Artist Post #3

Invader is a French street artist who pastes characters inspired by the game Space Invader on buildings. He uses tiles to form small mosaics, which look like 3D pixels on a bitmap. He will paste them in cities all over the world and then he will call it an "invasion" and place where to find each work in books or maps. Because the Space Invader game was done at such a low resolution, the images it produced had large visible pixels, like those of the small video game landscapes we created one of our first classes. Like I said earlier, these characters can be easily reproduced with square tiles which represent pixels. Placement of these space invaders is not trivial. Each one is placed meticulously, whether it be conceptual or purely for aesthetics. Sometimes Invader enjoys hiding the works and sometimes he enjoys placing them where many people will view them. In one city in southern France, Montpellier, he placed his space invaders so that when they were viewed on a map they created one giant space invader. Invader has another project that he also works on called "Rubikcubism" where he created works from Rubik's Cubes. Though I couldn't find much on how exactly he produces these rubikcubism works, from pictures I have seen, like the one below, of the process, it appears as though he is working from an image created on the computer, which I assume to be done in photoshop. I assume it to be done in photoshop since photoshop breaks everything down into pixels, which is what the squares on a Rubik's Cube ultimately are.

rubikcubism

                                                                     space invaders

space invader

Though his work is not complex, I do still think it is genuinely good art, and it is certainly original. The striking bright, and mainly primary colors really evoke a feeling of excitement. His choice of color also could be because it allows his work to stand out on the neutral colored background of a city. I feel as though his concept of an invasion is very relevant to the art he practices because street art is in a way an "invasion," since you are pasting work on something that isn't yours. Since art is becoming so much more accessible, in part because of digital art programs like photoshop and illustrator, I feel as though there will be an invasion of art greater than we have ever had before.

cool website with a bunch of his work!
INFO CITATION

Artist Post #2

Drew Rios is an apparel designer for Nike, a graphic designer at Toho Water Authority, and a graphic designer also at Fahrenheit Ultra Lounge & Restaurant. In the past he has worked with graphic design in the music industry. He received training in digital art at Ringling School of Art and Design. His specialties in digital art include music branding, print design, and type design. I discovered this artist on a site called Society 6. Society 6 sells prints of different artists' works and each artist has their own profile where they can post their different works and give brief descriptions of their works or descriptions of the inspiration for the work. This is a link to Drew Rios' profile. I was immediately drawn to this work of Rios because of spacey elements he used in it.

Earthrise

Drew calls this work a "tribute poster to the first image of earth from the moon." I find the mysterious mood created by the color pallet and haziness to be very relevant to the mystery surrounding space when the first picture of the earth was taken from the moon. This is the picture of earth which Drew is referencing in his work: Earth  

I interpret the texture Drew has created in the Earthrise to be some sort of replication of the texture of the moon in the original photograph. One thing I take issue with in Earthrise is Rios' way of showing the magnificence of earth. He takes a very obvious approach to showing magnificence by placing the beams of sparkling white light in a frame around earth. In the original photograph there is this natural and subtle magnificence that I wish Rios could have captured in Earthrise. I believe he was on the right track with his color pallet and texture but the added beams of light don't sit well with me in their artificial framing. However, I should explain that much of Drew's works have a 1980's vibe to them which he discusses briefly under some works. This could be why he incorporated the striking beams of light. Also, with his background in graphic design for products, it was natural for him to frame the main object of the work so that the eye is immediately drawn to what he wishes you to view first. 

