who is very interested in both music and digital art, its extremely aesthetic. This work is very influential to me because I'm both a musician as well as a visual artist. I enjoyed researching Iwai and will look for more art in the realm of his work.

http://www.pixelsumo.com/post/toshio-iwai-futuresonic

http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2006/06/as-part-of-sona.php

http://www.vanriet.com/doors/doors1/transcripts/iwai/iwai.html

Victoria Vesna grew up in Yugoslavia. She took to art early and graduated from the High School Of Art in New York. From then on she took leaps and bounds. Just a few years later she achieved her doctorate in Advanced Interactive Media at the University of Wales. She is now a professor of art at UCLA as well as their director of ArtScience programs.

Vesna’s work would best be described as conceptual multimedia art that engage audiences to explore their philosophical implications of science principles. Nanoscale science holds a particular interest for her and it shows in her cutting edge integration of web design. One website invites the viewer to create “cyber-bots” of themselves. Vesna processes cyber bodies to work as data containers that function given commands on screen. The products of these installations became wildly popular, due to the public’s fresh excitement of virtual reality being used to create avatars, or another version of themselves.

Emphasis on technology and identity formation has always been Vesna’s art context. A particular piece in that context caught my attention. Virtua Concrete is composed of digitally captured male and female body parts transferred onto six three feet slabs of concrete. It is highly conceptual, given without context it would be hard to appreciate its meaning. The body forms have silicon implants and/or computer chips on them, representing our nature to be technologically sound and immortal within the realm of technology.

The story that brought about the piece was an earthquake near Vesna’s home that brought fifteen main roads to dust and rubble. However, the internet pressed on, as one would expect. She wanted to create a piece that connected the virtual to the concrete. In addition, she recorded viewers looking at the piece, some crawling on top of it, from the walls and the piece itself. That produced quite entertaining footage.

Vesna’s work is thought provoking. In that sense, she inspires new ways to approach concept and interaction between artist and viewer. I am definitely influenced by that aspect and will seek interesting ideas in my art that could attract more than just the eyes.

www.nisenet.org/artnano/artists/vesna/

http://vv.arts.ucla.edu/projects/current.php

www.bodiesinc.ucla.edu/

Artist: Chris Finley, Chapter 1, Pg 56 “creates digital templates for his paintings”
Student: Janell Murray
Chris Finley was born in 1971 in Carmel, CA and now lives and works in Rohnert Park, CA. In 1993 Finley received his B.F.A. from the Art Center of Design, Pasadena, CA. The successful artist has had much of his work exhibited throughout California and New York.
Finley is known for his abstract paintings and kinetic sculptures. I will gear my thoughts towards his paintings, since I find them most interesting and completely mind blowing. With the help of digital imaging technology, he pushes his paintings to a new level. Many of his works are extremely intricate and give a sense of precise disorder. I can appreciate his seemingly obsessive quality throughout his art.
I particularly like his piece titled Pattern Master, acrylic and oil on canvas. I’m drawn to the contrast of the geometrical and cylindrical shapes, as well as the opposing dark and light tones. It’s a little bit crazy, but leaves enough room for the eyes to rest.
Though my digital art experience is limited, Finley inspires me to be confident in more deeply exploring the realm.
http://www.acmelosangeles.com/artists/chris-finley/
http://www.artnet.com/Artists/LotDetailPage.aspx?lot_id=21B86BE2D8357CCC627D08D1E88854FA
http://www.acmelosangeles.com/artists/chris-finley/

Artist: Nancy Paterson
Nancy Paterson works out of Toronto, Canada. She is an electronic media artist who works mainly with interactive installations. She is an Associate Professor at the Ontario College of Art & Design teaching ‘Time-Based Media.’ This course emphasizes the idea of using the fourth dimension as a creative medium. Nancy is also the facilities coordinator at Charles Street Video. Charles Street Video is a place that gives artists the opportunity to produce media arts by renting out production equipment and offering facilities to work in. Nancy’s current work is a creative text titled, ‘The Bottle-stoppers.’
Texts available that include all her work;
-‘Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age’ by Margot Lovejoy, Routledge (UK) 2004.
-‘Digital Art’ by Christiane Paul, from the Thames and Hudson World f Art series, published Fall 2003.

Her digital art deals mainly with interactive installations. She enjoys having the participation of the audience where the meaning of her piece is produced.

