Respon to week2 lecture + tutorial in week 3

My new life in university is beginning, there is full of excitement, unknown and curiosity. To be honest, I am even confused about what I am doing and what i am going to do, especially I am studying a subject that I have never expected to participate in called Media Art. However, it is no way for me to escape from this situation so i have to try my best to deal with it. And then I did find something interesting that really motivate me to keep moving on. In the first meeting of Contemporary & New Media Art , Linda raised a very inspiring question to us: What is art? Actually, I got no idea about it at that time. Although I like drawing and interested in studying the skill of drawing, I seldom think of the definition of art. After the lecture , I was eyes opened. This is the very first time that I really step into the art world.

 

So what is art? Linda gave us several ideas:

Art object is a debatable object.

Art is constructed by history and criticism

Art as archiving

Art as field study

Art is about maximizing one’s tools

Art can ask a question.

Art can be a concept.

Art is about philosophical thinking.

A work is also a work in progress……

 

Well, it seems complicated and honestly I am still thinking of this question but Linda did provide the basic concept of art to us which encouraged us to think deeper. Linda also show us some impressive art works to explain her ideas like the comparison of mermaid between different artists.

                                                   

                                                    A Mermaid (1900)
                                                    by John William Waterhouse
                                                       (1849-1917)

 

                                                  Mermaid, Rene Magritte, 1935

Wow, they really shocked me when i first time saw those pictures. And then i realised art works are presenting the way of artists thinking! We should not just define art by whether it is beaultiful or not, Art, definitely, is more than that!Now I know that art object may not be beautiful but it‘s always meaningful and it can make people pay attention to it. Every thing about the art work can raise question such as the material it used, the angle it took, the means of presentation it applied etc.

 

Moreover, Linda told us to do some research of  Robert Rauschenberg and his work:Open Score(

http://www.9evenings.org/)

which is a documentary of the 9Evenings: theatre and engineering event series. I found that Robert Rauschenberg was not just a painter, he was also working with sculture, photography, printmaking, papermaking, performance etc.He innovated his art works as "combine paintings" whick means he used painting and sculture at the same time in one work.

For example:

                                                  Robert Rauschenberg , monogram

It's quite interesting. I am wondering why he named it 'monogram'.Is this Robert's signature or something that represent himself?What 's the meaning of the goat?why it's stuck in a tyre?

 



The Open Score performed several works produced by Robert Rauschenberg and other artists, engineers and scientist. The video divided into three parts, it began with a tennis match. In the game the two players didn't use the normal rackets to play the game, their rackets installed with a device that can make the bang sound when hitting the ball. Also, every time they hited the ball, it would transmit a signal by the Fm transmitter then a light would be switched off. Finally the court became totally dark. The second part performed by 100 people standed on a stage with no light and listened to Robert's command to do something strange, the process was taken by a infrared camera . The third part of the video showed a perfomance which Rorbert himself took part in.

 

The 9 evenings event revealed that art and technology can be incorporated, it 's in fact a breakthrough in that generation as the technological things were just spring up. They also pointed into the future that technology such as Video projection, wireless, sound transmission etc would become more and more common and artist can apply it on to their art works. It represented a new age of art--the age Contemporary and New Media Art. I am really excited about it which makes me want to know more about new media art.

 

Then in the tutorial lesson, we were told to form a group of 5 people and choose a peice of art work to explain why it is art. Our group picked a series of photograph taken by Man Ray named Mr and Mrs Woodman.

We thought the posts of the two wooden man and the interection between the couple were interesting. Also, their action seems to be making love, but sometime we can see that they are fighting together, or we can say that they are dancing. What are they doing indeed? There are always some questions in my mind when I look at these photos.What does the woodenman represent for?

 



 

Finally, if you ask me again what the art is, i can tell you that i don' know yet but i am going to know it in my rest of life.