Skin Tones

I'm having trouble trying to get this whole skin tones by number thing working out. I pulled just a random image off the photo lab server and was using it but on both the iMac in the lab and mine here at home, the image looks way too warm but the numbers are in the ranges that they need to be. (top=before, bottom = after) Maybe I'm just giving this lady an un-wanted tan or something.

hmm?

This is why I'm fucked up

I was looking for some articles that would help with my current project linking food and childhood or food and emotional problems to see where that would lead me with thinking about peanut butter and jelly and what it could represent psychologically.

I ended up on the American Psychological Association website. And found this article linking attachments in infancy to adult relationships. (I only read the introduction-ish and the conclusion, I didn't really think it was relevant to me to read about the exact specifics of the study.) The study found that people who had secure attachments in infancy expected their partner to be there in times of stress and would gain confidence knowing that someone was there to back them up. In contrast, people with insecure attachment had more introverted ways of dealing with problems because they thought their partner was abandoning them. Individuals with insecure attachments were also more prone to fits of unjustified anger, even after the conflict in the relationship was resolved.

This is something like I was trying to get at with my BFA series. I wanted to show how childhood eventually effects later adult relationships and this article, and perhaps similar psychology topics, are a good reference if I ever bring Tabitha back. I think it's also beneficial to me to see that not every person in the planet is fucked up and not everyone is detached and anxious. If anything it makes me want to take a look back to when I was an infant to see why I didn't have a secure attachment with my parental figure (this would be my mom I'm guessing.)

Here is the press release version of the article (a summed up version of the journal linked above.)

this semester blows

So this semester I've really been having trouble being motivated to do . . . anything.

I hate all the art I'm making so far.

I haven't been wowed by some artist I discovered.

I don't like a certain job I have (no, not you photo lab).

I just drive all the fucking time. . .

I haven't even wanted to cook. And I love cooking! The grocery store is my favorite store!

but !

I think I finally found some motivation. low and behold, little unathletic me is going to train for a triathlon. And I am so excited. I think this is the longest term goal I've ever had in my life. It's going to take months! and I'm going to do it YES! I'm so excited about it I even made another blog for it. and it's going to be one of those geeky , "here was my work out and the shit I ate all week" blogs, so watch out.

I hope being motivated to do something with eventually help me become motivated about the rest of my pathetic life.

Appropriation Project

I've been working on some stuff for the appropriation project. . .It started out that I would be making out with actors in make-out scenes and then it became teddy bears making out in make out scenes and now I think it'll become something else . . .

Y

Runa Islam at the Hammer

Video artist Runa Islam discusses her current pieces in a talk from May at the Hammer. I was a little disappointed that there weren't actual video works in her presentation (just slides of her work,) since her videos are pretty much impossible to find online. However, it's a great opportunity to be able to listen to an artist talk in the comfort of your PJs in front of the computer screen.

PB&J Stills

White Girls Wearing Animal Masks

I just wanted to blog about this blog because one of our grad students was doing something similar . . . . http://whitegirlswearinganimalmasks.tumblr.com/

It's also interesting to create a collection of this pseudo cultural phenomena.

OCMA + LACMA

Western Digital Hard Drives

So, I recently had some problems when trying to re-format my Western Digital 1TB external hard drive. When I google searched the solution, it turns out its a problem for all 1TB Western Digital hard drives.

(**Note: if you get an error message "error code 0" when you try to drop files over 4g onto your harddrive, it probably needs to be reformatted.)

So if anyone else has problems reformatting their harddrive from MDOS to MacOS, you have to:

1. Open Disk Utilities

2. Select the drive, then go to "Partition." Under "Volume Scheme" select "1 partition."

3. Press the options button and select the top or middle option.

Voila !

Project

Project Name: PBJ (working title)

Project Description: I will create various video and photographic using peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as a main element for each photo or video.

Conceptual Concerns: More than just a simple food staple, the peanut butter and jelly sandwich is the epitome of American lifestyle. PB&J is America. Since it is primarily associated as a childhood lunch, the PB&J Sandwiches will essentially become a surrogate for childhood, domesticity and the United States.

Technical Skills Covered: My main concerns with technical aspects of the project are learning the necessary tools to edit in Final Cut Pro. I will learn more about the program through Video Art class and Lynda tutorials. The second greatest concern is gaining as much control as possible over my camcorder. (For instance, just this weekend I learned that the screen on the camera is horribly inaccurate and to add 4 points to the exposure.) I hope to do this by possibly taking a good look at the User's Manual and through trial and error through different lighting situations. (Low light, outdoors, indoors, bright light, etc.)

Formal Guidelines: As already stated, I will be making both video and photographic works. I don't want to consider this a long term project. For now I will consider this a "small" project and hope to have to completed by mid-October. If I do come up with something successful (highly unlikely) I will probably continue the series to the final, producing 3 - 4 Photographic works and 3 videos.

