Distancia y Aura (Distance & Aura)

the instalation at the gallery

2006-07-09T08:34:00.000+01:00

I add some pictures about the instalation ,that´s finally is done. I´m really pleased with the results and the feed back from the audience.

The project it´s all ready online just type : http://www.cristinabuendia.net

http://www.animalconcierge.co.uk/multigender/utopia2.html

2006-06-29T10:40:00.000+01:00

http://www.animalconcierge.co.uk/multigender/utopia2.html

This it´s a incomplete web for the project. I´m still developing some layers, I still need to improve the puzzle slidder . At the moment I´m thinking with the idea of the image being discomposed and then reconstructed by the user.I found this point pretty interesting because there's an open option for the audience to construct the image dragging the pieces with the solution that they can see in the corner or they can explores new ways to reconstruct.

I had shot a really slowly motion where the model is getting dressed and it's linked with the idea of the website.some problems to edit the video ,but basically it´s related what I showed Maria in my last tutorial .

MADA 3

2006-06-18T15:49:00.000+01:00

Artist’s statement

The main issue since I started to research the idea of the project was to find new forms/ways in those societies clearly hostile towards anything they cannot pigeonhole as being “correct”, the construction of a real or mental image where one can find their own projection with an acceptable level of freedom becomes an indispensable goal. Each of us builds our own personal utopia wherever we are able. Like an artist I feel that I need to produce a (re) produced the types of imageries that our society are constantly try to hide.

There’s a exploration of cyber feminism in the project mixing aspect like the representation in the science and technology of the women, how the internet and other new medias still reproducing the same role of women where the only point its being prepared to seduce. Using the mimicry and performance repeating as a critic situation all those representation issues around the female imaginary.

The universe in which the figure of my work moves is a universe populated with body that it’s not belonged to his/herself. Lived by strange presences being the glance of the spectators, although maintaining a distant attitude and in certain hieratic way. Composing a monstrous parade in which the other, the other people's thing, the different thing, those that throughout the history lacked, or we would perhaps have to say that society lacked (appealed here to the identification mechanisms to which these images interpellate) the right to the word and to narrate itself in first person, are transformed into subjects that speak to us directly to the eyes. But this transformation of involuntarily passive subject in subject assets already arises marked by a difference constructed in a culture that did not allow a true existence us. Can the human beings resign to construct and to dominate, to model to the others? If those differences that said to us essential have been more than culturally conformed differences... where the power of the culture to construct new bodies finishes, would not be interesting to increase until the infinite the number of variables multiplying the generic combinations and to arrive at a point in which it would make no sense to use categories like feminine and masculine because all we would be different between us? We would not like to acquire a body cyborg? As Donna Haraway already raised: "the bodies (our bodies, we our self) are maps of being able and identity and cyborgs is not an exception. A body cyborg is not innocent, was not born in a garden; it does not look for a unitary identity and, therefore, it generates antagonistic dualism endless (or until the world finishes), one takes in serious irony" (1) the images of Multi – Gender shows to us narrate the process of construction and birth of the cybernetic bodies like a process that will be slow and painful, in which many of the relations of being able established will have to be renegotiated. Like all process that implies a drastic change will be necessary to sacrifice many of our positioning in the way.

From a firm position, committed stance in questions of gender, my work emerges from an attempt to practice art by transcending / questioning the corseting categories of masculinity and femininity. Trying developed an idea that desists from reflecting a particular gender, marked by norms and conventions. Producing images with a disturbing point, double and ambiguous where the spectator/ user find very hard, defending of the ambiguity of the human condition retouching digital the bodies of the model that composed principally the piece.

The work does not limit its focus to dealing with themes revolving around gender-related codes established and accepted by society, in addition, it provides a thought - provoking defense of the individual search for self-realization. Defending the goodness of difference, in short, of individual freedom.

The artists that essentially have a linked influence in all my work are Sarah Lucas, Cindy Sherman, Helena Cabello/Ana Carceller.

Cyborg like metaphor of the impure thing, of the compound, something located between the nature and the technological device, between original and the retort, the reality and the fiction, a sex or another one.

(1) Haraway, Donna: "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century." In: Bell, D. and B. Kennedy: The Cybercultures Reader. Routledge, London, 2000. 309 pp.

Reflection

Overall I’m pleased with the results, since I started the course and from my initial idea the project had been modified in the way to present several times but the principal idea doesn’t change at all, about questioning the around the limit vision in the society about the masculinity and feminity. I see in a coherent way the multidiscipline of the medios in the final piece, video – multimedia interaction- photography because I think function very well in the methodology and concept of the idea to represent and protect a variety of possibilities (about sex about media). At the end I think it functions pretty well, the disconcert of the ambiguity about what the audience it’s attended (publicity campaign, science research, cyborg profile) because in fact it’s a mix of all of that but at the same time doesn’t at all.

About the interaction-implication that the user / audience receive or perceived it’s very suggest how the puzzle function as a journey (may not be clear, it will, nevertheless, lead towards the discovery of new realities) to nowhere / everywhere being intimately close to the conceptual idea to the gender multiplicity. Mixing in a process with a methodology similar as a game / experience. Probably in the phase of the interaction I would like to get more interaction with user, probably in the sense to be more direct as the initial idea function (ask people to be photographed for their self in the photo booth) but I think my informatics, enginery skills are not good enough at that moment to being able to get that result.

At the same time I’m still experimenting a major variable ways about how the puzzle script can function to offer a best and big offer of variety result and journey for the user and how to get more option to get involve the audience in the experience/understanding with the piece.

Cristina Buendia

2006-06-02T11:10:00.000+01:00

Ejercicios de Poder - Cabello/Carceller

2006-05-19T08:07:00.000+01:00

Cabello/Carceller

The Ejercicios de poder project was conceived and produced in 2005 for the El espacio recuperado exhibition organized by the Fundación COFF at the former factory of Tabacalera in San Sebastián. This building, similar to the swimming pools, bars or discotheques, is portrayed by Cabello / Carceller at a juncture when the function the site was built to serve is inactive, since the factory was closed down some time ago. It is, moreover, a tobacco factory, a place linked to women and their condition as workers. The women –the Cigarette Girls– were the main work force at factories, but despite this, they never wielded power. The video Ejercicios de poder: Casos Liam Neeson (La lista de Schindler) / Fred MacMurray, Jack lemmon (El apartamento) [Power Exercises: Case studies: Liam Neeson (Schindler’s List) / Fred MacMurray, Jack Lemmon (The Apartment], with a duration of 8’15”, analyses the codes and conduct associated with the image of male power. Based on scenes from the films alluded to in the title, Cabello/Carceller analyse the body language and arguments presented by the characters in the exercise of their pow er image. The men are acted by masculinized women, and the film sets of the factory and office are depicted by the real images of the decrepit, abandoned factory. Consequently, nothing is as it seems on first glance. In this manner, Cabello / Carceller aim to provoke viewer’s to adopt an active and participatory stance, using analysis and thought to complete the meaning of the work. Furthermore, the characters and scenery of Ejercicios de poder reflect out-dated social behaviour, hierarchical power structures and work systems, but ones which are often still prevalent. Once again this work by Cabello / Carceller analyses the power of cinema, both past and present, to create prototypes and behavioural blueprints. The Ejercicios de poder project is complemented by 4 photographs taken during shooting for the video. These images, like the video, reflect the cinematic style and photography of the late 40s and early 50s. The ambivalence of character and space encourage the spectator to consider the possibility that changes have taken, and are taking, place in the models of behavioural codes as depicted by the central characters of the video, as well as in the system which gives rise to this type of power exercises.

Interim Report

2006-04-04T19:03:00.000+01:00

Development

• About the research

I needed to change my first proposal because I realize that all around created the photo booth was extremely complicated and out of reach in the economy and resource issue, then I change the way to produce my piece, but the whole idea about the gender still being the same. Now I don’t leave all the “responsibility” to the audience and now I’m on my own research and selecting what are going to be the movement and different way of performing the daily actions. I ´m watching a lot tv series and movie and observing how people moving, or when I go out I watching how people walk and try to separate in different types. At the same time I’ve been practice with the model all those movement and I’ll try to do a video tested very soon

• Prototype

Around the prototype now I only have ready the look like of the model and the position but I need to made the clips but first I need to get the right camera and get the studio, I would like to have prepared to the end of April of the start of May. I still developed about how I’m going to get a body artist or try to learn a about that before I’ve been working with latex and thing like that to transform the body of the model.

