your wall your paper

"It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw — not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things. But there is something else about that paper—the smell! ... The only thing I can think of that it is like is the color of the paper! A yellow smell."

-Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper

For some interesting information about the history of wallpaper you may want to look at wallpaperinstaller.com where among other interesting stuff you will learn that "the oldest existing example of flocked wallpaper comes from Worcester and was created in approximately 1680."

Wallpaper has been used by many contemporary artists as either part of an installation or as the art itself. Here are some examples of contemporary wallpaper:

John Baldessari, Mike Bidlo, Adam Cvijanovic, Drew Dominick, Nicole Eisenman, Viola Frey, General Idea, Robert Gober, Lonnie Graham, Rodney Graham, Richard Haas, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Jenny Holzer, Jim Isermann, Peter Kogler, Roy Lichtenstein, Virgil Marti, Jane Masters, Michael Mercil, Takashi Murakami, Paul Noble, Jorge Pardo, Francesco Simeti, Kiki Smith, Will Stokes, Do-Ho Suh, Rosemarie Trockel, Andy Warhol, and William Wegman

And this is just from the RISD and the Fabric Workshop companion exhibitions in 2003 on Artists' Wallpaper you can read about them here and here. In my next post I will include links to images and the proper description for the project.

My apartment was not pretty

I just came across this web art project while working on something... let me know what you think?

http://www.turbulence.org/Works/apartment/

Links for my daring digital print students

Here are some links (in no particular order) you might find interesting, please feel free to leave your own suggestions in the comments:

http://www.engadget.com/

though not an art site, this is the techie site for reviews and tech news

http://www.contemporaryartdaily.com/

I pointed this out in class as a site that is loaded with great images of contemporary art

Modern Art Notes

For some insight on the workings of the art world

BLDG/BlOG

A blog of architecture and architectural ideas for architects and those people pre-occupied with the space we occupy

RomanBlog 2

Zoe Strauss

ICA Philadelphia

Roberta Fallon & Libby Rosof

These are Philly blogs that you should check out

Philagrafika

This event runs from January-April 2010 and will spread across a million galleries and museums in Philly

Okay, expect more soon.

Living in public

This week's On The Media, a program on NPR (that's radio which is way-old-media) has a very interesting article on the new film We Live in Public that you should take twenty minutes to listen to, it will give you much to think about.

From the program's website:

The new film We Live in Public focuses on Josh Harris, whom the film calls “the greatest internet pioneer you’ve never heard of.” The film offers a window into Harris’s psyche, and the impacts of living in a digital, recorded age. Director Ondi Timoner talks about this web entrepreneur’s fascination with privacy, and with recording life’s every moment -- including the most intimate -- 24/7.

Click here to visit the site where you can listen to the article online.

second project

Text as Art

Twitter me this…

As we know Twitter is this ridiculously popular social networking thing. 140 characters per message to express yourself to your friends, to update them on every small thing you do, every little tiny thing you do.

Well, artists have been effectively using short pieces of text for years to express an idea, to explore concepts, and to generally challenge people. I showed you a few examples in class the other day, but below is a much longer list of artists who have worked with text.

Your assignment, as you may recall, is to stick within the confines of Twitter’s 140 character count (and that includes spaces), but to create a work of art within those confines. Yes, you can combine an image with the text to create the artwork, you can repeat the text, you can do many things… as long as you have a conceptual reason for doing so.

I talked quite a bit about how artists view language, that language is this seemingly invisible thing that is turned visible by their acts. We will continue to explore the ideas of text-based art over the next few weeks. To begin with do some research yourself, look up the artists I have listed, go online and do some independent research, maybe go to the library. For Monday’s class I would like you to bring with you some ideas for discussion after our crit. Good luck, and check back at the blog for further updates.