Artistic References: "This American Life" program on MPR, Saturday morning cartoon shows and other children's entertainment programs, Winslow Homer, Childrens' drawings, Warhol (if American consumerism is considered), Dutch master vanitas paintings (possible source of rendition of food materials,) and others.

Readings: Readings will include Freud's theories of adolescence, Stuff White People Like (modern satire on American life,) Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood (a psychological perspective of childhood), and childrens' books, including: If you Give a Mouse a Cookie, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, If you Give a Moose a Muffin, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Where the Wild Things Are.

Grade: Grade will be based on the following criteria:

1. Is the work visually interesting?

2. Is the concept successfully conveyed through the work?

3. Is the final piece professional? (Are the videos displayed correctly? Are the photos mounted or framed or presented as needed?)

Goals List

1. Get work done.

2. Make something I actually like.

Things to keep in mind:

You can't drill holes through the wall of the Werby gallery.

I don't know how they installed flatscreens at glamfa with no cords showing.

and the fucking electrical outlet is on one side of the gallery.

GO TO OCMA

OCMA is free all next week (Wed - Sun.) Go go go!

(Some of the pieces from the video show are already de-installed. No more Ousler or Thater.)

This
is undoubtedly related to a company that was featured in a documentary film by a Cal Arts grad student. The company (FlatDaddy? I believe,) makes life-size card board cut outs for families that send in pictures of their beloved deployed soldier. The documentary showcased the effects on family dynamics when a parent is missing while raising larger questions about the photographic image and its relationship to being a substitute or surrogate for a "real" experience.

Are photographs really effective as coping mechanisms or a stand-in for any person, regardless if they are deployed in the army or not? As we move towards more internet-based interactions with one another it seems that the digital appearance of self is becoming increasingly more important.

BeatBoxin' is the stuff of dreams

So this isn't exactly inspirational or that insightful, but I can't stop watching (or listening) to this, so I might as well share.

This One's for You, Steph

Today I overheard an Intermediate photo student say to another photo student(non-jokingly), "Woah, I'm developing two rolls, I think I've shot the limit."

Yale Photo Grads <3 DiCorcia

This weekend I checked out the Yale Grad Photo Show on Sunset and was taken aback by the amount of conformity and traditionalism at the show. Since it was a group show with limited space, each grad student displayed one print from their body of work. All of the prints were roughly the same size (about 20x24), most of them were framed with no border (shadow box-like,) all were technically perfect, no grain, no spots, no scratches, perfect exposure, prefect printing, perfectly balanced colors, perfect color palette but . . . they all looked the same. No experimentation. No photos without a person in them. No non-narrative based photos. No abstraction. It was as if each student was supposed to do an assignment based on making their own DiCorcia or early Crewdsen.

Sorry Yale, but I could learn how to mimic DiCorcia on my own, without paying 30g a semester.

Artists Making Stuff

I found these three artists in a book called Sculpture Today. 

Paul McCarthy is well-known for his controversial video and sculpture pieces. The sheer absurdity of what he chooses to make is what is often intriguing about his work. (Giant inflatable poop, anyone?)  

Jane Alexander's work is inspired by her home in the southern part of Africa. From the text, "She deals with binary oppositions in her work: good versus evil, strength versus weakness, children and adults, oppressors and victims, and these children are a mix of confidence and vulnerability." 

Lastly is the artist Yoshiro Suda, whose extremely fine and delicate wooden sculpture works allow gallery visitors to interact with tiny pieces of "nature." His works are placed throughout the gallery space, as if actually growing from the walls. 

Storyboardin'

CLICK HERE and zoom in.

2 People Log-in = FAIL

Umm ya . . . Guess two people can't be on at once . . .

(Better) Color Correction

So this is image is a good example of the wonderful things raw files can do. The default white balance on the camera was probably set on day light, resulting in the very yellow picture on the top.

By simply adjusting the white balance in the raw menu to fluorescent I was able to get rid of most of the yellow cast. However, the image was still a little too cold. The info palette showed that the image was a little too cyan. I used curves to correct for cyan in the mid tones and highlights. Then the info numbers showed that the whites were a little too blue, so I corrected for that. On my screen the resulting image looks a little warm, (the face especially,) however, the numbers show that the whites are pretty balanced (each channel within 2 points of each other).

Larry Sultan

I really love Larry Sultan's series "Pictures from Home." He keenly used the pre-made, tacky palette of his parents' house to observe the couple in their home.

In the top image, his father's dark blue shirt complements the overall warmness of the image, especially the yellow decorations of the wallpaper behind him. The red articles of clothing pop next to their green companions and of course, the green carpet.

In the middle image the texture-less fields of green and white allow the objects to become almost like graphics instead of photographic. The large amount of green accentuates the warm tones in his mother's face and her shirt. The wall behind them becomes a blank nature back drop amongst the fake flora and fauna (the potted silk plants, the father's floral shirt, the organic patterns in the sides of the shelf).

