Event: The Fowler Museum

The Fowler Museum

Making Strange by Vivan Sundaram

This collection of work consists of two projects, Gagawaka and Postmortem. Gagawaka is a collection of garments made out of medical supplies and recycled items. The garments are Sundaram’s own take on the world of fashion. I found his recycled material outfits to be fun and creative. These outfits focus on interesting ways to cover the body and the aesthetics of everyday materials.  

His medical supply outfits were also very creative but they also represented the painful and a more serious side of real everyday life.

The second project, Postmortem consists of mannequins and dummies of human skeletal, vascular, and organ system. These sculptures are meant to focus more on the body itself and force you to look at body parts and movement in a different way. Similar to the outfits that are made out of medical supplies the Postmortem sculptures are meant to correlate with sickness and aging. Both of these art installations show a relationship between the artistic world of fashion and the scientific world of medicine.

Event: International Surfing Museum

International Surfing Museum

While walking around the International Surfing Museum I was surprise at how much history surfing and other ocean sports had. I became the most interested in the progression of how surfboards are shaped and made. When surfing first became popular in the early 1900’s boards were usually around 15 feet long (which is pretty long for todays standards) and were made with solid heavy woods like redwood. Since then the shape of boards have become narrower, shorter, and lighter. In the 60’s and 70’s surfers and board makers began to experiment with different materials and shapes to make a lighter, faster and more maneuverable board. They began to use balsa wood, plywood, and fiberglass along with a more narrow and sleeker design. These materials are used in most boards today. I have always viewed surfing as a type of expression and think that it could possibly be viewed as an art form also. Board making can be seen as a sort of scientific based art form.

Works Cited

"History of the Surfboard." History of the Surfboard. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 June 2015. <http://www.clubofthewaves.com/surf-culture/history-of-the-surfboard.php>.

Event: The Hammer Museum

The Hammer Museum

Numbers and Trees

One of my favorite art displays that I saw at the Hammer Museum was the Numbers and Trees instillation Charles Gaines. It combines colors and numbers to create a painting of a tree. Gaines uses painter acrylic sheets that have a grid with numbers on them and the numbers on each sheet correspond with a number. He then layers the sheets on top of each other to make a complete painting. This instillation was a good example of Art and Math, which we covered in week two.

                                                

Another area I enjoyed the futuristic models that artist/architects have made that may be built in cities someday. One of my favorite ideas was the Jiading Bridge that is planed to be built in Shanghai, China. It can interchange between being a flat bridge for cars or wheelchairs and it can also have a s-shape, like it is shown below to let boat pass underneath it while still allowing people to walk of the bridge. I thought that this idea was a clever combination of futuristic architecture and art.

                                                                                                    

Week 9: Space and Art

This week’s unit is about space exploration and art. Professor Vesna started this week’s unit off with talking about the beginning of space exploration through the telescope. In 1608 a Dutch eyeglass maker named Hans Lippershey applied the first patent for a telescope. He claimed that it could see things with three times the magnification. However, Galileo Galilei was the first to point his own design of a telescope skyward in order to study the stars. With this he discovered that the moon had craters and mountains and that Jupiter had many moons.

I enjoyed learning about how space began to influence modern culture beginning in the 1920’s. Many writers began to write books about space travel, which in a way marked the beginning on the fusion of space and art. For example, in 1929 Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was the first person to write about a complete space station with the means to do research and have people live in it for long periods of time. This was 28 years before the first simple small satellite; Sputnik was successfully launched into orbit. Many TV shows and movies about space such as The Jetsons, Star Trek, and Star Wars became very popular around this time.

          

       

In today’s world space and art have been intertwined even more. I found the KSEVT institute to be really interesting and I enjoyed looking at all the different ways they combine art and performance with science. The Cultural Space Programme’s goal is to work on the culturalisation of space in today’s society and has done projects such as a zero gravity theater performance. They focus on the humanities and art and are constantly asking the question “What is it like to be a human in space? (KSEVT)”

Works Cited

Contributor, Lauren Cox SPACE.com. "Who Invented the Telescope? | The First Telescope | Space.com." Space. N.p., 13 July 2013. Web. 31 May 2015. <http://www.space.com/21950-who-invented-the-telescope.html>.

"Corning Museum of Glass." The Quest to See More: Glass Lenses. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 May 2015. <http://www.cmog.org/article/quest-see-more-glass-lenses>.

"Cultural Space Programme." KSEVT. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 May 2015. <http://www.ksevt.eu/2015/?page_id=1849>.

"Dragan Zivadinov «Zero Gravity Biomechanical Theater» 1999. | Φrbit° Sφaceφlace :: Art in the Age øf Φrbitizatiøn." Dragan Zivadinov «Zero Gravity Biomechanical Theater» 1999. | Φrbit° Sφaceφlace :: Art in the Age øf Φrbitizatiøn. N.p., 23 Apr. 2006. Web. 31 May 2015. 

Pinchefsky, Carol. "CBS Blocks Production of 'Star Trek' Fan Film."Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 29 Mar. 2012. Web. 31 May 2015. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolpinchefsky/2012/03/29/cbs-blocks-production-of-star-trek-fan-film/>.

"SFE: The Science Fiction Encyclopedia." Authors : Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin : SFE : Science Fiction Encyclopedia. N.p., 29 Oct. 2014. Web. 31 May 2015. <http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/tsiolkovsky_konstantin>.

"6 Signs We Are Living Like The Jetsons - ON.com Blog." ONcom Blog RSS. N.p., 20 June 2014. Web. 31 May 2015. <http://blog.on.com/6-signs-we-are-living-like-the-jetsons/>.