Foster: Identity According to Psychoanalysis, Freud and Lacan

1.       According to psychoanalysis, Identity necessitates the internalization of a series of things which are in the first instance external.

2.       Freud furthers the idea of identity with the ego and superego. He defines the ego as the psychic mapping of what is initially a bodily image, and the superego as the introjection of parental authority.

3.       Lacan’s elaborates the notion of an exteriority that is taken within the subject, first in the guise of its mirror image, then susbesquently in the form of parental images, and later in the shape of cultural representations. The “moi” becoming more explicitly dependent upon which might be said to be “alien” or “other”.

Ideas

1.       Make a large photo collage that would make a portrait of a human body. Take a series of photographs of the most diverse people you can find (gender, religion, race, age, citizen etc.). Cut the photos up and use the body parts of each photos to match and create the body parts of the large photo. This should show one body containing all different kinds of identities.

2.       Give each person in a diverse group a small camera that would be attached to them and film their entire day. Edit the pieces together to create a film comparing the different perspectives in how each person relates themselves in to other people or nature.

3.       Have a hologram mirror. The person will stare into the mirror and see themselves, but then another face will be projected on top of theirs. This would challenge the person’s identity to by questioning their self-reflection and awareness of self. The hologram may morph into different multiple versions of their face to challenge the viewer more.

Sketch 4: Possible Environments

So this past week I've been evaluating ideas of environments and logistics of the project in the direction I'm taking it. As for the environment ideas, there are 3 possiblities of cellular environment/behaviors, space, or eco disasters.

Initially I was thinking cellular environments inside and/or outside cells. I was looking at protozoans, amoebas, and even the sol-gel processes. The challenge with this is that cells are very well known and documented, so it leaves little room for interpretation/freedom on the space, thus making the artistic decisions more challenging.

Another idea was creating space environments on what it would look like on another planet. Planets are documented, but not as well as cells are. This leaves more artistic interpretation and freedom on creating the planetary environments. Also, I could take this a step further and possibly make it what it would look like if life lived on it, or how the planet looked like billions of years ago (like Mars having water).

Carol also made the suggestion about doing eco disasters, which would be an interesting political challenge. Going this route will give a strong political and maybe controversial stance to the artwork, but maybe will help memorialize and caution future development by giving an artistic representation to the eco tragedies like bp or exon oil spill, gas leak at bhopal or the nuclear disasters such as chernobyl or 3 mile island.

To be honest, the ideas I'm most drawn to are space and the eco disasters and it's hard to choose between the two. I hope after the individual meeting I can come to conclusion which idea to go with.

As of logistics, I figure I may be able to get 1 environment done for the semester. As for supplies, I have an old (25 gallon?) fish tank, and depending on the environment I choose, I'll start gathering testing more supplies in addition to the studies I've already done. I plan on using the portable light kit from the lab, and for space I may have to use arc ranch. I need a space that's indoor, protected from weather, and hopefully can block out most light.  It also needs to be close to a sink as well so I can change out the water in the tank or w/e supplies I will use. I'll be using my camera to do photography and possibly video as well.

Foster: Gender Identity

Gender Identity

1.       Gender Identity refers to a person’s private sense of and subjective experience of their own gender. It usually consists of a person being accepted into a category of either male or female as and the traits for each category are defined by society. Though some feminist theoriest argue that these gender categories are impossible to define, thus does not exists since often a person would possess both traits from either gender.

2.       Gender is often referred to as a social or learned behavior, not the biological trait. To Lacan, Identity is built up as a composite of images and effects (mental representations) taken from the outside world from the start of life, which are developed in relation to the Desire for recognition and later social requirements for submission to an arbitrary law. Basically, identity is based on early life experiences which develop to Desire and submissive by social norms/laws.

3.       The biological gender (sex) doesn’t always match a person’s gender identity. Usually the gender identity is determined by age 3, and usually doesn’t change after that.  Other aspects of the identity influence gender identity such as race, social class, sexuality, etc.

Ideas

1.       Create a gender identity generator. Either by random or a participant answer a few questions, the program will take common gender traits to create a gender identity for the participant. They can specify what part of the world they are in, and It may change depending on cultural norms.

2.       Create a binary portrait series of men and women with their face split portraying both gender identities.

3.       Create surreal like portrait paintings displaying strong opposite gender traits to challenge the viewer on the gender identity. The portraits can also be done in environment settings, maybe changing roles of the gender identity.

Sketch 3: Slo Mo

After getting feedback, I did some research for microscopes to do video capability. Caffey sent me a link http://www.buy.com/sr/searchresults.aspx?qu=microscope and I did some research. Unfortunately the video quality isn't the best but thats ok. Another issue is that it had bad reviews as well, it cost money and time for shipping. Fortunately I was able to get in contact with Blinn, where I can use their microscopes to do some test footage without having to spend the money. I wasn't able to set up a appointment before this monday, so in the meantime I did some slo motion tests with the T2i.
The first one is steel wool with 60fps interpret to 24fps. The second one is BBs with 60fps interpret to 24fps, then slow down to 50%.