The last image appears to be a great deal more cyan or blue than the previous two, but I am guessing that it is because it was from a different web source and only appears colder. Again, working with the green "grass" carpet, Sultan slightly plays with complementary colors with the pink curtain in the back and the hazy "real lawn" outside is contrasted by the brightness of the fake green inside.

All three of these images have a very similar palette: yellow-green, white, a variety of yellows and some kind of cooler color for accent (turquoise, blue, lavender, etc). The warmness allows the images to speak literally of "home." (Tungsten lights and of course the warm and fuzzies of returning to a nostalgic place). Without the white objects in the images, I feel that the picture would sink into a sea of green and become sickly and overwhelming. The use of white helps neutralize the overall image.

When I looked at the whites in the info palette, I was a little surprised. I guess because the overall image is so warm they look neutral but a lot of the whites are actually cold and have a good amount of blue in them. For instance, the dad's chair in the middle image appears to be neutral white but is actually blue. The numbers do reaffirm that the overall image is yellow.

Todd Hido

For me, night-time based shots have lost their luster. However, I do respect the technical aspects of color correcting a mixed light source image (especially with reciprocity failure, weird shifts, etc) and know that there is a lot of artistic judgment in the resulting image.

Todd Hido does a great job at maintaining the same mood and palette throughout his series despite different difficult lighting conditions.

(The way he uses color work reminds me a lot of your BFA portfolio Justin, except with the obvious exception of the chalk graffiti.)

I'm working on this video.

There's a hummm from the florescent light above that I can't get rid of.

I already tried "hum remover" low and high pass audio effect thingies.

:-(

GLAMFA

Color Correction (Or lack there of)

So this is a piece I did for a show when I was a naive young digital artist and didn't save anything but a few untitled versions (for shame!) and I'm pretty sure the final version I ended up printing is actually lost on a thumb drive or something.

But here is what I have. I moved from a yellow image to a more contrasty green image. I played a little bit with colors. There's little spots of red (the Dorito's bag, Vishal's sweater) and the only whites of the image echo each other on the right side. (The TV screen, Nicole's dress and the right side of the building.)

So it's pretty obvious that I had trouble decided where to push the image. It was a diorama shot on film with mixed lighting sources, so my intention was to make it look even more unnatural and never have a completely color-balanced image.

The info palette shows that on the last image, the right side of the building is actually a little magenta (it shows up on my screen also,) and the only neutral white is the TV screen.

If I were to print it today, I would take out more green and yellow and reduce some of the contrast because the trees in the background are clipped.

Naomi Leibowitz

Naomi Leibowitz has a wide variety of projects ranging from video to performance to collage. Most of her pieces address sexism towards women in society.

One of my favorite projects, "Sirens," shown above, combines stickers and drawings with Playboy centerfolds. It asks us what young girls have to look up to as it combines the profane with the innocent.

La Gringa

I made this video to poke fun of the tension in El Gringo. Here, I am welcomed by a cute, cuddy little puppy instead of fierce, barking dogs. Plus it gave me an excuse to start shootin' and open up FinalCut.

Axon

This is a clip from Alejandro Jodorowsky's "The Holy Mountain," which I watched way too many times over the summer. This movie is widely known (I think?) but if you haven't seen it, you need to. The visuals are stunning. Your eyes will have orgasms. Literally.

Anyway, this is my favorite "Chapter" of the movie because it shows that you can do a lot with simple items like fruit and ribbons and such. And . . . There's nothing better than a good castration.

Vitamin D

The next three posts are about artists I found from the book Vitamin D, a survey on contemporary artists that primarily use drawing as their medium of choice. It's a great book just to get an over-view of things going around in other art spheres and they have it at the library fo' free!

Simon Faithfull

Simon Faithfull's takes a new approach to traditional sketching by making artworks on his PDA. He posts or e-mails his drawings on his website.

His PDA drawings bring into mind how technology can shape our modern lives and again uses the pixel as a way to abstract, not clarify subjects.

Marcel Dzama

Marcel Dzama creates story book-like characters with an eccentric and creepy twist. The drawn figures are de-contextualized, relieving the characters of a complete narrative structure. Instead of a setting for the actions taking place, the viewer is left with a white or off-white background, reaffirming the absurdity and fantasy of the image and calling attention to the fact that the drawing is in fact, a drawing. His limited color palatte is also due to his use of strange mediums. The browns of the image provided were actually creating using root beer. This also creates another layer of childhood-like innocence to the piece.

Make sure to check out his website (just click on his name) because it includes larger versions of the images so you can witness all of the weird detail.

Dzama's drawings were especially interesting to me because of my own investigations of childhood and the strange. His work also reminds me of Anthony Goicolea
and this music video from Bat for Lashes:

D-L Alvarez

D-L Alvarez's work uses the pixel as a critique on modern society. The result is that the pixel is re-used as a drawing device, making technology more personal and "hand made", while simultaneously fragmenting his subjects.

Yep.

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/148087