What do you believe in?

As I tend to do, I decided with this project to take the literal route from the “I’m a believer” prompt, and I am very happy with how it turned out.

I sat my 5 volunteers down in a comfy chair in the Hurvis studio. They knew I would be asking them a question and they would have to answer it for 2 minutes, but they did not know what it was. When I asked “What do you believe in?” (and clarified with the second question “What is true to you in your life?”) most of them were taken aback that I was asking them such a deep question on the spot. And yet, they all came up with interesting, diverse answers.

I eventually did a second filming session with each of them, getting footage out in the “real world” (as opposed to the very constructed studio space) of something that related somehow to what they said in the first session. It was interesting not being able to get all the filming done until I had gone through the first sessions and decided what I wanted to film next. Most of my work does not involve all of that planning, so having to make those decisions was different for me.

I then cut together the interview footage with the “real world” footage in a somewhat random way, though it makes some sort of sense as well. I decided to also add some background music. The music, while semi-cheesy, does serve a couple of helpful purposes. It distracts from the obnoxious white noise in all of the interview footage, and it also helps tie all the clips together so that it’s not just a video of random people talking.

De Certeau said in The Practice of Everyday Life, “For a long time people assumed that the reserves of belief were limitless” (179). Based on the responses I got, I think the reserves of belief ARE limitless. Different people believe in many different things, and they have the capacity to keep discovering new things that they believe in.

Stroszek

I liked Stroszek a lot more than I thought I would. Since the only thing I knew about it was that it was filmed very authentically and was more or less “real life,” I was honestly expecting it to be relatively boring. However, it ended up keeping my attention most of the time, although it was rather confusing at times.

It was very interesting to learn that Bruno S. was actually kept in asylums for most of his life and he had little experience with the outside world when the movie was filmed. Also that the old man was actually just a crazy old man who believed in conspiracies. Eva was actually an actress and not a prostitute, but she played it well. It is funny that Herzog pinpointed random people that he wanted in his film, like an MC that he heard one time, a Native American mechanic that he met once, and the world’s best livestock auctioneer.

Now that I think about it, the way I feel about Stroszek is similar to how I felt after seeing Boyhood. Boyhood was all made with real actors, but it has the same feel of just watching someone’s life happen before you. You may expect a film like this to be boring because the concept of “everyday life” does not seem that interesting. But then you realize that it is so intriguing to so closely watch someone else’s life unfold before you, because we are so used to just noticing our own lives.

Gillian Wearing

I really enjoyed learning about Gillian Wearing’s work. It is all quite fascinating. I love that she was able to make compelling pieces of art out of the lives of everyday people. That is one thing that I strive toward in my own art.

One of my favorite pieces was Signs that say what you want them to say and not Signs that say what other people want them to say. I like the idea of having someone’s thoughts be with them in a photograph in written form. It reminds me of Wing Young Huie’s work, which he lectured about at Lawrence a few years ago.

All of her video work is incredible as well. At first glance, it all just seems weird or boring, but they are actually very conceptual and have deep meanings behind them. It is safe to say that Gillian Wearing is now one of my inspirations.

Lawton Hall

It is always very reassuring to hear about alums having real, successful “lives after Lawrence.” I was very impressed by how much Lawton has done already and how put together he is. It seems counterintuitive to me to try making an artist’s life for yourself in a place like Wisconsin, which just seems like a cultural pit of despair (except for the few big cities – and Wisconsin is far from the worst state). But it would seem you could make that kind of life for yourself just about anywhere if you try hard enough and hold onto your connections in those places. And there are many more opportunities in Wisconsin than I had previous realized. (That is not to say I wish to live in Wisconsin any longer than I have to.)

One of the opportunities for artists in Wisconsin 

I got more interested in Lawton’s work as he went, and I think that is how he planned his presentation. Cyclic History/This Place is No Place were amazing to me, not because of the “music” of the projectors, but because it was very aesthetically pleasing. My favorite pieces of his that he showed, however, were All Your Thens for Now and the Holy Sheboygan! pieces. The latter were so intricate and experimental, but in a way that kept me engaged rather than overwhelming me. I would love to see the band live. All Your Thens for Now was so unique and drew inspirations from such unexpected sources. I really loved the use of voice as a percussion instrument.

Holy Sheboygan!

Once again, I am given hope that Life After Lawrence is not necessarily a black hole.

The Act of Passing By

I was able to immediately draw an idea from this passage in De Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life: “It is true that the operations of walking on can be traced on city maps in such a way as to transcribe their paths and their trajectories. But these thick or thin curves only refer, like words, to the absence of what has passed by. Surveys of routes miss what was: the act itself of passing by” (97).

