Mimicry

Mimicry in art copies another discipline or established practice. It is a blurry line between art making and appropriation, and can be one of the most controversial forms of art for such reasons. It takes something not usually recognized as art, and puts it in the context of art. It is a "play" or "presentation", to get people to appreciate the subject or idea as a think of inquiry rather than just an everyday object, occurrence or practice.

Intentionality and purpose is the key aspect of mimicry. You can't just take a tree and put it in an art museum and say "this is art." Well, you probably could (after all, Duchamp did the same with a urinal!), but what makes it meaningful is WHY the artist wants to present it at art. What point is the artist trying to make? What can we learn from this? It is about the concepts of the object idea, more than just the physical form or procedure.

As a whole, mimicry is a lot more open-ended to the viewer than most other forms of art. It is an art practice that begs the viewer to wonder and ask questions, rather than tell the viewers answers. Basically, it asks rather than tells or answers. 

More than Just an Image

One of my art profs told me that you have to take in artwork like someone would take in nature. You don't come to it with preconceived notions of what it "should" or "shouldn't" be. You take it in and engage with it, discovering and experiencing what it is. It is a process of exploration and curiosity.
This idea opens can take a piece of art from simply being a representation, to an open-ended host of options, meanings and symbols. It allows the art to be more than what it looks like.
Let's take Ai Weiwei's "Sunflower Seeds" for example.



Image from pascalepetit.blogspot.com.

Image from http://www.designboom.com/cms/images/erica/---newsunflower/sunflower01.jpg

Image from http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2010/10/11/1286795618795/ai-weiwei-sunflower-seeds-006.jpg
This piece was installed at the Tate Museum. It consists of 100 million porcelain sunflower seeds, carpeting the floor. Outside of the coolness of these seeds in general (seriously… a hundred million sunflower seeds laying her all handcrafted with amazing detail… open for you to walk through, lay in, or whatever you wish…), there are quite a few interesting things going on here.
First, each of these seeds was handmade by someone in Jingdezhen, China, a town that once made porcelain for the imperial court…. which has been saved from bankruptcy by making small sunflower seeds. The seeds all look exactly identical, but are, in fact, unique.
All of the seeds symbolize the masses of China. Each piece is a part of the whole work, in the same way that each Chinese person is just a piece of the whole of China as a body of people. In a sense, Ai Weiwei is showing the power China has in it's people, even in just the fact that they can get a whole town to just make these seeds. He seems to be saying "Hey, look at us… know what we have that you don't?? We have the power of the masses. Even if we don't have certain resources, or even if we are going bankrupt (Jingdezhen), we have people that can do stuff, and that's pretty awesome." It really brings home the idea of the whole "Made in China" concept, too, where China's people crank out stuff for the Western world to consume. As Ben Valentine writes, "Ai used a factory of workers to talk about factory labor and Chinese ideals concerning individuality; the contradictions are embedded in the piece, which may be why it’s so compelling."
The use of the seeds is important as well. They, as already stated, represented the masses of China, which had been depicted as sunflowers turning to the sun (Mao) in propaganda during the Cultural Revolution. Ai Weiwei himself said,"Chairman Mao is the sun and all the ordinary people loyal to the party are the sunflowers." The fact that Weiwei made his piece into a body of seeds directly references to that, and could indeed too be reminding people of the "Great Leap Forward" campaign of Mao to turn China from an agrarian society to a more "modern" society… a campaign that caused millions of deaths due to starvation. Sunflower seeds were shared in these times of social unrest ("Sunflower seeds were also the frugal diet on which many peasants only just managed to survive during 'The Great Leap Forward'") and were kind of a symbol of friendship and compassion.
In light of all of these meanings, Weiwei's placement of this work in a museum, where it can be interacted with, is really interesting. Putting these seeds here for the public to touch and interact with was a way of sharing his seeds with the world.

http://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/ai-weiwei-unloads-millions-sunflower-seeds-new-york-winterhttp://www.faurschou.com/work-descriptions-exhibited-artworks-from-the-collection/about-artwork-sunflower-seeds-by-ai-weiweihttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11515658http://hyperallergic.com/57619/ai-weiwei-haines-gallery/http://artasiapacific.com/Magazine/72/SunflowerSeedsAiWeiwei

Integrating Art into the Contemporary Classroom

So art helps us learn, right? And we need to learn things to make art. They go hand-in-hand. So how do we go about intentionally structuring the classroom to integrate art into the other disciplines?
In her article, "Five Ways to Integrate: Using Strategies from Contemporary Art," Julia Marshall lists a few methods:

