Week 15 artist

http://obadike.tripod.com/ebay.html

Keith Obadike's Blackness

Keith Obadike, like many others mocked Ebay with his sale of an unconventional product through the site, his blackness. I really like that his location is "Conceptual Landscape", in Hartford Conneticut.

It would at first seem like Obadike is just trolling, but once you read the benefits and warnings listed, then you can begin to see how he feels about the issue; that it can be more of a hinderance than a gift at times, and how the benefits and the warnings seem to contridict eachother.

I think that this performance piece, mostly carried out by Ebay, and bidders on the site is interesting, but do not think that I would necessarily call it art.

Week 14

Eyes of laura is creepy and reminds me of watching the waterfront camera in hopes that someone would walk by and do something ridiculous, while I was using it for my Sculpture Studio project.

The piece raises issues of voyeurism and privacy, but after watching it for about 2 hours on and off, I have found that nothing really happens, so there is not really any legal issue, in my opinion.

Apparently, Laura, the woman who is running the site and everything got fired from her real job. While it is lame, I do not blame them, because it is kind of weird, and would probably look bad for the company, if people made the comparison. I think Laura needs to find a hobby

Week 13 artist

While visual thesaurus, found at www.visualthesaurus.com, may not seem like art, it comes across as art in terms of its visual representation of words and their associations to other words. Markings in a color and line style key denote synonyms, antonyms, representations of verbs or nouns, etc.

I really like this, and think that it can have so many practical uses, especially in education. The visual representations of like and expressively unalike, and how close each word is to another would really help struggling students who learn better visually than they do when hearing it, or having to read and make conclusions on their own.

When you scroll down the site, you can see that they have words lists, which take buzzwords and show them and their counterpart words visually, in close proximity to each other. I think I could spend days just looking at the letters and words as images.

Psychogeography

The wikipedia article was really wordy, and didn't really describe the subject that well, but Psychogeography is basically a way to try to apply the rules and methods of cartography to alter the way that one experiences a place, or to depict one's mindframe, or the way that they experience life. They do not necessarily read as actual maps, but more in the mode of stories, and sometimes carry on a narrative.

The way that it is described makes the subject sound very pretentious, which I abhor in art. I think that art should be accessible to and judgeable by everyone and anyone. These maps do not seem to lend themselves simply to this art format, but more of a way in which to communicate feelings and emotions through the frame of a map, as simple navigation is something that about everyone should be able to do.

Week 12 artist

http://www.earstudio.com/projects/listeningpost.html?=listening_video.html

Listening post is a project that takes fragments of text from internet chatrooms, and then "read" by a computer. This is played as and over music, and creates a symphony of sorts of anonymous people from all over the world.

This piece of art is interactive, not in that people explicitly have control over aspects of it, but in that the words are dependent upon someone using a chatroom. The speech of internet users and its use in Listening Post is described by one of the creators as being like wind and a wind chime. I really like the piece, but wonder about privacy, or in a hypothetical situation that someone admits to a crime and it is "overheard" by listening post, would it be admissible in court, or for a warrant?

Week 11 artist

pacmanhattan.com/about.php

Pac Manhattan was created in 2004 by NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. They were the first generation to grow up with video games. Everyone has their heroes, those they respect, admire, try to emulate, I think that the students' involved hero was Pac Man.

Pac Manhattan is a location-based game, which, means that gameplay relies on the character or characters' location IRL (in real life). Like many other location-based games, this game uses a form of localization technology, the cell phone.

The game consists of 10 players, 5 on the street: four ghosts and one pac man, and 5 in the control room, each of these controllers is paired with one of the players on the streets. The players and their controllers are to remain in constant contact during the game, the player tells the controller their locations, and then the controller updates the system with their player's position, and in the case of pac man, updates how many and which of the power dots have been used.

The game lasts until pac man is "eaten" by a ghost, or until pac man defeats the ghosts. Pac man can eat ghosts, like in the regular game after eating a power dot.

This is really interesting in that it takes a videogame and then applies it to a "real life situation", while the the opposite usually holds true.

I like this idea, and have always been a fan of flash mob type art works. Even before I knew that it was a form of artistic expression, I would always enjoy seeing peoples reactions and the value of challenging expectations. My friend and I would sometimes get people together when we were in the mall sometimes and all wear a certain color shirt, or speak in a particular accent. Who knew that being annoying was art?!

Week 10 artist statement

www.singlecell.org/jh/index.html


Juha Huuskonen is a self described artist, curator and software designer. He created the piece, bob meets barbara, for the collection of pieces focused on dualities, comparisons and contrasing relationships, doublecell.

The page starts up with a dot orbiting the two pieces. The user is instructed to make circles with their mouse. While orbiting the two pieces fast enough, they get closer, until they reach, and the box is split in fourths, with 1/4 size bob and barbaras. This goes on for about 4 or 5 rounds until the boxes get really small, and the viewing area zooms into one of these, and everything essentially starts over.

I like this work, because it is simple, and combines aspects of games with simple actions and divisions. The two pieces are probably bob and barbara, and this is probably a metaphore for sex, because there is a raised piece and a receded piece, and the two bocks come together like a puzzle.

I spent over 30 minutes playing this instead of doing finals.