Revision & Evaluation

I decided basically tread the model like a one mixtures of sexes, because I think it’s very related to the whole idea that I wanted express with my project and try make dude the audience about what it’s with the conclusion about how “constructed” are both sexes and how non sense can be.
I found helpful that point to make the audience get a feeling that something it’s strange but at the same time very familiar and how the model can past around the both association with the intention to show a multiplicity of possibilities in the way to do things that a person can have independently what kind of sex it is.

Further Progress

• the different video clips

At the end I think that will be around 32 video clips in a way to present a big possibilities of different ways to do the daily actions. Finally like I commented before we only going to see the model in a neutral look without separated in two simulates roles (male and female) now I decided for a neutral – androgynous look like.

• Installation

About how I will presented the piece I want project in a wall .The interface to presented can be similar to a slider puzzle and the way that audience can interact in a first moment should be by a joystick but probably I could investigate and try explore other way to interact, like a tap sensor panel to be control by the foot or similar…

WAVE “Are you a good witch or a bad witch?”

2006-04-03T18:05:00.000+01:00

“Are you a good witch or a bad witch?” Video

The piece consist in a deconstruction of the film “The wizard of Oz” and it is presented as a result of mixing fragments of the movie with the intention to do an interpretation of the novel of L. Frank Baum from a queer theory point of view. Reveling some of the issues about why “ the wizard of oz “ has become part of the gay culture, and what are some of the mechanisms has been created a process of identification around homosexual community with determinates elements that constitute the movie. The video also analyzed new meanings and hided messages as a re-lecture can have.

The video show some of the most relevant clips from the movie that has been appropriated for the queer culture to defined the condition of being gay. Some of the songs like “somewhere over the rainbow” or when the Lion interpreted the song “If I had the nerve”:

Yeh, it's sad, believe me, Missy,
When you're born to be a sissy
Without the vim and verve.
But I could show my prowess,
be a lion not a mou-ess
If I only had the nerve.
I'm afraid there's no denyin'
I'm just a dandelion,
A fate I don't deserve.
I'd be brave as a blizzard...
I'd be gentle as a lizard...
I'd be clever as a gizzard...
If the Wizard is a Wizard who will serve.
Then I'm sure to get a brain, a heart, a home, the nerve!

Other relevant song can be the part of Glinda one of the good one’s witches that sang this song:

Come out, come out, wherever you are
and meet the young lady, who fell from a star.
She fell from the sky, she fell very far
and Kansas, she says, is the name of the star.
Kansas, she says, is the name of the star.

As we can see that term “came out” was appropriated in the 70 with the meaning of sexual liberation and came out the closet.

For the gay community of the 70´s and the post war , and much more for people that weren’t lived in the city was pretty hard to had a sexual liberation with a repressive and hostile live in Oz was mean to be a nice, there over the rainbow.

2 Assement

2006-03-28T11:46:00.000+01:00

I put simulated photographs about how it´s going to look my model, finally like I said before I decide to choose like a neutral look like gender, erasing all the genitals to create an androgynous creature. I included as well a prototype and example that how can be the interactive puzzle in a flash media file, taking the details of the photographs. I would liked to do a video example but I need to get a body artist painter because I need to learn the right product to do the special effect with the make up but I think that it´s clear to generated an idea about the character. I need still developed what kind of game of interactivity can have the audience in my proposal.

http://www.animalconcierge.co.uk/cristina/assessment/example_cristina.htm

New Tutorial with Maria

2006-03-24T12:40:00.000Z

Wow I never play her game before, cos in my last tutorial i couldn´t do the tutorial in group and I found really interesting .
One of the issues I decided to that tutorial was about hwo it´s going to look the model, because I decide thaht the best option it´s have a neutral rol. Creating male and female models simulation I would back to talk in the wrong way around my discursive, I can´t still creating the definition of both sex beeing the oppostive between each other, then I think the best way it´s create a mix creauture.
Maria recomended me again about analyzed the speed in the videos becuase she think ti´s going to be very good to express the whole idea of the proposal

2 essay

2006-03-11T17:17:00.000Z

Looking through the history of the feminist / post feminist and more particularly in the view of the art has been based in the feminist critic about: the pornography, claimed for a multiple and fictional identity, the sexuality and the transgender, the cyber feminism; creating all the key point high controversy. Having for principal objective of the sameness.

Focusing in the area of the gender/sex there is a lot of artists that have been working for over 25 years, and been considered and labeled like post feminist. We could ask ourselves if the Deleuez´s dream had become real or if only an illusion, are we really now the expression of “body without organs” (1). In a world of post human identities, post human bodies, are the place in which throughout the 90´s artists works to talk the same dysfunction of the body and the difficulty of construction or representation of an identity.

Those works related to the standard representation, and radical subversion of the image in the way to think about the artistic like a liberated surface, an expression of these machines of the never end ended desire. Analyzing a whole series of art works that play around the idea of free movement identities and sexualities. Like the artwork of Zoe Leonard “Jenniffer Mille “ 1995 could be a good example of the kind of celebration of multiple and ambiguous identity.
Or we could mention the kind of works that try to destroy the classic stereotypes related with the female identity adding elements usually associated to the masculinity (like the beard and hair) in art works like “La femme at le barbu” (1975) by Annette Messager or the famous Janna Sterbak´s hairy shirt. With big doses of irony and humor we can be mention the “Women with Beards” net project that represented fictionally how will be in the year 2000 with bear sexy women photographs, trying to express that the identity are beyond any established category.

The problem with all those works is the confusion that can be generated in the aspect of the gender. Excessively in all those works and in the major cases when it's debated the gender, the discourse tend to address and focus in the surface aspect, in the constructions of visual elements. I will not extend to put more example of artist like Cindy Sherman or Yasumasa Morimura (between a lot of others), because I talked about it in my first essay.

My last proposal could become quite confused in that way, and could follow the same that lacks of those other art works. Having a result in an image that could result diffused.
That is the reason that I wanted to base the clips of the videos in the narration of daily performances, daily gestures that everybody can reflect in their own life. The reiteration actions that usually we don't realize. I feel this will be the best way to express that gender is not something that we can wear, it's not an option that we can have opening a wardrobe. Trying to get deeper in the way to show more than only the visual exterior.

Related to this we could debate "What is Female Imagery?" Like Lucy R. Lippard was asked twenty years ago (2) With this apparently innocent question a controversial debate began something that still today stays alive and that it has given rise to interminable exhibitions of women on the feminine thing and its hypothetical readings. The first answer to the question gives L. Nochlin with an opinion that would foretell present positions: "My first reaction is of rage by the restrictive thing of the term. I am a human being, not defined by previous conceptions, androgynous, not programmed to illuminate no imagery specific. But my second reaction is the one to deliver an attack and to meditate it. Alive in a society, and who I am I it comes determined by the existential structure that one assumes a woman to him. My experience is filtered through a complex interaction between myself and the expectations that the world has about me". In this answer pointed an interaction between the individual experience and the surroundings and through her the question were answered intelligently. The individual experience very hardly can separate of inherited cultural products; the social and personal situation of the artists influences manifest in its work and, after the appearance of the feminism, no longer we can maintain the existence of an innocent glance. But it does not necessarily bring with himself a glance of coherent, predictable and a universal group or either the assumption of a non-temporal collective glance. As Judith Butler (3) would point out seventeen years later: perhaps "If a notion of a stable sort let it be like the original premise of the feminism policy, it will be necessary a new type of feminists policy that responds to the objectives of gender and identity; a policy that assumes the variable construction of the identity like methodological requirement as much normative, when not like a politic objective "

One of the obvious problems that the first feminists had to confront with the gender was trying to find a female imagery using the opposition of the masculinity. The gender considered then as a social construction whose fluctuation possible in the historical happening and that is in constant negotiation from the same moment at which its perennially begins to be questioned.

