#response5

I chose the video "Their World Is Not Our World" by Susannah Sayler and Edward Morris. They are two Americans born two years apart. The video is 23 minutes long, and is apparently a work in progress. In the video, the narrator who is male, goes on a trip to Oostvaardersplassen, where the woman he accompanies wants to take photos and explore the land. The general public are not allowed to enter the park, they're only allowed to look at it from the outside. The male narrator says that he only really goes on the trip to be with the woman photographer, and that he just wanted to spend time with her. However, based on his narration he learned a lot in the process. He speaks of the "re-creation" of extinct animals to be placed in the park, and the park's creation and the surrounding community as a sort of idealistic and utopian place. He speaks of the animals as if they have maintained their innocence in a world where humans have not. For example, when he explains the concept of the "nazi cow" he says what they're really called, and then their nickname, and then proceeds to comment on the nickname saying "as if it was their fault what happened". he explains how the nazis wanted to make a hunting grounds with only purebred indigenous animals that a certain man (i forgot his name) could kill off for sport. The juxtaposition of these innocent and unknowing animals next to the kind of person that wants to kill others both because they believe they don't belong on the earth, but also for fun. The quote "Their world is not our world" comes about when the narrator is expressing the obvious differences between animals and humans, if you can say that humans are not animals. I believe that quote to be true. We as humans can never truly know what goes on in those animals' heads because they don't speak our languages. In a way, the fact that we don't share the same "world" means that we have no right to destroy theirs. we live by the same means but have no mutual understanding of one another. The rule forbidding the public to enter the park is also artistic in a way he mentions that the photographer said, a "don't touch the art kind of thing" but I feel like there should be another reason. The land in and of itself is not untouched, because those animals were human made, and the community of houses on the water is man made as well, but preventing humans without permits to enter the park is kind of a tribute to the means of the park's creation. I watched the end and the beginning of the video, im not sure how much of it I missed during the video but there was one quote that struck me toward the middle or end which was "the other type of hunters that came were the news cameras". This makes me feel a type of way because it shows how humans not only ruin nature by tearing it up and poaching, but also with invasive methods involved in documentation. To me, one can never truly feel the atmosphere of a place through a video; this reminds me of the concept of images from Ways of Seeing, and how the images which are distributed into different homes change their meaning. Even as I am sitting and watching the video about Oostvaardersplassen, my perception of the place is changed by the point the video is making, the soundtrack, the voiceover, the images and the order in which they're presented to me, these things all affect my idea of what that park is and what it is there for. When the narrator mentions the news cameras, it is after a period of silence in which there are video clips of the specially bred horses galloping around, and people taking video or photo or just watching. He then proceeds to speak of the death that begins occurring, and it is almost hard to listen because of the graphic clips that accompany his speech. Animals in the process of dying, animals lying dead on the ground or in the water, animals rotting, and flies picking at their decaying flesh. It's almost disturbing-- but we know as humans that this sort of thing is happening because of our interference in the natural world, it just doesn't become as real to some people until they see it. This video makes me look at certain things in a different light now, especially about the world of animals and what they think about that's deeper than what they're going to eat or how they're going to reproduce. I hope that they do have that deeper thinking, but I suppose I'll never know.

I chose to observe Diane Burko’s prismacolor pencil on Arches paper drawing “Eastern Plains of Colorado #1.” Looking at this drawing, it can be easily recognized as an aerial view of a river surrounded by mountains and trees and other plots of land. The view near the top fades away, as if we were looking at this landscape in person, the detail would fade and blur together as we looked at points farther away. I loved how she used darker gray shading on the mountains/grey forms in the lower left corner to depict the shadows/reflections of clouds overhead. While up close, I thought those forms looked weird and I questioned why she chose to include them, but when I backed away and saw a smoother version of the whole picture, I was amazed by how well it worked to look like it would in person. However, just because the landscape is recognizable does not necessarily mean it is portrayed realistically. Burko’s choice of medium greatly influences the perception of this drawing. The rough paper creates white space within each color she uses, no matter how dark or hard she used the pencil. This was a feature that immediately attracted my eye, and I really enjoyed the effect it created on the drawing, but it immediately informs the audience that this is a drawing, with a near-abstract depiction of color, rather than reassuring the audience that this drawing is as good of an interpretation of reality as she could manage. From afar, the white spots are barely noticeable. It creates a pleasant, light, but dimensional perspective on what she is depicting. Up close, the dots take up nearly half the image. In between every color, every pencil-stroke, the white space is there. When inspecting the drawing close-up, the white space creates texture. The landscape is recognizable and very coherent; however, I feel the coloring technique, choice of medium, and white space immediately alerts the viewer that the artist made a creative choice to deviate from what they saw in reality in order to make it more visually appealing. Initially, I did not get a sense of expression, that this drawing “came from within” or showed emotion—which made sense, since it is a drawing of a landscape… However, once I read the description for the drawing, I understood that there was an issue Burko was trying to address. She claims that this series focuses on global warming, especially glacial melting in the arctic. When I read this, I assumed this river was a new river caused by increased snowmelt. As I progressed in reading her caption, I learned that this drawing was actually meant to show road-building and agriculture have created artificial shapes on the land. So, while this drawing does represent a “bigger picture,” I am not sure it “stands on its own” because I only interpreted it as a landscape, not the impact humans have on it, until I read the description. This could relate to our discussion on the Gombrich reading, or Errol Morris’ “Photography as a Weapon” essay, where there is an argument that the truth of a painting may change as a title/caption is revealed or changed. While I saw this drawing and saw a landscape before reading the caption, I could have read the caption first and immediately recognized—even sought out—the man-made forms on the land. However, without knowing this drawing was focusing on man-made forms, I simply accepted them as a natural part of the landscape. After staring at the painting for a long time (about 5 minutes) I began to zone-out, honestly. I thought I had recognized the forms, what was happening, etc. But after about a minute, I snapped back and tried to continue the in-depth observation. What I recognized was that I could see the graphite/pencil Burko had used to sketch out the initial design. I noticed a tiny white square in the bottom right corner of the drawing, and spent some time trying to figure out what that was. I stood up and got closer to the drawing to see if the heavier-colored spots rose higher on the drawing than the faded areas (they did not). Ultimately, I learned that even though I had thought I was done looking at the drawing, and thought that it was just a simple landscape and I didn’t have too much to observe, there is a lot to recognize in a drawing of something seemingly familiar. Even though I had interpreted it initially as just trees, mountains, a river etc, I had a lot to learn and observe. I’m sure if I went back to sit in front of it again I would discover even more.

 The artist first in both pictures, distorts the face of a certain person. In the black and white image, the artist creates triangles and places pieces of the face into each triangle. The artist then shows the original image image in the corner. The artist in the second image, cuts the face off a person and places the eyes in the center. The image is also, almost symmetrical over the middle. This shows a two face figure.