Line Project Artist Statement
When thinking of ideas for this line project I drew many blanks. It wasn’t until I began reading Michel de Certeau’s passage that I found inspiration in the quote, “It is transformed into a texturology in which extremes coincide - extremes of ambition and degradation, brutal oppositions of races and styles, contrasts between yesterday’s buildings, already transformed into trash cans, and today’s urban irruptions that block out its space”(Certeau 91). My eye focused on the “brutal oppositions of races and styles”, which so wholy encompasses the sentiments of New York. I then began to think of the way that New Yorkers see each other, and how little race or ethnicity can tell you about someone in this city.
My project is an analysis of the silent judgements that unconsciously (and for the most part harmlessly) pass through our heads when we see people. I walked through the streets and from a distance would try to guess where people were seemingly from, and then as they got closer I would overhear whether they spoke english, another language, or english with an accent.The people were drawn as contour drawings with the judged flag of their country, and a speech bubble next to them would be drawn in either red (if they spoke perfect english) or green (if they spoke another language or had an accent). The thing about the city is how unnoticable the blending of people is, which lead me to recognize the quote “The creation of a universal and anonymous subject which is the city itself”(Certeau 94). The anonymity of people despite what language they are most proficient in is not something that can happen everywhere, and in fact it is very much noticed and differentiated in smaller or older towns.
The subjects of my line drawings take huge importance as to where they are located. Walking toward me I had very little time to try and recognize what their faces were telling me, and also very little time as to what their voices told me. Certeau also talks about subjects walking in the city in relation to how they communicate with the city in the quote “In the framework of enunciation, the walker constitutes, in relation to his position, both a near and a far, a here and a there. To the fact that the adverbs here and there are the indicators of the locutionary seat in verbal communication”(Certeau 99). I interpreted this as how each individual that I observed has both a “here and there” quality about their position and how that makes all the difference in the time one takes to judge someone.
WWW Response
The two texts, Tim Berners-Lee WWW and Jorge Luis Borges The Library of Babel, while seemingly completely different actually write about a similar concept; that of a catalogue in which humanity could have information at their disposal. The Library of Babel, being written in 1941, was obviously a bit ahead of its time in terms of the concept, as the first computer had not even been developed yet (and even when it was, the internet was still very far from this point). WWW brings in the technical point in which we are in today, where the internet has become a universal method of exporting and importing information across the world.
In the very beginning of The Library of Babel, Borges writes “The universe (which other call The Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low railings”(Borges 51). He seemed to take the interpretation of a hive information in a very philosophical way, in which there was no real “library”, rather the universe had all of this information ready for humanity to discover itself. However, the fact that he called it a library insinuates the ability to retrieve any and all information that it stores, it’s all about having the right call number. In Lee’s WWW, where he writes what W3 defines, it says “The idea of a boundless information world in which all items have a reference by which they can be retrieved”(Lee 793). In just more technical and modern terms, he essentially calls W3 the most up to date, extensive library that humanity has access to. The key difference between these two, however, is how they seem to credit the source. Borges claims this information belongs to the universe, and that humanity simply has the power to find that information themselves through their own resources. Lee comes from the perspective that this entire machine of information was built by, made for, and powered by humanity. It is not about the information that the universe holds, but the information that humans are willing to share.
Despite the time jump between these two texts, they write of the same basic concepts; impressive when considering what a quantum leap humanity has made in technology over the course of 60 years. In the past there have been many references to a resource like the world wide web, but it was a fictional, unimaginable fantasy to them. It can only make one wonder what we cannot imagine in another 60 years.
Newspaper Project Response
My news project focuses around the idea of manipulated news, coming from different or conflicting perspectives. The first page of my news centers on the weather, and how conflicting each week comes to itself and causes debate as to the validity of climate change. It then moves on to American vs Chinese news. America has the benefit of freedom of press, but it also means that Donald Trump can reject everything that is said in the media. Chinese media is censored by the government and is therefore almost always censored. The last page was entirely positive, and focused on the fact that the only positive news in the paper are the things that will sell (advertisements, TV show times, etc.). I was inspired by the quote, “My interest in news precedes my interest in art” from Aleksandra Mir, because I chose to focus on the political aspects of press rather than only on the abstract or visual components.
Patterns Response
My designs were based off of pictures that I took of a jelly bean, a chain, and a toy bird. I wanted the jelly beans to have an earth tone’s palette to give it a more “farmers market” feeling, so I chose mustard yellow, green, and brown. As for my chain, I wanted to go a bit more abstract and high fashion, so I cut out two links of the chain and made 2 patterns; black chains and white ones, with the white behind the black, and a burgundy red in the background. Lastly, I wanted to do something funny for the toy bird. Thinking of the joke, “the birds work for the bourgeoisie”, I decided to make USSR birds with the word “bourgeoisie” also made into a pattern around it.
Interaction of Color Writing
“To make images pleasing to humans still requires humans to say what pleases them.” This was written in a text called “Color goes Electric” by Claire Lehmann in 2016, and discusses the beginning and transformation of color photography throughout the years. This quote is in reference to how film manufacturers would actually take test subjects and ask them what photo they preferred in order to calibrate the staining of the film. I thought this was particularly interesting because it is almost impossible to know how people will react to anything, and in particular to colors. Everyone associates different feelings with different colors, and depending on how a certain set of colors makes one feel, it can entirely change the attitude toward a photograph. My yellow photo gained a lot of traction for being so monochromatic; even people that normally hated the color (like myself) were infatuated with the saturation of the photograph. There was nothing realistic about it, but I believe that that might have been exactly what drew people in. The advertisement's ridiculous nature of the yellows (and the pineapple) made it almost humorous to look at.
This bright photo is one of my most popular, and it is almost entirely composed of just different hues of yellow. In an essay by Nato Thompson, he claims that the color yellow is“The color of caution. The color that beyond all others looks out for you, the reader. The driver. The citizen. The vulnerable body. Yellow is bright because it doesn’t let its guard down. And neither should you.” This photo was made on a complete whim, but it is one that tends to make people strangely uncomfortable. The yellows are bright, but they are also somewhat dirty and stained. The crooked angle of my hands in the photograph make people’s wrists feel contorted themselves. While this photograph isn’t inherently warning of anything, it still has the cautionary feeling of “yellow”.