Principally to express my idea of multiplicity and the whole universe of possibilities that a person can have to project his/her gender I decided take a model that performances a diverse example of those ordinary actions. I found more appropriated that have different model to performances different types of option, because metaphorically articulate that there no limitation respect in both sex and how stupid can be associated determinates gestures to one or other sex.

The part of game (slider puzzle) that my proposal will imply can result a very stimulated expression, the idea of discovering in the video motion collage an explosion of possibilities. Trying to get a balance between a piece that can be read in an abstract way but also in a literal version too. Something similar to a puzzle slider is that the audience will sort, although the idea that the audience will contact to the piece by a computer and the image can be project in a wall, could be interesting and using something similar that a joystick to emulate that a idea of game or videogame.

Being a digital piece is the only option, the immersion that the audience could have couldn't be possible in any other way. Leaving the option to choose a composition with the different clips. The result can be a great video motion collage, with the objective of creating a multiplicity of results. The piece can be assumed like a video game without rulers or any specific ending.

The developed narrative, the digital narrative in a multiple senses: producing with number, digits, narratives dissolve in the electronic virtuality. Maybe the greater potential of the computer is its interactive condition; therefore to narrate by means of computer means to explain a history in an interactive form, which implies the possibility of taking part in the history (if that exist). The fundamental challenge of all interactive history consists of solving "the dilemma interactive suitably", that is to say, the necessity to assure the balance between two poles: the control of history on the part of the author and the degree of freedom of the audience have. Not to be sequential is an other issue when it's a digital narrative, to do a effect piece we need to put in the mind that an art work can be read in any moment because it's not a long time that audience take to look at a piece.

The new proposal does not lose the key point that I had initially discussed about confronting the watcher / user to take an active part in that issue. Now they are not integrating themselves in the piece but they add their own solution or their own choice of construction. Using a model becomes the best option in the way that I can do the research to study, explore and analyze an extensive amount of different ways to do those daily performances. Researching from different media like films, TV, publicity, and as well to study people in public and private spaces

(1) Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. , 1987 A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press.

(2) Lippard, L,R. 1976 What is Female Imagery?.Feminist essays on women´s art. New York :Dutton.

(3)Butler , Judith. 1990. Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge

Tutorial with Andy

2006-03-08T10:47:00.000Z

Tutorial with Andy

In this last tutorial we been debated about the real base about my proposal, the gender in the art is not a new issue and I think that Andy wanted to know what will be my what it’s the real meaning that I want to express with the project. Basically I´ve been explaining that when we talk about the gender in art work there always like a superficial state and in very rare occasion it´s getting more deeper, many times I have the impression that is more a act to provoke that try to talk about a really interesting issue. Gender it´s no only wear a determinate type of cloth, make, hair style… it´s something related about what we are, how we act , how type of moves and ways to do thing define ourselves.
Related to how it´s going to be the piece presented Andy suggest me that I need to try to be less literal in the way to construct the interface, and try to explore a more abstract side because can became quite confused to the audience. We been discursion thaht and Andy suggest presented the piece like puzzle slider.
About the kind of the image will be presented Andy suggest me that maybe I could film some part like a little details, like a very little specific part of a body like the hand, or the arm, ect…

Pop culture imagenery references

2006-03-05T06:11:00.000Z

Before I was talking and research about some artist that have been used the gender issue in their artwork, I would like have a view about the influence of some musicians artist specially in the pop / rock are. Not only in a aesthetic way, because I want to see in the more performance aspect too. The 80´s was such a good example moment in the popular culture, artists like Madonna or David Bowie what so represented in these age. Madonna that around all her career represented perfect the concept of chameleonic look, a woman that can adopt whole variable types of roles used in some occasion de androgynous point. Like in her “open you heart video” when we can watch her like a striper of a peep show that when she finish her “performance” like a “artist” as a “person” become a boyish character that have the arrogance to flirt with a young boy as we can image, a child.

Here some example about David Bowie

Other reference I would like to inspired the aesthetic part of my project it´s Marilyn Manson (his own artist name it´s a mix of one the most famous actress and the other part for one of the most famous American criminal ) in his cover Mechanical Animals where he are represented like a hybrid character androgynous.

Tutorial -feedback with Maria-

2006-02-27T10:55:00.000Z

In the last Tutorial with Maria I was quite confused after the fact I need to change my proposal. I was explaning her about other project I had inmin d about the public toilets and the relation with how metaphorical are the sex separates and differents ways are organized. Finally I cleared my mind and I decided still with a proposal more close to the line thaht I had before.

She sent me that email:

To analyse gender behaviour through the performance of ordinary everyday life actions;
To such end you will be building a database assembling 4 or 5 examples of how to perform the actions of sitting, standing, walking and dancing;
That database will feed an interactive multimedia program allowing the audience [web audience?] to choose the more convincing/acceptable examples concerning the relation action/gender.

Here it gets a bit confusing.

You say a male and female model would be required, but a little below you affirm that actually the male/female model is the one and same drag king.

What if instead of that single one you had 4 models – a male as male, a female as female and a drag king plus a drag queen. Maybe you could even project the clips near by a wall-to-wall mirror, thus including the viewer, male or female, as the fifth model.

That would also indicate repetition/mimicry as the cultural mechanism for affirming or questioning the values and divides imposed as acceptable by mainstream society.

Centring on mimicry would also bring a kind of ambivalence to your approach, living open the questions for instance if drag would be a critique of or an imprisonment inside a stereotype, or if in drag an anarchic joy of being could be taken as the important statement, thus affirming life beyond the gender divide.

You can also play with the speed of your clips, and maybe you would be surprised by how many contradictory gender signs one can find built-in as constituting parts of ‘normal people’ gestures.

Anyhow, you got enough to start doing, thus allowing the making of the work to surprise you by talking back and taking your assumptions further beyond the certitudes of what you wanted to say at first.

Your first assuptions are the trigger for the work and yet they can and probably wil be outgrown by the making of the work and the new insights happening in the process.

I really like and her suggestion about how can manipulated the speed of the clips to increment problably a lot of detail thaht we can lost in a video with the standar speed.
But I wasn´t agree with the idea to get like a 4 types of different model, because will cange completely my discurse I´m not talking about a variety , I´m talking the multiplicity that one person can have.

Changes about my initial proposal

2006-02-06T19:24:00.000Z

Finally I decided to change my proposal, because I had a lot of the troubles to managed and carry on with my initial idea. I saw myself basically involved in the most physical construction part to the whole idea, and at the same time the economic issue seemed quite complicate to be affordable for me.

Following with the same issues that I wanted express in my other proposal, I would like to explore the topic that both sexes (female/male) are analyzed through different performances by the way of ordinary actions that the persons uses in everyday life. I would like to divide in 4 to 5 examples, those will be the performance of sitting, standing, walking and dancing.

The project will consist of creating a multimedia program that shows to the audience a graphical/motion poll, they will be asked to decide which of the performances best represents the relative gender.
The making of the piece will require a male model and a female model;the model will in turn perform these actions. The user will choose one clip from a series of 3-4 per action.
The best will be project in the wall the image that users can watch by the computer, for best resolution and quality image.
I feel through this experiment I can show how the sex can adopt different possibilities that can be seen outside of the regular existence of male / female gender. We need to reconstruct the way our brains see and relate to gender to allow these possibilities to exist as part of a normal society.

I will make the audience think that are two models (female and male) but in actuality both roles will be performed by one woman, this model has already knowledge about such things as drag king performance and
we will work and practice the action to perform the male part to achieve believability.

Tutorial with Andy

2006-01-28T09:48:00.000Z

We been talking about some of the point that I doubt. And basically I come to the conclusion that problably the best thing , it´s change the idea of contruct a photobooth for all the logistic, economic and materialize problem that have .Because I have the impression thaht try to get a sponsor to help me it´s going to be very complicate and time run so fast and I need to be focus in that point.

Maybe the option will be create a virtual option, provide with a chat peer to peer be webcams as our blackboard have.I don´t really know yet, maybe it´s better try to explore as Andy recommeded me the notion of identity and developed more the idea aroun thaht the contruction of the identity have in virtual areas like internet.

I feel lost at this moment but I will managed (finger cross)

Some points to improve the proyect

2006-01-16T09:30:00.000Z

I had some point that i´ve been thinking about the proyect.

