From 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
From Pirsch Unter Wasser
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Documentary on Amazon tribes from 1970 contrasted with modern day anthropological approach
The Tribe That Hides From Man (1970)
youtube description: The Kreen-Akrore are a forest Indian tribe living in the Amazon basin of Brazil who successfully managed to evade the cameras and crew accompanying the Villas Boas brothers during their attempt to make first contact with these hostile and entirely unknown people. The search for the Kreen-Akrore lends itself to a documentary style which uses the conventions of narrative cinema, unfolding the events chronologically, while building up the tension and suspense of the search: for example subjective' shots are utilised to give the impression of what it is like to be watched, by unseen eyes in a hostile jungle. Some of the scenes are clearly staged, thus helping to reconstruct the events and tensions of the search
Uncontacted Amazon Tribe: First ever aerial footage
youtube description: For the first time, extraordinary aerial footage of one of the world's last uncontacted tribes has been released. Survival's new film, narrated by Gillian Anderson, has launched our campaign to help protect the earth's most vulnerable peoples.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Derrick Huang
Derrich Huang's website
found thanks to great blog post by flic
found thanks to great blog post by flic
Another Kind of Aroma (2007) - installation with spices,box, documents
Consumption (2005) - installation with oranges and red threads
Unicef Ads
Advertising Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, Shanghai, China
Chief Creative Officer: Kevin Lee
Creative Directors: Kevin Lee, Ng Fan
Art Directors: Kevin Lee, Haibo Huang, Phoebe Liao, Stephen Zhong/Robin Wu
Copywriters: Adams Fan, Derek Huang, Raymond Yung, Andrew Lok
Artists: Haohui Zhou, Bin Liu
Designers: Spring Zhu, Chaowen Wu, Jinghua Pan
Print Producer: Ling Gu
Vija Celmins
Celmin's later work sees her retreat from world affairs to explore sublime, natural imagery deliberately selected to emphasize her formal procedures and conceptual concerns, often recording a specific human glimpse through a camera which is ephemeral yet frozen in time. There is evidence of time elapsed in production, and it is this intuitive sense that encourages the viewer to mimic this in a prolonged act of looking.
Celmins's drawings are first and foremost detailed records of seeing and doing, transcription and adjustment, working and reworking, each tiny mark in graphite - made or erased - an index of a roughly equivalent abstract fraction of a source photograph. The drawings are built up in infinitesimal increments until an image emerges and sign and signified, drawing and photograph, finally relate but never so much so that one loses sight of each of the careful marks that compose the whole. The surfaces of the oceanscapes are dense with information, atmospheric effects and moody chiaroscuro, but despite the vigor of Celmins's efforts, her encounter with the paper is never heavy enough to violate or pulverize the surface - one never senses the three-dimensionality paper can assume when heavily worked.
Large Desert (1975)
Ocean paintings
Ocean , 2003
Ocean , 2005
Ocean Surface I, 2006
Ocean with Cross I, 2005
Ocean Surface I, 2000
Big Sea I, 1969
Big Sea II, 1969
Night Sky paintings
Night Sky , 2000
December 1984 , 1985
Untitled No.8, Woodcut
Spiderweb series
Web #5, 2000
Web Ladder, Vija Celmins, 2010. 1-plate, 1-color mezzotint, printed on bright white paper.
Celmins' series of spider web drawings further complicate the relation between her drawing practice and her photographic sources. With the exception of one work (Web # 9, 2006), Celmins renders her ethereal white webs by carefully rubbing out sections of an evenly applied charcoal ground with an eraser. The principal image, therefore, is actually generated by drawing with negative space. So, while Celmins's source remains, as ever, a photograph, her drawing is more akin to the negative from which the photograph was developed. The results of this process are ineffably delicate webs of light, which stretch out across grey fields of charcoal and evoke the ghostly sight of a spider's web backlit by dull light.
Shell, Celmins, 2009-2010. Oil on canvas
Wolfgang Laib
Laib expresses a spiritual message through symbolically loaded materials: pollen, wax, milk, marble and rice. He presents himself as a nature mystic, critiquing with his intuitive images made from natural substances the materialist values of a late capitalist, highly industrialised society.
