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For my art assignment I decided to create an imaginary friend like JooYoung Choi. When I was a kid my friend and I would make these dolls out of duct tape and I immediately thought of this when I saw JooYoung’s assignment. Meet Petunia:

Petunia is made mostly from duct tape with her insides stuffed with pillow stuffing and her arms, legs, and mouth with cardboard. I used some craft supplies to make her features and skirt and super glued everything that wasn’t duct taped. Some of this stuff I had laying around and some of it I went to the store to buy. I bought two rolls of duct tape but only used half of one. With the leftover materials I plan to take them over to my 10 year old cousins house to see if she would like to make her own duct tape imaginary friend.

I made her like a puppet just like JooYoung made her friends in hopes of animating her in some way. I put this clamp on the back where the hand holes are because otherwise her head just falls back. I wasn’t very confident in my puppeteer skills so I ended up taking her to my work so she could have tea with a friend. My friend Kelsey enjoyed having a tea party and imagining if Petunia could talk, what her personality might be like.

Overall the process was pretty fun and nostalgic. It was interesting to go to the store during this time and having to wear a mask. That was the only thing that was unusual about this process considering the Covid-19 pandemic. I ended up straining my left wrist from all the pulling of the duct tape.

To Grind

To Tamp

To Pour

To Smile

To Open

To Work

To Serve

To Look

To Walk

To Help

To Eat

To Drink

To Create

To Bike

To Laugh

To Procrastinate

To Juggle

To Wash

To Brush

Are you in or are you out? A question that myself and many different voices were asking in a dream that I had. My idea for this video project basically stemmed from that dream. I was also inspired by the perfomance/video art work Fashionably Late for the Relationship, performed by Lian Amaris Sifuentes and filmed by R. Luke DuBois. In this work, Sifuentes is set up in a bedroom scene in the middle of New York City. She then acts as a woman preparing for a date. DuBois recorded this for 72 hours. In actual time, Sifuentes is moving as if she is in slow motion. After the performance, DuBois compressed the footage to make a 72 minute work of video art. What can be seen is Sifuentes seemingly moving at a normal pace while the world around her is sped up, creating an illusion of blurred images. I wanted to try this method of recording and editing.

Barbarella in the Excessive Machine: A Space Age Love Story

This chapter is interesting. I especially like thinking about time as a way of expressing narrative. This can be more obviously seen in movies and films with moving pictures, yet I am intrigued by the way photographers who work with still pictures like Duane Michals and Gregory Crewdson create implied time. In Michals The Creation, he simply uses a sequence of frames, even numbering them to show implied time. Crewdson creates implied time in his greatly detailed sets built to capture moments that seem to be taken from reality. Both of these artists use photography beyond just capturing real life and actual time.

I also think it’s interesting how recorded time and actual time can contrast so sharply, still artists can manipulate time so well to create illusions of or mimic time. I am fascinated by performance artist Lian Amaris Sifuentes collaboration with filmmaker R. Luke DuBois to create Fashionably Late for the Relationship. It would have been excellent to see the performance aspect of this work as it was happening in actual time, while anticipating the finished work.

Reading Cubitt’s essay initially had me thinking about my art history class. In this class we see that some of the first known pieces of art are cave drawings. As mentioned in Cubitt’s writings, moving image technologies in the form of shadows were of ancient art techniques. This has me wondering about the effects of projections on the very beginnings of ancient art. As I read on, the article began to give me a whirlwind of thoughts and feelings. At first, I thought how romantic it is to think of projection and painting in a way to remember the deceased, or to prepare for death like in Pliny’s story of the maid from Corinth. I like thinking about how art has been used as a record or a memento in the face of mortality. As well, how beautiful and inspiring it is to think of the Buddha as so radiant that he had to project his reflection into a pond so the artist sent to paint his portrait could do so. Then projection and image take on a more brutal and disturbing portrayal as Cubitt mentions the forbiddance of making images explicitly written in the Ten Commandments. Also, when described by Russian writer Maxim Gorky on his first experience with cinema in 1896, as the Kingdom of Shadows, a world without sound without color. Quite fascinating to think of projection in this way and how Cubitt connects all these writings and experiences.