Day: September 7, 2018

So blackboard wasn’t working for me and I decided to write my response here. Chapter 1 of the installation textbook finally answered a lot of questions I had about the subject itself. After the first class, I still wasn’t really sure what this was all about, but now it makes a tad more sense. I think the whole idea of creating a scene out of materials that carry different associations is a very avant-garde way of conveying messages or stories and that’s what I find so interesting about this art form.

I found it interesting to see how installation art evolved into the form that it is today. Starting in the 1950s with Kabakov and his room full of different paintings; to the ’60s where artists started to use actual objects to convey meaning and messages that altered the typical associations that the viewer had for these particular objects; then to the 80’s where quality was masked by quantity and installation art filled huge exhibits to convey meaning. To now where digital images can be projected onto objects to kind of bring a whole new dimension to this dynamic art form. I also particularly liked the feminist movement dealing with installation art and how certain exhibits in the ’60s were decorated in tampons and used sanitary towels which ultimately gave a statement about the world and where a women’s role fell in it.

 

After our class discussion of the first project, I tried to jot down some ideas in my mind that I thought would best fit with what we were going to start doing in mad mapper. When we first projected an image onto that box last class, I immediately got the idea of Radica Cube World Blocks; a toy from at least a decade ago that I used to play with. Basically, they were mini blocks with a little animated stick figures inside of them. If you had two or more, you could combine them and watch as the stick figures interacted with each other through the boxes.

I thought it was a really cool concept that could translate well with what we are doing with mapping and decided to start brainstorming further with this idea. For my sketches, I mapped out a basic story line where a little video of myself would go through 4-5 boxes stacked up. 1-2 of them would be stacked up as the video progresses. Each box would have materialistic items inside and with each box, I would obtain more things. (i.e. guitar, couch, food, games, people, money, etc.). The final box would contain a video of the earth spinning around, but is not connected to the rest of the boxes therefor not obtainable by my character. No matter what I do to the box, I can’t break the wall to reach it, acting ultimately as a metaphor for greed and the idea that not everything is achievable no matter how bad someone wants it. Below are my sketches for this concept.

Timeline:

So I didn’t know what you meant by timeline, but I am going to take a guess and say you were talking about when and how everything will be put together. Here is what I have so far.

Saturday and Sunday (9/8,9/9): Start finding props and start filming

Monday, Tuesday (9/10/9/11): Design boxes in photoshop/illustrator and import them into madmapper

Wednesday, Thursday (9/12/9/13): Go into blackbox and try to set everything up and make any last minute changes.

Materials list:

• 6 cardboard boxes
• 5 different videos
• Materials inside boxes
  • Couch
  • Food
  • Game oriented object (basketball, etc.)
  • People to be filmed
  • Money
• Green screen
• Blackbox