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Tim Sullivan Reflection

  It was interesting to hear from Tim Sullivan on his experimental art, his career, and his uncanny resemblance to the pop star Heino. One of my favorite ideas of his was the still life ‘negatives’. The artist would attempt to paint the objects in the scene their opposite/negative color, so that after inverting them the colors would stay the same while shadows turned white and highlights turned black. Overall, Sullivan’s experimental practice greatly appealed to me. He seemed to dabble in almost every medium to suit his needs as an artist. Sullivan’s work based on California also appealed to me, in the way it coexisted with Barthesian ideas of the work and the text. The images on the billboards (images of idealized ‘California’ that often depicted entirely different locales) recalled the viewers perceptions of the textual idealization of the state, while simultaneously subverting them (the holes cut out of the billboards add a tinge of doubt to the ideas). The cut out circles from the
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Lyle Rexer Reflection

     Lyle Rexer gave a very interesting talk about the prevalence in contemporary photo art of ‘Bad Pictures of Bad Subjects’. This is not a disparaging comment, however. Rexer discussed how the changing nature and use-cases of photographs have led to this outcome. Today, nearly all Americans have access to a camera attached to their phones at all times. This, along with social media’s meteoric rise, has lead to an unprecedented volume of so-called ‘vernacular’ images being taken as compared to past eras. What do these kinds of images, with little consideration given to framing, composition, or conceptual ideas, say about our contemporary image making culture? Naturally, contemporary ‘fine art’ photographers have been quick to respond to the growing trend. In creating these ‘bad pictures of bad subjects’, scrutiny is placed upon the context of the photographs, rather than the content themselves. I always wonder whether I would be able to tell the difference between these ‘bad’ pictures
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Journal 3: Death of the Author

In this chapter, Barthes contests the prevalent idea of the author-god that continues to pervade much of western society. The idea that writing-- or other arts for that matter-- serves solely as a vessel for the author’s intentions is, according to Barthes, deeply flawed. True ‘originality’ always eludes the writer, Barthes holds, as all they can hope to create is a patchwork collage of those that came before them. “We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning… but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash.” (Barthes, 146). I’ve done a lot of thinking recently on ideas such as these, as I often utilize elements of randomness and chance in the art I create. Additionally, I’ve always struggled when trying to come up with any kind of concrete and definite ‘meaning’ behind the work I create, so interpretations such as these, where less value is placed on the intentions of the writer/artist as
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Journal 2: Musical and Tangible

As my project hopes to explore relationships between the aural and visual world, this chapter appears to be especially pertinent material. I found the separation of music into "the music one listens to," and "the music one plays" to be especially interesting. One might, at first glance, be inclined to equate the two musics as two largely equivalent representations of the same underlying form. Yet Barthes' analysis of them as "... two totally different arts" rings largely true to me, as an amateur musician myself. I have indeed experienced the very phenomenon Barthes describes: that of a piece not resounding with me when merely listened to, but becoming beautiful when played.  Could it be that Beethoven's "lack", the inability to hear his own music, unlocked an unrealized musical potential inside him? Existing outside the realm of the heard music, and likely the played music as well, Beethoven's new perspective simply as 'composer&
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Journal 1: Conveying Meaning in Advertising

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  This advertisement for Heinz ketchup is a good example of the kinds of visual rhetoric Barthes talks about in this chapter.  Linguistic The pieces of linguistic information within the image are: 1) The Heinz brand and label, and 2) the tagline "No one grows Ketchup like Heinz." The operative verb here is very telling as to what the intent of the advertiser is. As we all know, ketchup is not grown. However, tomatoes are. The linguistic equation of the product (ketchup) with fresh tomatoes serves to reinforce a positive, fresh, clean, and healthy view of the product in the consumer. This reinforcement happens by way of Barthes' idea of "anchorage," where linguistic information is used to “fix the floating chain of signifieds in such a way as to counter the terror of uncertain signs.” That is to say, it steers the viewer towards the “correct” interpretation of the image, underscoring and highlighting the positive, ‘euphoric’, desirable qualities of the connoted i
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Heat

 My aim with this project was to create an ominous, foreboding atmosphere while using only footage taken by my phone within my dorm room. The sound in the video is sound taken from the same videos. I applied a simple EQ filter and reverb in order to dampen the noisy high end of the sound, and to deepen the background rumble in order to add to the strange atmosphere. I used a combination of slow, rhythmic, abstract scenes, interspliced with quick cuts to several different objects. This strange rhythm attempts to slowly increase tension, while evoking the 'unknown', as much of what the viewer sees is entirely abstract or out of context. After the initial part of the video concludes, the final scene is the recurring image of the mirror as the camera slowly rounds the corner. This section is presented entirely without sound, further increasing the uncomfortableness of the scene, and heightening anticipation of a sudden climax. The climax never comes, however, leaving the viewer wit
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The Beatles' New Medium

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  My central argument is that, though The Beatles have been analyzed countless times in terms of popular culture, and their music "as it is written," such analyses fails to take into account the essential new medium by which The Beatles' distinctive sound was enabled: recorded sound.  The Beatles - Formed in 1957 as teenagers - Gained massive popularity in the years 1962-64.​ -As their popularity grew to unprecedented heights, they began to feel more free to experiment with their music.​ -As their music began to utilize more and more studio recording techniques and sound manipulation, producing the same effects at live performances became increasingly difficult.​ -The Beatles retired altogether from live performance in 1966.​   The Beatles' retirement from live performance signaled that their true medium was not as performers, but as recording artists. With the ability to record sound, suddenly the "allatonce," enveloping nature of the aural world was subjec
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