The Radicant: "No Fixed Form"

The second part of this book talks alot about philosophy and way art has to seen. Nicolas Bourriaud's The Radicant deals with concepts and further with an increase in discussion of philosophy and influential thinkers as well as the controversy it raises.

What is art? and who decides what art should be or look like? Bourriaud begins by elaboratiing on some famous artist like Joseph Cornell's surrealistis boxes and Marcel Duchamp's fountain. The idea of challenging traditional art is to prove that Art is dynamique. It changes with time and taste. Many art forms came about as the quest fo rseeing news things grow even stronger in people.
Bourriaud argues Marceld Duchamp's ready made art to show the evolution in art and what used to be acceptable and creative in the art world centuries ago.
Today the Computer has even taken art to the extreme. How would we see art inthe next tweenty years?

Mentor/ Muse

Lindsey and I had not thought of a mentor prior to starting our project but somehow it all fell in place when our questions sparked answers that evolved about mostly Western media perspective about the rest of the world especially in Africa.
We hope to include this video clip in our final project to give our audience a better sense of media criticism.

Michael Jackson was a victim of the media. Just like many other celebraties, Micheal many public disgrace,rejections and many unanswered question about him through the media. This video is a good example of reactions to the media. Many misconceptions pass through to people from all angles and such is this video. We also chose this video because of its aesthetic beauty.
During our presentation, we had a lot of great suggestions and comments which we are paying much attention to make our video great in terms of th einformation we are trying to put across and the idea of technological advancement.

PROGRESS REPORT

After the comments and suggestions we received our presentation, we are thinking of probably incorporating a traditional Ghanaian dance video performed by a Lawrence student who has been to Ghana twice to learn the culture in performing arts. This is also to show how cultures are being shared in a harmonious way as technology advances to all parts of the world.

We also hope to work on especially our sound quality and transitioning. Finally, we are thinking of how to incorporate ourselves into the video. still playing around with what we have so far to make the best out of it.

Nature vs Culture

Many things means different to different people. Culture is one strong and valuable element of human life that can unite or divide society. It also means people of different race and ethnicity eat differently. There is a saying that goes like this; one mans' meat is other mans' poison. This is true to this video.

As Professor Sedlock is spending enormous time studying these wonderful and distinct creature in the best way to preserve them, it is the soul food of other. This is not necessarily wrong because as it was said, they have grown up to know bats is part of their meal.
One interesting thing i learnt about bats are that as at now there are about 198 different species of these unique creatures. The still believe that there are more things to the history and story of bats in terms of how they fly at night with that limited vision. This is something i hope to research on myself.

Lost and Found

This Week on our Project Report:
Looking back to what we have so far, I can say Lindsey and I are doing great on our project.
We have all of our interviews done, edited interviews into sub clips , and finally we have done some logical arrangements of the clips as to how we want things to flow like the quick-time movie in our presentation. We have done through all the sub clips to make sure we have all the vital  information and in sequence for our project.

Next Step...
 Our next plan of action is to do all the cool stuff to our video.

• Artistic editing
• Sound track: maybe have some music at the background
• Transitioning: find a harmonious way to merge all clips together  as one big piece
• Organization and finally
• Perfection: we hope ;to make our project at perfect and appealing as possible.

Andy Warhol : Abstract Creativity

He took art from a traditional context or meaning  and redefined  it. He challenged how we view art and the question of what constitute and art piece or form. Andy Warhol was very obsessed with repetition and themes. His style was unique and personal and change the art world after World War2.

According to the media, Andy made more than 10,000 art works which has given him fame still after his death.Warhol was very creative and made a lot of experimentation with different kind of media including experimenting with urine to test for how oxidization can recreate  new forms and produce interesting results. He gave meaning to abstract form of painting and action painting.

As a successful artist, Warhol was interested in new things and  had a good sense to learn more. As much as he was interested in consumer culture and commercial form of advertisement, he was fascinated with the youth and how fast technology is helping to define these younger generation.
Even though he was popular, he still engaged himself in social events as a form giving back to society. I think what makes an artist is not simply being great at painting, drawing or whatever interest you but being able to change and adapt make you even  more stronger.

Klaus Nomi

When one thinks of an artist so  many things comes to mind. But in my case, when i  think of artist especially an music i think  of  style, looks or appearance. I think of something that makes him or her unique. Klaus Nomi is no different in this sense. Indeed, he had a unique personality in terms of appearance.Like many artist, stars, celebrities or whatever name we   choose  to give them, has his own identity. Whether it was given or taken by the artist himself a  distinction is made from who the artist really is and what he or her is  known to be.




To some extent his artificial makeup look was a signature of himself but at the same time i think he  did that to make himself feel better. Nevertheless,  he was trying to fit in and find a common grounds on which he can fight his loneliness issues. His inability to find a permanent relationship. It is natural to feel lonely  sometimes especially when you can get what you think would make you whole say, love. But in the case of artists or well known personalities, it would be extremely hard in a sense that, first and foremost you are in living in two separate worlds. That  is the stardom, living a life where you feel loved, attention and in control and the  second life where you feel like a cocoon, you go unnoticed. That is the reality.

Stereotypically speaking, what happens to most artists in the long run that either they die as paupers or of strange ailments. In Klaus' case, he died of the later and according to the media, he was the first publicly known artist to die of AIDS.  In a sense Klaus contributed greatly on having an image something uniquely you in the artist world and there are artist today that one can easily say is influenced by Klaus Nomi. A typical examples could be Lady Gaga or even the late Micheal Jackson..