Five Mountains
The pollen work in particular is a highly obsessive project. Its accumulation is labour intensive, for it takes several months to fill the few jars required every year, the material painstakingly collected by the artist from thousands of dandelion, hazelnut, and pine tree flowers. After each exhibition the used pollen is kept and cleaned for new projects. Because his practice is so fixated and repetitive it seems related to conceptualists like On Kawara, Roman Opalka, and Hanne Darboven. Of course it is not about writing or counting like these artists' practices, but time is a primary focus of the work. Laib's work also calls upon us to ponder the infinitesimal nature of the world around us.
Robert Irwin
Article on Robert Irwin
Robert Irwin
Two Running Violet V Forms
Stuart Collection, University of California San Diego
Copyright Robert Irwin/Artists Rights Society, New York
Anthony McCall
Anthony McCall is a British-born (1946) American Avant-Garde artist who specializes in cinema and projected film.
A key figure in the avant-garde London Film-makers Co-operative of the 70s, his earliest films are documents of outdoor performances notable for their minimal use of the elements, e.g. fire.
After moving to New York in 1973, McCall continued his fire performances and developed his ‘solid light’ film series (e.g. Line Describing a Cone, 1973). These works are simple projections that emphasise the sculptural qualities of a beam of light.
At the end of the 1970s, McCall withdrew from making art. Over 20 years later he re-opened his ‘solid light’ series, this time using digital projectors rather than 16mm film.
"Line Describing a Cone" (1973) is described best as "one of the simplest, most elegant and most effective ideas ever committed to film. Starting with a dot at the bottom of the frame, a single line is drawn on the screen, taking the 30-minute running time to form a complete circle. Meanwhile, in the fogged room, the same line gradually forms a cone, with the base of the cone at the screen and the apex at the projector lens. The screen functions mostly to "tell the time" of the movie -- one need only note how much of the circle is there to tell how much of the movie is left. It is the space in between the projector and the screen that is most important -- in this space, the audience moves about, interacting with the cone of light and moving along the beam to get different perspectives...."- Andy Ditzler, 2005
In October 2009, McCall’s work was featured in a solo show opening at the Moderna Museet. This exhibition showcased Doubling Back (2003) as well as a light installation entitled You and I, Horizontal (2005). Also included in the show were a number of drawings illustrating varied motions of light waves, which the artist refers to as "scores" of his films.
Later in 2009 he was awarded £500,000 from the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad to create a work consisting of a column of steam in Birkenhead which will be visible up to 100 km away.
Olafur Eliasson - The Transcendental in Art
Olafur Eliasson filters the natural world through new technologies, using intangible elements such as smoke, light and wind as his materials in his sculptures and installations. Having been greatly influenced by the work of Robert Irwin, Eliasson considers his overriding concern to be an awareness of the act of perception. However, by introducing elements such as temperature and humidity, as well as a more overt disruption of physical orientation, he goes even further to show how not only the eye, but also the rest of the body, responds to various stimuli — in addition to the emotional and intellectual reactions one might have when anticipating, discovering and experiencing a new or altered situation. Eliasson's work often involves an intervention which either takes its cue from its surroundings or imposes upon them constructions that affect them in some way. His installations may incorporate some or all of the properties of reflected or projected light, color, geometry, movement, water, wind, sound and temperature. He uses natural and industrial materials, as well as the environments of nature and architecture, to create situations that, while not esthetically displeasing and often very compelling, are less about their look than about the experience they create for the viewers, who, by their very presence, become integral elements in the work. Over the past fifteen years Eliasson has built up an impressive body of work consisting of rainbows, sunsets, waterfalls, scent walls, fog, mist, beams of light and periscopes. His stunning installations encompass his audience in a world that is at odds with standard physics.
Lava Floor (2002)
Eliasson's work was an installation lava rock on the floor of the lobby of the exhibition space. Visitors were invited to walk across the uneven surface to reach the galleries. Eliasson often attempts to bring nature into the exhibition space in such a way that makes the visitor physically engage.
Your Strange Certainty Still Kept
In a dark and silent room drops of falling water are lit by the rhythmic flashing of strobe lights, creating the effect that gravity has been suspended.
