Category: Uncategorised (page 1 of 9)

This is my current professional portfolio as a post, which can be also seen in my “Portfolio” page here on the site.

This is my series of paintings on liminality. I’ll likely return to some of them to finish them up a little more, adding some gradients and details.

All sentiment is right; because sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself, and is always real, wherever a man is conscious of it. – David Hume

Here is my proposal; we perform the various aesthetic activities of perception and investigation for the sake of our involvement in the activity of seeking correct judgements, rather than for the sake of actually having made correct judgements. – C. Thi Nguyen

CJ The X: Visual Essay “Subjectivity in Art”

I’ve watched this video like five times, it’s a fantastic essay on how art critique works and where it fails depending on the critic’s philosophy. The essay covers A LOT.

CJ is a very fast talker and jumps straight into their ideas from the start of the video. Beginning with a discussion of what their opinion of “review” versus “critique” is, and what they consider to be valid reasoning for negative critiques. They also talk about how “taste” works, citing David Hume and Anthony Fantano.

Then, CJ talks about the difference between an artist’s intent and outcome being the goal versus the purpose, and how we can critique based on that information. Thi Nguyen’s work might be really interesting to you, some of which is cited in this section of the video, as well as parts of an interview with Nguyen himself.

At 37:28, the video gets into number rating scales for a bit, which you might enjoy as well. CJ mentions that not only can we not accurately quantify our feelings about a work of art into a number, but also, the scale itself is open to interpretation. For example, a 5/10 could be received as a D, like getting 50% in school, a very bad grade. Or, it could mean that the viewer enjoyed about half of the work, the work is average and worth experiencing, that it meets the requirements and is not a waste of time. Not to mention, are we rating the work on a subjective taste gradient or an objective taste gradient? Assuming that the reviewer has enough experience or knowledge about the work to give it an objective taste rating at all. Or, is it an aesthetic testimony? Are we looking at the piece and trying to decipher if other people might like it? Regardless, the number scale is still a claim to aesthetic truth, and we can go from there. If we disagree about our number rating, we can then open a conversation about the art work and look at it closer and look at our own opinions closer to find why each other thought differently about the work.

The next section is about what art actually “is”, including discussion of intrinsic and extrinsic value. CJ has a fascinating bit, “what if art doesn’t reside in us, the subject, or in the thing we’re engaging with, the object? What if art is something that happens when those two things interact?” They talk about the story of Vivian Maier as a case study into what art is and what it can become once it becomes perceived.

CJ The X: Visual Essay “Objectively Bad Art”

This video is also amazing, and delves into even more art philosophy than the last one. CJ goes into what a negative critique or review might mean, quoting Simon Frith, “What do people want from music? What is it they’re not getting when they describe a song or performance or work as ‘bad music’?” Was the intention that the artist had not reached? Did their intentions not line up with the end product’s communication? How can you decide what was being communicated by the work, let alone whether that communication was effective? Does art have to be “useful”? Is a given piece useful in generating value? Are there different ways to generate that value? And are there different kinds of value to be generated?

CJ the X defines two aspects of negative artistic critique that I think about all the time. Art is bad because it’s wrong, or art is bad because it’s stupid. This relates to the production versus effect argument.

Effect (when art is “wrong”): it’s bad because it’s evil or ruining our society – not the art itself, but a critique of the people who made it and their failings in creating something that fell short. Bad art is responsible for bad things. It’s a personal critique, the artist is  destroying things we love ie. the sequel or remake sucks because you loved the original, but we don’t talk about the actual reasons we didn’t enjoy it, we’re too busy feeling personally and directly hurt by the piece. Ie. punk rock, street art and graffiti, Piss Christ, any art that is pushing boundaries of the previous art movement. This art will create bad things that people who view it as “wrong” don’t want to take hold in greater society.

Production(when art is “stupid”): When we don’t like art, but we’re not seeing moral issues, we’re not getting something from the piece that you wanted from it. It becomes “stupid”. We weren’t able to grasp what the art was trying to communicate, and often (depending on the complexity of the piece) we don’t see that as our, the viewer’s failing, but as the artist’s. Hence, the work is stupid because I should’ve gotten it and I didn’t, but that’s not my fault it’s the artist’s. I came here for something (like catharsis) and I got nothing.

Concensus defines effect – your intended effect is nothing compared to what the consumers of your work agree that the effect is. It overshadows what you intended easily, which makes it very lonely to be a successful artist, your messages are subject to mutability by the fans of your work.

Objectivity and subjectivity are both tools that can help us appreciate and critique art, but the best tool of all time is curiosity.

Liking stuff is cool, but it’s more important to know why you like it.