We often do not notice how many things we casually glance at as we are walking from point A to point B, especially in familiar places. My goal was to capture the feeling of those quick glances by randomly taking photographs around me while walking, without even looking through the viewfinder. I occasionally arbitrarily zoomed in or out and the camera was on autofocus, but those were the only ways I manipulated the images. I felt a little bit creepy at times, since many of these pictures included unsuspecting people, either passing by or engaging in nice-weekend-day activities. I didn't look at the pictures until I was done, and a lot of what I had photographed was the tops of buildings with the vast blue sky overhead.

This project reminds of a mix between my previous projects, I Can See Ahead of Me (a sped-up video of my travels across campus) and This Is Happening (photos taken at random and paired together). Both of these projects can be viewed on this blog.

You can view this haphazard series of photos on my flickr.

Hands

In The Practice of Everyday Life, De Certeau says that “one can distinguish ‘ways of operating’ – ways of walking, reading, producing, speaking, etc.” (30). My project explores a couple ideas about “ways of operating.” The first being that we operate in ways that we consciously decide, as well as in ways that we do not realize or think about. There are things that we habitually do every day that we take no notice of, because we are literally always doing them. They sneak in with the things that we are conscious of.

The second idea is about how important our hands are to our everyday operating. In this class, we are all able-bodied people who cannot truly imagine what life would be like without our hands. They do almost everything for us and we barely take notice of that fact. Also, many of these unconscious everyday actions are done with our hands.

I chose to make a video because I focus on photography so often and I would like to do more work with video. I have always enjoyed making videos but have not had the time or inspiration for it in a while. It chronicles some of the everyday things I do with my hands. It is mostly conscious things; the things that make up most of one's day, such as making a sandwich or playing guitar. But some of the unconscious things sneak in between, such as snapping my fingers or putting my hair behind my ears.

Modalities of Action, Project Idea

Going along with De Certeau’s idea of “ways of operating,” I plan to make a video documenting some of the various things that my hands do throughout a normal day. I often find that my hands are doing things that I did not consciously decide to do; cracking my knuckles, tapping things, swaying while I walk. Then there are the things that I consciously decide to do; brushing my teeth, making food, playing guitar. Everyday things that I could not do without my hands.

Some hands, doing what hands do

When we think about it, it is obvious that our hands play a huge part in our lives and it would be incredibly difficult to function without them. But we do not think about it that often. It is easy to forget how many different things our hands do throughout the day.

I have no Yik and I must Yak

Having been influenced by the rediscovery of Wayne White, I knew that I wanted to work somehow with text on images. I thought of the various places that I could take text from: my journals, tumblr posts, quotes… And then I landed on Yik Yak, the app in which you post text anonymously and then vote on each other’s thoughts.

The premise of Yik Yak

A handful of Yik Yak posts are actually funny or relatable, but most of what is posted is mean/pointless/trolling/etc. Posting on Yik Yak is much like (to take a McLuhan quote completely out of context): “complaining to a hot dog vendor at a ballpark about how badly your favorite team is playing” (142). What is the point?

Yik Yak is meant for college campuses, so I thought it might be a fun idea to continue taking random candid photographs on campus, and pair the photos with random posts from Yik Yak. I toyed with the idea of making the pairings completely random, as people post many different things on Yik Yak in all types of situations, but I ended up deciding it would be funnier and make more sense for the viewer if I paired them to make at least a little bit of sense. I screenshotted the "Yaks" I liked and overlaid them with the photos in PhotoShop.

You can view the series on my flickr.

Nietzsche and McLuhan

Friedrich Nietzsche

I found this presentation to be much harder to make than all of the previous similar presentations I have done for Photography classes. Since it was not about an artist, I could not use art to illustrate my points. I had to draw my thesis and arguments from somewhat dense philosophical ideas, which I often have a hard time with. I am not entirely sure why I chose to do my presentation on Nietzsche. I guess I have always found him interesting, though I have never looked too closely at any of his work. If nothing else, this presentation was a good excuse to do just that. (And I found that I still like Nietzsche and his ideas.)

I did not know that Nietzsche had such strong opinions about art and that he even saw art as a substitute for “the God who made a clock-like universe, wound it, and withdrew,” who is now dead (146).

I think that if Nietzsche were around today, he would be mostly pleased with how far we have advanced our society and that we continue to seek out new ways to advance it.

Respect and Honor and Respect and Honor and Respect and...

Kwame Anthony Appiah, Professor of Philosophy and Law at NYU

 

I was curious what Kwame Anthony Appiah’s lecture was really going to be about. I was expecting and hoping that it would be about the importance of showing respect to others and acknowledging the ways in which they are honorable, or something along those lines. I was definitely not prepared for the philosophical lecture that was to come. I must admit, I completely lost where Appiah was going for most of the lecture. I heard the words “honor” and “respect” innumerable times and it honestly sounded like he was repeating the same thing over and over with slightly different phrasing for the first 20 minutes. (This is not to belittle his intelligence or his field/research, this is only to say that I sadly could not comprehend it as well as I would have liked.)