Beauty (1993)
From the exhibition Take your time: Olafur Eliasson, installation view at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Gently falling mist from the overhead sprinklers produce iridescent effects as the light is diffracted on the tiny droplets of water as it descends. Other than the light and the mist the room is empty.
In Beauty, transformation makes the work successful. Water is allowed to do what it does naturally, but in the process becomes something much more rich and complex than expected. Eliasson reveals water's unique optical properties, transcending the materials that are used to make the work.
Notion Motion (2005)
From the exhibition Take your time: Olafur Eliasson, installation view at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Notion motion consists of three installations that explore the interaction between water, light and the viewer - an installation of ripples of water reflected in light, in which Eliasson visualizes light waves. Notion Motion is an enchanting work created with simple means. Eliasson immerses the viewer in a simple and minimal yet overwhelming visual experience created by the interplay of light and water.
At the end of a long hallway is a large screen with ripples floating upwards. Some of the wooden floorboards are higher than the others, and as you step on them you realize they might bear some relation to what you see on the screen, but it is difficult to make the connection. The waves on the screen do appear more active after stepping on a plank, but there is variation and a definite time delay.
After another short hallway and around the corner, you enter another room where you get to see behind the screen. The floor boards in the previous rooms control a set of paddles in a shallow pool. Light is reflected off the surface of the water which is displayed on the screen.
It is interesting that although you can see how the mechanism works in this room, you are a passive observer. It creates an interesting duality between artist and observer, because the first room, when you pressed the floor boards, you were creating the work but in the second room when you finally have some sort of understanding you can only act as an observer. Eliasson only sets up the conditions to allow you to have that experience but you have to create the art yourself. It raises interesting questions about where is the art - in the artist or the observer? The piece sums up many of the ideas explored throughout Eliasson's work.
One of the most brilliant aspects of Eliasson’s work comes not only from his knowledge of perception and sensory experience, but also from his use of materials and special effects that generate universal responses. Take Your Time is fascinating on many levels, namely because it is successful whether you view it in solitude or experience it with a group of people. Neither circumstance diminishes the other, both acts, communal and individual, become equally important.
Reversed Waterfall
Eliasson's contraption attempts to reverse gravity — the most paradigmatic of physical laws. Yet it does so fully within the realm of the physical and the visible.
Moss Wall (1994)
The Forked Forest Path (1998)
Saplings (such as silver birch) are woven together to create the powerful illusion of a dense forest in this installation.
The Weather Project, Tate Modern Turbine Hall
The Weather Project consists of a huge, yellow, artificial indoor sun. The distant ceiling is mirrored, and viewers can see their small, shadowy, inverted reflections through the mist.
Eliasson toys with ideas of the sublime and technology, careful to make us aware of the mechanics of his work - that what he has done is a trick, a thing of smoke and mirrors, and an 18,000-watt bank of sodium yellow streetlight bulbs. You can walk under the sun, see behind the backlit screen, and watch the weather wafting from the smoke generators.
Eliasson used hundreds of monochromatic lamps which radiated single frequency yellow light to create a semi-circular disc, and humidifiers to create a fine mist in the air via a mixture of sugar and water. Throughout the day, the mist accumulates into faint cloud-like formations before dissipating across the space. The ceiling of the hall was covered with huge mirrors, in which visitors could see themselves as tiny black shadows against a mass of orange light. Many visitors responded to this exhibition by lying on their backs and waving their hands and legs. Open for six months, the work reportedly attracted two million visitors, many of whom were repeat visitors.
Eliasson wants us to consider why we talk about the weather so much, and how weather impinges on our culture and our sense of ourselves. The installation explores ideas of experience, mediation and representation.
The Mediated Motion at the Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria (2001)
Eliasson created a sequence of spaces filled with natural materials including water, fog, earth, wood, fungus and duckweed. During their journey through the exhibition, visitors were confronted by a variety of sensory experiences – sights, smells, and textures – which had been precisely articulated by the artist. Eliasson also modified the building, including the insertion of a subtly slanting floor which made visitors become more conscious of the act of movement through space.
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