If we consider objective critiques of art as basically using quantifiable science about pleasure and preference like the golden ratio and colour theory while also employing a level of constructive acknowledgement of the work’s meaning and communication of that meaning, I think we can reach a critique that is useful.

 This is what I wrote regarding horror video games, specifically related to the game Silent Hill (1999) and the book Silent Hill: The Terror Engine by Bernard Perron.    

Throughout the entire game, we can see, hear, and infer many classic horror tropes. An overwhelming fog blankets the quiet town, our character walks through and sees someone, but only for a moment before they run away and disappear into the mist. The eerie music keeps us uncomfortable company as we explore an alleyway, seemingly in an attempt to follow the person we saw before. Immediately upon entering the alleyway, we are met with the completely eviscerated carcass of what looks to be a large animal. But with the human imagination, combined with the general atmosphere of the game, we could draw the conclusion that it was not just some wild animal. Then, we find an overturned wheelchair, wheels still spinning with no sign of stopping or even slowing down. Was someone just here? Was it the person we’re following? Or something much worse? The limited details of our surroundings let the imagination run wild and scare itself.

This is also a common tactic in horror in visual media where the viewer can be left in the quiet to spiral in their own minds before being jolted out of it by a jump-scare. Even in my previous sentence describing the carcass at the entryway of the alley, I left the ending open for the reader to draw their own conclusions of what I mean by “not just a wild animal”. I could mean that it was a domesticated animal, or perhaps even just an accident, but in the context of the game, and in the greater context of the horror genre, one can assume that I meant some horrifying creature or person had done that to another person.

“Likewise, encountering terrifying monsters, one’s first reaction is not to view them as an algorithm of physical strength points.” (page 5, Bernard Perron)

In many video games, especially those labeled under “horror” or “action”, the developers use visual stat bars or numbers to display exactly how difficult a fight is going to be. Unfortunately, I find that this all but rips the player out of the story and feeling of the game. In games like Alien: Isolation, the monster uses your own habits and instincts against you to hunt you down, creating an impossibly tense atmosphere and intense feeling of being trapped. Now, if you were to put a big “Lvl. 100” above said monster, that shatters any real fear the player might have. As Perron implies above, in order to truly scare a player, they have to forget that they are in the real world. They have to get lost in the game, in the story, to feel true fear.

“You are dealing with yourself in an eerie space while desperately trying to survive through the night.” (page 28, Bernard Perron)

This section of the text reminded me of a line from Emily Dickinson, “I am out with lanterns, looking for myself”. Psychological horror like Silent Hill requires a vulnerability from the player that other horror video games do not. The saturation of action-sequences in horror tends to cover up the real fear that comes from being alone with your thoughts in an unfamiliar environment that is out of your control; and that is exactly what Silent Hill forces the player to do. The player is forced to “deal with” themselves in order to get through the game and complete the story. In video games, fear is also visual. The human mind can come up with horrifying things, but the scariest thing to an audience is their own mind. When one is reading horror or listening to horror, their mind fills in with what the author or speaker leaves out. Only the audience member knows the scariest thing in the world to them, so silence, space, and limited perspective helps visual media to incite the fear that the player’s mind will be especially susceptible to.

“The true weird tale has something more than a secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread…” (page 30, Bernard Perron quoting H.P. Lovecraft) All good scary stories start with, “it was a dark and stormy night in a cabin somewhere in the woods”. All great scary stories start in your hometown. The more a player thinks they know about the story, the more opportunities the game has to subvert and twist those cliches and tropes into something so unexpected and strange that the player can’t react to it with anything but fear. In some of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories, and David Lynch’s as well, they start with something seemingly normal. Seemingly familiar to the average audience. Then, throughout the story, the audience learns that everything is not what it seems. The scariness that comes from seeing something so wrong where it absolutely shouldn’t be is something that Lovecraft and Lynch use to their advantage, and Silent Hill does well too.

My favourite kinds of horror stories are like that, because they are inherently psychological and surprising; aspects which in themselves can be scary. Even better are ones like Borrasca (a psychological thriller full-cast podcast), where you know something is wrong, but it keeps getting worse until you think you know what the evil must be, something supernatural, something corrupting and not of this world, and it turns out to be awfully human. Somehow, going from familiar to horrifyingly unfamiliar and then back to familiar again is more terrifying than you could imagine.

Inspiration Collage

Material testing, Crayola crayons

Material/concept testing with crayons and marker on paper.

Inspiration Writing

Inspired partly by my childhood house and some objects from my grandparents’ house. Also highly inspired by this scene in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency where Dirk goes through a playground slide he found in a closet that drops him into a dreamworld version of the house he’s in. Everything is super colourful and loud, and very childlike. When he tries to leave, the windows and doors show nothing but static outside the house. He is able to call his friends who are in the real house via a red telephone with an impossibly long cord. He then gets chased through impossibly connected hallways by the Purple People Eater from that kids song. He finds a pair of scissors stabbed into the kitchen table and the table is bleeding as if it’s alive. Finally, Dirk is able to escape by going through the door (despite the static). Trust me, the scene makes exactly the same amount of sense with context as it does without.

