Richard Tuttle

I saw Richard Tuttle's water color drawings while visiting the Speed Art museum this weekend. I went with a friend to see the impressionist exhibit, but on the way out we found a room of minimalist and postminimalist work, including Frank Stella, Sol LeWitt, and Richard Tuttle. I had never heard of Tuttle, but his drawings drew me in immediately. He does multiple series with this process, using notebook paper and small amounts of watercolor applied randomly, and displays them as a group.

The work is about the choice of materials, the notebook paper which is typically avoided as a surface for fine art, and the non representational and chance application of the watercolor, almost imitating a spilled drink. The pieces have an accidental and effortless feel, while being entirely intentional on the part of the artist.

Train

GDC 10: the Holocaust board game

"Brenda Brathwaite's Train is a table top game that teaches the player about the Holocaust through simple, effective game design."The game Train exists in the nebulous space between board game, art, and social teaching tool. The game is beautifully designed, aesthetically, to reflect the subject material and present only information that is useful to the game's end.

The goal of the game is to fill a car with as many passengers as possible and deliver them to an unnamed destination. You are the train conductor, trying to get all your passengers to the destination safely. When you've reached the destination, you select a card with tells you where you've just delivered your passengers. "Dachau." "Auschwitz."You have just delivered a train full of passengers to a nazi concentration camp. This moment of revelation is really the point of the game, and how the game is handled from this point on reveals the level of understanding the players have. Most players do not mention their destination to the other players, suggesting they are either embarrassed or do not want to ruin the surprise.

The point of creating the game around this reveal is that you have been looking at the game up to this point impersonally. You are a player with a goal, and you do not question the motives for the goal. You participate in a types of systemized killing without having to actually participate. It provides a point of understanding as to how something like this can happen, and how different reactions can then be justified. One woman continued to play, insisting that the train conductor probably had a family to feed and had to keep working in order to keep them alive.

Final Project

"Several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability [emph added], that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason - Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration."

-John Keats

For my final project, I am going to develop an online work which confronts Keats' theory of Negative Capability and what it means in relation to the structure of the education system today. Negative Capability is the ability to withhold judgement, being able to persist in uncertainty, as opposed to immediately categorizing and assigning meaning to a person, concept or work.


The ability to persist in uncertainty is extremely valuable in creative pursuits such as art, literature, and science, but it is not something that is currently encouraged by the education system in America. Using this concept, and research about the inefficiencies of multiple choice tests, I am going to construct a reading comprehension test which points out the importance of Negative Capability and also demonstrates the inability of our current education system to teach it.

Visual Sociology

After the lecture by Jon Rieger last class, I decided to do some research of my own house and neighborhood over the last twenty years. I leafed through my family photo albums and found a couple of photographs I could re-take to talk about the change in my home and neighborhood over the last 20 years. This project is very incomplete, I could spend forever looking through all of the photographs of my house and street and retaking them, but here are a couple I did take the time to put together.

The first photos are both from 1992, the second photos are fron 2012. I tried to find some from 2002, but we don't have as many photographs from that time period.

My mom probably won't be happy to see the top photo comparison, she hasn't done her spring gardening yet, and in general my parents are so busy they don't have the time and energy to garden and landscape as much as they did when we were younger. Also, the seasons in the photos are different, and so are the weather conditions. From these, it makes the neighborhood look extremely bleak. It's true that the neighborhood is not as lively as it used to be, but these photos are a bit misleading.

found art

I opened up my used copy of Toni Morrison's Beloved for the first time the other day and found that a previous owner had left a photograph in the book. I think it's interesting the things you leave behind, and although I know no one in this photo, I feel like I can construct a narrative based on the photo, the fact that it was forgotten, and the fact that they returned Toni Morrison's lovely novel.

Susan Cain on Introversion

Following my post on Aron Wiesenfeld, who emphasized solitude and independence in his creative process, this video touches on the same subject but comes at it from a more social angle. Being an introvert in our society is a bit difficult, as we are expected to act like extroverts in order to be successful. Introverts are a little under half of people, but that's a large group to be discriminating against socially. I've definitely felt insecure about my introversion, which is different from shyness. In fact, I wouldn't say I'm very shy at all, but I'm very introverted. But I feel like I have to project myself as an extrovert, otherwise I'll be labeled standoffish or somehow unfriendly.

Susan Cain also discusses how the current model of 'groupthink' is debilitating to the creative process. Because yes, we are all more creative when we are left alone. When placed in a group setting, you will unintentionally behave differently because of social programming. Cain suggests that this new paradigm of group work, in schools and in the business world, is ineffective and should be reconsidered. That's not to say working with a group is not an essential part of the creative process, but that it is currently overused to the point that it is crippling the process.

Aron Wiesenfeld

http://www.aronwiesenfeld.com/

The drawings and paintings of Aron Wiesenfeld depict solitary figures in bleak, silent spaces. His work is about individuality and finding your self. For the young, innocent characters in his work it's a coming of age, an initiation into adulthood. Of his own work Wiesenfeld says, "It's my personal feeling, that I need to sequester myself away from external influences to be able to hear my own voice. It has been necessary to do that in order to become an artist and do work that is really mine. My experience has been that other people, even the ones with the best intentions, have their own ideas about what I should be doing, plus the world is full of ideologies that will push and pull you. I think that's part of where that story in my work comes from, which is about removing oneself from society to become a sovereign person."

His work is interesting to me because of this narrative, and because of what it suggests about creativity. That creativity is something which performs best in solitude, outside of the impressions and stresses of others.

Next Generation Weather Alerts

Tornado Tech: What if Dorothy Had A Smart Phone?


After waiting out the storms in the third floor of my rickety apartment in Old Louisville last weekend, this article caught my eye. My apartment does not have television installed, and I remember searching online trying to find a decent stream showing live weather conditions and trackers, just so I could have a basic knowledge of how the storms were progressing and how much I should be worried. The university provides text alerts for when storm alerts are issued, so this seems like the next logical step.


The article mentions radios which are placed in the home to warn for alerts, because the siren systems are intended to warn those outside, and cannot be heard inside many newer homes. Tornado season is just starting, and we've already seen the damage it can do here and in southern Indiana. Laura Meyers, a researcher, confirmed that I was not in the minority as I surfed the web looking for more information." [People] wanted additional confirmation," Myers says. "They wanted to know they were directly in the path of the storm. If they got it through the television, then they checked their radios. They checked their smartphones. They called people. Many people went outside to see if they could see it coming."


Moving beyond the radios, there is, of course, an app which can be purchased for $10 for your smartphone. Personally, I think I should be able to get access to weather information for free, but if the app is good enough I would consider purchasing it. 

Cheng Long Wetlands Environmental Art

The Cheng Long Wetlands International Environmental Art Project is a project which invites artists from around the world to plan site-specific work for the Cheng Long Wetlands, located on the south western coast of Taiwan. The project has been running for three years as of 2012, and each year the curators choose a new theme for the projects. The site specific work remains on location for about 1 month.


The work is directed by the artist, who then works with the community and students from the surrounding areas to actualize the work. It becomes a social project as well as an art project. The work raises awareness of the wetlands themselves, but also on the theme of the exhibition. This year's theme is "What's for Dinner" and "The artworks should reflect on environmental issues surrounding food production and emphasize organic aquaculture. Artworks will be in village public spaces, on abandoned buildings, and in the wetlands nature preserve, and artists will use recycled materials and natural materials to create their artworks that will stay on exhibition through 2013."


Examples of previous works