Time Based , Guerilla , Wearable Technologies.

Time Based Art

  Time Based Art can be film , video or photographs , and it can be described as an artist who crosses the boundaries. Time based art also requires a view

er to spend a certain amount of time interacting with it to be able to gain its full pote

ntial. Andy Goldsworthy is both a land artist as his art appears on the land but also a time based as his work has an expiration date. Here is an example of his work.

Time based art is a new term however it is not a new thing Eadwerad Muybrige was using this in the eighties taking a series of several shots of animals and humans whilst in action.

I found the work of Tony Oursler very relevant to our doll project as he projects images of faces on to dolls. I found this very interesting which made me consider using a photograph of a face for the faces on my dolls.

Guerrilla Art

Guerrilla Art is also known as street art has links with political art and activist art. However most artists who practice the Guerrilla Art remain anonymous as more often than not their practises are illegal.

The Guerrilla Girls are a group of radical feminist artists established in New York City in 1985 , known for using creative posters to promote women and people of colour in the arts. Their first work was putting up posters on the streets of New york decrying the gender and racial imbalance of artists represented in

 galleries and museum.

Here is the work of Banksy ( which is his nickname) who is another artist famous for Guerrilla Art.

Wearable Technology

Pac-Lan is a mixed reality game which uses Radio frequency identification technology , and mobile phones. It is like the old school version of Pac-man however it is a modern version with someone running around whilst someone attempts to catch them whilst playing on the internet.

I did not find this lecture very relevant to the course however I found it very interesting.

The Body as Art

There are many ways people have began to modify there body's to create a living and walking piece of art or maybe to try and make themselves perfect through corrective surgery and implants.

A tattoo is a permanent marking made by inserting ink into the layers of skin to change the pigment for decorative or other reasons such as branding in tribes. I find tattoos fascinating and how you can now have a piece of art you have drawn 

tattooed onto your own skin and be a true part of you , however it is the permanence of it which is off putting to me. 

Another form of body modification is body piercing from the ears and belly-button to your face and your private parts! However I found this picture fascinating as a lady has combined the two (body piercing and tattoos) on to her face to completely cover it , so much so it looks painful and  doesn't look as if it is real. 

Scarification is a process ware scars are formed by cutting or branding the skin. Scarification has been used as a rite of passage in adolescence , or to denote the emotional state of the wearer of the scars , such as times of sorrow or well-being. This is common among Australian Aboriginal and Sepik River tribes in New Guinea , amongst others. The Maori of New Zeland used a form of ink rubbing 

scarification to produce facial tattoos known as "moko'. Moko were considered to make the body complete as 

Maori bodies were considered to be naked without theses marks. Moko were unique to each person and served as a sort of signature. Here is an example below.

Dr.Gunther von Hagens is a controversial anatomist who invented the technique for preserving biological tissue specimens called plastinisation. he does this by replacing the bodily fluids with plastic essentially preserving the skin and organs. Many people are confused by his work not being able to come to terms with whether it is a form of art or a piece of science. I find it very interesting in science terms however as a piece of art very strange and rather intrusive.

I find Dr. Gunther von Hagens work could be relevant to the doll project to try to re-create one of his pieces showing the inside organs and layers of flesh and muscle on a doll. This would be a very different take on the classic angelic doll. I also like tattoos and the tribal patterns from the different tribes.

Land Art or earth Art

• Land Art emerged in the late 60's early 70's in the USA as a backlash to the commercialisation and industrialisation of the land.
  
• Often Ephemeral and concerned with time.
• An act of protest, inspired by natural processes and the environment.
• Inextricable link between landscape and the artwork.

To appreciate a piece of land art it is thought that you should be in the air to be able to see it at its full potential and to be able to appre

ciate it however this is controversial as it is there for everyone to see not just the wealthy who can 

afford to go to the sky to see it.

Time art isn't a new phenomenon.

Lancelot 'capability' Brown became famous for taking grounds and re-forming them to become more natural than it was in the first place. He 

was well known for adding Meadows , folly's , encircling drives and lakes into the grounds of which he was working on. His grounds have remained in good condition and many have become parks. Here is a photograph of one of his grounds.

It was in 1678 when people began the crop circle phenomena when they used it as a form of protest against land owners. Here is an example of a crop circle.

Many people believe that there is an alien mystique about the crop circles , however man-made or not crop circles prove to be very visual and powerful instillation's. They are also used as a form of advertisement and a way of putting across certain views in a large scale to attract media attention. I find the patterns interesting used in crop circles and the sheer scale of them.

Stonehenge is another form of Land Art , it has been linked with the movement of the sun , as time measures the movement of earth around the sun. It was built at the same time as the pyramids.

I found the Nazca in Peru very interesting , which have been made by the Inca tribe. The Nazca lines are a series of geogliphs located in the Nazca dessert. These designs are very shallow in the ground created by moving the soil and rock on the surface. It is thought that the spiders and birds could be signs of fertility. This area is not accessible by the public only by air transport as it is feared that any disturbance could easily destroy them. 

I like the grid of lines which appears on the image however not as striking as the line of the insect , which cross over this image almost entrapping it. This would look good using layers of stitch .

Body Extensions

In this lecture we looked at the work of Rebecca Horn , who is a performance and installation artist looking at the senses and extending her body. We were shown a video of one of her performance pieces , and we were asked what we saw. I found this video very strange I hated the sound of the fingers scrapping against the wall it made it sound and look like something out of a horror film. Im also not the biggest lover of performance or instillation art so found it rather weird. In the video she I prefer to work on a much smaller scale and very intricately. Below is an image of the finger gloves (1972) 

If I could extend my body in any way I would make myself have a much longer neck so I would be looking over everyone around me. I found this quite interesting as I wouldn't normally look at this type of art work. I thought it was useful for our doll module as we could extend certain elements on our dolls to make them look dis-proportionate.

Tapestry

A tapestry is a form of woven art. They were very popular as they are easy to store and transport , they can easily be rolled up. They were used in the medieval  era as not only decoration but to emphasize high class and were often taken on long  trips to highlight this. 

Tapestries were usually made through a commission ware an artist would create the design , which would be made later on by craftsmen. They are made on a loom , with a parallel warp thread and then a weft thread which is what gives the tapestry its colour and decoration.

Popular designs for tapestries would

 be plants , trees ,historical happenings such as the battle of Hastings. However many were medieval allegories , one famous one is the hunt of the unicorn. These were a series of seven tapestries covering the hunt of the unicorn with it eventually being caught and tied up and dies in the sixth , this can be related to the death of Christ.

We were asked to create our own illustration for a tapestry with our own allegories. Above is the illustration we created. We chose to look at the life and growth of a caterpillar and how it makes its transaction into a butterfly. However we related this transformation to our own lives. When we are born we are very much like a caterpillar , free and careless with no responsibilities. However as we get to our teenage years we suddenly are subjected to rules and responsibilities and feel very constricted almost as if we were in a cocoon ; but as we leave home we are free to make our own path and decisions , like a butterfly as it breaks free from its cocoon. 

I liked the idea of using an allegory in my work , to give it a double meaning. However I don't feel I will be using this in the doll project.