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Thursday, October 30

10:33 PM
Hal Foster spoke here on Tuesday, and he was refreshingly intelligent. His lecture drew mostly from the title chapter of his book The Return of the Real, which lays out a theory based on some Lacan lectures. There is the paranoid view that there is a "gaze of the world", that we do not only look out but that the world looks at us. The intersection of these two gazes is an image screen by which we understand our world. Foster says that some contemporary art now attempts to puncture that screen in order to reveal the gaze (or, the real).

Maybe I shouldn't try to summarize it. Anyway, it's interesting - I've only read that chapter of the book (photocopied), but I'm going to look into the rest of it.

Tonight we had a visiting artist in Print Media - Dean Dass, Roland's professor from University of Virginia and a friend of Randy. Some of his work involves categorization of animals, or just categorization in general, and a bunch of other things I'm not sure how to explain. It's good though. Birds that curse Columbus and his men for coming to destroy the new world, making their conquest a struggle. A collection of things from science and art.

As usual, Randy (dept. head) thinks Dass's work is about reality/unreality and handmade/machine, but of course it isn't.

Tomorrow he'll be having individual crits with him, and I'm looking forward to getting a fresh perspective.

Monday, October 27

3:43 PM
The week before last our movie was Ghost in the Shell which I had never seen. It was pretty sweet - and picked by Kim instead of Randy, which was a nice change of pace (or theme). Last Friday there was no movie, but there was a lecture by Julia Driver of Dartmouth College. It was ok but not particularly insightful, just a review of some basic philosophy points with the Matrix as the jumping off point. We were an audience of artists and there were more off kilter things that we're interested in. So it got more interesting during question and answer.

I ordered a Powerbook online so it should come in a couple of weeks. Exciting.

Wednesday, October 22

9:40 PM
I like this.

Wednesday, October 15

1:24 PM
In the past 24 hours I've gotten four messages of "Hi, I haven't heard from you in a while." It's odd. and I think I'll be writing letters for a while.

Last Friday we had another movie: The Thirteenth Floor starring Craig Bierko and Gretchen Mol. It had a sort of interesting idea (yet again: is this reality or is it a kind of dream?) and gave it the cheesiest Hollywood treatment possible. Maybe it was being intentionally dumb, like Existenz. I forgive it because I like Craig Bierko.

Monday night I went bowling with some Print people and won both the games I bowled. I hadn't bowled in over five years, probably. Also, I talked to Dad and they bought a car to replace the dying Grand Marquis that I'm driving, and they're generously letting me drive it and having me pay for only half of it. I just need to get the old car home somehow.

Tuesday, October 7

2:26 PM
Friday night the Print Media dept. had a little private screening of Existenz, a movie about a virtual reality videogame that is indistinguishable from reality. the blatant sex and violence and bad acting are unfortunately unimpeachable because they are part of the content of the videogame. I dunno. It was probably a bad movie, but still a somewhat interesting idea.

Saturday I went with Gentian and Alisara to Chicago. It was a rather long drive. Shannon was in Chicago too (my main reason for going); she went with her family because her cousin's daughter went to the American Doll museum. Shannon went to the contemporary art museum with us, and then she had to leave after a few hours. We hung out with Alisara's friends, then drove home.

On Sunday there was a interdepartmental raft "regatta" at Cranbrook. I'd heard about the annual raft race from Jeffrey Adams, that artist and Cranbrook grad who spoke at UT last year. I'd assumed that it was still going, but this was the first it had been done in about 12 years. Six of the ten departments participated. Our dept. (actually, just Hilary and Roland - they made it on Saturday when three of us were gone) made a raft out of coiled plastic tubes. We lost our heat but won in the runner-up race (so 4th place). Sculpture won overall (they had a pirate theme and a skull-and-crossbones flag that said "Skull-pture"). There were also prizes aside from the time trial. We won best design, I think. It was fun.

There was also a pig roast that evening, and it was pretty good, but I didn't stick around very long.

This morning I had my first critique. I had two drawings similar to Cosmographic but on different size paper (longer and more scroll-like). I got some pretty good feedback. I'm going to start a digital drawing in Illustrator that I can print out on the big Epson 3000 printer. I already did a few sketches in it using a Wacom tablet I borrowed and it's exciting. It won't look like my physical drawings, but I'm interesting in how I can manipulate the drawings in a slightly different way and make them interesting to look. Also, they can be more complex than when drawn with a real pen.

Wednesday, October 1

1:48 PM
Just went to a really fascinating lecture by sound artist David Dunn. We got to hear recordings of plasma waves that eminate from the planets, seals under water and 100 feet of ice making sounds like electronic instruments, and a computer Dunn designed to interact with creatures in the natural environment who in turn react to the sounds it produces.