Later in the lecture, he got to some ideas that I could actually think about, such as the idea of showing respect to soldiers because we perceive them as extremely honorable people. I definitely got more interested when he started talking about the influence of different cultures on each other. I found it very interesting how it was Western missionaries who got the Chinese government to rethink foot-binding. And then on the other hand, when missionaries tried to end female genital mutilation in certain Eastern countries, they were met with resistance and the horrific practice only grew.

I had trouble seeing how this lecture applied at all to our class until I read the last bit of The Medium is the Massage just now. The ideas presented in the book are rather outdated and tend to glorify the “West,” while Appiah’s lecture was very impartial and spoke of facts rather than ideals or biased ideas.

Something Is Happening exhibition experience

Photograph of the exhibit by John Shimon

I am very pleased with the outcome of the whole Something Is Happening experience. I think my prints turned out quite nicely, and I am glad that I was able to use 4 of the photographs and present 2 of my pairs, rather than just 1 pair. That way, they could also be seen by the viewer as a series of pairs rather than just a haphazard bunch of photographs. I have been a part of many Mudd Gallery shows, and this was definitely one of the best. The turn-out at the opening was great, and the white cheddar popcorn was deeee-licious.

Stunning portrait by professional photographer, John Shimon

The most exciting part of this process for me was the book. Even though I only made it myself, it still feels pretty cool that a book of my photographs exists. I enjoyed creating it on Blurb, and I am excited to work with Blurb again to create the book for my capstone project. Except for the fact that there is no Large Portrait size option. Harumph.

allatonceness

My sound piece is titled "allatonceness" because it is quite literally a bunch of noises happening all at once. However, all of the noises come from the same source: my acoustic guitar. I recorded myself (with the Mac) playing 5 different songs that I know on the guitar and then layered them all over each other. I did not mess with the recordings besides cutting and layering. The bad quality of the computer microphone made it sound weird and unnatural enough by itself.

Working with sound was a new experience for me. Definitely quite different from the other creative things I do. I am very interested in music; I listen and/or play nearly every day. However, my interest in experimental sound is rather limited. Most of it is a bit too much for me (which is part of the reason why I took a rather minimal approach to this assignment).

McLuhan said, "The ear favors no particular 'point of view.' We are enveloped by sound. It forms a seamless web around us. We say, 'Music shall fill the air.' We never say, 'Music shall fill a particular segment of the air'" (111). The songs in this piece form a web around each other as well as the listeners. There are 5 distinct tunes being played, but they are extremely hard to pick out (until the very end with only 1 tune left standing). It is a rather uncomfortable feeling.

This Is Happening

Something is indeed happening. It is this. This Is Happening.

McLuhan said that “Environments are invisible. Their groundrules, pervasive structure, and overall patterns elude easy perception” (84-85). My photographs are presented as a series of diptychs, paired together aesthetically and to show some mysterious glimpses into the environment in which we live, here on campus. In the spirit of Robert Frank, I walked around with my camera and photographed things around me at random, narrowing them down and piecing them together later.

I uploaded the photographs to Flickr in the order that they appear in my Blurb book. It will definitely be more effective in the book, because one cannot view them as diptychs, as they are meant to be seen, on Flickr. While Flickr is a great way to share photographs, the site should offer more ways to customize the way that you present your work. As for Blurb, it took some time to figure out how to fiddle around with all the various aspects to get it just right, but it was definitely sufficiently customizable.​

I Can See Ahead of Me

I Can See Ahead of Me from Lucy B. on Vimeo.

I took the approach of forming a video idea from the vague ideas of “time” and “space” and then applying the reading to my final product. My very general idea at the beginning was to show the passage of time through filming every time I walked somewhere (the changing sky also helps) and speeding it up, and to show space by the various places that I walked within the wide and yet constricted space of the Lawrence campus.

Now I find that the final product relates to the passage, “Information pours upon us, instantaneously and continuously. As soon as information is acquired, it is very rapidly replaced by still newer information” (63). What seems like a clear path gets extremely confusing and overwhelming with the speed and the blur. The viewer is bombarded with shaky, confusing images, but can still make out that it is meant to be a path to somewhere. The real-time footsteps in the background could be metaphorical of us attempting to catch up with all the new information. Yet, the footsteps also somehow work with the video, and the door opening at the end matches with the video as well, so this could mean that we are caught up. It is open for interpretation.

The title comes from something that I said to my friend while recording that I thought I might try to put into the final product, but it didn’t quite fit, so it is only in the title. It seemed appropriate.

Jason Yi

I found the zip-tie project annoying, a manipulation of the word "collaboration" to get free labor out of art students, and a waste of perfectly good unused zip-ties (and, let's be honest, it does not look that awesome, either). However, after hearing his lecture and seeing his exhibition, I found that Jason Yi has some interesting ideas.

