vdta '18

500LETTERS ARTIST STATEMENT

incredibly accurate !!!!1! thank you for your service

http://500letters.org/

Since the early 1970s Hamish Fulton (born 1946) has been labelled as a sculptor, photographer, Conceptual artist and Land artist. Fulton, however, characterises himself as a 'walking artist'.

Fulton first came to prominence in the late 1960s as one of a number of artists – including Richard Long and Gilbert & George – who were exploring new forms of sculpture and landscape art. A central characteristic of their practice was a direct physical engagement with landscape. Fulton's time as a student at St. Martin's College of Art in London (1966-68) and his journeys in South Dakota and Montana in 1969, encouraged him to think that art could be 'how you view life', and not tied necessarily to the production of objects. He began to make short walks, and then to make photographic works about the experience of walking.

DATA COLLECTION

so far, the book with the highest ear count is (unsurprisingly) a wild sheep chase, with 138

followed by 1q84 with 105

some choice lines:

While I was inside her, I would kiss that ear, give it little bites, run my tongue over it, blow my breath into it, inhale its fragrance.

A freshly made ear and a freshly made vagina look very much alike, Tengo thought.

Those ears had me in their thrall. They were the dream image of an ear. The quintessence, the paragon of ears. Never had any enlarged part of the human body (genitals included, of course) held such strong attraction for me. They were like some great whirlpool of fate sucking me in.

I felt her ear between my fingers. It was a wonderful sensation.

WOULD THESE TURN MURAKAMI ON?

Solipsist explores language as a closed system through speech recognition software and a receipt printer. This project takes speech recognition as the paradigmatic example where linguistic expression meets contemporary technology. Taking Mel Bochner’s text Serial Art, Systems, Solipsism (1967) as a point of departure, Solipsist explores the implications for free expression when speech is inscribed within machine listening systems. The form of the receipt brings ideas of validation and evidence to the project–the viewer leaves with proof of having spoken, evaluated through the impassive arbitration of the technical-administrative system. The viewer can say whatever they want, but the system only hears them in the finite terms of the language it knows.

x Solipsist, Robert Twomey (2012)

inspiration and prequel

week 8 | MILESTONE REVIEW

MY TRUE LOVE, THE IMPOSSIBLE

two ideas: 

1. there is a small relief sculpture of alexander the great near the corner of russell and swanston. as is tradition, he has a tiny penis. I wire a bright red button over the penis that says “touch here!”

I have some sort of condom inflation machine that is fed information from the button

every time the button is pressed, the condom inflates

why? good question. who gives into curiosity? who can’t keep their hands to themselves? a look into vulgarity?

why not? can’t. illegal. also difficult

2. billboards along busy roads that say “honk if you love ____”

e.g. “honk if you love jesus”/“honk if you love brad pitt”/“honk if you love ella fitzgerald”

next to them are animatronic figures of the mentioned person. they register every time a honk is made and wave their arms in return

why? a public popularity contest. who gets a honk? who doesn’t?

why not? too difficult. also would need permission to install. maybe illegal

I’D RATHER DIE

that’s me being dramatic. there isn’t anything I’m 100% ruling out at this point, but I likely won’t be looking into self-tracking data

I feel like most datavis works I see are in that field, and not that that’s a problem, but I don’t think I’d be adding anything new to the scene

also, I don’t want to examine myself that closely. leave me be!

IT COULD HAPPEN

something to do with literary texts? google captchas? 

text messages? imessage tracking? tinder conversations? online dating?

WEEK 6: SLAVE TO THE ALGORITHM

thoughts: ok well, processing is very fun (colours! shapes! I control them!) and easy enough to do with clear instructions, but I’m not sure how creative I could be without those instructions. of course, it all comes with practise and trial and error

26.03.18 | BAD FRUITS BAD FRUITS

OUR BOYS IN CONSTRUCTION

although not our initial plan, I think the fruit worked out quite well with our narrative

the fruit allow us to take a step away from the art and view them in their numbers without seeing ourselves — the human babies — first

also, they keep the piece lighthearted and playful, removing the easy cynicism that often comes from works critiquing the relationship between art and social media — why don’t people just look at the art and not their phones!!! etc etc. 

that may be part of our discussion but it’s not the primary drive of it, so the fun little fruit keep that in check, I think

WHERE ARE ALL THE PLASTIC BABIES

if I haven’t mentioned this before, our original plan for this project was to make a clear acrylic box filled with painted plastic babies, representing each genre of work that people posted on instagram (with the babies symbolic of the selfie, or the human in the frame)

you would be able to see which categories triumphed in number through the colours

we then decided, instead, to make a white walled box representing the ngv gallery, with the babies standing around the floor, observing invisible art on the walls

BUT TINY CHEAP PLASTIC BABIES ARE VERY HARD TO FIND???

online we could only source sellers that were situated in WA, or brisbane, or perth — basically anywhere that wasn’t melbourne and wouldn’t get to us in time

in actual brick&mortar shops we couldn’t source any

THE TOP TEN MUST SEE yadda yadda

x x x x

a quick google search shows pretty much the same images that we’ve been sorting through

I can understand a platform like instagram highlighting only the most visually captivating works, but surely a news article that goes into depth about what the ‘must-see’ pieces are could have elaborated on the pieces that were just as interesting, if not as photogenic?

of course this isn’t surprising in any way; these specific works have become ‘the face’ of the triennial and are probably the main reason that so many people are going, and any exposure is good exposure (right?) — but from the perspective of someone who has been sorting hundreds of photos of the same thing — please! some variety!

group project | NGV TRIENNIAL DATA 

our narrative: the correlation between what is offered and what is posted, or: which genres of art do people gravitate towards exhibiting on social media (instagram)?

we divided up 1000 of the most recent instagram posts tagged with #ngvtriennial at 200 photos per person, and then individually sorted them into genres and marked whether or not it was a selfie/had a person intentionally present within the frame

19.03.18 | FRAME ACTIVITY

my frame resembled some sort of carved jack-o-lantern face

I HAVE MET MANY SCIENTISTS THROUGH MY WORK WITH NASA, and I am fascinated by the scales they work with, from molecules to the expanse of the universe. They are similar to artists in many ways, but they think beyond the conceptual. They can easily break the laws of nature through their practice and create an entirely new set of rules to follow. In that way, their work is very much like that of a poet or a musician.