So long and thanks for all the fish...or so they say.

Well, it might not be a full-hearted so long, but as far as taking formal classes in my career as a MFA student, it is.

As this week closes out my last final exams, I was able to look up and for a brief moment, I was able to see the light. Then, after a split second, the clouds and darkness came rumbling overhead with the reality that I have only four months to complete my thesis work and all the light disappeared. Faced with the challenge of creating and completing work that not only is suppose to encapsulate who I am as an artist, but also express what I have to say, where I have been, and ultimately where I am going. These horrifying thoughts although completely overwhelming have me extremely excited about the possibilities and challenges of what lies ahead for next, and my final semester. Although I do not have the energy right now, after a break over the holidays and a chance to spend some genuine quality time with my friends and family, I will reboot. I can not wait to see what lies ahead of me in 2011. Though 2010 was one of the hardest years of my life, it blessed me with an amazing, beautiful, and very special boy and gave me another wonderful year with my boys--all of them.

So for now, have a wonderful holiday, and so long and thanks for all the fish!

So....finally 4 months into it, we finally brought it to fruition.

So....finally 4 months into it, we finally brought it all together. After lots of questions: how, why, and even if we should be doing this, it is up. Far from being done or even remotely near a stage to where it needs to be finessed, but it is installed and in Gallery E.

So to answer the question of the last four months...will it work? The answer is yes, and I think rather beautifully. Once installed, and sitting back both Gisette and I felt the excitement one gets the first time they realize what they have been working so hard on, losing tremendous sleep over and stressed way to much about, finally came to fruition. Now the installation in Gallery E is just an idea, a thumbnail really of what the actual installation will look like in Satellite Space. A lot of things still need to be worked out on my side--close circuit television and how to create a delay in a closed circuit for opening night, loads of more shooting and editing for video for the duration of installation; and a lot of things that nee dto be resolved for her--how many to print, variations in lines and "patterns," tonality and density of ink on the fabric, but all in all it was a wonderful sigh of relief and a very exciting moment to finally see it and think of the possibilities...See you in May.

Themes in Digital Art...according to Paul

Driving to pick up the boys last night from daycare, I was enjoying Science Friday on NPR. Tuning in and out, the familiar voice of Robert Siegel came across the radio. He was interviewing an artist named Erin Cooney about her upcoming interactive idea titled the Simultania Project. She envisions the whole project like one massive science experiment. Her intent is to have people from around the world to record 1 minute of video and sound at exactly 11am on Saturday, November 13, 2010. Then, you are to email her the clips, all of which she intends to display in one enormous installation. Cooney says it will display one moment in time in parallel universes.

The Simultania Project can be found at the following link:

http://www.simultaniaproject.com

I started thinking about Christiane Paul's Themes in Digital Art. Although she claims these are not the only themes, she does state "the most specific are artificial life and intelligence; telepresence and telerobotics; database aesthetics, mapping, and data visualization; (net) activism and tactical media; gaming and hypermedia environments; mobile and locative media; social networks; and virtual worlds." Under these categories, this project would best be categorized in the theme of Telepresence, telematics, and telerobotics.

According to Paul,Telepresence, Telematics, and Telerobotics is "obviously not only connected to digital technologies but inherent to any form of telecommunication - communication over distance (from the Greek tele, meaning 'far off', 'distant'). She continues that while "it is an old concept, digital technologies have allowed for unprecedented possibilities of 'being present' in various locations at the same time."

There are a lot of art projects that fall under this category today. It is not that Cooney's idea could not have been done in the 70s with 8mm or 80s with video, it is just the internet has opened the possibilities and allowed the results to be immediately realized. A couple of other recent projects that fall under the umbrella of Telepresence, telematics, and telerobotics are:

Moment in Time

A Moment in Time was a project by David W. Dunlap and Rick Smolan conducted through the New York Times' photoblog "Lens." It put out a call that the moment: Sunday, May 2, 2010 at 15:00 U.T.C. (Coordinated Universal Time, the equivalent of Greenwich Mean Time) was to be captured around the world by photographers. The goal was to create a worldwide photographic mosaic. Certain topics were suggested: arts and entertainment, community, family, money and the economy, nature and the environment, play, religion, social issues and work. Also they suggested photographers might want to plan an image that would best represent them and their community in a single image. The contributed images were than collected and placed together around a 3 dimensional globe according to their longitude and latitude of where the image was captured.