Adress the use of the on line website for the proposal, define better the use thaht will have.What it´s the point to create a virtual comunity?
Other evident problem it´s how I´m going to materilize the photobooth.I had so many worryes about if I´m going to be able to manage the contruction.
Will be important to know if we have ant space to leave stuff/ material for the final show.

I´ve been investigate about the contruction of the booth and I thoug that probably the best idea will be find a set designer that could help me to contruct it.I have been talking that people that are involve in film and they recomended me try to find help in some website like:

- http://www.shootingpeople.org
- http://www.talentcircle.co.uk
- http://www.mandy.com

I should consult about what kind of material will be the best to congtruct the booth. Thinking aspect , like the photobooth won´t blending, propper contruction that the audience wouldn´t damage or destroid .

Other point which I feel so lost it´s about the techinician and programation aspect, I had no idea how i´m going to contruct the whole internal ingenry that the booth have.

Assessment

2006-01-14T19:26:00.000Z

Title: Utopia Identity (temporal title)

Aims

The subject that I intend to conduct research and base a project on surrounds the idea of multiplicity, being that any person can project her/his own image in various states. The very relation with the objectives like that of artists Cindy Sherman and Yasumasa Morimura when they present their self in various photographs of self portraiture but never being the same, always they are simulating, substituting, parodying but mainly performing. With no great devices I want to be able to demonstrate that anybody have the capacity to project a multiplicity of images of her/his self. This formula of using digital plane corresponds to devices being used to present/display our identity by forums, chats, and instantaneous messages and to make an exploration of which mean these changes in our society and as it artists practices adapts to the actual society.

Objective

 Create a website as an on-line poll and documentation site.
 The simulation of the photo booth will have a similar look of the standard photo booth, need to be stimulating to catch the eye of the participant, but it must have ease of use to achieve maximum results
 The website when developed although very technical must provide straightforward instructions to make the online user comfortable because the patience of the online participant it’s very limited.
 To be very specific about the privacy of the user showing always that the photo once generated will not be included anywhere without her/his consent.

Rationale

Deconstruction / Interactivity

The important subject within this work for me is to create an interactive booth in a gallery, in which the visitors upon arrival change from just a viewer to become an active user. From my point of view it’s that the piece will generate a comprehensive documentation about the gender and performance. The previous relation with the object (in this case photo booth), that we conceive the object (photo booth) like an element that this ready in a non-place. Thus is not only characterized by a loss of identity, it institutes in the middle of the super complexity shelters regulated to the sine of which all those that they use are put still on of equality point.

One of the key points of the piece is the new meaning that photo booth results in. This object has previously noticeable and assimilated with a standard operation. But in a regular photo booth you do not listen to commentaries about how a woman or a man must pose according to her/his sex. These audio recordings come from the internet (public space) but inside of the photo booth the user is in a private space, this will then produce a confronting of both spaces.
What I am trying to discover is whether our single identity need to be only associated to our facial characteristics? I believe there are many corporal gestures that can define our identity, and for that reason the photography obtained has a frame greater than the standard photos identity because this Photo booth should catch ¾ of the body of the represented subject.

Portable cyborg

As William J Mitchell comment about the portability, the scaling up of the networks and the scaling down of the apparatus for transmission reception, constantly reduce the scale or the cell phones, mp3, or DVD player and in some occasion mixing in one only apparatus all this actions, something like happens with our body, or with our representation. We are included in date bases apart like a number in occasion like id photography. My project could follow the same line but with the object that the user can modify normal rules that they can find with the need to include a picture for an id form or ID card.

About the perform gender

Foucault spoke about the bio-politic as a result of the control society .The science discourse affirm while long time that the sex and gender have a natural relation. Thanks to some feminist authors like Monique Wittig or Judith Butler this theories were re-thinking and discussing like nonreal basement, because femininity or masculinity has a natural lack of this. The texts of Judith Butler, and other academics on queer theory emphasize the application of those technologies (the existence of that previous context of authority) in conceived statements as verifications acts of the speech. From this perspective, the sort statements (is a girl or boy) apparently describe a reality, but in fact (it is worth, in this case, the redundancy) they are performed acts that impose and reproduce a social convention, a political truth. All this leads to the redefinition of the notion of sort in terms of performance postulated by Judith Butler, trying to be unmarked of the primarily aesthetic connotation that has acquired the term performance. According to the American author, the sort identity would not be something substantial, but the performance effect of an invocation of a series of femininity conventions and masculinity. "An invocation, that it needs to repeat itself constantly to become normative, reason why the subversion of the performance effect can be operated an investment and be generated". Thus, with the appropriation of an originally offensive term like queer, a performance investment takes of the discursive order of the heterosexual law.

The Nineties represented an appearance of critical speeches on the construction of the sort, the sexuality and the race. Donna Haraway, doing use of the notion Foucault theory about the one of bio-power redefines the cinematographic, artistic and scientific representation in terms of technologies of the sort. Haraway uses the metaphor of cyborg (name given in 1960 by Mandred Clynes to a rat from laboratory to that a system of cybernetic control had been implanted him) to indicate that our bodies and our identities, of sort, race and sexual, is products of complex bio-politic technologies. The postmodern creatures we are, techno-alive cultural gender systems. The transition of the postfordism indicates the passage of an sex-organic industrial society to an information system of prosthetic and polymorph. Haraway denominates "computer science of the domination" (paradoxical of the society domination) of the actual situation of the sexual and cultural minorities front to the increasing globalization of the production systems and reproduction of the gender, sex and the race.

Outcomes

 Encourage the audience to participate in the project because without the public this project couldn’t be completed

 Practical skills in computer programming about make a date base or whatever other application that the website need

 Practical skills in management the costing of the photo booth

 A knowledge of technical and cultural background about construct a simulation of a photo booth

 Still doing a research about the cyborg and the immaterial identity

Media
Materials to construct the simulation of the photo booth and Hardware:
Materials to construct the photo booth like a web cam, basic computer to sent the images in to the net .To work about the website a current Pc or Mac.
Software
Flash 2004 MX, Dreamweaver Mx , FreeHand Mx and Photoshop.

Methodologies

My project I hope to present as a net.art piece that are expanding like an installation and a happening. The proposal has aspects related with the identity; to change the context and deconstruct the object linked with the interactive perform of the audience.

The idea is to present the piece as a happening proposing for the date of inauguration to the audience that bring any element or accessory to perform their identity in the same way as Cindy Sherman or Yasuma Morimura. The piece therefore consist in two parts, the first will be a website where the Internet user can access to the poll, how should a man or woman pose when they are trying to project there own sex? Where the users leave their answer as a verbal document that gathered and documented in digital audio file. The second element should be the simulation of a photo booth where inside of the cabin the user should have a background sound with recordings from the on-line poll, as "instructions" while this photo is being taken. Finally the process the user may choose if his/her wishes to enter the virtual community of the website or not, this is to protect the privacy of the user.

The user in the installation apart from participating in being photographed can also have access to see in the computer the website, therefore he/she would see their image being entered in the data base and have access to observe the rest of photographs There will also be an option for the user to send his/her image to. his/her own e-mail account or to any other person. When completed will make him/her a part of the piece.

Research

I’m hope to learn how to construct a database for a website, because the project will be used like a documentation site about examples to represent the gender. I need to learn how construct a system that functions like a basic photo booth with an option when the user want to be shoot it

Risk assessment

At this time I can’t predict big risks, maybe only the manipulation area of some materials of the computer like the mouse or the keyboard when the audience being using could be a problem if they don’t a correctly follow the instructions.

Timetable

December

Construction of the preview website while I’m continue learning programming skills and research about the identity in Internet.

January

Finish to learn how to construct a date base. Start to do a research about how contract a photo booth

February

Website finishes and gets a domain and host to the web. Prototype the photo booth.

March

Present a prototype of the photo booth.

April – June

Improve the visual aspect of the instillation and conclusion about the project.

Bibliography

Augé, Marc., 1995. Non-Places: Introduction to Anthropology of Super modernity. London & New York: Verso Books.