1. DEPICT
• Render/sculpt from observation. Study something and recreate what you see.
• Can help further art making AND help study something in relation to a subject. Ex: Drawing the bones of a skeleton would help me know how to draw people more proportionately and be able to understand the bumps and dips in the human form as I draw them in the future. Also, it would help me understand how my own body works and is made up, and I can use that knowledge for more practical purposes in the future.
2. EXTEND/PROJECT
• Envision possible outcomes (What could be or what could happen?) and make artwork about that.
• This is an inquiry about what might happen based on what we already know. It combines fact and fiction. It is similar to the process of storytelling.
• Want an example of this? Check out the 2013 ArtPrize entry "The Future of Genetic Manipulation on an Ecosystem," by Rob Vander Zee 



Source: http://adventuremomblog.com

3. REFORMAT
• Recontextualize an object or idea.
• Taking an idea from an area of study or an object associated with one thing and giving it a new context, purpose, or look allows us to see different meanings or purposes it may have.
• Through art inquiry, Marshall explains this might look like making "postcards from a trip around [our] brains or minds" or "portraying cells or organs as characters in a photo album, comic book, or formal portrait."
4. MIMIC
• "Play out" methods used in other disciplines. Ie: "mimic botanists by collecting and studying plants from the local market" or "mimic anthropologists in studying notions of "cool"…" by interviews and photographing other students
• To me, this is the least "artsy" form of integration. It is more of a performance than an art practice. Marshall admits this herself, saying "mimicking as an art strategy stretches the conventional notions of art". It would be more of a learning through studying an action rather than an object or idea.
5. MAKE METAPHORS
• Probably my favorite form of integration. This takes two different things and fuses them together. It's a juxtaposition. It describes one thing in the terms of another. I love this because it raises curiosity (How do these 2 different things relate?) and allows us to describe things otherwise hard to describe.
• This might include symbols, such the ritual masks of animals used in Native American culture depicting ideas such as power, wisdom, or the ability to reach other realms.
• David Wojnarowicz's "Something From Sleep III" creates the silhouette of a man filled with planets and galaxies, creating a metaphor that explains the human consciousness in the terms of the cosmos. From it we might deduct the expansiveness of the human mind or imagination, or how knowledge is gained by looking at the universe.

The Art of Learning

I think that practicing art is one of the best ways to learn. Perhaps I'm biased. I AM an artist.
Yet, I believe that all forms of learning all use the same methods of learning or understanding that art contains inherently. One cannot HELP but learn through art. Why?

• Art is observing. If your goal in art is to create something believable, you HAVE to know at least a little bit about what you're referencing. You have to know what it looks like, how it might move, sit, or act. You have to know what it's proportions are, and what it's properties are. Even if you are making something up that doesn't exist, odds are you are drawing something that references other things. You go in with a certain knowledge of what different parts of it "should" be like based off of the knowledge you have of what is true about things that do exist. Through art, then, we gain understanding of how things work, look, interact. We learn in what contexts they exist and what properties they have. Through observing we make relationships and gain understanding, and are able to use what we know and use that to help us ask and answer questions about other things we observe as we go through life.
• Art is asking questions. How does (insert object) look? What about in a different context? What is important to me? What might be important to someone else? Why? Why did someone else decide design something in this way? Could it be done better? Why doesn't this look right? What might happen if…. Could these to objects (or ideas) relate to each other? How would putting them together change their meaning? The whole art making process is asking questions and trying to solve them. Even the question of what I am trying to make and why falls under this question. This curiosity seeks for answers, and allows the artist or student (or anyone!) to look and think about everything in life critically. It seeks to understand not only the physical world around us, as in observation, but also why people see and do things in different ways, and how both ideas and objects can relate to one another.
• Art is Exploring. You can never discover anything if you always stay inside the bubble of what has been done or seen before. Art is taking what you know or have learned and messing with it in new ways, putting new things together, and recontextualizing things. It is taking what is known and pushing it to come up with new. It is experimenting, taking the knowledge gained through observation and thinking critically about things, and pushing that in new ways to make new insights and explore new possibilities. Whether that exploring leads to something unattractive and unfunctional, or the next greatest solution, the one exploring has added something more to their wealth of knowledge.

Source:http://www.undermatic.com/diseno/citas-ilustradas-por-tang-yau-hoong/

Analyzing the Work of Tom Bamberger

Tom Bamberger is an artist who uses the newer media of digitally-synthesized photography in a quest for truth and beauty.

All information on him is taken from "Understanding Digitally Synthesized Photographs Through Theories of Knowledge: A Case Study of Tom Bamberger's Cultured Landscapes, " by Yi-Hui Huang. More of his work can be seen at http://www.mocp.org/exhibitions/2003/12/midwest-photographers-project-tom-bamberger.php.

 What is his work about?