Piece from Jason's exhibition

I like how he draws his inspiration from his family and his childhood in a Korean household. Most of his work seems to connect back to that somehow. I think it is incredibly cool that his sculpture work is based off of his father's landscape photography (and other things about his family, like his heritage). I do not remember the name of the piece, but I like the one he showed us of the Korean mountains made out of packing peanuts. The idea that it would disappear if someone doused it with water would be terrifying to me as an artist. I would not want to make something so fragile, but at the same time, I understand that the fragility was a part of Jason's point.

Piece from Jason's exhibition

His work in the gallery was very intriguing to me; I like his use of everyday things, like wrapping folding chairs in saran-wrap, or covering wooden rods with colorful tape. It was definitely an aesthetically pleasing room, full of bright colors. It was fun to look at. I did not get much else out of it, though. It evoked less landscape imagery than the mountain range (and others from the lecture), even though he mentioned the landscape idea in his statement on the wall. Though perhaps that is just Jason expanding on his own ideas and getting more metaphorical. I liked the pieces in the gallery much more than the zip ties, that much is for sure (partially because I know that he actually made them himself).

My creative evolution

My name is Lucy. Photography is my medium. I prefer analog photography to digital, but I definitely appreciate the accessibility of and necessity for digital photography, and I won't try to pretend that I don't go a little crazy with a digital camera in my hands. I understand that if I want some sort of career in photography, I should learn more about the digital side.

Photography was not always the main way that I expressed my creativity. Throughout my childhood, I always wanted to be a writer. I had a hundred different notebooks that were half-full with unfinished stories and plays. Sadly, my motivation to write waned as I got older and now I barely even write in my own journal because I can't find the time. When I do find the time, writing still comforts me.

Music has also been a big part of my life since I was young. Throughout the years, I have picked up piano, flute, guitar, and ukelele. Practicing my instruments is another thing that I have hard time finding time for, but I do still play them all occasionally; the one I practice most often these days is the guitar.

My guitar, picture taken with my SLR

I have loved taking pictures my entire life, and I got much more into it in high school. I would take my little point-and-shoot with me everywhere and annoy the hell out of my friends by taking countless pictures of them, including plenty of ugly ones that I refused to delete because every photo meant something to me. I eventually acquired a Flip video camera and took that everywhere as well. Once I had a good amount of footage, I would make extremely amateur music videos featuring my friends.

The first "friend video" I made, junior year of high school.

My senior year of high school, I took my first photography class from a curmudgeonly, but hilarious old priest we called Father V. It was from him that I first learned the processes of film photography. It quickly became my favorite class and I would spend most of my free periods developing film or making prints. That class made me realize how prevalent my passion for photography was and influenced me to look into it at college.

My freshman year, I was not able to take photography classes, but I dove into it on my own time. I took a lot of pictures with my SLR, and eventually acquired a Polaroid, a TLR, and a Diana F+. Later on, I also got myself an Actionsampler. Experimenting with different cameras has always been extremely fun for me. Once I was able to take the photography classes my sophomore year and learn more about the medium (as well as experimenting with even more cameras), I knew that I wanted to declare my major as Studio Art.

Taken with my Polaroid

Taken with my Diana F+

Taken with my Actionsampler

My most recent projects, including the one I am working on for my capstone, have been done with a large format camera (the kind where you have to go under a sheet to look through it). It can be very frustrating but it is also very rewarding and makes me be as precise as possible with every shot.

I was abroad in London during Fall term, and before leaving, I got a nice Canon DSLR so that I could document my trip. I took an obscene amount of pictures there, including a lot of land- and cityscapes. While I am entranced by the beauty of nature or of a thriving city, my favorite subject matter will always be people. I am very excited to get back to my portrait work in the studio.

View of Windsor Great Park and Windsor Castle

From atop Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh, Scotland

While in London, I also had an internship with DegreeArt.com, a gallery that promotes and sells work from art students and recent graduates. It taught me a lot about the inner workings of an art gallery and the art world as a whole.

I have dabbled with other mediums at Lawrence (mainly because I had to for my major), such as ceramics and drawing, but I always end up back with my cameras. However, I do have multiple creative outlets. My creative energy as of right now will be going towards my capstone, random fun with my DSLR and other cameras, practicing guitar and occasionally piano, my art therapy coloring book, my Wreck This Journal, and my regular journal.

If you made it to the end of this lengthy post, I congratulate you.

Congrats

Diana F+ (2012)

A collection of personal photos taken with my lomography Diana F+ camera.

What Should I Do? (2013)

A selection of prints from my final project for ART 230 (Beginning Photography)

Subjects were brought to an open snowy space and told to do whatever they wanted

Feelings™ (2013)

ART 110 thematic sketchbook, logos for feelings