MITCHELL,William J., 2003. Me ++ The cyborg self and the networked city. Cambridge, Massacusetts. Mitt Press, 2003

Donna J. Haraway .,1991"Manifiesto para cyborgs: ciencia, tecnología y feminismo socialista a finales del siglo XX", en Ciencia, cyborgs y mujeres. La reinvención de la naturaleza , Cátedra, Madrid

Butler , Judith. 1990. Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge

Foucault, M., 1970. The Order of Things. An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, London: Tavistock Publications.

example of the web: "http://www.animalconcierge.co.uk/madig/poll.html"

see the animation in flash : http://www.animalconcierge.co.uk/madig/presentp.swf

Artistic creativity again forms of virtual violence. Cyberfeminism

2006-01-13T21:05:00.000Z

Artistic creativity again forms of virtual violence. Cyberfeminism

Abstract.

The forms of domination in the social order, like effects materialized though strategies of “normalization” . The violence it's constantly reworks it´s founds in the inscription of power on sexed bodies and now in the reiteration of codes on ew agents that represent us in an online world. The symbolic and real gender violence are still being normalized.

Any creative or political undertaking wich aims it´s mobilize against mechanism of a an andocentric, patriarchal system that constantly feed us whit the (unconscious) repetition that our sexes have differences and those need follow a determinates rol based in domination and dominate.

Most females Internet users saw in the net an opportunity for an a political action , the Net hasn't resisted of the ignored patriarchal power. It´s reiterate models of domination, protecting mostly of the times in the anonymity and the fact to follow the same identities of reactionary power in the history.

The reaction against that need to be follow for the political and creative action , being in a process of reiteration and repetition to confront the sexual domination in Internet .Observing that the better way many times in put in the position of the other, who it´s the victim in a process of visibility that something it´s constantly try to be hide and/or ignored.

Literature Review. Sexism in the Language

The chapter Sexism in Language, from Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory is a book written in 2003 by Tori Moi, who examines the history and development process of creation of the English language. In a route to understand better other theories that talk about the sexual differences. The method of the analyses is social and anthropocentric but with a obvious feminist point of view.

The first point he comments about is the English lexicon, it's a structure to glorify the masculinity to ignore and impair the feminity. Here it's been explained perfectly the English is constructed literally for men and remembering that the fact that is still being under masculine control. It's also new and we found other example of the primacy that men have constructed for their own benefit. Explaining that it's something that we already have because we don't seem to react to do something to change it that.

It emphasize that this fight about the sexism has the context for which sex gets the power. Looking back in history it's easy how women have been qualified with characteristics about weakness, from this we are not surprised in individual cases that women always have resulted in passive victims in the patriarchal power.

The text encouraged the reader to be aware of other meanings such as the feminist use of the language. Explaining that although everyone use the language but not with the same direction or interest. It's here where the author explains that we need to understand those interests as politic and relatives to the sign. The fact is the meaning of the sign not only becomes with the meaning that the class of power (in the differences ages) denominated, but curiously the sign become has multiples meanings. That doesn't mean that those “other” meanings are being reduced to total silence, it's dependant of our self still fighting for those “other” meanings.

This fact to contra attack (explained the author) “that are already made that a singular number of people feel incommoded to use generic like “he” or “man”, and questioning words like chairman or spoke man and vindicate word like witch and shrew like positive terms”. Elucidation and cheering about the take control in the fact that the structure of the language is something to be appropriated, because there no an essence inherent in the language.

Other key source points will be the conclusion in the fact that other causes that the women have weaknesses in her position in the language, because many feminine experiences have a aren't defined in words. A lot of time authorities affirm that there is no answer. The problem (concluded) the author is that interest could be fall in term of fetishism, such as been cited by Beltrolt Brecht “When you named yourself, always name to other” producing for consequence not been a safe place to the feminist.

The text I feel is insightful in the way it try to give a positive meaning and give some tips about form of strategies, it is very satisfactory in the way the text goes further than a formalist text could. Adding relevant datum about politic, social, cultural, feminist, semiotics that developed of Anglo-American history. It is very clarified in the form of the mechanism that the patriarchal system haven been used to take position.

Mori,T (2003) “ Sexism in the language” Sexual / Textual Politic: Deminist Literary Theory . London, Routledge

Artistic creativity again forms of virtual violence. Cyberfeminism

Looking above the history of Internet we could determine that the first years of life of this media was for a scientific use and under a masculine hegemony. Over the past few years this has changed and now a high percent of women users are surfing daily on the net. The exit of the concept “global village” term called by Mc Luhan (1), should not induce us to think in the global communication or a democratization of the different cultures or geographies, neither the idea of equality society.

Talking about what it is the presence of the women in the net, far away from the concept the cyber feminists had about Internet, like a new horizontal space without hierarchies was to find that the same codifications and stereotypes that we can found in the “real or physical” world. The Internet doesn't leave to be plural expression media.

To analyze what kind of presence women have on the net, it could be divided into 3 categories:

A) Women's' images for men
B) The created image for the women in websites specifically aimed at feminine representation
C) The presented image by women from net site and institutions that defend the equality (sex, race, etc.).

A - Women images for men. Erotic and Pornography.

There is a vast amount of websites about pornography on the Net; many of them are about female pornography. These images can be manipulated, modified and used like a pleasure element producing the objectivity of the feminine body, the difference with other traditional media is that this is accustom to get any whim or wish with the excuse that it is virtual woman being free of any moral valuation.

The cyber pornography consumption brings a lack of empathy to put itself in the place of the other in the way the computer science technology increases gender violence. The Internet law is not a concluded fact for that reason many of these website creators excuses about that it's a free expression.

B - Created images aimed at women's websites that are specifically feminine. Traditional stereotypes.

Looking at the websites denominated “feminine” we can easily observe that 90% of their content has a priority about beauty, health, cooking, family home and partner sections. It could be said that they follow a pattern like Foucault denominated “biopolitical” (2)
Respected to the physical image, all of them gather a canon of feminine beauty very similar and repetitive (boring). Beautiful, young and very thin women, whom it urges to spend their money on beauty products, take care about their health and make dieting a way of life. The psychological damage that the dependency of the physical figure is causing for women particularly younger girls is resulting in eating disorders. In recent years a huge number of the sites that denounce the increase of anorexia and bulimia contradictory contain an extent varied diets to lose weight and the image of the most skeletal models offering medical advice to avoid these diseases.

C - Presented image by women from net site and institutions that defend the equality (sex, race, etc.).
The women are not just only users of Internet, experts and people in charge are entering with force with the scope of the new technologies. Organized in cybernetic networks and clubs, many of them in a new form of feminism. In words of Sadie Plant “the co-operation, for there liberation and get the power between woman-machine-new technologies” Sadie Plant (3) a member of the Australian group VNS Matrix.

They advocate the subversion of the patriarchal and hierarchic system, trying to approximate it those the decentralized complex and multiple structure of the network. Trying to present a new “post human” image of the feminine body, beyond the icon “white women, perfect body” where weapons of irony and virtual parody the physical universe of the feminine thing has been deconstructed, They main point of investigation of the stereo-types, is to forget the body and reconstruct the post-sexual cyberspace. The cyber-feminists found this medium incredibly productive and had multiple possibilities of communication and expression whilst also showing the physical attributes does not matter seem to be perfect synchrony with their new objectives for the feminine position on Internet.

Videogames

Other space of virtuality are videogames, although generally people talk about gender violence like a fact that it only happens in the private space we usually forget or do not contemplate about other cultural mechanisms that still contribute to a potency uncultured process in the gender violence like a social phenomenon “inevitable”.

Producing the games over time a “normalization” effect (accept / sub missed) one of the values that be subliminal insert in the collective unconscious. These values that are linked to the patriarchal culture that legitimate the masculine domain, the violence like a strategy of relation and submission, the competency the triumph about the other like finality, the contempt towards the weak, the sexism, the racism, etc.

One of the biggest receptors/consumers of this violence that impregnated in the multitude of videogames is a very young audience, kids who are not qualified to decided for themselves. They are very sensitive about any stimulate and mainly if we think in the mass media those kids stay in a position to not have the capacity to differentiate between what it is reality and what it is fiction.