Bamberger is a huge follower of Darwin, believing that only science can explain the universe, and that the world is an interaction between ourselves and the environment. According to Bamberger, though, truth can not be found in reality. Reality is concrete and what we see, but everything we see is tainted. It is not true. Truth, Bamberger believes, can only be found in the mind. It is abstract. Truth is beauty, and only in beauty can we find truth.

A straight photograph is not a finished product to Bamberger. It is frustrating. It poses a problem, because it doesn't contain the agreed upon truth of what beauty is. It lacks beauty, and thus lacks truth.

To solve this, Bamberger alters pictures to create imaginary landscape-like scenes that he finds beautiful. He currently explores the idea of truth in how to make one image beautiful, through taking a small image and repeating it and seamlessly weaving it into a new bigger, "more beautiful" image. He also references nature, because of his beliefs on the human relationship to it. In a way, these images are an evolution of our surroundings into a more perfect form. Beauty is not even in the object itself necessarily, but in how it is composed and presented by the artist to create what his mind says to be "truth". Digital altering is the means he has to do this, and because it is done in the media of photography, the image still the feeling of honesty and observable reality that a photograph implies. In a sense, through doing these images, he creates his own new reality.

Source: http://www.mocp.org/exhibitions/2003/12/midwest-photographers-project-tom-bamberger.php

Source: http://www.tonkonow.com/bamberger.html

How is  Reality Defined?

Bamberger's view of reality was the basis of how he went about making art and what media he used. Does my worldview affect what I think about reality too? Does the way I perceive things alter reality, or does reality and what I think about it (personal truths) go hand in hand? Do I believe that what is real and scientific and what is true to me are the same?

Short answer? Reality is what is real. What Bamberger created is unreal. It might have qualities of beauty in it that seem to be "perfect" to Bamberger, but I don't believe such a high standard of beauty equates with truth. If that were so, that says that the more homely aspects of our life have no place. Reality is a show and an appearance, rather than an experience and a knowledge. Also, Bamberger claims to appreciate science and nature, yet he fails to accept the science and nature around him that don't live up to his standard of what nature should be. Bamberger, I believe, does not pursue truth, but beauty. This might be admirable and wonderful in it's own right, but it is not truth. It is his opinion on what reality should be.

• A worldview defines how one sees reality. I do believe that one's belief system shapes how one will see the world around him or her. Bamberger's foundation in science and beauty, along with his belief that nothing is truly real to us but what is in his mind, drives him to create images that correlate with his standard of beauty. Any artist in general might look at an object and see in it different meaning, potential, or purpose than the artist behind him or her might see. I might find a tree to be beautiful, because in it I see intricacy, the gorgeous textures and colors it is packaged in, and the wonder of all of the functions occurring within. I appreciate it, because I see lushness and make associations of climbing trees and exploring in them as a child. I see in it the intelligent and perfect hand of a Creator, and believe that this tree shows us more about Him, and His care and design for His creation. Odds are not everyone will have the same thoughts upon contemplating the idea of the tree for a while. Another may look at the tree and see it as a symbol of renewability, a valuable part of an ecosystem, or something to learn from. They may associate the tree with peace or with vitality. Still another may look at the tree as a material potential for building a new product, a great element to place in a yard, or something growing maybe a bit too close for comfort to the powerlines. We all are looking at the same thing, but who we are affects our reading of it. 
• How we perceive reality depends on context. Am I trying to find meaning and purpose in what I'm looking at? Is my mind elsewhere, so it's just an insignificant blurb that just happens to be in my line of sight? Am I trying to find a practical purpose for what I'm looking at? Am I focused on how it's affecting something else, that is the bigger focus of my attention and cares? Both my priorities and how I am approaching what I look at or study in reality affects how I will read it.
• I believe reality and truth are two different terms for two different things. Reality is what exists around us. Truth is what cannot be proven wrong. Aspects of reality may be truthful, but I think we have two different terms for the two different things for a reason. They aren't the same.

An example? Let's look at irrational numbers in algebra. They don't exist. They cannot exist. They aren't REAL. But they don't lie. We know that while i isn't real, it will always be the square root of negative one. It is truthful.

In my opinion, this is the fatal flaw of Bamberger's work. It is tasteful and creative as art, but I don't agree with where he's coming from. To him, reality is a show and an appearance rather than a what is actually experienced or observed. Also, Bamberger claims to appreciate science and nature, yet he fails to accept the science and nature around him that don't live up to his standard of what nature should be. Bamberger, I believe, does not pursue truth, but beauty. This might be admirable and wonderful in it's own right, but it is not truth. It is his opinion on what reality should be. It is a perspective on reality.

