With the topic being conceptual art, the entire class banded together to make a piece composed of letter-sized paper and thick graphite lines. I'm not quite so sure the goal was to make something that was aesthetically-pleasing, because the end result was pretty anti-climactic. As the name implies, conceptual art is more about the concept and its implementation than the final product, and there was actually a bit of a system involved to the piece described above. We had to draw randomly from a hat a certain type of line, and put it together respectively to the order in which we had drawn. So to some degree it wasn't completely random. I tend to think it's the participant's discretion whether they want to take anything away from the experience and the boundaries are really quite limitless.

Since the video of my piece is too large to post, I decided to just post a photo of the final product.

performing art

Jaime and Lindsay had the task of performing my proposal. I thought they did a wonderful job and it turned out better than I expected. I was thinking that they would sit beside each other but they chose to sit opposite each other and that aspect made the design much more interesting. I had them close their eyes and trace each other's hands onto a single sheet of paper. It took some focus and teamwork to not poke one another with the pens. This was more of a meditative experiment. I wanted them to focus on their interaction with the other person and reflect on how they could communicate with the other person without the use of words or sight. I also wanted them to think about the aspect of design.

I had the pleasure of performing both Kayla's and Lindsay's piece. First I performed Lindsay's with Pavlos. It was like a take on chirades. Basically, without using words we had to act out an idea or object and make the other person guess what that idea was. I chose to act out a birdhouse and Pavlos chose Guitar Hero. I also participated in Kayla's project with Liz. In this piece, I had to blow green bubbles and make a 5' by 5' square. Liz had blue bubbles and she had to outline my green square. This was a little messy and hard on the knees but we made it happen.

dada and tzara

DADA was an international movement originating out of Zurich, Switzerland that reached its peak during 1916-1920. It was mostly a reactionary movement against the horrors of World War I. Tristan Tzara was one important figure who laid the foundations for the DADAist movement. Born in 1896, he grew up to become most famous for his manifestos which were some of the first Dadaists texts including "The First Heavenly Adventure of Mr. Antipyrine", "Twenty-Five Poems", and "Seven DADA Manifestos". His philosophy is known for embracing contradiction and chaos and being against conformity and logic. Along with André Breton, Philippe Soupault, and Louis Aragon, Tzara performed pieces to shock the public. He was also a poet. He had an intense energy that was crucial to the success (or failure) of the DADAist movement which meant to destroy the values of the current culture. Tzara explains in "DADA Manifesto on Feeble Love and Bitter Love" that, "DADA is not a doctrine to be put into practice: Dada - is for lying: a successful business. Dada gets into debt and doesn't live on its well-filled wallet." In 1930, perhaps tired of his own pessimistic and nihilistic outlooks, he joined the much lighter Surrealist movement. Later he joined the Communist Party and then the French Resistance during World War II. Tzara passed away in 1963.


Information retrieved Nov. 5th 2007.

http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/dada/Tristan-Tzara.html

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9074038/Tristan-Tzara

http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/tristan_tzara

shadow

At first, I thought the main point of this experiment was to try and prevent your partner from staying in your shadow, so I started out skipping, jumping, and making sudden movements to try keep Ashley out of my shadow. Once I realized that we were trying to do the opposite, I started moving slower. When Ashley and I traded positions (signaled by the tapping of two stones) I found it quite challenging to complete the experiment successfully. If Ashley moved away from the sun, it was hard to predict where she might go next. Since we had to be silent, I started to think about the significance of the assignment. I thought of a quote I had seen stenciled onto a wall in France. Roughly it translates to, "Leave the prey in the shadows." So I started thinking about the idea of weakness and darkness and perhaps a connection between the two. This assignment was pretty much how I expected it to be, but perhaps a bit more challenging.