Many times the creators of those videogames hide behind excuses like boys and girls know and understand perfectly that the presence of violence is factious. They know it's unreal because it's something that they can't smell or touch, this is the view of videogame creators when interviewed by gaming magazines

The biggest problem is that the kids become immunized in front of the horror and in one way are amnesties in front of the violence. Being a burden fact that they are insensitive to the violence that generates violent behavior. Step by step it's already something that they contemplate daily while their watching television in this way they don't think it's wrong if it's happened in the reality, because happened in their videogames too. A reference to video violence can relate in such incidents as Columbine High School shootings.

Why should we consider that the violence in videogames have more damaging effects than other platforms (like films, ex) over a young audience? The answer may be the bigger interactive control that the videogame users have, because the player is not limited to be a passive viewer but is identified with the character (of the videogame) and must decide the characters fate. This character is then forced to be more active against the situations of violence with the assignment to complete the game. Other issues with growing violence coming from developing the technology so the videogames are developed with better graphics that add realism to the action making impossible the difference between reality and fiction.

These videogames are made by men for men, and are created in the masculine imaginary for excellence, answering to the desires and affinities of the man. Maybe this will be the answer as the biggest consumers of those products are boys.

We discover a “Macho culture” with an a idea disorientated about the masculine topic, where it's elevated to the universal category and unique, where only are power values,

The explicit sexism is obvious: if we observe the percent of feminine representation in videogames is minimal and the characters role is often a passive one. The body canons that it follows are always quite exaggerated, with appearances of a comic character even with a look like a porn actress. Their costumes (dress) seem to be more an excuse to portray them as a pleasure object rather than for an action hero to complete the game. Creating in the way to the kids a vision stereotype and limit the understanding what is meant to be a woman.

Resuming the representation of the women in the videogames in the majority of cases is invisible and if they are visible they appear like victims, marking semiotic in terms of difference and opposition between men-women dominant-dominated, visible -invisible, privilege - marginal, powerful -weakness, recurring to take a position according to each sex.

The result to denounce those types of sexist and coarse games was being incorporated women protagonist characters that assumed the active role in the game. The conclusion was a new type of character with characterizes an androgynous look with violent/aggressive behavior, performing the same values of the masculine “hero's”. The feminine character sporting the “macho culture”. Nothing changes.

We have a normalization of the explicit code of masculine parameters, easily proven when we try “the inversion” “the change for the other”, this does not happen because it's impossible. Masculine is the neutral the feminine the other being linked with the abnormal.

An example to be a conclusion for the videogames section could be analyze in a very famous and related videogame 'Tomb Raider' better as the protagonist Lara Croft. With similar objectives like Doom we can make a comparison between these two violent videogames. Apart from the objectives of the game (that are pretty similar), all the action and show of weapons the most interesting point it is what vision the video player with their character. In Doom the player only has a POV with character being shown as a pair of hands in Tomb Raider the user can see the whole body of our character (Lara). This is then the first point the person that controls the action and be the person who controls a subject for the action, and what is their image of our character? An exaggerated body more relation with the look of a porno actress that a hero, producing over the game player a constantly action of a voyeur.

Back to the Net

With respect to this digitalization a reaction it's produced. Zizel (4) comments about the conscious of the real (mentioned in "passion du reel" when it comments on a “reality without reality”) that no longer reaches to being sufficient with touching to objects or touching the body, but will be those experiences that are more violent, corporals and extreme that get to smooth to an excess of artificiality of this world every time more prefabricated (pre-made). This produces a regulatory effect by which an attempt is created to recover a "corporal and physical sensation" where "the real thing" seems to disappear progressively.

Coming inside the space of the domestic violence we may surmount that the majority of the cases the action of violence are consequence about the radicalization of ownerships over their partners, when they see a small bright of the labor, economical, relation independency. Any sign of violence is a citation, cannot be understood like a concrete fact aisled. All of these bloody warnings (materialized in blow, bleeds, a word) are in effect to form the power just in case someone wants to change this hegemonic situation. We can't forget that it is a process of reiteration and what will be the consequence, violence as a way of self-regulation a situation of power.

Could a performance utterance succeed if it's formulation didn't repeat a “coded” or iterative utterance? (Derrida)(5)

The repetition of these situations of violence becomes, for the person who experience it something terribly “normal” like the example of Derrida

Seeing with the eyes of the other is a possibility to escape for the closed eyes imposed by the dominant ideology that contemplate the domestic violence as something that happens in the private space and only those concerned within it. Here the practices of Cyber Feminists need to be constantly reformulated to help to see by the eyes of the other. For the interactive and communicated system that Internet have become an invaluable media it's essential to denounce the violence. Many of the labor, political and artistic works from the Cyber Feminist artists are vital because the violence have a process of constantly recycling.

Facing this situation requires acute, ironic and also visible actions of creations like an exercise of politic awareness. We need to be constantly aware of these physical and social structures where the technology is invented and produce where old forms of violence and domination (with or without bodies).

I would like to put like an example of an artistic reference a piece of Natalie Bookchin (6), titled The Intruder. Although the piece has an apparance of a game it is not. Never the character of the woman (that remit to “la intrusa” the character of Borges) can be rescued it is about the development of the piece. It's a Cyber Feminist review of history about violence against women and in the way the fairy tales are narrated. The history tells about two brothers that love to the same woman and search in a way to share her (making herself their slave, their lover, scolding her) in other words narrated the feeling of property of the girl. There no negotiation “in the game”, if the brothers are the cowboys that shooting with their gangs she will be shot or if they mark a territory she will be the battle ground .In the intruder you don't read a history, it produces a history. Participation of the user and putting in the view of the other, bringing order to open the eyes to gender violence.

1 Mc Luhan, M (1962) The Gutenberg Galaxy. The Making of Typography Man.Toronto. University of Toronto Press

2 Foucalt,M. (1978), La Volonté de savoir :Vol. 1 of Historie de la secualité, 1 ed.New York, Pantheon

3 Plant, S( 1997) Zeros ¬+ ONES, London: Fourth Estate Limited

4 Zizek, S (2001) “Interview with Slavoj Zizek.The One Measure of True Love is: you can insult the other. Spiked, http://www.spiked-online.com. 2001.

5 Derrida, J (1988) "Signature Event Context." Limited, Inc. Evaniton: Northwestern University Press,

6 http://www.calarts.edu/%7Ebookchin/intruder/
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Some comments about the M.A

2005-12-05T10:19:00.000Z

I really like that course because for first time I’m doing a course focus in the subject I’m interesting, because before I couldn’t work all I wanted work in this medios for my degree but in other way I’ve been learning a lot about that. I really fell more comfortable with the digital tools because are more related with my though and address about art. Then I feel very good with this point. Related with my project I don’t feel very relax because I feel lost in the way to used new platforms and other system, and at the moment I feel very disoriented in the idea about how I’m going to construct it. Other point will be in the possibility to created the photobooth and if I have any opportunity to get a sponsor, because in other exhibition I didn’t need too much economic recourses or I get money to support the piece.

The artist that feel closer to my work and add me light normally proyect with their works a strong sense of critic and politic debate. In my point of view the actual art need to be a critic not be only aesthetic or poetic. My main interest are the feminist and the gender beause I find very interesting how we react and establish our relation whit it , becoming amazing how our body start to develop in medios like internet and other virtual spaces.

Lately I’ve reading some text about Lev Manovich like the language of new media and other essay talking about the death of the computer art and thing like that and for the recommendation of Andy I started to read the Me ++ The cyborg self and the networked city. By William Mitchell talking about the politic of the space and fact that influences our new systems of lives and how the new medios are developed in it. Lately I’m reading the book Out takes: Essays on Queer Theory and Film (Ellis Hanson,Editor) that investigate and explore around the film history the queer appearances it’s very clever explaining a diverse fields about the gender.

