Evan Baden

I had very mixed feelings about Evan Baden’s work.  His first series Illuminati I thought was incredible.  It had a great Idea behind it, and was executed beautifully.  However, I felt that the same cannot be said for the rest of his work.  His second body of work, Technically Intimate, I greatly disliked.  The biggest issue I had with the project was that after I heard him talking about it I felt that his impotence for the project was his own obsession with porn that he refused to admit to, a thought that others in attendance had as well.  This changed my view of the project from it being artistic to porn.  In addition to that I felt that the motifs in the images were quite basic and did not really push the idea beyond a very obvious level.  Finally I felt that in many ways his third project was just an extension of his second project, however I felt that it was even more exploitative than the second.

Has it become stronger in death?

I Found Working on this project to be very interesting.  Friedrich Nietzsche is not someone that one would normally think about having to do anything with art, but strangely enough it turns out that he does in fact have quite an influence on art, and theories on art.  However, because he is someone that is not commonly associated with art, there is not a lot of reference to him in journals or articles.  This was not as much of a detriment to my research as one might think, because it lead me down a very interesting path.  What I found was that Nietzsche’s ideas have invaded our popular culture, and that culture has in many ways watered down and perverted the ideas.  However, it is thought this dissemination though popular culture that Nietzsche has entered into art directly.  Because his ideas are part of the common lexicon much of his work has ended up in many movies and music by accident.

                         

Sounds

This Project was way way out of my comfort zone.  While I love music and it has always been a big part of my life I have never been one to make it.  I am for all intents and purposes tone deaf so I have always stayed away from making music.  So when I was presented with this project I became quite worried.  I did not think I would be able to do the project because I have never been able to make anything that sounded in any way decent in the past.  However, after a couple of hours of working on the project when everything started to come together my feelings on the matter completely changed, to the point that by the end I became much more confident in what I was creating.  I also have a bit of trouble uploading the files to youtube.  It took me a very long time to figure out how to get them up there.

Do I have Friends?

The main issue I found with this project was repetition.  I am used to doing projects with 12 images in them max, and it is very hard to become repetitious with so few images.  So when I was thinking about the project the thought that the images may start to become repetitive never entered my mind.  However, once I started shooting and editing I felt a bit of repetitiveness start, so I found myself having to really work on the photos to remove this feeling.  Another feeling that I kept having during the project was frustration.  While it was much faster and easier to work with and edit the photos on the computer as opposed to in a dark room I still found myself hating it.  Coming from a film background I have my way of looking at, working with, and arranging photos.  However, none of that works in digital.  For this reason I found it very hard to choose an order for the photos, and in general became quite frustrated with the whole process.

Flicker:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/92732076@N04/sets/72157632645038533/

SnapFish:

http://www2.snapfish.com/flickrus/projectshareewelcome/l=5257409023/p=605301359565086012/g=5866528023/cobrandOid=1295012/COBRAND_NAME=flickrus/otsc=SYE/otsi=SPBKlink/ 

Lynda Barry

I felt that Lynda Barry was the best convo speaker in my time so far at Lawrence.  She was able to be thought provoking and funny and all around interesting.  This is something that I have not seen another convo speaker do.  But enough of that what did I like about her speech.  I found her way of connecting things incredibly interesting and enjoyable.  I really liked how she used familys and art and technology together.  Her discussion of how parents relate to there children is changing because of new technology was incredibly interesting.  However, what I found the most amazing, was the story she told about phantom pain.  I had to agree with her about it, it was strange that what was most definitively a medical process was not considered one because it used an image overlay.  To me there was something very wrong about that.  With that being said however, I still thought that the story was incredible.  The fact that the experiment worked was so fascinating, it really makes you wonder about the human brain.

My First

For this movie I really wanted to capture the idea of space being present in all times.  I tried to capture this through the use of extremely long shots.  What I was trying to capture was the permanence of spaces and objects throughout time.  I wanted to show that while things change that space that I saw there never will because at that point in time it existed.  I wanted to put the song Time is On My Side by the Rolling Stones in the video, but I had trouble getting it to the program.  It is for that reason that I left the video silent.

Under the Influence

There have been a number of artists who have really shaped me as an artist.  Of all of these artists there are three who stand above the rest, they are Chuck Close, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Ian Ruhter.  The images of these three men have inspired me in incredible ways.

The first to have a real impact on me was Henri Cartier-Bresson.  While looking at his images of street photography, I was filled with a sense of aw due to his ability to capture the magnificence on the every day.  As I have discussed before this ability to turn even the most mundane days into something special is something that I have tried to recreate on my own.

Chuck Close and Ian Ruhter have inspired me in similar ways.  They have both effected the way I create portraiture as well push me to try and create Daguerreotype's.  They both create these incredibly detailed and complex portraits that have greatly influenced my own portraits.  There is something about the beauty subtle intangible beauty to there portraits which can not be expressed, which I have tried to recreate in my own portraits.

                    
                                     SILVER & LIGHT from Ian Ruhter : Alchemist on Vimeo.