Recently in artists Category

Here is a link to the Animatronic Sculptures I mentioned (by Asia Ward):

http://asiaward.com/toy-sculpture-video

They are awesome!

The designers Dunne and Raby use design to propose alternative products that challenge about how we think, live and produce things. They suggest that a "design fiction" attitude can critique the status quo and generate awareness. What I find interesting is their comparison with Art:
" But isn't it art?
It is definitely not art. It might borrow heavily from art in terms of methods and approaches but that's it. We expect art to be shocking and extreme. Critical Design needs to be closer to the everyday, that's where its power to disturb comes from. Too weird and it will be dismissed as art, too normal and it will be effortlessly assimilated. If it is regarded as art it is easier to deal with, but if it remains as design it is more disturbing, it suggests that the everyday as we know it could be different, that things could change."

This is much more in line with my own approach -subtle critique. Objects that infiltrate our every day activities can be used to communicate subliminal messages, or to gently nudge us into new ways of thinking. However, I don't believe all art is "shocking and extreme" !

The Project "Between Reality and the Impossible explores food production for an over-populated world: http://www.dunneandraby.co.uk/content/projects/543/0

http://www.dunneandraby.co.uk/content/bydandr/13/0

I find Arthur Ganson's work to be one of the best artificial representations of life. It is easily misunderstood that evolution moves toward a predetermined goal, and Arthur Ganson's work evokes ideas of artificial life that exemplifies the superfluous and gratuitous features often found in the natural world. The personification of some of his machines is what I find to be extremely inspiring. In a way, I think it demands a more empathetic observation than some true 'bio art', without skirting the ethical issues.

Taken directly from her website:
Beatriz da Costa is an interdisciplinary artist who works at the intersection of contemporary art, science, engineering and politics. Her work takes the form of public participatory interventions, locative media, conceptual tool building and critical writing. da Costa has also made frequent use of wetware in her projects and has recently become interested in the potential of interspecies co-production in promoting the responsible use of natural resources and environmental sustainability. Issues addressed in previous work include the politics of transgenic organisms, and the social repercussions of ubiquitous surveillance technologies. Through her work da Costa examines the role of the artist as a political actor engaged in technoscientific discourses. This topic is also addressed in a recently published anthology she co-edited with her colleague Kavita Philip entitled Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism, and Technoscience.

da Costa is a co-founder of Preemptive Media, an arts, activism and technology group. She is an Associate Professor of Studio Art, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California Irvine. She is a core faculty member of the ACE program and affiliate faculty of the Culture and Theory Ph.D. at UCI. da Costa's main area of teaching at UCI resides within the Arts, Computation, Engineering (ACE) graduate program. In addition she also teaches undergraduate courses in Studio Art and Computer Engineering, and frequently supervises graduate students across a range of other disciplines.

I'm currently reading Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism, and Technoscience and it touches on a variety of artists Natalie Jeremijenko, collaborators Karl Mihail and Tran. T Kim-Trang (specifically their Creative Gene Harvest Archive) and Critical Art Ensemble (CAE, who we've read about in this class). da Costa has collaborated with CAE on Free Range Grain and Molecular Invasion.

I'm interested in da Costa's work because I feel she's able to take the personal and connect it to a larger political and social interest. In 2010 she underwent treatment illness and as a result of that has created projects such as The Life Garden and Dying for the Other.

-Teréz

Here is a link to a brief Art 21 segment about Mark Dion's public ecological project in Seattle: http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/mark-dion

Also, here is a link to Mildred's Lane, Mark Dion's long-term project with (I believe his ex-wife) artist Morgan Puett. The two have created an art/life integrating "complex(ity)" in PA.

"Mildred's Lane [activates] connections that situate themselves at the nexus of science, methods of living, environmental activism, transhistorical and critical artistic practices. This unusual situation affords participants the ability to collaborate in the production of large-scale, socially charged, research- driven projects within a truly transdisciplinary environment. Woven into the project work is a curriculum based on creatively and experimentally living and working together - what we call workstyles. These valuable collaborations are designed to become shared experiences that hope to have transformative and lifelong effects on how artists think of themselves as practitioners functioning in the world."
Check out Mildred's Lane here: http://www.mildredslane.com/home#home

Here is a link to a brief Art 21 segment about Mark Dion's public ecological project in Seattle: http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/mark-dion

Also, here is a link to Mildred's Lane, Mark Dion's long-term project with (I believe his ex-wife) artist Morgan Puett. The two have created an art/life integrating "complex(ity)" in PA.

"Mildred's Lane [activates] connections that situate themselves at the nexus of science, methods of living, environmental activism, transhistorical and critical artistic practices. This unusual situation affords participants the ability to collaborate in the production of large-scale, socially charged, research- driven projects within a truly transdisciplinary environment. Woven into the project work is a curriculum based on creatively and experimentally living and working together - what we call workstyles. These valuable collaborations are designed to become shared experiences that hope to have transformative and lifelong effects on how artists think of themselves as practitioners functioning in the world."
Check out Mildred's Lane here: http://www.mildredslane.com/home#home

Hi fellow classmates!

I am apart of a performance called, Barefoot, a senior project organized by Anna Hanson who is in the theatre department here at the U. I am the sculptor and a technician for this collaborative piece that involves dancers, performers, a lighting designer, a poet, and musicians. We are exploring the human body as it communicates with nature and I am exploring the mark we make in a space through the sculptures I am creating for the performance.

Here is a link to the blog I set up with more information about this event - it documents my process as I work with fellow artists to create this work of art exploring the human biological body.

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/smilt002/myblog/

The performance is this upcoming week on Friday and Saturday - here is the poster with more information.

You should all reserve a seat, though! It's a free event and it's taking place in the installation and performance room that we visited on the first day of class in Regis West that is connected to our main classroom. It's a great chance to see the possibilities of collaboration with multiple artists and with people of different disciplines and it might give everyone some ideas! :)

I hope to see you all there!

Hannah S