Next in my work is that I hope to find a way to finalize the lighting set up so I can get better quality video, as well as find a way to bring a more poetic meaning to the work. Before I was kind of leaning towards a music piece, but my focus at the moment is find a better method to get better quality and aesthetically pleasing set up for the visuals. Then I came across this artist, Kim Keever.

http://thechive.com/2012/09/12/artist-recreates-beautiful-environments-in-nature-through-a-fish-tank-24-photos-video/

This reminded me of the suggestion Carol made about doing cellular environments. The direction I want to go next is create enviroments similar to the technique Keever used, but take it in a new direction of possibly doing cellular, or alien-like surreal environment.

Jared also showed me another artist similar to Keever, Mathew Albanese. He uses more household products to create his environments instead of the model sets for trains that Keever used.
http://www.behance.net/MatthewAlbanese/frame/366923

Artist Presentation: Roger Ballen

Roger Ballen Prezi Presentation

Foster: Appropriation

Appropriation

1.    Started in the 1960s, grew in popularity since. The artist borrows or takes images from well-known context and creates new work or art by putting these images into other contexts. Appropriation artists want the viewer to recognize the images they copy and hope the audience will bring in their own context or views of the art. The deliberate “borrowing” of an image is called “recontextualization” which allows the artists to comment on an images original meaning to propose another.

2.    Difference between appropriation art and forgery is that the artists bears ultimate responsibility for whatever objectives they choose to pursue in their work, whereas the forger’s central objectives are determined by the nature of the activity of forgery.

3.    Not all appropriation art is Pop art. For example, Sherry Levine took a photo of a photograph. Thus, she challenged the concept of ownership in photography. If she photographed the photograph, whose photograph was it? Sherry Levine is a feminist artist, so she is addressing the predominance of male artists in the textbook version of art history. Other well-known appropriation artists are Andy Warhol, Richard Prince, Jeff Coons and Kathleen Gilje.

Ideas

1.    One idea is to take iconic photos of celebrities in the past and update them to modern trends. Elvis can have gauges, Bob Hope wears shutter shades, and Marilyn Monroe has tattoos reminiscent of Kat Von D.

2.    Another is to take renaissance style paintings and put the kool aid man in them. The painting will be done on canvas, but literally have a busted hole through the canvas and you’ll see the kool aid man coming out of it, possibly a sound bite that says “Oh Yeah”.

3.    Film or put on a theatrical production of a classic Greek play in modern times. The language would remain exactly the same, but everything else would be updated to modern times.

Discussion

1.    How do you feel in regards to authorship in appropriation art? Do you think because an artist had an original comment or innovation in the context that it is still art? Or would it be a critique?

2.    Why do you think appropriation artist borrow iconic images? Do you think it helps or hurt them as an artist?

Movement in Water

Out of the ideas I presented to the class, the most response I got was from the study of movement in water idea with the dyes.

One of the suggestions was to use iron fillings in water with magnets. Since I couldn't find any, I went to the hardware store to find a piece of iron to file down, unfortunately they didn't have any iron besides curtain rods, which was too much. I also read online you can get iron from dirt, so I dropped dirt over magnets. I did get some iron, but only a little and looking at the time frame it would take way too long to get a decent amount to work with. So I ended up getting steel wool and cutting it down to small pieces.

I also had iron copper plated BB's, and also dropped that in water. It was magnetic, but it was hard to get any movement from the BB's since the magnet can only control them from the sides but not the bottom or top. I was using 6 magnets, but maybe stronger magnets might of worked better.

Also from class discussion, it was suggested to use materials that resist water. So I used vegetable oil, which gave beautiful motion in the water, but visually the colors weren't as pretty. Also, I was having issues with shadows over the lights when dropping the oil, and I need some sort of light rig where the shadows won't be visible on the camera but I can still drop the material in the water. So for now I used UV light to see what it would look like, and dropped BBs in it but they didn't show up as well, but the motion was there.

Since the only paint I had around was fluorescent tempra paint, I used that under the UV light. It gave very neat motion and was aesthetically pretty. And using UV lighting it eliminated the shadow issue.

I also did some research into Ferrofluid, which is a magnetic liquid. Unfortunately its quite expensive to buy 50mL $40 online. It is very possible to make with some work, and I found some diy here.

I think if I went down this route, I would use a large piece of glass or pexiglass and multiple magnets to control the fluid and create some sort of patterns of motion.

Feminism and Male Gaze

Male Gaze and Feminism

According to Lacan, ‘Gaze’ is used to describe a condition where the subject observes “the observation of himself” in a mirror. Laura Mulvey coined the term Male Gaze as an inscription of the image of woman as an object of male desire. For narrative she saw the camera adopted a male point of view to appeal to an assumed male audience where women were often represented in a sexualized way. I believe the same can be say as for the male gaze to be applied to art. Just like the camera, the same can be said about a painting or a work of art, where the perspective of the artist can adopt a male gaze (or point of view to appeal to a male audience).