Other artist that have been use poll of quiz in art

2005-11-22T17:06:00.000Z

Hans Haacke -MOMA poll-

The idea of using polls to have a political impact was devised by Hans Haacke as a radical artistic exercise in 1969. Here we have som notes from Herbert Schiller's account of it in Culture Inc.:
The corporate outreach to museums obviously is not intended to induce social instability in the political realm. Its objective is quite the opposite. Yet whether the crowds that now flow through museums – an estimated one billion passers-through in 1987 – come out of them more depoliticized than when they entered is unknowable. It will remain so unless – a frightening prospect – "exit polls," such as those taken outside voting booths, are introduced. Even then, some fairly detailed questions would be required to elicit useful information. Actually, Hans Haacke tried this technique in some of his gallery shows, first in 1969 and then, more successully, in 1971 and 1972. He asked visitors to fill out lengthy questionnaires, tabulating the answers and making them available while the exhibit remained in place to new comers and returning information-suppliers.
In 1970, Haacke asked visitors to a show that included his work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City to ballot on the question: "Would the fact that Governor Rockefeller has not denounced President Nixon's Indochina policy be a reason for you not to vote for him in November?" At the end of the twelve-week exhibition, the ballot boxes had registered the following results:
Yes 68.7%
No 31.3%

*Haacke, not unexpectedly, has not had another show at MOMA.

Guerrilla Girls

Other artist that emphasize are the guerrilla girls, they use this percetanges to criticizes the art market with a feminist point of view. The defendd minority group like women and racial people. They criticizes the consumption and sexist symbols that attack the image of the women.Their work content critic and ironic like main elements.

*Schiller,H; 1989. Culture Inc., Oxford UP, pp. 96–97.

About the gender, simulations and sustituations

2005-11-08T20:22:00.000Z

There a lot of artist that they been working about how represent a multiplicity of gender in a only one person, some of these most representative artist are Cindy Sherman, Yasumasa Morimura and Nikki.S.Lee. And apart of talking about the gender they talk about the simulation, frequently issue in the contemporary art.
The appropriation-imitation of the ordered forms of the feminity seemed to be the first passage of separation to gain critical distance of which it was being criticized. The imitation determined as the only possible form of critic values, as comment Judith Butler in the Genger trouble, when comment about the parody seem to be the only way to act. Indeed, it will be of this obvious representation of the cultural essentialism of where they are going to arise "the more deconstructive" strategies from the feminine identity and the agreements stereotyped from the sort on the image and experience from the woman from the later decade, and between which it will emphasize by Cindy Sherman.

The simulation of multiple identities in its appropriation of the cinematographic photograms of the films of the Fifties that it develops in his series Untitled Stills of end of the seventy, for example, does not make but destabilize the traditional schemes paid attention on the woman. She try demonstrate the simulated character of an existence recreated on signs, emblematic expression of value-forms in the consumption culture, introducing at the same time an intense reference to the men spectator . Sherman in this series reconstructs photo grams characteristic of these films, but taking control only of its appearance. As a whole it is detected that an only author has made them, although inspected one by one would seem falsifications of frames of Hitchcock or Fellini. Usully produce a strong sensation of familiarity, them to have seen before somewhere. In fact, Peter Schjedahl observed in an occasion that the photograms of Cindy Sherman seemed so familiar at first time and the spectators were safe of to have seen the film which the photogram belonged, although that, evidently, not outside possible.

This series of Sherman, however, is first of all, a critic to the representation, a weakening of the consecrated fiction of the unitary subject that proposes the theories of the School of Frankfurt or the Postestructuralism. This series ironically reveal the excess of dependency of the social systems and the cultural practices of a paid attention concept of identity. The imitation of given representations and seizures since done of the nature is, nevertheless, threatened by a dangerous ambiguity at the time of being interpreted: for Ingrid Calame, for example, the series of Cyndy Sherman Untitled Stills, in the context of the exhibition Hall of mirrors: Art and Film since 1945 in the Museum of Contemporary Art of Los Angeles, seemed to fetishism the classic cinema more than to raise a critic of it. In any case, the strategic resistance seems send the system its own logic being duplicated it, to reflect, like in a mirror, the meaning without absorbing it. That absorption of the meaning does not cause that this relation cannot be confused with imaginary and symbolic the description which we could do the modern exposition like projective universe where the person / object opposition still significant age. These works force the glance logic of the abstract, fungible and reducing meaning.

As far as the critic of the mythical structure of the masterpiece and the representation in the history of the art via simulation strategies, the iconografics appropriations developed by Sherman in their series History Portraits"(1989) and by Yasumasa Morimura in their series of 1990 are specially interesting.

In relation to the History Portraits de Sherman we can affirm that they recover, parody it, the fiction of a concept of traditional representation. They are, really, attempts to use the representation against itself to challenge his authority, its claim to really have something or epistemologist value. This series implies, as well, an explicit critic to the history of the art and its methods of understanding and interpretation. In them, their self portrait of the author assuming itself, of an evidently parody way and with the prosthesis elements that characterize the production of Sherman, the identities of the portrayed ones in each one of the reconstructions, either are women or men. As Rosalind Krauss proposed, the prosthesis elements play with the generation of a false image of mask or veil, that in their fragmentary would aim at the hermeneutic dimension of the art work, the idea that it has an inner truth or meaning.

In certain way, work ironic abstractions of the past, those images seen infinite times from the childhood in scholastic books under epigraph of "masterpieces". Paintings which photography in fact always they have been for the culture of the technical reproduction, but simultaneously distorted, ironic are now respect with our memory of the past, replaced its historical gravity by the real presence of the false thing, exaggeration and grotesque.

A game in the distance between memory and truth that, together with the effects of deformation, distortion and deceives, it implies in a reflection on concepts and forms of interpretation around the subjects of sex and the sort. A fact which also we can appreciate it in works of other many authors of the age , but that is specially well-known in the old work appropriations that the Japanese artist Yasumasa Morimura carries out.

In the self-portraives of Morimura personifying to the infants painted by Velazquez, the idols pop as Michael Jackson or Madonna investigates themselves in the absorption processes and influences vice versa of the forms of representation of the western culture on the part of the Eastern culture and for, even, to get to raise the affirmation of his than more probable equivalence. Images that at any moment, journey by that other line of the permanent non-identification. Neither Sherman nor Morimura never appear like they themselves, always are acting, representing, parodying, replacing.

And more Films -Ooh... You Are Awful--

2005-10-30T16:03:00.000Z

Other film -Masculin, féminin-

2005-10-28T21:37:00.000+01:00

Masculin, féminin
Jean-Luc Godard (France, 1966, 103 min.)

Photobooth in films -The Knack...and how to get it-

2005-10-27T12:44:00.000+01:00

The Knack...and how to get it
Richard Lester (UK, 1965, 85 min.)

Aesthetic Camp: performances pop and subcultures .

2005-10-19T22:58:00.000+01:00

Historically the science speech established that the relation between sex and gender is something natural, thanks for the analyses of Judith Butler these theories have been to re-thinking .Butler defines this relation between sex and gender like standardized performative and according to heterocentric rules. A clear example as it indicates Butler, are the Drag Queens. Normally these provoke laughter or censorships, because they show the performatives mechanisms through which a stable relation (a regulated process of repetition) between sex and gender takes place.

Maria recommended me the reading of Sontag published about the aesthetic "camp". The term "camp", that means effeminate in English classic, was begun to use as of years 60 to talk about to the hyperbolic theatrehood of the feminity in the culture gay, mainly in relation to a series of performatives practices that acquired a collective character and political (drag queens, public demonstration of the homosexualiti...). These practices discover the skilful of the gender provoking differences and broking the border between the closed scope of the scenic representation (or of the domestic recreation) and the public space of the political vindication. The text of Sontag agrees with first documents on the practices Drag Queens (among others the documentary The Queen de Andy Warhol) .
On this Sontag text redefines the term (that in its new meaning would come to designate to the love/unnatural, skillful taste towards and the exaggerated thing) and incorporates like criterion of analysis of the history and the theory of the art. The sad thing is that the writer is based excessively on the aesthetization of the concept, erasing the original political potentiality. For Sontag camp is a set of re-meaning techniques - where it mixes the irony, the burlesque thing, parody - that the new sensitivity symbolizes posmodern. She finish relationated camp with the pop , since both movements make using parody of the representations and objects of the popular culture.

Tutorial with Maria

2005-10-10T00:12:00.000+01:00

After explaining to Maria my proposal, one of the first things that were not clear it is how I am going to formulate the question for the questionnaire/poll in the website. Something that I thought before, because when I’ve had to always expose my proposal was been difficult how formulate it. Because will be extremely key for the proposal in the form the question will be formulate. To constructed it, therefore, I must to choose if I’m gonna use the sex or the gender asking.

