Thursday, November 19, 2015

ALLATONCENESS NEW MEDIA WORK

Tuesday, November 24, 2015 - 3:00-5:30 PM
Warch Campus Center Cinema
New media projects by 11 ART 240 Digital Processes students responding to Marshall McLuhan’s ideas of the global village from his seminal book The Medium is the Massage. Writes McLuhan, “Ours is a brand-new world of allatonceness. “Time” has ceased, “Space” has vanished. We now live in a global village…a simultaneous happening…we have had to shift our stress of attention from action to reaction.” 


Chloe Stella   Dentro Di Me (Within Me)
A short stop-motion video exploring the anxiety that stems from feeling constricted by one’s physical existence. 

Molly Froman   Blind 
This video explores the relationship of the still and moving image. By layering still images I have created not only a video but also a new still image which only gradually changes over time. It aims push the limits of subtle change and what it might mean to the viewer.
Patrick O’Mahoney   A Day in the Frame
My final project will be a series of photographs set to music. I will encapsulate the daily activities of a Lawrentian using still images in attempt to tell a moving narrative.

Malcolm Lunn-Craft   STILL RUNWAY SHOW
In this project, i will be using photography to help exemplify beauty in the form of a modeling photo shoot. The models will come dressed in what they idea of beautiful is, and strike poses that make them feel beautiful. This project is meant to show beauty and diversity and how we all are unique in the same community. 

Sara Morrison   Selfie-Portrait
A photography book which presents selfies as legitimate works of self-portraiture in order to explore the link between the two and why we consider one to be art and the other to be frivolous and self-absorbed.
Alison Smith    Appear Offline
A series of photographs exploring the interpersonal interactions between players in gaming.

Colt Duncan    Censored 
A series of photos mocking censorship and all the people that try to hinder anyone’s voice or artistic vision by using censorship. “Art is anything you can get away with” – Marshall Mcluhan, and although I agree, I think you should be able to get away with all art. 

Alicia Lex   Life Bling
A magazine containing 'life bling' found in Appleton, WI. But, do these blings solely belong to Appleton? To imagine what the artist captures as bling, an abstract video will show you through the eyes of the artist.
Mark Lofgren   Amateurism in Modern Film
I believe that in modern Hollywood we have lost this aesthetic of amateurism that early 20th century film once possessed. I seek to return modern films to the amateur.

Luis Gonzalez  Hitana    
A music video that follows a couple walking around at night and has clips of The Goat Wizard playing live hoping to capture the vibe of the song that is in very odd meter.

Pat Commins   "The Pat Show"
In hosting my own talk show with a simultaneous video and performance interaction, I examine the roles that space, identity, and the audience play into creating a piece, and the impact of amateur versus the professional aesthetic.

Anna Kosmach   In the Eye of the Beholder
This video project explores the ways in which culture influences how women perceive who and what is beautiful, and what types of women qualify. I asked women I knew to describe who they thought was an icon for beauty that they look up to, and talk about why that woman is beautiful in their eyes.

Liam Guinan   The Village of Appleton
A video exploring Appleton's "village centers" such as stores, bars, hotels etc. and the cultural rituals performed there. It's purpose is to present Appleton as a "modern village" as McLuhan described in The Message is the Massage.

Molly Hopkins   je ne sais quoi.
This video attempts to show that human beauty comes from the little things that we all do.

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Something is Happening




Bob Dylan performing Ballad of a Thin Man, referenced on page 104-106 of Marshall McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage, from D.A. Pennebaker's Eat the Document. An amazing, spirited performance. McLuhan must have been impressed with the song, dedicating three pages of the book to Dylan's likeness and the words:
"Because something is happening
 But you don't know what it is
 Do you, Mister Jones?"
Although many have tried to link the lyrics to specific people and events, the song can be interpreted as a universal critique of people unaware of the world around them. It was one of a very few songs Dylan kept performing over the years, typically introducing it with the reflection that "there are still a lot of Joneses out there."


Sunday, September 27, 2015

Robert Frank's Journey to the Outside


Sarah Greenough discusses the structure of The Americans in this video. She authored the 528 page volume that investigates Frank's Guggenheim project and the resulting 180 page book, first published in the United States in 1959.

