School Spirit

I made an intervention happen last week! This is the thing I was planning.

I gave away these cardboard shirts to fans with very little pocket money.


It was a really cool thing, and the first guy gave me a beer in exchange. I'd say it was a good day.


Here's is how I presented it in class. It's pretty snazzy right?

Maps

So we had been given a project, wherein we would artisicatally map out an area in the Unvinersity district on the unversity of washinton, in some sort of arttistic fashion, keeping in mind that a map is always drawn by human hands and has room for vision, interpretation and error.

I was assigned this little area right here.

The stadium is complete now of course.

I travelled all around this zone and took a great many pictures, but in the end did nothing wit that data. In addition to the pictures I took an audio recorder and put it in my pocket. It took a while to come to the conclusion of it, but I became really interested in finding a way to map out the ambient sound. I was thinking of concepts like the audio tour and those little maps you'd find in children's museums were you could lift a flap and press a button to hear a sound clip of the animal or subject it was explaining. I ended up settling on the latter.

Under each of these flaps was a little audio button. I made it very childish looking as though a kid were to map out a make believe land and play games in it. The fanciful descriptions were fun to write.

In the end, I think the audio and visual elements conflicted with each other. People were interested in pressing the buttons and hearing what sounds came from them but had little interest in looking at the images or descriptions. It could have been made very detailed and not so childish, but I think the result would have been the same. Ideally, I would have loved to make a map grid-ed out with sounds from each specific square of the areas. I was trying to save some money on the ordeal though, and I don't think te amount of buttons necessary to make it happen would have shipped to me on time for critique. It was suggested that may not be in my style, but I think I decide that! I am not always messy, and I would like to show that.

Bustering

So we were able to take a field trip to the Frye to see the exhibit on Buster Simpson. He's an extremely fascinating guy, with a large body of work. I know we were there mostly to learn about his interventions even though there was a lot of gallery work.



I particularly enjoyed his Hudson River Purge, wherein he threw in limestone antacids for the bay, neutralizing it's acidic Ph balance. It's very humorous and I think that it is a quite successful intervention that bring your attention to the environmental problems of the modern world. Seeing the video as a projection, almost an animated gif, worked well for the gallery and makes it almost never ending.

Busters' Woodman, the man walking with sticks, didn't appeal to everyone, but I get it. Here's a guy actively struggling with his task and he is pretty much being ignored wholesale. I feel like I do that a lot, in regards to seeing people struggling with their loads, be they homeless or not. I feel guilty on many an occasion, since I think I could help, but I suppose the problem is that once you start helping, people kind of expect you to help whenever they need it, which can be troublesome for you.

I am getting off topic somewhat though. The trip was very enlightening, and while it is still kind of tough to make those distinctions between performance art and social practice, seeing Buster Simpson's work does solidify some of the ideas we should be thinking about.

Complaint Choir (part 2)

The second part of our complaining exercise was to take other peoples clips and intermix them into something interesting. The class seemed to like mine. I feel it was just a few seconds too long but I liked messing about in final cut pro. Take a look and see what you think!

Spend the Hours, Talking, talking

We're doing interviews. The first was with my mom. It was a bit strange, talking to her so formally with structured questions, but we got through it. I asked her things about animation, which she knows some about but not nearly as much as me.


The next was going on the beat with a couple classmates of mine. Here's an edited clip of the interview with guy we ended up talking with. He was really cool and receptive.


https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B10mTUG-8vFIYlRIOUVyNHZRMzA/edit?usp=sharing

Complaint Choir ( part 1)

So this project is a beautiful thing where a ton of citizens sing harmoniously about their issues.



We've been asked to make 10 complaints about whatever, hopefully about local or student based issues. I don't really like to complain so this is tough for me!



Just went for a general Youtube quick cut kind of thing. I hope that it is entertaining despite my bitching =P

Sightseeing

So we had an assignment to find one place we were familiar with, and another that we knew but always wanted to find out more about. The familiar place for me was UW's Odegard Library where I have spent many a late night on an assignment. But man, I knew so little of the Hub, our recreational center.

There are game consoles and Bowling alleys down there?! Guess I know what my tuition is paying for. Too bad I probably won't get the free time to use them. My partner had been there a lot, so I think it amused him to see me so amazed and interested in it all. We then got to show off our areas and there were some pretty neat things to see, like this secret harp practice room.

It pretty astounding to see all the little nooks and crannies of the campus that I miss durig the basic commute from one class to the other. I wonder if we'll get to do more of this.

They took it down

Hmph. Guess nobody likes positivity these days.

Practicing my Social skills

So We are taking this class in social practice, which is the art of uh...


Well that's mostly the first problem with the craft. It's kind of like creating with art skills a situation that people can interact with. It can be a performance where you take part in a public display of something or another, or you can just leave a thing out there for people to interact with and document how they use and shape it. It's really fascinating, and a bit lofty.


Well here was our first intervention

Ah, it all becomes clear now eh? Yeah, not really I guess. The idea was to make a sign with some special kind of encouraging statement that those starting out their quarter could read and hold on to(and maybe laugh at). We tried our best to make a pun out of using the area near the elevator. Actually, I was the one who suggest we simplify it down to two words(Rise up to the challenge would have been really dang hard to cut out the letters for in only ten minutes.). Its interesting to take an active role in your work, and I have had a taste of this kind of thrill before with my installation project. It'll be fun to see if people take to it, or if management takes it down.

Also wanted to show this colorful arrow I was working on for it with the scraps. I didn't push to use it, but ain't it cute?

New Year, New Possibility

My next year at UW should be pretty good. I mean, they gave me a doughnut that was Purple on the inside, so I think that's a pretty good sign.