Another inspiration (which I actually hate) is the backrooms and liminal spaces. If you don’t know, the backrooms are this internet analog horror concept. In video games, sometimes you’ll “clip” through the floor or wall (fall through the game) and catch a glimpse of the “backrooms” or nothingness that exists beyond the confines of the playable game.

So the concept is what if you could do that in real life? What would these backrooms look like, how would they feel, would you be the only one there? Etc. The backrooms themselves aren’t what scare me. It’s liminal spaces. Liminal spaces are like an off-shoot of the backrooms idea, but they also exist on their own. They’re usually images of locations that are eerily lit (often with flash and poor resolution) with an air of nostalgia about them. Like you’ve been there before, but also that you’re somehow not supposed to be there. There’s something inherently uncomfortable about liminal spaces, and I think it has to do with the fact that no one stays there long and thus this feeling of transient-ness becomes its own palpable creature. For example, an airport is technically a liminal space. You go through airports, you never stay long. But a completely empty airport is much scarier. You never stay long, but when it’s empty, you know you’re not supposed to be there in the first place. I especially hate the childhood nostalgia liminal spaces, because they really do make me feel like I’ve been there before, since a lot of the images that exist on the internet are of early 2000s play spaces and children’s bedrooms. Basements and completely closed off rooms with LittleTykes play-sets in them. A flash photo taken of an otherwise darkened daycare. The Sunday School room in a church but completely empty and dark. There’s something spooky because I feel like I’ve been there, but I also feel like I’m the one who took the picture. I don’t know how else to describe it.

Digital Concept Testing

I’ve been struggling a lot lately with panic attacks and anxiety, so I really don’t know why I chose liminal spaces and nostalgia (things that bring me anxiety) to be my inspiration for this project ✌️😬

A quick mock up of an idea. I’m not sure I can get such opacity with traditional drawing tools and material, so I’ll have to do more material tests before I commit. There’s five compasses on the floor and five flowers in the vase in the corner.

I also designed another wallpaper (below) with Ginkgo leaves, tulips, rose hips, bluebells and budding forget-me-nots.

Week 1

Above is my first (probably of many) brainstorming/inspiration collages for the projects and thematic explorations we’ll be doing in this course. I’ve included photos, art from other artists, my own digital drawings, and handwritten quotes that are connected to the themes or ideas I want to work with. I added in the pixelation on some of the pictures and also drew over top to highlight some of the quotes and pictures. The program I used was Krita, which is a really cool digital art program I discovered in highschool. It’s open-source and free, and includes a plethora of different brushes and tools you can use. It also has an animation workspace, which I haven’t experimented with much yet, but I’d like to. To draw in this program I use a Wacom tablet and pen.

WEEK 2

Material testing:

Above are three digital drawings I started as a part of my material testing and experimenting this week. I’m trying to find symbolism in my dreams that I can use in these pieces as well, so I’ve included a bit of colour psychology as well as literal symbols like trees, trains, compasses and moons. I want to find a happy medium between thoughtful planning of each drawing and letting my imagination run, so I’ve found drawing digitally and doing small sketches very helpful.

Week 3

Thematic Descriptions/Project Proposal & Research

Dorothea Tanning

• ‘here in the museum is the real explosion, rocking me on my run-over heels. Here is the infinitely faceted world I must have been waiting for. Here is the limitless expanse of POSSIBILITY, a perspective having only incidentally to do with painting on surfaces.’ – TATE

Leonora Carrington

• Over the course of her eight-decade career, Carrington continued to explore the mystery of the world around her, claiming at the end of her life, “The only thing I know, is that I don’t know.” – MoMA
• Surrealism’s attitude toward women was ambivalent. André Breton, the founder of the movement and a key impresario, was fascinated by the Freudian idea that the female psyche was unrestrained, mystical, and erotic. And some female artists associated with the movement, such as Carrington, were framed as the femme enfant (woman child) who served as muse to the male artist. But as Carrington once said, “I didn’t have time to be anyone’s muse…I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist.” – MoMA

Rene Margritte

• During the German occupation of Belgium, Magritte changed his point of view on the Surrealist movement. Surrealism did not rattle society; Nazism did. As war devastated Europe, René Magritte wrote in a letter to André Breton, “the confusion and panic that Surrealism wanted to create in order to bring everything into question were achieved much better by the Nazi idiots than by us.” To respond to the changes of the 1940s, Magritte believed Surrealism had to change too. – SFMoMA
• an intense desire to confront mystery and truth in painting. – SFMoMA
• He coined his new method of painting “Sunlit Surrealism” and while his iconography remained just as strange – SFMoMA
• Magritte himself remarked that “Charm and menace can enhance each other through their union.” Perhaps then, these colorful colors are not escapist, instead enhancing and calling attention to the violence of the times. Some of his paintings underscore that reading, with gruesome subject matters, like a girl eating live birds—hardly charming. – SFMoMA

