UCI / Beall Center for Art + Technology

My trip to the Beall center was nice because the art work was easy for me to fully understand. I didn't feel overwhelmed by the work in the room. I really like the way the artist are using the viewer as a key in there work. The work involves the viewer and you really feel like you are apart of the inflatable bodies. They move and inflate as you walk by them. The pieces were very well put together and the bodies were clicking as the move and that gave the experience a interesting element because you can actually see and hear them move along.

Eadweard Muybridge

9 April 1830 – 8 May 1904

Eadweard Muybrige was a English photographer who spent most of his time in the United States. He is most well known for his work with animal locomotion which used multiple cameras to capture motion. He changed his name many different times early on in his career when he first moved to the united states. His work is all about capturing motion and movement with animals and or people. I think his work is like a still movie. The first kinds of movie probably every invented. I like the work he did with animals and the photographs he has with people moving are fun to look at too.

So with his work he basically took different cameras to capture movement and motion. As you can see with the couple dancing above. He would capture every move the couple made than later put them all next to each other and create this moving little film of the couple actually dancing. I really like his work with animals. He did a great job at capturing all the different movement and he was excellent at motion pictures.

Jennifer Ringley / Jennicam

Jennifer Ringley is a web cam artist. Her work is basically redifing web cam work. Her web cam (Jeennicam) is kind of like a show all about her daily life. Uncut and real her webcam shows views what she does everyday. Regarded by some as a new media artist, Ringley viewed her site as a straight-forward document of her life. She did not wish to filter the events that were shown on her camera, so sometimes she was shown in the nude or engaging in sexual behavior, including sex. This was a new use of Internet technology in 1996 and viewers were stimulated both for its sociological implications and for sexual arousal.The JenniCam web site coincided with a rise in surveillance as a feature of popular culture, particularly reality television programs, and as a feature of contemporary art and new media art.

The Jennicam last for seven years total. The webpage would automatically refresh every three minutes with the most recent picture from the camera. Anyone with Internet access could observe the often mundane events of Ringley's life. JenniCam was one of the first web sites that continuously and voluntarily surveyed a private life. Her first webcam contained only black-and-white images of her in the dorm room. After a couple years Jennifer decided to start charging money to view her web cam but views still had access to view her webcam for free.

Vaneeesa Blaylock

Vaneeesa Blaylock is a performance artist. Her company performs works in virtual worlds that explore identity, Individuality, and persona in the 21st century. The Company's primary media is live performance but they also produce photography and other media as performance documents. On 17 June 1961 Rudolf Nureyev defected from Russia. He would not be allowed to return for the next 28 years. On 21 February 1962 Nureyev and Fonteyn performed together for the first time. They would perform together for the next 26 years. They have defined ballet partnering for all time. Vaneeesa Blaylocks company has put together a recreation of there last performance in SL. By doing this work her company says they are searching for insight into what it means to be alive in the virtual world by channeling two artists who, for a time, they are as alive in the physical world as perhaps anyone has ever been.

 

Vaneeesa Blaylock and her company recreate beautiful work through SL. Her recreation of this performance was very creative and well done. She recreated something that was done over half a century ago and now everyone can appreciate the simplicity and grace of their performance that really shaped art work for ever. Ballet and partner work with ballet was changed forever after this performance so to have it recreated in SL is so cool!

 

Four Yip

Four Yip paintings mix reality portraits of Second Life avatars. Her work includes three different types of paintings. First she makes a snapshot of the avatars she says than she paints them in a digital sense based on how she see's them and lastly she Photo shops them. "They are imaginative portraits," is what Four Yip says about her avatars. My favorite piece of her work is this one above, Four Yip's portrait of Kean Kelly, transforming her from an unblemished avatar into a person with a history and secrets to keep.

I personally really loved the work Four Yip did with the portrait of Kean Kelly. Kean Kelly's avatar is cool and futurist looking but the second portrait of Kean Kelly looks more meaningful and more like a digital painting than a avatar. The second piece of work has a lot of detail and looks like a real painting in a art galley i like the texture that Four Yip was able to capture with that portrait and i think her work in this piece is very new media and a cool new way to create art work through avatars.

Joseph DeLappe

    Over the course of 26 days, using a treadmill for cyberspace, Joseph DeLappe reenacted Mahatma Gandhi's famous 1930 Salt March. The original 240-mile walk was made in protest of the British salt tax; Joseph DeLappe updated this seminal protest march in Second Life, the Internet-based virtual world. For this performance, Joseph Delappe walked the entire 240 miles of the original march on a converted treadmill at Eye beam in New York City and online in Second Life. His steps on the treadmill controlled the forward movement of my avatar, Gandhi Chakrabarti, enabling the live and virtual reenactment of the march.
 
    After reading up on the artist Joseph DeLappe I feel like the walk he did on a treadmill to represent Mahatma Gandhi's famous 1930 Salt March is amazing. The 240 mile walk Gandhi originally made was remarkable and a milestone in history that will always be remembered. To have a new media artist like Joseph DeLappe reenact Gandhi's journey is such a good idea. He turned a historical event and put in on Second life.