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

The Film Studies EditShare Media Server is the place to store video and audio media for your classes in Hurvis 013. Here is a video explaining how to log in. Students enrolled in a video production class, such as ART 240 (FIST 240), are automatically allocated class media storage space on the Server, which can be accessed from all work stations in the Hurvis editing labs. Student's personal computers can NOT access the server space! Students are strongly encouraged to frequently back up all files stored on EditShare to their personal external drive.

NOTE: All files stored on EditShare will be cleared one week after the end of the term.


Tuesday, September 15, 2015

One of the Greatest Men of All Time



Douglas Engelbart (1925-2013), whose vision of collaboration using computer technology to help solve the urgent and complex problems of all of humanity, died on July 2, 2013. His comrades believed that his ideas were never fully realized due to his ideas and generosity of spirit. For example, he resisted patenting the "mouse" he'd invented and it eventually fell into the public domain. The robotic rigidity of institutions is also to blame -- most powerful technology companies in American relegated him to R&D. Ted Nelson, professor and inventor of the first hypertext project, delivered Engelbart's eulogy on December 9, 2013. In his tearful delivery, he said the "...real ashes to be mourned are the ashes of Doug’s great dreams and vision, that we dance around in the costume party of fonts that swept aside his ideas of structure and collaboration...Perhaps his notion of accelerating collaboration and cooperation was a pipe dream in this dirty world of organizational politics, jockeying and backstabbing and euphemizing evil." Engelbart articulated his ideas for collaboration publicly in what is known as The Mother of all Demos delivered on December 9, 1968, nearly half a century ago. Some of what he described is still in the process of being realized in commercial forms such as Skype, Google Docs, and more.

Monday, June 1, 2015

I'm a Believer NEW MEDIA WORK I'm a Believer I'm a Believer I'm a Believer

Monday, June 8, 2015 - 3:00-5:30 PM
Warch Campus Center Cinema

New media projects by 10 ART 340/540 students responding to Michel de Certeau’s ideas of "Ways of Believing" from his seminal book The Practice of Everyday Life:

For a long time people assumed that the reserves of belief were limitless. All one had to do was to create islands of rationality in the ocean of credulity, isolate and secure the fragile conquests made by critical thinking. The rest, considered inexhaustible, was supposed to be transportable toward other objects and other ends, just as waterfalls are harnessed by hydroelectric plants.
page 179


Lucy Bouman   What do you believe in?
A video project exploring what immediately comes to peoples' minds when asked what they believe in, including footage from interviews in the studio as well as from the outside world.

Rachel Wilke  The Lawrence Confessional
Bringing up hook-up culture at Lawrence University is known to be taboo. In this short video, students confess a personal hook-up story in order to break the stigma that hooking-up on campus is wrong and should be kept secret. However, there is a twist in the end. 

Steven Alexander & Htee T. Moo   “Elements”
A series of photographs and videos that explore four of the astrological elements as we interpret them.

Hannah Ganzel   Frenzy
These two videos, "feeding the masses" and "cleaning up after the masses", displays both the unending consumption of food and disposal of shit. It also displays the position of the people who work as cogs in the machine.

Olivia Rowe   #Meninism
A documentary-style film that combines the efforts of a fictionalized "meninist" with real interviews and social media posts about the feminist and meninist movements. The film aims to highlight misunderstandings and generate discussion about both causes. 
Michael Hubbarb   Memory Split
Ben Meunier returns in another starring role as a confounded young man haunted by flashes of distant memories and lurching anger as he wanders off through a dense, grassy field into unfamiliar territory.
Ridley Tankersley   June 1st, 2015
A short collection of clips from a 15-hour digital video cataloging the entirety of my day with its routines and irregularities. This video examines life through amateur videography and positions its place in the art world.

Finn Bjornerud   "This is Lawrence: Leisure"
A short video project that uses montage to blur the lines between reality and fiction concerning the activities of Lawrence students in their spare time. The kids are rowdier than you think. 

Noah Gunther   Learn to Skate
Learn to feel again in the age of manipulation and mirrors. What did you eat so far today? Imagine it's all on a plate in front of you but half-digested, like it is in your stomach. Now imagine that you're being digested. Climb up the stomach walls. Free yourself! Free yourself with Learn to Skate!