Astroknot

Seeds of Mars

These are just two more of his works. Astroknot is an example of another 80's/space inspired work. Seeds of Mars is much like an early botanical drawing which he incorporated comets into to humorously suggest that the earth was "seeded with the DNA of martians."

project 1

One More

Photo Editing

Jordan Tate

This particular artist is an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Cincinnati. He has a Bachelor of Philosophy in Interdisciplinary Studies from Miami University and a Master of Fine Arts in Photography from Indiana University. His artwork can be found in the Museum of Contemporary Photography and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. In addition to digital art, he is a writer and published “The Contemporary Dictionary of Sexual Euphemisms.” As well, he founded the contemporary art blog http://ilikethisart.net. It is not uncommon for Jordan to collaborate with artist Adam Tindale to create joint works. Tindale is "an electronic drummer and digital instrument designer." "Adam performs on his EDrumset: a new electronic instrument that utilizes physical modeling and machine learning with an intuitive physical interface." Tindale is a Permanent Instructor of Interaction Design in the Media Arts and Digital Technologies area at the Alberta College of Art and Design. 

This video is one of Jordan and Adam's works. It is called Lossless_23. This type of video is called a 3D stereographic, which is the result of is the result of the "sorting process where pixels were sorted by hue." I am not quite sure what exactly the artists are trying to say, or if they are trying to say anything at all. The only thing I could possibly see the work meaning would be something along the lines of how beauty is fleeting and that eventually it will start to sort of be eaten away. I think the work is interesting but it seems a bit too simplistic for me. 

This work is called New Work #90. It is a video of a bust floating above the ocean. This is Tate's statement about New Work: 

New Work is an exploration of visual language and process. In a sense it is an examination of how we see, what we see, what merits being seen, and how images function in contemporary visual culture. The photographic image is still often viewed as a mechanical reproduction of reality. In this paradigm, the photograph functions not as an object, but as a conceptually transparent representation of a reproduced reality rather than an object loaded with historical and functional contexts. New Work represents a shift away from the context of photograph as mechanical reproduction and is an acknowledgement of the image-maker as the mediator of sight, as well as an exploration of process and practice in contemporary image viewing and production. These images are a continuation of ongoing research / meta-photographic critique concerning the visual and conceptual processes of image comprehension.

After reading this I found the work much more intriguing. When I first watched the video I thought to myself, ok this is neat but I really don't understand the significance of it. It is interesting that these works are in a way an experiment or a test to see how we comprehend what we see. 

New Work #50

This is another New Work project that also is a bit visually confusing.

All of my information was found by navigating through Jordan Tate's profile found at this address rhizome

Collage

Jochem Hendricks

Jochem Hendricks creates "eye drawings," or in his native German, "Augenzeichnungen." It is funny that though called "drawings" the artist's hand never picks up a pencil or even moves. Rather, the drawing is done with the eyes along with the assistance of technology. "Human eye movements are traced and digitized during the visual process of looking at something" and then are printed later. The final products are never simply a tracing of a 2D or 3D object, and the subjects are never trivial. Hendricks has done eye drawings of hands, time, reading, writing, drawing, and light. The subjects he choses "circle around issues of research and the visualization of abstract motives and processes." 

Time

This is one of Hendricks' eye drawings titled time. One meaning of the work that I initially can think of is that time is stressful and a great concern. The jagged and spastic patterns that the lines are going in indicate to me this level of stress. Also, the darkness created by the overlapping of the lines indicates that certain patterns we traced over and over during the drawing which means that the eye was moving very quickly in a concerning way. It is also interesting that the drawing is in a circular shape. I do not know if this was a drawing done by looking at a circular wall clock. If that was the case then that could explain the circular shape. If this is not the case then it is interesting to think of time in the shape of a circle. We tend to envision time as a straight line that ultimately leads to an end. It is interesting to think of time as a circle because many times in life you repeat stages that you have already been through years before.  

I think what could be improved within the work would be to possibly have some sort of comparison where there are multiple eye drawings done by various people from various economic, racial, or cultural backgrounds so that we can see if people from different backgrounds view things such as time or art in different ways than we do. I do also take issue in that all of the drawings are done with black ink. Colors can also be associated with different "abstract processes" so I think it could be interesting to somehow incorporate that into the eye drawings.    

All information from: Jochem Hendricks Website

The First Assignment

freaks and geeks

from thecobrasnake.com