Life and Art

The concept of using life as a medium to use in art is a relatively new idea to me. I have never really given thought to using life as a medium. It is although a fascinating and interesting way of looking at art. However there are questions that arise with not only artists using art but with science as well (I think science rises much more consequential questions), such as how far will and can they go with the use of life, what can they create, how much are they able to do, ect.
I do feel that art is relatively harmful depending on what the artist is doing with life and how life is being manipulated. I did enjoy the guest artist who came to talk to our class about her particular medium which is water. This form of art is very peaceful and all the different ways in which she used art to convey ideas was very unique and interesting.
USing life as a material is something that can raise many but can also be a powerful form of art.

Chance Project

my recipe:

1. materials: a piece of paper (any size), handful of coins (any variation of coins), 6 randomly chosen colors of paint, and a pencil
2. assign each color a number
3. drop coins on the paper, trace them, and number them (ex: first drop #1, second, #2, and so on)
4. once you've dropped the coins six times, start painting each circle with the assigned color
5. you done

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v188/phat_irie/IMG_0619.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v188/phat_irie/IMG_0621.jpg

Natasha's recipe:

1. get a large piece of paper, a ruler, 6 colors of paint and the tools to apply them (brushes, water, etc.), and a 6 sided dice.

2. assign the colors numbers 1 through 6.

3. roll the dice, the number you get divide by 2. Use the number you now have to draw a line that many inches over and parallel to the edge. keep repeating process to turn the paper into a grid.

4. start at the top left square and roll the dice. The number you get will correspond to a color number, paint the color you get in the square. keep repeating going one square at a time, left to right, going down one row at a time.

amusement tour !

Here is my amusement park tour using google earth (tip: you should download google earth, it's free) I still have kinks to work out and there is always room for more to learn. So this is not the final product but it is part of the process!
Enjoy :]


take my tour here

The Eiffel Tower

The Eiffel Tower article by Roland Barthes brought an array of information about the Eiffel Tower to my attention. A lot of interesting aspects of the tower that I had never thought about before. I have always associated the Eiffel Tower with Paris and vise versa and within this article Barthes points out that the Tower is a universal symbol of paris, everyone everywhere knows of the Tower, what it looks like and where it is. It is a "universal language of travel". A kind of fun fact that he mentioned about the symbol of the tower is that it can also represent other symbols and one of those that he brought up was of a phallic symbol which is kind of odd but makes sense especially because the Tower appeals to our imaginations and fantasies, as well as it is even mythical. This Tower is full of myth as well as carries so much history within it which I found interesting, how much history one single monument can hold.

I also found it interesting that such a glorified monument was once thought of as useless, even before it was built. And that even now it still is "useless", an "empty sign" and that as Barthes stated is nothing, it serves no purpose really. The fact that it is empty and that there is nothing inside to see but the fact that we still visit it, celebrate, and admire it is fascinating because we want to participate in the dream of what it us,

"The Tower can live on itself"

Batarkan

Enad, the bartarkan
The hybrid I created is made up of a human, shark (tiger shark), and bat (Jamaican fruit bat). The dominant part of the species is the human whom controls the functions of both the shark tail as well as the bat wings while the habitat is that of the tiger shark. The habitat is the ocean, mainly tropical and temperate waters off of North America from Cape Cod to California. The diet of this hybrid is a variety of marine life which is also common to the human's diet, including: lobsters, crab, and shellfish, along with different kinds of fruits that can be found in the trees by the ocean. The Batarkan is able to retrieve these fruits because of their powerful bat wings (which have been conditioned to live and survive in the ocean). The Batarkan is not as aggressive as some of it's ancestors and is actually a quite pleasant species. They spend their days with other Batarkan as well as with other sea creatures such as other sharks and certain species of octopus. These hybrids live in colonies throughout the ocean, similar to humans. They also mate with their same species, in a manner similar to the tiger shark and reproduce in that same way. Although they care for their young in a combination of all three of the individual species this hybrid is made up of. This hybrid is also fascinating especially because of it's ability to adapt to different environments. The humanpart is able to survive in the ocean; they need to wear special goggles in order to see under the ocean and they are able to breathe because of special gills they developed as well as glands that excrete salt from their bodies.
The ocean is a fascinating place full of mysterious creatures.

ideas for hybrids

one idea i have come up with, but am not sure how attainable it will be but...

Hybrid: Octofan
a cross between a human, octopus, and fish/shark

I find the ocean fascinating and really wanted to combine species from it into my project. I see this project as exploring unknown ideas and in many ways the ocean is a place that is relatively unknown, so I thought it might be an interesting place to start.