 
Molly Froman

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

I'm a Believer

  
“I don't believe in art. I believe in artists.”
                                                                                  ― Marcel Duchamp




    But the will to "make people believe" ("faire-croire") that gives life to institutions, provided in both cases (church+state) a counterpart for a search for love and/ or identity. It is thus important to investigate the ups and downs of believing in our societies and the practices that have their source in these displacements.
     -Page 178 "The Practice of Everyday Life" by Michel De Certeau


    Then I saw her face, now I'm a believer
    Not a trace of doubt in my mind.
    I'm in love, I'm a believer!

    Neil Diamond wrote this song. He had his first big hit earlier in 1966 with "Cherry, Cherry," which got the attention of Don Kirshner, who was looking for material for The Monkees. Kirshner was sold on "I'm A Believer," and as part of the deal, allowed Diamond to record the song as well. Diamond's version was released on his 1967 album Just For You. The Monkees version benefited from exposure on their television series.

    This was The Monkees second single, after "Last Train To Clarksville." It was released during the first season of their TV show.

    The Monkees sang on this, but did not play any instruments. The producers used session musicians because they were not convinced The Monkees could play like a real band. This became a huge point of contention, as the group fought to play their own songs.

    Neil Diamond had intended the song to be recorded by the Country artist Eddy Arnold, and was surprised when record executive Don Kirshner passed it instead to The Monkees.

    Mojo magazine July 2008 asked Neil Diamond if he resented at all the Monkees' success with this song at a time when his own recording career was less successful. He replied: "I was thrilled, because at heart I was still a songwriter and I wanted my songs on the charts. It was one of the songs that was going to be on my first album, but Donny Kirshner, who was their music maven, hears 'Cherry, Cherry' on the radio and said, 'Wow, I want one like that for The Monkees!' He called my producers, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich - 'Hey, does this kid have any more?' And they played him the things I had cut for the next album and he picked 'I'm A Believer,' 'A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You' and 'Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow),' and they had some huge hits. But the head of my record company freaked. He went through the roof because he felt that I had given #1 records away to another group. I couldn't have cared less because I had to pay the rent and The Monkees were selling records and I wasn't being paid for my records."

    from http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=2135

    Wednesday, April 15, 2015

    Sophie Calle Space



    In bed with Sophie Calle: The artist's parody of Brigitte Bardot in 'Days lived under the Sign of B, C and W'



     -Page 118 The Practice of Everyday Life by Michel DeCerteau



    First official Sophie Calle's work of art:
    In 1979, Sophie Calle asked several (23) persons, friends, strangers, neighbors, to come and spend eight hours in her bed in order to keep this bed occupied twenty-four hours a day. These people had to accept to be photographied and to answer some questions. She took photographs of the sleepers and noted the important elements of these short meetings: subjects of discussion, positions of the sleepers, their movements during their sleep, the detailed menu of their breakfast she was preparing for them... The whole set of these series of photographs (23) was exhibited at the XIth Biennale de Paris in 1980, fiirst Sophie Calle's show who then decided to "become an artist."




    A conversation about "self-burial" between artist Sophie Calle and a man without identity. In this video the two artists meet for the first time, to discuss an artistic idea which they have discovered that they share: arranging and attending your own funeral.

    Wednesday, April 8, 2015

    Rock My Religion

    Dan Graham!



    Dan Graham
    Figurative, 1965, Offset printed periodical
    13 x 19 ½ inches [framed]
    Edition of unknown size
    Published within Harper’s Bazaar (March 1968)
    Collection Specific Object / David Platzker, New York






    WATCH IT!!!
    on Vimeo


    INVISIBLE   INTUITIVE   INTERPOLATED



    "This knowledge is not known. In practices, it has a status analogous to that granted fables and myths as the expression of kinds of knowledge that do not know themselves. In both cases it 
is a knowledge that subjects do not reflect. They bear witness to it without being able to appropriate it. They are in the end the renters and not the owners of their own know-how. Concerning them it occurs to no one to ask whether there is knowledge; it is assumed that there must be, but that it is known only by people other than its bearers. Like that of poets and painters, the know-how of daily practices is supposed to be known only by the interpreter who illuminates it in his discursive mirror though he does not possess it either. It thus belongs to no one. It passes from the unconsciousness of its practitioners to the reflection of non- practitioners without involving any individual subject. It is an anonymous and referential knowledge, a condition of the possibility of technical or scientific practices."
    -The Practice of Everyday Life by Michel De Certeau


