The Yes Men

I was impressed, intrigued, and amused by the actions by the Yes Men. I found it so interesting how easy it was for them to make appearances and give speeches at different events that seemed so esteemed and important. I also found it hilarious that they made presentations that were so audacious and ridiculous with powerpoint presentations with images that could definitely be seen as offensive. The dvd clips that we watched in class portrayed people in the Yes Men to be creative, funny, and interesting.
Creating websites that look authentic, the Yes Men receive invitations to speak and participate in events representing the WTO, Dow, and other various organizations. With their own agenda to express their personal views, the Yes Men proudly accept to attend these events and to speak at them under false identities of real members.
In a hilarious presentation in which the Yes Men are disguised as partners of the Dow corporations, they make a presentation explaining the rules of "Acceptable Risk" and the way that they determine if a project is worth completing even if it could mean the loss of lives or nature. They offer pictures and keychains with a Gold skeleton that they name "Gilda," and no one questions them.

I admire that the Yes Men risk getting in serious trouble in order to express their views. It is amazing that no one questions them during their presentations at all, no matter how ridiculous they seem.
Also this week, it was exciting to get a chance to meet Brian Knep. He showed us a lot of his work, and told us about his experiences leading up to being an artist. He showed us an installation of a large face that smiles when it is not being directly looked at by the viewer which I found very interesting. Also, he told us about jobs he had leading up to creating installations. He worked on design and software for movies like Jurassic Park, which was very interesting for him. Though working in an office type environment was not for him, he was happy with the experience. He told us about upcoming projects he is interested in working with, and explained his processes for many of his works.

Brian Knep & 2 Questions

Learning about Brian Knep was extremely fascinating. Knep is a New Media artist that studies the effects of changing, healing, and other types of growth and evolution in his pieces. By using many different types of new technologies and computers, it is possible for him to make works that are interactive with the viewers.

In his 2003 video installation titled Healing, the viewer is able to physically walk on and across the piece, causing tears and breaks that slowly heal themselves back together. One aspect of Knep's work that I find interesting is that he creates each piece so that it will never repeat itself or stays the same experience for a viewer. To make this piece work requires a size variable computer, a ideo projector, a video camera, and custom software. Healing discovers aspects of integration and interaction.

I was also very interested in his piece about frog evolution. In his piece titled Frog Triplets, different stages of a tadpole growing into a frog are depicted against a wall in a non-repeating video. The images are in motion, and moving at various speeds with each other. This 2007 piece shows the incredible journey that frogs go through in their lifetimes, and I think it is depicted interestingly and effectively through his projection.

Questions:
What triggered you to create your piece Healing?
How important to you is it to have your work be interactive with your viewers?

Andy Deck

Andy Deck is an American artist who specializes in creating pieces that are web-based. He was born in 1968 in New York City, New York. Starting in the 1990s, he has been working with software to create art. Deck combines many messages concerning politics, "sociocultural emergency," defamiliarization, and parody to create very interesting artwork. Initially, Deck began working with software to create short films. Through his work, Deck addresses the problematic of passivity in mass-media "rich" societies. He has taught courses at Sarah Lawrence College as well as New York University.
I think what attracts me most to Deck's work is the fact that it is so interactive. Starting in the mid-1990's, Deck has been including an interactive and collaborative element to his work, joining the viewer with the art. Every web installation he creates leads to click after click of entertaining slight changes in images and visual stimulation. Each piece has various ways to change or manipulate what the viewer is looking at on screen. The possibilities are also very great in each work - the viewer is able to choose his or her own path through his web-based images.
With various influences from current events, politics, and other elements of society, Andy Deck has many unique and bold pieces that are definitely worth checking out.

"After concentrating on digital media for a few years, the emergence of the World Wide Web provided a fascinating means of addressing people around the world with almost no distribution costs. It didn't take long to see how certain kinds of potential offered by the global network could fit together with the drawing software I had been developing. Actually, when I showed people early prototypes for online drawing, the first thing they asked was whether people could draw together on the same image. So it seems there were immediately some new forms of interaction that people wanted."
-Andy Deck

LINKS:

http://artcontext.net/ (Andy Deck's official website)
*Alyssa's Favorites*
Lexicon, Surge Cycle

http://www.andyland.net/

Screening Circle link:
http://artcontext.org/act/05/screeningCircle/

Second Life

In class, I watched a video that included a presentation and interview with Philip Rosedale. As the creator of a virtual world, "Second Life," Rosedale discussed his idea behind the creation. "Second Life" is a 3-D world created by those living in it. It became open to the public in 2003, and has continuously grown and is used by millions of people from all around the world. In this world, you can buy, sell, trade, and meet people. To begin, users create a digital avatar of themselves. This avatar can be created to look however the user would like, and includes a variety of looks, hairstyles, clothing, and other items.
Rosedale explained that ever since he was a child, he was constantly fascinated with the idea of building and creating new things. His ideas were sometimes too big to tackle, and his dream was to live in a world with no boundaries and nothing to hold one back from creating. His world has free, public access to anyone. The word has everything. Users have the ability to buy anything from land to the ability to have babies.
Though "Second Life" is an interesting and very new type of reality, I'm not sure if it's for me. In an interview, Rosedale has been quoted to say that "Second Life" users end up preferring their online lives over their real lives. I'm not sure how this makes me feel about the idea of it. It would be interesting to see the different types of people, communities, buildings, and other things that people have used "Second Life" to build. Whether or not I set up my own account is still debatable, but regardless, I find the idea of the 3-D world to be fascinating and intriguing.