In Class Reflection on "Power"

After seeing the works of art that hold "power" over people I understand exactly why they do. In the case of the pictures on naked children it is not a positive power that they hold but a negative one. Almost every person in the class was in complete cohesion when say that, that shouldn't be allowed to photograph children in that way. Some could understand why and how the pictures were probably taken but no one was flat-out, "Yes. This is okay as art and I have no problem with it."

A couple of the other pieces held different types of power. The Mexican people acting inside the glass boxes really interested me because I have spent extended time in Mexico. I thought it was interesting how people could go up and share their confessions about what they thought about Mexico and how it was almost always a media-based assumption.

The sexual figurines that were shown were definitely meant for shock value. I have come across Takshi Murakami's work in other art classes in the past and I found it interesting how he could make such happy, playful work of flowers and smiley faces with all kinds of vibrant colors and flora and then completely change directions and go to very adult, sexual versions of what look like children's toys. I personally would never make something for a shock value merely because I would rather stimulate thought on a piece where you study every part of it and what it means rather than seeing something and closing your eyes or turning away almost immediately like many of my classmates did.

In this project I am planning on taking some sorts of logos and changing them to become art themselves rather than symbols for, what I believe to be, destructive things.

-N8

Ecology - Reflection - "Luke Gnarles Seaman"

Ecology: the scientific study of the relationships organisms have with each other and with their natural environment. After hearing the definition of "ecology" in class I decided to go for something about the relationship of humans to different environments. I always get asked the question, "Mountains or beach?" and almost every time, North Carolinians prefer the beach and people who have recently moved here prefer the mountains. Point of view. I see it as all environments and how we relate to them is simply a point of view. I, for instance, prefer going to the mountains and climbing rocks, skiing down slopes, and longboarding down hills whereas other people I know prefer the ocean and sun rather than mountains and clouds. It was this thinking that brought me to the thought of doing a project on longboarding.

I spend hours every week longboarding like many people spend them going to the gym or studying for classes. It has become a part of me just as much as my love of music and art and because of that I have focused various different works of art towards it to pay respect to something I love doing. As a longboarder, I look at the world differently. Where most people would see a mere staircase, I almost instantly calculate in my mind, "How many stairs is that? Could I land the impact without getting hurt from that height? Could I jump far enough to clear the last stair?...." When I am driving in my car up/down a big hill most people would see a hill, occasionally you would get people thinking about sledding but that is normally exclusive to fall/winter time and a longboarder would do the same calculation, "How fast could I get going down this hill? Is my board hardware tailored to survive until the bottom without falling to pieces? Are there blind corners where traffic could be coming? If I fall how bad will the injury be?....." It is all merely a point of view.

For this reason I chose to do a picture of Luke (my younger brother) doing a trick called a "slide" where you break the wheels' rolling friction from the ground and slide (much like socks on a waxed floor) until your wheels begin to roll again. I chose a photograph because longboarding is such an action-adrenaline sport and no other medium could really capture what I was trying to express for this project. I chose a sequence of photos because I wanted to show the progression of the slide from the "wind-up" to the actual slide progressing towards the exit. Also because of the nature of longboarding, I wanter to show the speed and high-voltage nature of the sport. The filters and coloring I used are supposed to be a throwback to the 50's when skateboarding actually started and the smudges on the pieces are merely for aesthetic appeal.

If I were to go back and do this project again I would not change a thing. I went out for a boarding outing with some friends originally but when I took the pictures they just seemed too staged. I later went out with my brother and received the shots necessary in a single take which just reiterates how you can't stage something so natural. I don't even remember how I made the filters to look how they did with the reddish tint and I tried going back to recreate it because a friend asked me about my process and I couldn't do it. This whole project was a "fly by the seat of my pants" experience and I thoroughly enjoyed the subject matter and assignment as a whole.

-N8