The entire project can be viewed at the link below:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/03/blogs/a-moment-in-time.html

Worldwide Moment 10.10.10@10:10AM GMT

Worldwide Moment 10.10.10@10:10AM GMT, created by Brett Brownell and is a not-for-profit simultaneous photography project event with the mission statement "to create international peace, art, and cultural awareness." Again, taking an photo at certain time and date and an online destination to upload your images. The ultimate idea was to educate the world about "culture, race, gender, government, and how possible it is for us to achieve peace."

The entire project can be viewed at the link below:

http://www.worldwidemoment.org

One last project I would like to mention would fall under a different category for Christiane Paul. It would fall under the umbrella of Social Networking. it is a great project by a really smart artist I was introduced to this Fall. His name is Nate Larson. He actually worked collaborately with Marni Shindelman on this project. It is titled Geolocation: Tributes to the Data Stream. They are large format digital C prints presented with text. Nate and Marni actually follow strangers through Twitter updates. Utilizing the geotag information provided with the Twitter updates, Nate and Marni travel to the site and photograph of the location the tweet was made, and then pair it with the original tweet for presentation.

The entire project can be viewed at the link below:

http://www.telepathicwitness.com/geolocation01.htm

A Funny Thing About Time and Technology...

Sunday Morning:

I wake up with my 9 month old. He was up throughout the night for some reason, and I can not believe he is up right on time. It feels later than 7am, so I look at my phone and it says 7am. I get up and begin my usual morning. I go downstairs and while I am feeding him, turn on the news on my cable box which now says 7:15am. I proceed to watch the news and my husband and three year old eventually rise and shine and make their way down the stairs. My husband checks his iphone for emails and then says, "It's only 9:30? I thought it was later than that, you want anything from Starbucks?"

I am gallery sitting at 12:00pm, so we proceed with our day and go outside for a walk before I have to shower and leave. At 11:00am I go get ready, then come down the stairs and out the door. I heard someone on the TV say "Daylight Savings Time." All of a sudden, I remember, we were suppose to turn our clocks back. I begin to wonder, do I even need to leave now? Again, I look at my phone, 11:30am. I look at the cable box, 11:30am, and then I look at my husband's phone, 11:30am. I finally come to the realization that we were linked in to big brother and time had been turned back for us.

Since we do not own any clocks not plugged in to any media power, all of our clocks were taken care of for us. (I think Kurt owns a watch somewhere, but never wears it.)

As I left for the gallery that morning, I actually had a bit of sadness come over me. A sadness for the nolstagia of turning my clocks back. It was always a big deal growing up. We would wake up and either be late or early for church, depending on the season. My dad would spend the morning walking around to every room and turning back the all the alarm clocks, everyone's watches, all the wall clocks, and the my favorite part, the grandfather clock. It was always such an ordeal. Taking the gold key that was wrapped in super-soft cloth down from on top of the clock and opening it up the door, and ever-so-slowly winding up the weights. Then he would turn the hands of the clock so carefully, stopping on every hour to wait and hear the chimes. One....Two....Three...

And yet this morning, nothing. We just woke up and it was done. No alarm clock to turn back, we use our cell phones as our alarms. No wall clocks to adjust, we use the cable box as our clock. No excitement, no talk of "Well, we got another hour's sleep,"nothing.

As I drove to the gallery, I began to think how technology has changed everything--even time. And, worst of all, it controls the time for us.

Living in a pool of Frustration...

Sorry for the negative title, but seriously folks frustration all around.

So it is my second to last semester and there are some beautiful things happening, like, I see the light at the end of the tunnel. BUT, at a time when all my work should be coming together in some sort of cohesive and wonderful way, I am more frustrated than ever, and somewhat lost in how to fix the problems in front of me. Now, I have been warned of this phenomenon from past grads, that the most lost and highly frustrated you will be is your last semester, but I didn't feel it would happen to me. Well folks, here you go.

My new work is much more conceptually based, and maybe never having tackled any work this conceptual is where the frustration is stemming. However, I am having technical issues up the wazoo and getting such diverse reactions and advice from professors and peers, I am having a hard time filtering. A problem, I have never experienced before. I have always listened and pondered used what I thought was relevant and then filed away the unused advice in a mental comment box for future projects. This semester I have been unable to do this. I am so excited about the new work and then find myself bogged down by technical issues, that before I can work through and show the full idea, I get a plethora of advice and suggestions while the work is still in progress that I feel I must try, and then never get back around to the original intent or idea.

Prescription:
Take the weekend to reboot.

Solution:
I am going to take the weekend and reboot. I am going to hire a babysitter and spend the weekend putting aside all pending ideas and suggestions and work on the original intent. I am going to produce prints in 3 different ways, and then spend the rest of the weekend mentally working through what I think is best and come to peace with my solution.

Then I will bring it all in and let the critiques begin....but this time with two feet on the ground.

