Human Body Needed Inspiration

This American Life: Episode 468 ~ Reflection

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Lick and Lather ~ Reflection

I think that Janine Antoni is a very note resting and dynamic artist. She loves to have meaning behind every project and even within each project. She is very specific about what materials she uses and were they come from. She is also careful and particular in her process, of how she creates the art. She doesn't want the materials to become lost in the final piece. 

I love how important it is for her to use her body in her art pieces. It brings out the factor that we often forget, that art is labor intensive. In the scene where she is painting with her hair, it struck me as an odd but beautiful thing. Janine thinks outside the box as an artist, but she does so simplistically. Everything she uses in her pieces and everything she does has a purpose and a meaning and I admire her for that. 

The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas ~ Reflection

I found the story disturbing. A whole community of people turn their backs and forsake one child for the sake of their own happiness. How selfish.

This first part of the story describes the Festive of Summer.  "In the streets... Processions moved. . .  The music beat . . . And the people danced." As I read this section of the story I imagined a great festival, of all the colors and noises, and I though of gallons. Lots of ballons. 

I continued reading the story until I reached the part about the small captive child. "The room is about three paces log and two wide...in the room the child is sitting." This made me think of a cage.

"They all know it is there, the people of Omelas. . . They all know it has to be there." This is the reason the sculpture s displayed upside down.

The Easter eggs are though of as balloons. They are clear so that you can clearly see that they have nothing on the inside. They are empty, devoid of real meaning. The cage is black on the inside and contains the purple egg, with repreces the small neglected child. The colorful, outside of the smaller cage and te larger geometric cage are attempts to detract from the truth of what is going on. The purple egg that is inside the cage contains the ring that holds up the intire group of eggs. The whole sculpture is hung upside down for this reason: the child is keeping the whole society from collapsing. 

Touch, A Natural History of the Senses ~ Reflection

Touch is important to us. It makes things tangible and real. We are constantly touching something, whether it be our feet on the floor or our back on the bed. Touch is how we communicate and how we understand things. Texture is important, it help us to recognize objects.

Our world is three dimensional, doesn't it make sense to portray it in three dimension? The third dimension makes sense to our brains, because we can reach out and touch it. Its right there. Its concrete and solid.

This also makes it interesting to play around with. Can we create something that is real but unrealistic? I can create something that you can touch, therefore it is real. However my creation can portray something that is so far from reality that it doesn't exist. But it does, because you can touch it.

The Tokens ~ Reflection

The Tokens shows how important and sentimental some objects are to us. It isn't  necessarily the object itself that we hold valuable, its what the item means to us. We often assign sentimental value to object for a variety of reasons. We could attach a specific memory or feeling to an object. That object can remind us of a person, or a place.

These items hold value for us because we want them to. The serve as a reminder of times and thing past, and they allow us to hold on to our memories in a physical way.

On Longing ~ Reflection

absent for in class discussion