Thomson & Craighead

FLAT EARTH

Flat Earth is a desktop documentary that basically turns to world onto a flat computer screen. The project takes the viewer on a 7 minute trip around the world, telling different stories about different locations around the world from blogs on the Internet. All the blogs are put together and told kind of like a story. Most of the images taken from Flat Earth are from satellite imagery from the web. The pictures are kinda like the ones taken from Google Earth. This is with the exception of the close-up imagery from outside USA, which had to be paid for non-commercial use and a series of images taken from Flickr under Creative Commons attribution license.

Flat Earth is a really interesting trip that everyone can take around the earth. A lot of people can not just take a trip around the world so i think its really unique and cool that from this project everyone can go on their computer and take a trip around the world. I like the way that Thomas and Craighead use real peoples blogs from their experiences. By doing this straight from blogs of real people i think it would give the viewer an amazing experiences from places around the world. It helps people feel like they are really there.

Jeffrey Shaw

In this installation a rotating platform lets the person stand on a rotating projected image within a large circular projection screen and explore a three dimensional virtual environment. The work presents a virtual landscape containing eleven cylinders that show particular sites in the Ruhr area. The viewer can navigate this 3D space and enter these panoramic cylinders.On the platform there is a column with an underwater video camera. This device is user interface, its buttons and handling allow you to control his movement through the virtual scene as well as cause the rotation of the platform and of the projected image around the circular screen. A small monitor within this housing also shows the ground plan of the virtual environment with reference to the user's location there. A microphone on top of this camera picks up any sound that the viewer makes, and this causes the release of continuously moving three dimensional words and sentences within the scene.

Credits:

This is so cool! Jeffrey Shaw showcased this project in 2000. I really like the way this project is interasctive. Everything about the camera he uses and the way you can pick what you see and where to go is really different. The underwater camera is also pretty unique.

Gracie Kendal

 Kristine Schomaker

 

"…I have found it difficult to be comfortable in my own skin. My sense of self has become dislodged and torn apart. Through Gracie I have begun to put myself back together."

- Kristine Schomaker


    Gracie Kendal also known as Kristine Schomaker is a Los Angeles based new media and performance artist, painter and art historian.  For over 12 years, she has been experimenting with different art forms including using online virtual worlds and social networking technologies. Kristine's most current work is about the notions of online identity, specifically the construction of Avatars. Her work as a whole stands as an allegory of the relationship between appearance and identity, illusion, belief and reality. Two projects she is currently working on are, "My Life as an Avatar: The Gracie Kendal project" and "1000 Avatars" a contemporary portraits of avatars in the virtual world of Second Life.


     Her first major project she is currently working on is called "1000 Avatars". This project is still in the making and Kristine Schomaker actually has a blog that she uses to keep in contact with her followers and through this blog people give her comments, thoughts, and suggestions on her work. So first off, Kristine is an Second life artist who plays with the relationship between appearance, identity, illusion, belief and reality. She feels like a lot of people who use avatars today are literally approaching it from the point of view that their avatar represents their ‘incarnation’ into the Internet.” In today's world, an avatar is our virtual representation. Many people today are using avatars to give themselves an "alter ego" or a second persona. And because an avatar is secret, it allows people to espace reality and enter a whole different world. "The portraits I am taking have become a documentation of the lives of hundreds of people who to me are fearless. These people (yes I say people, because no matter how we represent ourselves online, we are all people on the other side of the computer) put themselves out there into the brave new world of virtual environments as explorers, searching for anything and everything. They are amazing, creative, soulful people who I am so honored to have in my project" this is what Schomaker said about this project. Second Life offers people the freedom to explore different identities. Experimentation and creativity is welcome. It is a safe environment that allows unlimited freedom to express yourself and consider boundaries/barriers that aren’t readily accepted in the physical world. “Computer screens are becoming the new location for our fantasies… The immateriality of cyberspace dissolves not only space and time, but our identities as well. For some this is a frightening prospect, for others perhaps the beginnings of a new empowerment ", Kristine Schomaker.

Kristine Schomaker is also working on a second project called, "My Life as an Avatar: The Gracie Kendal project". The Gracie Kendal Project is a close-up daily view of a personal, social and psychological co-existence with my virtual persona. Using installation, text, photography, mixed media, video and performance, Schomaker shows herself onto another form and confronts her own imperfections.Kristine Schomaker,"My work deals with the process of becoming self-aware while living in a media-saturated, technologically advancing society. It is symbolic of the personal anxiety and loss of identity occurring in a world where visually aggressive advertisements dictate who you are supposed to be. In this environment I find it difficult to be comfortable in my own skin. My sense of self has become dislodged and torn apart. Through documentation, I construct a narrative of self that represents me and is me, one that helps to deconstruct ideas of normalcy and authenticity".

Kristine Schomaker was originally an Abstract painter but when applying to an art program in college she started playing around with art an Second Life and began to really grow as an artist during this time period. When Schomaker was showing her Second Life art work to a college art professor one day he suggested that she should create an avatar as a self portrait. Growing up Schomaker has always had weight issues, she constantly battled her weight and has been self conscience about her image so when her professor made this suggestion she thought this would be a great way to make a kinda alter ego in the Second Life world. A lot of her work as Gracie Kendal is about body image and self exploitation. Kristine Schomaker says that she has always hated taking pictures of herself and looking at herself but though second life she has really become more comfortable with her self image and through the Gracie Kendal projects she hopes to help others learn to accept and love themselves. Her work in Second Life isn't about losing weight or changing your otter appearance. Through her work she is trying to help others become self accepting and most importantly brave. She would like to help others find peace and grace within themselves.