Nancy Paterson is found in Chapter 3: Themes in Digital Art in our textbook. The piece that is pictured and talked about is her ‘Stock Market Skirt.’ Incorporated is a physical object being altered by the results posted online for the stock prices.

The ‘Stock Market Skirt’ is probably my favorite piece by Nancy Paterson. There are so many different objects that were brought into this piece to make it represent what she was trying to say. It is a new way of understanding the changing flow of the financial markets.

My work could be influenced to possibly including some installation pieces in the future. I have never used any sort of installation before. It is generally not something that comes to mind when I am generating ideas. However, seeing how Nancy is able to incorporate digital art and installations to create something that is easily understood is very inspiring.

http://www.vacuumwoman.com/MediaWorks/Stock/stock.html

http://www.thelibrary2.com/

http://www.vacuumwoman.com/MediaWorks/Medusa/medusa.html

Julianne Glawe

Robert Rauschenberg- American artist 1925- 2008

Robert Rauschenberg was born in Texas in 1925. He started out thinking maybe he would be a minister or a pharmacist but soon enough, he found his calling. He began to study art while he was in the marines. He drew people and ordinary objects and enjoyed art. After his time in the Marines, Rauschenberg studied art in Paris on the G.I bill but soon moved to North Carolina to study at the Black Mountain College where many artists were teaching and learning. Rauschenberg liked painting and began to put together his "combines". He put found objects onto his canvases and mixed 3d with collage elements. This is what made him famous. He continued to create his "combines" and also experimented with printmaking, painting, ways to transfer photography to different surfaces and some other methods. He and Jasper Johns made some of the most ground breaking post- war art. His most famous piece was also one of his first titled, "Monogram" which combined a stuffed angora goat, a tire, a tennis ball, the heel of a shoe, a police barrier and paint.
Rauschenberg's digital art was represented in the way he combined the things that were produced digitally in magazines, newspapers, on the television etc. He used what he saw in the media in his art because the images are what people were seeing and surrounded by at the time. In the book his art is considered photographic with collage elements and also he is a painter.
My favorite work of Robert Rauschenberg's is "Travelling 70'- 76'". I love this piece because I could look at it all day. There are so many elements combined in it and so many colors, lines and styles. I have experimented with this style with paint and picture clippings of my own on canvas and I really just like putting things together. You can have the most random things and there will be a way to arrange them so there is balance in the composition and even though the elements are so different, they work. I think his method of collage will help me in my digital art. The self portrait project we just did could have been put together in the way he modeled his canvases.
Check out these links to his art:

www.artnet.com/artist/14005/robert~rauschenberg.html

www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/arts/design/14rauschenberg.html

www.tate.org.uk/servlet/Artistworks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=1815

Artist: Kenneth Feingold

Kenneth Feingold was born in 1952 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He has been a resident of New York City since 1956, and is currently producing work there. Feingold has been recognized for his films, drawings, digital art and installations. His talent in the multi-media arts classifies him as a successful contemporary artist. In his current work he combines the elements of sculpture, installation and audio to create robotic scenes. Feingold uses mannequin heads with robotic parts that interact with each other in a manner that is complacent and emotionless. He creates this uncanny relationship between false personality, with natural language processing and conversation of personality algorithms. Feingold confides that a large focus of his work relates art with artificial intelligence. He uses software and audio to make this clear to the viewer. Without these devices the viewer would be lose the influence of Feingold’s conceptual intent. A fine example of his use of these diverse methods can be found in the work, “You” (2004). In this work he creates a relationship between two mannequin heads, one female and the other male. They are placed in a suitcase with blankets and pillows as if they are lying together in bed. In their discussion they forgive, forget, then begin to argue again, and this cycle is continuous. Each time “You” is viewed these characters partake in an argument that is different from the last, yet of a similar nature. The software that defines their personality also includes obsessions, associative habits and personal vocabularies. Feingold integrates concepts that are scientific in his work by creating “[...] projects that point to the possibility that computers may not only help us to understand the structure of ideas, but they may very well change these processes and the way we think” (145). I believe that his incorporation of multiple mediums is innovative and redefines what is categorized as digital art. His innovative methods of creating art might encourage me to attempt to do similar things in my work. By creating in a new way, we produce work that is completely original and inventive. As artists we should all be striving to do this in our own work and hope to see it in the work of others.