Artists working with text:

El Lissitzky

Andy Warhol

Alexander Rodchenko

Kurt Schwitters

F.W. Marinetti

Rene Magritte

John Heartfield

Hannah Hoch

Ed Ruscha

Barbara Kruger

Sabrina Ward Harrison

Dan Eldon

Tauba Auerbach

Jenny Holzer

Cy Twombly

Kay Rosen

Robert Indiana

Jasper Johns

Roy Lichtenstein

Guerilla Girls

Lawrence Weiner

William Wiley

Alexis Smith

Jeff Soto

Raymond Pettibon

Glenn Ligon

Bruce Nauman

Christopher Wool

Neil Jenney

Joseph Kosuth

Nancy Dwyer

John Baldessari

John Michel Basquiat

John Cage

Robert Rauschenberg

Tim Rollins and

Kids Of Survival

Trenton Doyle Hancock

Howdy and welcome to the fall semester!

First things first, here are the blogs of the students:

Kasey http://kc96.blogspot.com

Natalie http://natalian86.blogspot.com/

Rachel www.rachelkozlowski.com

Garrett http://crowdedlives.blogspot.com

Olga http://olgavuk.blogspot.com/

Aaron http://crimcram.blogspot.com

Brian http://digitallysound.blogspot.com/

Griffin http://grifflotz.blogspot.com/

Anja http://printmakingfall09.blogspot.com/

G Mutz http://gmutzprocess.blogspot.com/

Robin http://www.robinzeggblu.blogspot.com/

Andrew http://smotherparty.blogspot.com/

Ayelet http://ayeletdaniel.blogspot.com/

Allison http://allisonwolfeblog.blogspot.com/

Mirida http://miridab.blogspot.com

Colin http://www.colinkellyart.blogspot.com/

Digiscape Digiscape Digiscape!!!

Digital Printmaking Project 3
Digiscape: DUE May 4

There has been a long tradition of landscape painting in American art. After the confusion of early colonization, American artists began to depict the incredible landscape around them in oil paintings. This tradition continues to this day. This generation and the generation to come will also be faced with the subject of landscape, however, it might take on a different form. This new Landscape or digiscape exists solely inside the digital world, comprised of million upon millions of bits of data. Like "Real" landscape, within this metaphysical digiscape, everything is in a constant state of flux, with each person perceiving it from a different point of view. Unlike the "Real", the digiscape abides by a different set of rules, not constrained by the properties of the physical world. In this way, the digiscape is analogous to the dream world, constrained only by the limits of human imagination.

The question is, what does your digiscape look like? In this assignment use images that you find online, along with at least five images of your own, to create three virtual renderings of what the digiscape might look like. Experiment and alter the relationships between elements by changing their size, scale and transparency. Think of this as an opportunity to realize a personal and original vision of an electronic space, rather than a re-creation of something you have seen before, i.e., slick, geometric, computer graphic spaces or the psychedelic fractal-scapes of which we are already familiar. Experiment enough to create at least three variations of your idea.

Requirements: The finished images should be flattened (no layers) .PSD or .TIFF files and must be at LEAST 12000 x 3600 pixels (width x height)/40” x 12-18”. The resolution should be 300 DPI. In addition, please include a .JPG version of your images at a pixel width of no greater then 900 @ 72 DPI.

INDEPENDENT RESEARCH
Everyone is expected to find at least 3 contemporary artists using the landscape that are working in ways that they find inspirational. Work by these artists will be gathered either from the web or from books, and presented to the class in a coherent digital (projected) format. Examples from these artists along with five preliminary sketches should be posted on your blog. During the process you should also comment on at least three other student blogs.

WRITTEN STATEMENTS
A one-page typewritten statement explaining the visual, emotional, and intellectual motivations behind the work presented at critique must be handed in at the start of each critique. This should also be posted on your blog.

Technical details of the project must also be included, including what worked and what did not, so future students can learn form your experiments. Include name, class, semester, year, and project title, at the top of each document.


ASSIGNMENTS WILL BE EVALUATED
BASED ON THE FOLLOWING CRITERIA:

CONCEPT - idea, intention and meaning. Does the artwork clearly communicate something to other viewers?

CREATIVITY - originality of thought and expression. Does the artwork show innovation and uniqueness? Did the artist solve the given assignment problem in an expected or unexpected way?

COMPOSITION - arrangement and organization of elements. Has the artist carefully considered elements such as balance, proportion, texture, color, shape, and positive/negative space?

CRAFTSMANSHIP - attention to detail. Does the artist skillfully manipulate the images? Are all details carefully finished and/or intentional-looking?