    Novartis Campus, Associates in front of Dan Graham’s “Curve and Straight Line”; Basel, Switzerland




    Saturday, March 28, 2015

    Articulating Everyday Life


    The Practice of Everyday Life
    Michel de Certeau

    General Introduction

    This essay is part of a continuing investigation of the ways in which users-commonly assumed to be passive and guided by established rules-operate. The point is not so much to discuss this elusive yet fundamental subject as to make such a discussion possible; that is, by means of inquiries and hypotheses, to indicate pathways for further research. This goal will be achieved if everyday practices, "ways of operating" or doing things, no longer appear as merely the obscure background of social activity, and if a body of theoretical questions, methods, categories, and perspectives, by penetrating this obscurity, make it possible to articulate them. 


    Jonas Mekas
    A Walk
    1990, 58 min. Filmed on Dec. 15, 1990. On a rainy day, I have a walk through the early Soho. I begin my walk on 80 Wooster Street and continue towards the Williamsburg bridge, where, 58 minutes later, still raining, my walk ends. As I walk, occasionally I talk about what I see or I tell some totally unrelated little stories that come to my mind as I walk.
    This video was my early exercise in the one-shot video form. There are no cuts in this video.

    from jonasmekas.com

    Wednesday, March 11, 2015

    ALLATONCENESS NEW MEDIA WORK

    Monday, March 16, 2015 - 3:00-5:30 PM
    Warch Campus Center Cinema

    New media projects by 11 ART 240 Digital Processes students responding to Marshall McLuhan’s ideas of the global village from his seminal book The Medium is the Massage. Writes McLuhan, “Ours is a brand-new world of allatonceness. “Time” has ceased, “Space” has vanished. We now live in a global village…a simultaneous happening…we have had to shift our stress of attention from action to reaction.” 

    Alex Koszewski- you have two minutes
    A photography project about media attention exploring reactions and expectations of people towards being the sole subject of an unexpected photo shoot.
     
    Lucy Bouman- I have no Yik and I must Yak
    A series of photographs with text, exploring the stupidity and the futility of the anonymous social platform Yik Yak.

    Willa Johnson- Glitch and Glamour
     A project exploring the glamour of the old and the glitching of the new.

    Jamie DeMotts- Claustrum
    Featuring a Fox River Fish
    A short film in an air apocalypse about the snapshotting of identity exploring the relationship between nature and people using dystopian mood to portray a human constructed elsewhere.

    Olivia Rowe- Confession
    A film about a girl trying to confess to the person she likes exploring anxiety and love through a variety of digital (and non-digital) mediums.

    Hannah Ganzel- Ach Mein Gott
    This music video focuses on how much emphasis our culture puts on women as objects of desire.

    Amanda Bourbonais- OnlyOnYouTube
    A YouTube channel dedicated to deconstructing and rebuilding viral YouTube videos, exploring the connectivity of viral videos and YouTube itself as a medium, creator, and distributor.

    Michael Hubbard- Never Lighter
    A short experimental pseudo-horror film featuring Ridley Tankersley as a college student who has become too entangled with the distraction of his computer and is slightly detached from reality. Meanwhile, another college student played by Ben Meunier takes notice that his social life has also become mired in the occasional folly of modern technology.

    Zach Ben-Amots- Hysteria
    Hysteria assigns a colorful visual reflection of a soundscape entirely made up of laughter. This abstract stop-motion video was inspired by T.S. Elliot's poem of the same name.

    Ridley Tankersley and Noah Gunther- Pepperoni Beer Donuts
    Pathetic trash students play toilet instruments while being drowned by perfect audio-video hero machines exploring enlightenment in the age of THE INTERNET.


    Wednesday, March 4, 2015

    Marshall McLuhan's Savage Village


    A developed world view of traditional culture as profoundly uncouth?
    At least Martin Denny knew better...


    Monday, February 23, 2015

    Bruce Conner was Beautiful



    Sometimes just minimal exposure to someone with a beautiful spirit can make your whole life better. I am thankful to feel the spirit of Bruce Conner, as have many others.