Project Ideation/Description:

Personal narrative, Beyond reality, dreamscapes, surrealism but without the Freud or Dalí crap
Landscape: Imaginary, realistic, urban, rural
Still Life: Composite
Figurative: Full or partial figure, realistic, imaginary
Elements: Line, shape, colour
Principles: Rhythm and movement, emphasis

Questions:

What is the significance of the theme or idea?

To connect people to the feeling of derealisation and paranoia which may or may not be foreign to them, which is quite scary to me but can be also intriguing like a car crash. You can’t look away.

Where is the idea/theme being developed taking place? How does location play a role in the composition?

dreamscape landscapes or layered backgrounds to add depth and interest in what otherwise might be a boring background.

Why is this of particular importance?

I want to express myself and explore art in a way that is interesting to me through a theme that is personal to me.

Who might be involved in the making/conception of this idea?

Myself, my family and friends, as well as some books I have on dreaming and brain physiology and dream psychology. Also surrealist artists (drawers or otherwise).

Why should anybody else care?

It’s visually engaging and extremely subjective. Eye-candy that also means whatever you think it means (regardless of whether that’s what I, the artist, intended).

How is what is being shown connected to the idea/theme?

The line between reality and imagination is being crossed with the imagery. Every object and figure has a specific meaning like a puzzle. (I made the picture but the viewer cuts the pieces)

When does this visualization of the idea take place? How does time play a role in the consideration of the idea/theme?

Much of the ideation of this project takes place late at night or early in the morning as it is heavily inspired by my own dreams and nightmares

Basically, I want to make drawings that make you feel a bit uncomfortable, like you should maybe look away from some parts, but are also interesting enough that you need to keep looking. Pieces that are like mysteries with analogies, metaphors, references and symbolism all throughout that make the viewer question what any of it means, if it means anything at all. Maybe I’ll put each one with an accompanying text (not an explanation, per se, but just more exposition?).

Derealization

Derealisation is where you feel the world is unreal. People and things around you may seem “lifeless” or “foggy”. You can have depersonalisation or derealisation, or both together. It may last only a few moments or come and go over many years. – NHS

Depersonalization-derealization disorder occurs when you always or often feel that you’re seeing yourself from outside your body or you sense that things around you are not real — or both. Feelings of depersonalization and derealization can be very disturbing. You may feel like you’re living in a dream. – Mayo Clinic

Depersonalization symptoms:

• Feelings that you’re seeing your thoughts, feelings, or body or parts of your body from the outside. For example, you may feel like you’re floating in the air above yourself.
• Feeling like a robot or that you’re not in control of what you say or how you move.
• The sense that your body, legs or arms appear twisted or like they’re not the right shape. Or they may seem larger or smaller than usual. You also could feel that your head is wrapped in cotton.
• Emotional or physical numbness of your senses or responses to the world around you.
• A sense that your memories lack emotion, and they may or may not be your own memories.

Derealization symptoms:

• Feeling that people and your surroundings are not real, like you’re living in a movie or a dream.
• Feeling emotionally disconnected from people you care about, as if you were separated by a glass wall.
• Surroundings that appear out of their usual shape, or are blurry or colorless. Or they may seem like they only have two dimensions, so they’re flat with no depth. Or you could be more aware of your surroundings, and they may appear clearer than usual.
• Thoughts about time that are not real, such as recent events feeling like the distant past.
• Unrealistic thoughts about distance and the size and shape of objects.
• – Mayo Clinic

These feelings, in combination with anxiety and panic disorder can lead to intense bouts of paranoia- feeling like nothing around you is real and you are also not real can be really scary and sometimes the only thing I can do is ignore the feeling until it goes away. Fake it ’till you make it. This situation can make you feel like someone’s watching you, trying to hurt you, or that you are not yourself and might hurt yourself or someone else.

Occasionally, especially when you’re in a prolonged survival state or prolonged stress, you can also experience dissociative amnesia. This is when you actually forget things about yourself and your life. You may not recognize your family members, photographs of your past, or even your own reflection. Also very scary.

In the end, experiencing these things is your brain’s way of protecting you, but sometimes it over does it. Dissociative states are a coping mechanism.

Usually these things don’t last very long, and it’s quite common to experience these things once in a while in passing. It of course would become a problem if you experienced these symptoms for longer periods of time.

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