Authenticity

Hans Aarsman Ted talk from 2009

Google street view

Doug Rickard:

I saw some of Doug Rickard's photographs at the MoMa yesterday...images taken from Google Maps. They are very reminiscent of color street photography from the 70's- Eggleston, Stephen Shore, etc. Rickard's images are published in a booked called "A New American Picture", which seems to be a riff on Walker Evan's "American Photographs".  Knowing the artist's intent gives the photographs a new dimension though...I'm not that into the idea of an artist "taking photos" using the internet, but a phenomenon like Google's street views is a part of our media-based and image-swamped society that can't be ignored. I started looking at some other artists working with this process-

Michael Wolf

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Jon Rafman: http://9-eyes.com/

and

Apres Garde: http://buchr.tumblr.com/

Recent photos

I've recently been wandering around New Brunswick taking pictures with my 35mm. New Brunswick is kind of enigmatic to me- almost like a twilight zone. (I could probably say that about any place after living there for a while.) New Brunswick is a college town, it's the "Healthcare City", it's close to New York, it's known as Little Mexico in some parts, other parts are "shady"...there is really no definition for it. (Again, you could probably say that about anywhere if you really got to know it). These photos are taken mostly around French Street-an area that a lot of students don't frequent-where the separation of class/culture in our community is made clear. I'm kind of interested in documenting the different sides of certain overlooked parts of New Brunswick in a photojournalistic way, but I also enjoy making images using just the streets and light/shadows and overgrown land plots as my subjects. I'm going to stick with color film; its printing process and the resulting image are much for appealing for me than that of black and white. 

This last image interests me a lot- it was the first image made on the roll of film where the light seeped in...I don't know where or when it was exposed- it's just an accidental image that happens to have been made using a camera. 

11/11/11

Today in thesis class Gerry announced that next week we will be submitting a first draft of our thesis proposals, which should be something of a synthesis of our blog. Frankly I haven't been using my blog as a true outlet for what i'm working on and thinking about, so transforming my blog this far into a thesis proposal would amount to something pretty shallow. Although I think my lack of blog enthusiasm during the first two months of the semester partly reflected my lack of artistic drive (which has taken a turn for the better recently), it also reflects the trouble I frequently have with organizing my ideas and convictions. I am hereafter going to use this blog more so I can really address just what it is I am trying to get at.

Brooklyn

Visiting Brooklyn last Friday was a good chance to see what the art scene is like there. New York is arguably the center of the art world, which must make Brooklyn something like the backstage. Our plan to visit the first studio fell through on account of traffic or something, so instead we walked around a bit and saw some galleries. I especially liked the third gallery we stepped into called Interstate Projects, where we saw a video installation from the artist Jesse McLean. The exhibition, called Trust Falls, consisted of two different videos projected in adjacent rooms. The larger projection was a 20-or-so-minute string of shots of various spaces. It well-made technically and the way the shots flowed from one to the next was mysterious and intriguing, eerie at times. It really made me want to start making videos again (I haven't really made a video for two years now).
The studio which we did visit, the Bruce High Quality Foundation, was interesting in the sense that we got to see how a group of artists are working together and playing off each other's creativity. It was kind of surreal to be inside a warehouse where people have come together just to make art, and then step outside to the beautiful weather and the distant views of New York- it all seemed so contingent & left me thinking on the bus ride back to New Brunswick about what exactly I'm doing in terms of art & where I want to go.

Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees

I just finished reading Lawrence Weschler's biography of Robert Irwin. Annie Hogan recommended it to me when I expressed my interest in perception. I'd like to recommend it to everyone... the book, which is really more of a direct conversation with Irwin, lays out the steady progression of his life through different stages. At one point while he was traveling through Europe he even decided to just live in seclusion in Ibiza for eight months. He was tremendously focused and dedicated to his work, constantly creating questions, always asking more of himself. He was also not afraid to simply drop everything and try thinking in a new light. His artwork is really his perception itself, and how he has altered his perception through experimentation. Although it seems a little contradictory to Irwin's aesthetic philosophy to post an image of his work,