    Wednesday, February 11, 2015

    Johnny Cash via Media

    Just a singer with a guitar, but seen so differently over the decades by evolving media standards and entertainment industry protocols.

     

    A 23 year old Johnny Cash performing "I Walk the Line" live at The Tex Ritter Show. (1957). Barn-dance-country-fried-Saturday-night-dude-ranch-ass-kicking deadly.



    This is from the Johnny Cash show. (February 17, 1971). TV-hairspray-slick helps the cutting, cunning, brave, proud and free political message come out of nowhere.



    "The Beast In Me" is a song written and originally recorded by Cash's former stepson-in-law Nick Lowe. BBC (July 9, 1994). Plenty of near-invisible artifice. Still, classy and powerful.



    Johnny Cash's last public performance, "Understand Your Man". (Hiltons, VA, July 15, 2003).  Raw home video adds to the discomfort level. You feel his pain.

    Wednesday, February 4, 2015

    Children of Cage

    Margaret Leng Tan performance exerpt of In the Name of the Holocaust from John Cage, I Have Nothing To Say, And I Am Saying It, PBS American Masters, 1990

     

     


     Margaret Leng Tan

    "Cage liberated 20th-century American music from the almighty European tradition and gave American composers the confidence to be themselves. In fact, not only composers but American artists in general. One can go so far as to say Cage gave all artists the confidence to be themselves. In essence, we are all Cage's spiritual children."

    Monday, February 2, 2015

    Sarah Jane!

    photograph ©2015 J. Shimon & J. Lindemann

    Monday January 26 found us wowed by the presence of visionary high-art priestess, master of the video medium, and (former?) raccoon queen Sarah Jane Rennick. Not only has Sarah Jane managed to become a semi-productive artist less than a year out from LU, but she's also found the key to happiness in life. (low overhead, an art gallery in your bathroom, and high-paying, low impact, part-time work where you get to play with poop. oh, and someone to cover the $phone$) Make sure you submit to her Booty Town Gallery's

    Sarah Jane Rennick: Celebration of a Visionary (w/ prizes!!!)

    art show.

    Friday, January 23, 2015

    Robert Frank's Journey to the Outside

    Robert Frank tells us it wasn't so much about art as it was about life in this 2008 interview, conducted on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the first printing of    The Americans.
     

    Sarah Greenough discusses the structure of The Americans in this video. She authored the 528 page volume that investigates Frank's Guggenheim project and the resulting 180 page book, first published in the United States in 1959.

    Wednesday, January 14, 2015

    Stan Brakhage: Expanding the Language of Film, Frame by Frame


    One may read infinite interviews with independent filmmakers whining about making a $3,000,000 film on a $750,000 budget, but can we really pity them after we consider how Stan Brakhage (1933-2003) expanded the creative potential of the entire medium using nothing but blank film stock and some felt tip markers? The immensely influential filmmaker completed over 300 films while living a low budget life, working with amateur equipment and discards. His films take us to the extremes of our emotional states while dismissing the tedium of narrative structure. He has opened the doors to new understandings of human experience to all willing to accept his art.

    Saturday, January 10, 2015

    One of the Greatest Men of All Time

     


    Douglas Engelbart (1925-2013), whose vision of collaboration using computer technology to help solve the urgent and complex problems of all of humanity, died on July 2, 2013. His comrades believed that his ideas were never fully realized due to his ideas and generosity of spirit. For example, he resisted patenting the "mouse" he'd invented and it eventually fell into the public domain. The robotic rigidity of institutions is also to blame -- most powerful technology companies in American relegated him to R&D. Ted Nelson, professor and inventor of the first hypertext project, delivered Engelbart's eulogy on December 9, 2013. In his tearful delivery, he said the "...real ashes to be mourned are the ashes of Doug’s great dreams and vision, that we dance around in the costume party of fonts that swept aside his ideas of structure and collaboration...Perhaps his notion of accelerating collaboration and cooperation was a pipe dream in this dirty world of organizational politics, jockeying and backstabbing and euphemizing evil." Engelbart articulated his ideas for collaboration publicly in what is known as The Mother of all Demos delivered on December 9, 1968, nearly half a century ago. Some of what he described is still in the process of being realized in commercial forms such as Skype, Google Docs, and more.