http://www.kenfeingold.com/

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/artist/feingold/biography/

http://www.acegallery.net/video.php?Video=32&Title=YOU&Year=2004&Next=/artwork.php?pageNum_ACE=11&totalRows_ACE=67&Artist=3&Artist=3http://www.acegallery.net/video.php?Video=32&Title=YOU&Year=2004&Next=/artwork.php?pageNum_ACE=11&totalRows_ACE=67&Artist=3&Artist=3

Student Name: Brittany Vatalaro
Artist Name: Nancy Burson

Nancy Burson is an American artist who is most known for her work with computer generated images. She was a pioneer in the field of computer generated composite photographs. Her early work included a morphing, or a transformation of one image to another, of different faces. Now this technology is used by Law Enforcement Agencies. The most famous piece she did with morphing involved combining the faces of popular Hollywood stars. The first merger was of the faces of Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelley, Sophia Loren and Marilyn Monroe. The second contained the faces of more recent stars Jane Fonda, Jacqueline Bisset, Diane Keaton, Brooke Sheilds and Meryl Streep. It is very interesting because the composite image really shows the culturally defined ideals in beauty at that time. The two images are so different from each other it really shows how these norms and values change over time. Most Burson's work usually addresses the idea of beauty as defined by our society and culture. I have always found this an interesting topic especially these days when the media has even more control over these ideals, especially with girls.
Recently Burson developed a similar technology, the Human Race Machine. It allows the user to see a picture of themselves as another race. It is touring the United States in colleges right now. Her work is shown around the world in museums and galleries. She has taught at the New York University's Tisch School of Fine Arts and was even a visiting professor at Harvard, although she teaches and lectures worldwide.

Check out these links:
www.nancyburson.com
www.nyu.edu/greyart/exhibits/burson/index.html
www.pbs.org/wnet/egg/205/burson/index.html

Artist - Robert Lazzarini

Awards –

New York Foundation for the Arts, Visual Arts Grant, July 1985
New York Foundation for the Arts, Visual Arts Grant, renewal, June 1986

Education-

1990 BFA, School of Visual Arts
1985 Parsons School of Design

Some of his work includes –

violin, 1998
flame maple, ebony, bone, spruce

hammers, 2000
wood, steel

chair, 2000
maple

telephone, 2000
plastic, metal, rubber

Lazzarini manages to make some of the most hauntingly surreal yet realistic art that I have ever seen. Which is mostly why I’m so drawn to it. While very realistic something I consider to be very hard to pull off well in sculpture it also enters into the surreal with the way he distorts his works. I’ve never been much for sculpture but definitely inspires me to explore different ways of distorting realism. One of his works I like particularly is the skull piece’s. Both incredibly realistic and very distorted they manage to keep their proportions. Lazzarini is from chapter 1 of our book and is in the sculpture section.

www.thecityreview.com/whitb8.gif

www.pierogi2000.com/graphics/lazzariniskull4.jpg

www.pierogi2000.com/graphics/lazzarinichair.jpg

Rafael was born in Mexico in 1967. He received his college training in Canada and obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Physical Chemistry. Rafael’s work generally deals with kinetic sculpture. He specifically deals with interactive robotics. He works on large scale public projects and has shown his work in over twenty four countries.
Rafael’s work dives into responsive environments in which the viewer actually becomes part of the work itself. He makes custom interfaces to help the viewer become part of the work. The book discusses him in the context of using digital technologies as a medium. This means using our technologies such as video, robotics, lights, sounds, to create a work of art. That is exactly what Rafael does in his works. He uses these digital technologies to create installation pieces. My favorite piece of his is titled “Vertical Elevation.” It has over a dozen robotically controlled searchlights to create visual architecture out of light and pulses of light. These search lights are controlled by the viewers who hold on to sensory joy sticks that measure heart rate much like on the treadmills you find in gyms. These measurements are then translated into movement of light and pulses in the light architecture. I think interactive art is really new and innovative breakthrough in the art world.

http://www.lozano-hemmer.com/eprlh.html

http://artobserved.com/electronic-artist-rafael-lozano-hemmer-to-flood-trafalgar-square-november-2008/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKHwsxTTf-I

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

More on Charles Cohen:

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