I think I miss you is a video that visits the details of greetings and replaying/re-editing of elements of the relationship between the two female figures as they greet, interact and say farewell. The simple act is revisited and edited in camera, distorting the event and refocusing to a dreamlike, almost memory. This video acts as a meta video as the qualities of hi-8 video and dv- tape and the mechanics of the two recording mediums are interplayed with each other.
One of the conundrums of being “degreed and pedigreed” is having too many scattered pieces of your life. Each piece is an authentic part of you, but it is different in each iteration of life experience. This sentiment should resound faithfully as I collapse the feelings from leaving the MFA program at Concordia and matriculating at Parsons. Each piece is a part of the whole that is Laura Simpson and my art practice. It is a bit overly serious to say so boldly that I have an “art practice.” If I was to unpack my art practice, it would be composed of experimentation and planning with room for serendipity.
I keep rediscovering myself. It’s almost as if I record myself talking and forget what was said until I go back to listen.
Right now, I’m wrangling my thesis paper for it’s final iteration, but I took a few minutes to reflect (and procrastinate) on chasing dreams, achieving greatness and innovation.
Yesterday, I had a discussion with a fellow Parsons DT student and we came to a similar conclusion to the idea of “saving the world via design” and the idea behind statements like “go innovate” or “is it innovative enough?”
Singlehandedly, I cannot save the world with design and as an artist, I don’t think I want to either. I do want to passionately experiment and make objects that will exist in the world after I am gone. I tend towards design and art that play with ideas, but are aesthetic and intellectual pursuits rather than a tool to bring drinking water to drought stricken lands.
I think that I am still contributing to the world. If something innovative comes from my tinkering, then so be it. I don’t prescribe to a notion that greatness is a given after years of working. I do strive for greatness in my field nonetheless. If I get it, it’ll be by making pixels do the wrong thing, finding ways to hack electricity and writing about it.
I was pleased to find a comic that showed my beliefs in such a thoughtful way, from a scientist to a creative technologist/artist/designer/nerd like me.
I was melancholy about ending my studio practice so shortly after I had gotten it into full swing. Hopefully in the summer I will be able to resume my practice again in another space.
My Gowanus/ParkSlope Studio in memoriam:
Scribbling Speech is an organic performance and installation. The artist writes all of her responses to interaction and stimulus in marker on the wall of the performance space, creating historical trails of the experience. Each of the columns are the height of the artist, to keep the footprint of the piece human size.
The Performance took place Feb. 18th 2009 from 10am-6:30pm.
As I have developed my thesis, I have run into the idea of fantasy. What does it mean to have the epic and the low?
How do I combine the drama of Cinderella’s gown with a gentle look at materials and simple combinations? How do I amplify fantasy for reality?
Linda Nochlin addressed the issue of how the goals of art criticism differ from those of art history.
I suffer pangs of jealousy, because I missed this talk by a year.
Some bands have this amazing sound that just makes you go “you can get that sound with just a guitar and drum?” Others have amazing videos that awe you. Usually I don’t get both in the same package. To remedy this, I have mashed the Raconteurs song with Glitterbanditz video.
The result is pretty as a picture.
Branding and food should come to all as no surprise, as the brand is a shorthand sign of what the company, artist, creator is hoping to tell you about the brand. Is it Upscale? Down Home? A little bit of both? To this degree The Lee Bros. Boiled Peanuts Catalogue tickles me in a peculiar way.
I’m not a displaced southerner in New York. I am in fact less than an hour away from where I was born and raised on Long Island. My parents however, were displaced South Carolinians (Cah-Ro-Lin-E-N or Cah-Ro-Line-An) who taught me both to joys of creamed corn, stewed vegetables, ox-tail, okra and the effect that a double boiler can have on white Carolina rice.
Do I eat Boiled Peanuts? No…That wasn’t common in either region that mom and dad are from, but seeing the palmetto with the state flag’s crescent moon as a part of the masthead is a signal from afar that recalls childhood summers of peas, beans, BBQ and krispy kreme.
Laura Simpson
5’2″. Energetic source for ideas and explosions.
May program, but I want to make code dance and pixels quiver.
On Video:
Video has surprisingly become my medium of choice, but not for the same narratives that I watch on television. I make narratives out of nothing. Video is a powerful critical tool in examining aspects of time, qualities of space and how I perceive them.
On Installation Art:
Installation has taken on many meanings for me. At first blush, they seemed to be sculptures that refused to be “outdoors” sculpture, made of rock, metal or plastic. Upon second, third and fourth investigations, Installation is ever growing and evolving. Can my little creations grow to take up all of your attention?
On Design:
Design is an amazingly organic process, that flourishes within a structured system of prototyping, testing and iteration. I’m not really a designer, but I’ll steal design methods and process.
This summer kicked off with ambitions. Beautiful, big ambitions. I would research and start building an amazing thesis.
I would write an elegant abstract for TEI such that I would be selected among the great unwashed graduate students as worthy to sun myself in intellectual engagement from the forefront of HCI and on Portugal’s beaches in January. (Full disclosure: I personally dislike going to the beach, it’ll be winter in January anyway and I am fairly sure that I’m probably the majority of that great unwashed… just kidding, my hygiene is superb even on days I don’t leave the house.)
Instead, I’m in a bit of a Pickle. It’s the 13th of July, six days from my unbirthday, thirteen from when I have commitments in Western Mass, and a little over a month from having to show something for this summer/ something to show for Intern Show. What a mess.
Where did it all go? I couldn’t really account for it all, bit and slips here and there. Some was sitting in a bus terminal, parts are in the subways, lots were spent learning a valuable skill in rapid cover letter writing and digging loose change out of couch cushions. More valuable time was spent brainstorming for game concepts and participating in InterActive Music New York.
Brainstorming game concepts sounds so far from what I would describe my work as being about. Game Design and Interactive Installation Design aren’t so unconnected as it might be perceived. I want to create a rule set for engaging in any of my works. I want a set of standards, behaviors, punishments for interacting with my work. Is not not like designing any interface or even a game? I have a world and mind set that I want you to be surrounded by. It’s the beginning of something beautiful. I think..
What now? My summer is half over and I have some scattered ideas for a game, some writing and a visual step sequencer. This alone does not a thesis make, or even a foray into a thesis inquiry. Or does it?