I think for get the greater turn out of opinions and make the proposal open will be better formulate the question from the point of view of the sex. Then the question would be similar to this, How do you think that a men/woman need to pose to be photographed ?.

We’ve been discussing about the aspects that the proposed of the project, such as this perfomative act of being photographed takes place of relatively private way. It is a point that interests to me, as it is possible to be granted to the spectator that are disposed in the public space (gallery) that become a private space at the time to perform her/his image inside the photo booth .I think it’s a good point of view that not generate more passive watcher that get to the gallery to find finish image and ordering a participation more active.

Another one of the recommendations of Maria was a work of Sophie Calle
where she show in a vitrine from her series Birthday Ceremony (1980 – 1993), displays an array of presents, which the artist received on the occasion of her ritual birthday celebrations, all neatly arranged, instead of ever making use of these gifts, in relation to that I could include some accessories to the audience helping for constructed their imagine .

Maria recommended me the text to Notes on "Camp" by Susan Sontag (published in 1964).I supposed that are relatively related with the character that has my work with the gender studies or queer theory .Was interesting the reading, although I didn’t discovered nothing new . Maybe was relating in the point of which we spoke to offer to the spectator accessories to construct his/her image. But I think it’s not included in my expectations mediate too much in the freedom to the audience to perform with the piece.

For theorical research respect photography, Maria recommended me to consider some texts of Rolan Barthes about the photography, about the puctum or for be more clear what photography does to attract without apparent sense in a specific point of the image.

References about other artist that had been used the photo booth

2005-09-30T00:16:00.000+01:00

http://www.warhol.org/

http://www.photoboothproject.com/

http://photomatisme.free.fr/photomaton3.html

http://www.dephex.org/projects/photobooth/default.asp

http://www.timhunkin.com/a104_photobooth.htm

Interactivity in the Digital Art

2005-09-28T16:45:00.000+01:00

Interactivity in Digital Art

If we spoke of interactivity in the art and we want to look for the origins, can be result contradictory. Duchamp usually said that any piece of art to be read needs a process of creativity to be decoded, for this reason we could say that any art piece it’s interactive.

We continued investigating in the interactivity of the media them we were with find Bertold Brecht and his developed around the radio ("to change this apparatus of the distribution to comunicación"(1), a use differentiated from the television with the same intention to dissolve to the dichotomy receiving-producer, trusting the potentials emancipates of not hierarchies systems of communication. Another initial point we could find in fluxus when they began to use happening and performance to question the relation that the audience have with the art, speaking about the object and the lost of this. Also they dealed with the subject of the communication and for it, they theorized about the new mass media that appeared like the television. In them, this machine of images lost its customary invisibility, calling the attention on its physical presence and materiality as concrete device. Simultaneous negation, therefore, of the visibility of the image and the invisibility of the apparatus. The multiple delays of the spectator and their unquestionable desire of disappearance no longer here are satiated by the succession of visual moments and vertiginous ruptures chained to a continuity of sequences and fast transitions.
A point to emphasize on the interactivity is the make to give an opportunity to the implication/participation hearing in the art piece. The process of the piece has a part of participation of the audience not being the author of the piece the person in charge that deciphers and disturbs the complete route of the piece.

One of the big problems than we found, is the location of these pieces; normally arranged in galleries, museums, institutions, ect... where the tradition of "look but do not touch" is very latent over the audience, where these act shyly or simply don’t act by fear not to commit something that it’s not allow.

But I find asking myself, Does exist this really interactivity? For example an affluent fact known that is the button "To close the door" in many elevators is placebo without utility, ready in the place to only give to the individuals the impression that they participate in some way, contributing to the rapidity of the day of the elevator when we pushed that button, the door is closed exactly at the same time that when we pushed the button that indicates the floor without "worrying" the process by the fact to also push the button of "closing the door". This extreme case of false participation is an appropriate metaphor of the participation of the individuals in our "postmodern" political process... Of course, the postmodern answer to this would be that the radical antagonism only emerges, as the society even is perceived like totality, as Adorno said that contradiction is difference under the identity aspect. So that the idea is that with the postmodern era, the backward movement of the identity of the society involves simultaneously the backward movement of antagonism, dividing in two parts the social body what we received in exchange for this is one person of the indifference like the neutral means in which the multitude (of life styles, etc.) it coexists. Then, What it’s the point for the artist does not mediating to the audience in its work? Is not perhaps an interactive piece a masked closed route? Does really exist the interactivity? For me I would only talk about the interactivity when the act of the art it’s a way of visibility or make become aware about a subject. Other good example will be talk about the hackactivism when they proposed some flood net to get something for the better status of a community, to me it’s a real act of interactivity.

And after all the massive part of the artistic projects more assets in the field of the critical reflection on the use of mass media of masses been has based on the belief in that it is possible to solve many of the present problems of the society through different a public communication. For that reason we find its insistence in the attempt to produce means, surroundings of opinion interchange and language, giving then a production of new forms of critical community through them.

Distance and Aura

2005-09-22T23:33:00.000+01:00

I liked the idea of use this title for my blog, about the idea of virtual, the lost of the object. Like Lev Manovich used for his text title. It seems to me a subject with much controversy that the art has found some time before and if we want to speak on digital art is essential.

We could start asking ourselves as Manoovich does, what is the human nature and what it is the technology? How can be delineated in the heat of the limit between both in century twenty? He explain analyzing Benjamin and Virilio, that they solve this problem in the same way. Both consider related nature and distance in space between the observer and the observed one; and they see the technologies like destroyers of the distance. As we see these two suppositions take to them to very interpret the new excellent technologies of their times of a similar way.

Benjamin begins now with that famous concept of aura: the unique presence of a work of art, an historical or natural object. We could think that an object must be near if we want to experience its aura but, paradoxically, Benjamin defines - in the work already mentioned aura "like the only phenomenon of a distance": "if while you rest in late of summer you follow with the glance the extension of mountains in the horizon or a branch that project their shade on you, experience the aura of those mountains and that branch". Similar, Benjamin writes, "the painter maintains in its work a natural distance of the reality". That respect by the distance common in both, perception of the nature and painting, is upset by the new technologies of reproduction of masses, specially the photography and the cinema. The camera, to Benjamin compares with a surgeon, "deeply penetrates in its weave [ of reality ]"; its camera focuses for "evoking to an object by its shell"

Virilio introduces the term "Small Optics" and "Big Optics", to emphasize the dramatic nature of this change. The Small Optics is based on the geometric perspective and shared by the human vision, the painting and the cinema. This implies to the distinctions between close and far, an object and a horizon on which the objects excel. The Big Optics occurs in the real time of electronic transmission of information, is "the active optics of time happening to the speed of light".

If the information from any place can be transmitted with the same rapidity, the fence concepts and far, horizon, distance and space will not return to have meaning (Therefore, if for Benjamin the industrial era moved to all the objects of its original place, for Virilio the postindustrial era eliminates the dimension of space completely). At least in principle, each Earth point is now instantaneously accessible from any other point of the planet. As a result of this, the Big Optics locks up in a claustrophobic world without no depth or horizon to us; the Earth becomes ours prison.

In the occidental thought the vision always has been understood and discussed in opposition to the tact; reason why, inevitably, the degradation of the vision (to use the term of Martin Jay) leads to the elevation of the tact .For example, we can be attempted to read the lack of distance characteristic of the tactile act like concession for a different relation between the subject and the object. Benjamin and Virilio block this line of apparently logical discussion when they express the potentially present aggression in this act. More than the tact of the understanding like a respectful and careful contact or a caress, they present/display like a breakage of arguments informal and aggressive.

This way about the connotations standard of vision and tact happen opposite for Benjamin and Virilio the distance guaranteed by the vision preserves the dawn of an object, its position in the world, whereas desire "to approach the things destroys the relations between the objects, finally eliminating the material order the complete one and leaving without meaning the slight knowledge of distance and space. Therefore, and if we are in discord with its reflections on the new technologies and even questioned its positioning in favor of the conservation of the natural order and the distance, the critic on the vision-tact is something that we would have to retain.

The bibliography of this text are mostly based in the Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Benjamin in 1936 and Big Optics, by Paul Virilio.

Welcome to Distance and Aura

2005-09-20T00:30:00.000+01:00