Thesis Work

So, it is that time when I am narrowing down, thoughts and ideas and working on my thesis. I have been working on a new body of work in which it breaks apart the image, all based on a mathematical equation, and allows me to present bit and pieces of multiple images in one 2D plane. When I project black vertical lines whose spacing is also based on a the mathematical equation, it allows the images to animate and present each image as a singular image.

The working title is All That Remains...

All that Remains… addresses the residue our acts and energy leave on our space. As we experience a space we build a history with it and that residue remains long after we have exited the space. The work is two-fold: it allows me to delineate the dichotemy of my world--me as an artist and me as a mom; it also allows me to show several different images within the same 2-dimensional surface.

There are very clear realities that exist once an artist allows themselves to open up to an experience or to someone other than their art. These realities are sometimes no longer ideal and a time line is created. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I am an artist. Tuesdays and Thursdays and weekends, I am a mom. Although the time is split, it is not that black and white. Both worlds inevitably merge and influence each other.

The images presented in All that Remains… contains 4-6 different images taken from both worlds over separate days but at the same time of day. Thus, bringing to the surface the complete and separate worlds I live in. The images are then broken down into a mathematical equation and re-presented to the viewer as one image. What is portrayed is the residue left from this chaotic world. However, when projected or seen through a lens, the images are broken down and can be seen as individual images.

All that Remains is an installation of photography and videos. The work consists of 10-14 4' x 6' horizontal digital prints mounted on the wall. Although all the prints have various horizontal measurements, they contain a consistent heighth measurement of 4'. One considerably larger horizontal print which measures 6' x 8' is also mounted on the wall and contains a digital video projected onto it. The projection causes the one-image print to reveal 6 underlying separate images once projected on. The projector will be mounted above to the ceiling so not to block the area and to reduce reflection on the print.

In the smaller room, a four-wall video projection animates on the walls--one animation per wall. Each wall illustrates one image through the residue and reveals the 4-6 underlying images that make up that moment in time.

A moment in time.

The image I chose from the readings was Michael Rees', A Life Movie (monster Series). The image comes from an animation the artist created by placing an artificial sculpture that was made up by body parts and "come to life and perform their permutations" (Paul 63). Upon viewing the image (and as a photographer), I immediately thought of Eadweard Muybridge's (an English photogrpaher) work. I am very familiar with a lot of the conceptual artists presented to us in the text (Paik, Burson, Hendricks, Cohen, etc.), however, I was not familiar with Rees. As a photographer, I responded to the image initially due to it's representation of time. The image is presented to the viewer containing five strips made up of four frames each. This format allows us to read the image and feel the movement being presented to us. It is no longer a clip of information, but a free-flowing sculpture captured in constant motion, taking place over a period of time.

Michael Rees, A Life movie (monster Series). 2002.

The idea of time has always interested me, and is constantly present in my work. How an artists captures the idea of time and the various techniques utilized in which to present the idea of time is extremely compelling.

PRE-20th CENTURY

Eadweard Muybridge is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion. Muybridge created the Animal Locomotion series using his zoopraxiscope, a device that was invented by Muybridge, and was a primitive version of the motion picture players. The zoopraxiscope projected a sequence of still photos very rapidly, resulting in moving images. In Animal Locomotion, Muybridge studies the movement of different subjects and presents the viewer with a sequence in time. The viewer, like in Rees' work, is able to visually create the movement and moment in time while scanning through the images.

Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion. An Electro-Photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements. Commenced 1872 - Completed 1885.

20th CENTURY

In the 1980s, David Hockney experimented with collaging photographs into what he called "joiners." A joiner is a series of photographs taken at from different viewpoints and sometimes different times of day, and collaged together to create one overall image. The joiners contain images taken over time. Some were created wit images taken in an amount of hours others are created with images that took weeks to photograph. Owing to the different time periods collaged together, the idea of time is always present.

David Hockney, Place Furstenberg, Paris. August 7, 8, 9, 1985

CONTEMPORARY

Stephen Lawson is a contemporary Scottish photographer and sculptor. In his early photographic work, Lawson employs a linear shutter to create vertical strips in his panoramic images. Each strip is shot with a mathematical precision--each strip is rotated 1 degree every two seconds. Because of this precision, the strips match almost perfectly creating an end image of almost a seamless panoramic. Each strip contains the same amount of exposure, however, the time in which the strip was exposed is different than the time the previous strip was exposed. Thus creating a period of time as you view the image from left to right. The viewer not only experience time, but is guided through it by Lawson.

Stephen Lawson, Callanish Stone Circle from the North-West. 1991