Edward Snow stated that when feminism characterizes “the male gaze”, certain motifs are almost sure to appear: voyeurism, objectification, fetishism, scopophilia (the love of looking), woman as the object of male pleasure and the bearer of male lack, etc (30).  Thus, it can be assumed that the female spectator will see things differently than what the male will see.  Paula Rabinowitz used an example for the film All That Heaven Allows (1956) combines female sexual expression and maternal repression in a melodramatic film that creates contradictions for the female spectator that may not yield distance through excess but instead may seem all too familiar in their excess(163).

For example in our reading of the Foster article, Cindy Sherman was able to make the viewer feel implicated by her work seeming to be a spectacle of the world (Foster 148). Female subjects are self-surveyed, she captures the gap between the imagined and the actual body images by showing the distance of a self-made women and her mirror face. I believe Sherman’s art critiques the male gaze through a women’s voyeurism. She captures the moment of a women looking at herself in the mirror, that observation of herself is the very definition of the gaze. The woman in the picture is not to be the subject of gaze to an audience but only a subject to herself, thus creating a gap between the imagined  body and actual. To conclude a simplified way to understand Male Gaze as John Berger puts it “Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at” (Sullivan 191).

Artwork Ideas

                Being inspired from an episode of the reality show Cheaters, a boyfriend had cheated on his girlfriend through Craigslist hookups. To make artwork out of it, there would be this gigantic projection onto a wall at least 15 feet high to simulate a computer screen. On it, it would simulate as if a greater being was browsing the escort sections of Craigslist, where it will scroll down, click on links, go back, click on more links. The links would be the images Craigslist post, usually sexually explicit with attached pictures that would be projected 15 feet tall. Ideally, the craigslist posts exemplify the male gaze, where women are overtly sexualized in explicit in visuals as well as words. The scale of the piece will make the pictures of the women look giant like, and intimidating. Thus, will complicate the male gaze of the viewer by making him feel uncomfortable, powerless and weak; therefore the viewer will be unable to enjoy the pleasures of the male gaze.

                Going along a similar idea, this was inspired by the Haunted Mansion at Disney. At the very end of the ride, the viewer looks into a black mirror and sees a projection of a ghost hitchhiker in his dune buggy sitting next to them. For this art installation piece, there will be a small room set up like a private viewing area with a tv outside and a black mirror, sexy mood lighting/romantic velvet like decor and a camera inside. The camera records the viewer the whole time, and the viewer will go inside and watch the mirror. A projection of a sexualized woman (like Jessica Rabbit) will be on screen. After the viewer leaves the room, the tv outside will play the recording the viewer’s expression to the public with the viewer right there. Thus, the viewer performed the male gaze by watching the woman, then the viewer became subject of the male gaze to the public, and the viewer watched itself being watched by the public, thus taking the role of the female subject. As a result, the viewer switches roles by performing the male gaze and becoming the subject of the male gaze.

                The last idea is a sculpture. There will be three objects side by side on a blank white table/pedestal in this order: a birth control pack, a standup 360 mirror, and a baby’s bottle. These objects represent the contradictions a female spectator may feel or face through their gaze. The birth control represents sexual freedom, a baby’s bottle of maternal repression, and a mirror for reflection of the viewer, so they can observe themselves through the idea of the female gaze. Opposing to that table is another table with stilettos, a stand up 360 mirrors, and a playboy. The stilettos represent voyeurism; playboy represents pleasure, and the mirror a reflection of the spectator. These objects help the viewer observe themselves through a male gaze.

Discussion

1.       How do you interpret Cindy Sherman’s work in relation to the male gaze?

2.       Does the female gaze exists? How would you define it?

3.       What gaze does a female view another female? What gaze does a female view a male?

Mulvey believes female view themselves through the male gaze, thus creating the inequality. Females view males through a female gaze, such as teenybopper magazines coin term “boy toy”.

4.       Why do men usually possess the gaze and not subject of the gaze?

Possibly men can’t bear burden to be the objectified, they reject it while women just deals with it

 

Works Cited

Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Brown Unviersity Wiki. Brown

University, 10 June 2009. Web. 4 Sept. 2012.

<https://wiki.brown.edu/confluence/display/MarkTribe/Visual+Pleasure+and+Narrative

+Cinema>.

Rabinowitz, Paula. "Seeing through the Gendered I: Feminist Film Theory." Feminist Studies 16.1

(1990): 151-69. Print.

Snow, Edward. "Theorizing the Male Gaze: Some Problems." Representations 25.1 (1989): 30-

41. Print.

Sullivan, Laura L. "Representations of Women and the Virtual Male Gaze." Computers and

Composition 14 (1997): 189-204. Print.