The Artmaking Process of Sandy Skoglund

Sandy Skoglund is a photographer from Massachussetts who deals with the idea of transformation. Transformation is taking an object or idea and twisting it, elaborating on it, putting it into new contexts, or changing it into a new form.

"Transformation alters reality, endowing it with new perspective that can motivate artist and viewers to question what is normally taken for granted." (Walker, 2001, p.53)

Sandy uses transformation to blend the natural and the unnatural. Through digital photography and editing she creates scenes that look like they could be real, but aren't quite... right. She makes strange and unexpected juxtapositions. The images appear almost as a dream.

"Ferns" Source: mocp.org

Where does the work come from?

Skoglund seems to acquire knowledge simply by observing the banal of the world around her. Her study is that of the ordinary and unremarkable. However, she pays a lot of attention to the meanings and contexts that these common things exist with, so that she can create new meanings for them, or make us question their normality. According to Annenberg Learner's summary on Sandy's image "Revenge of the Goldfish,"Skoglund explores the aesthetics of artificiality and the effects of interrupting common reality."

Her process:
Sandy Skoglund uses sculpture, models, and sets to create the installations scenes that she then photographs. She removes boundaries in the elements that she puts together, to make them overlap, and to merge fantasy and reality together in a more believable way. For example, in her "Revenge of the Goldfish," Sandy painted the room blue, to fit the context of the large terra cotta goldfish swimming around, and the repetition and movement of the fish gives them a greater sense of reality. In the same way, the people in the room seem to not question the fish around them, and despite the color, the room visually looks exactly like any other kind of room. It is believable.

We see Skoglund's almost humorous view toward the banal object in how she presents it. Goldfish are certainly not remarkable or scary, but Sandy presents them as "revengeful." Their new context, where they seem oversized and where they look as if they are swimming threateningly around the two sleeping people, gives them an entirely new, irrational, and fantastical feel. The bizarre result allows the imagination to come up with all kinds of crazy stories to explain what is happening.

"Revenge of the Goldfish" Source: learner.org

What techniques are effective in her art making strategy?

• repetition- repetition brings emphasis. here the goldfish are an important part of the narrative, so the repetition makes us notice them, but also makes them feel more dangerous, because they make the room feel claustrophobic
• color- the simplification of the color palette removes distracting elements of the image that aren't the focus, so we are better able to see the juxtapositions that Skoglund is trying to present
• transformation of background- transforming the background to make them more vague allows the boundaries to the two ideas/objects/scenes to meld together more believably
• size - the size of the goldfish gives them the "threatening" feel, but also makes their ratio work with the size of the "fishbowl" they are in so that it is believable in that way as a space

To Think Outside of the Box

Recently in my Digital Creativity class we read the article "Thinking Outside and On the Box: Creativity and Inquiry in Art Practice," by Julia Marshall.

Marshall believes that thinking outside of the box implies taking what we know of the world and creating something new and different based off of that. The "box" is the function that specific things have. Marshall encourages exploration and deviation from how we already understand and use things, and finding different associations with them, in order to inspire something fresh, to solve a new problem that might be presented in life. She took a literal play on the words "outside the box" by actually having her students create a packaged invention with an imaginary function, explainable and with instructions in the terms of materials and concepts that exist.

According to Marshall, a few ways to think outside the box involve searching out questions, gathering source material and analyzing it, and playing around with the meanings and functions of different materials. In searching out questions, we think critically about things that need to be solved, could be solved, or could be done differently in life around us. For example, one student noted the problem of retaining information from textbooks, and set out to create a tool to assist with that process. Having something to figure out inspires an artist or worker to set out trying to understand and solve that idea, and find solutions. It drives inquiry.

After we know what we want to figure out, it is important to think of how different materials/ideas or combinations of materials/ideas might be used to put together a solution. This process involves exploring why and how things have been created before or questions have been answered before, and what other things might have the same characteristics or abilities to do the job in the same way, differently, or better. Ultimately, it is doing ones research to figure out what will work the best in solving the problem, without simply copying an existing formula or solution. This involves exploration.

Finally, during conception of the idea and also in the physical/action creation of a solution, there needs to be the freedom to try new things, swap things out, and see how meanings might change if things were switched around. It is allowing ones self not to get too connected to one's work, where one stops exploring it, and finding ways to improve upon it. It is taking the solution to its full potential, even if the solution ends up being something very different than the person was expecting it to be. This process in itself might pose new ideas or problems to pursue further in a new exploration.

Thus, the creative process is never really finished. It is fluid and continuous. It absorbs information and connects it and disconnects it in new ways, figuring out how things work or might work if put into different contexts. It is the endless cycle of formulating and solving questions, and making creations accordingly along the way.