Roger “The Dean of the University”. 21/4/15

“Science for Artists 1#”

I found this lecture very interesting but mind-boggling, Roger certainly knew how to start a lecture off – he popped something out of a cup, like a small explosion, everyone giggled and were enticed to the science already.

I loved the presentation of the lecture, the background was space and every click he made it moved to another part of space with the next topic, it certainly kept the whole presentation experience alive, not to mention the visuals were bright and vibrant behind a black background, just how I like visuals! He stated that in the lecture that he’ll be discussing “Mostly about size, the electro-magnetic spectrum, elementary particles and the Big Bang” – I can’t say I absorbed or wrote about the lecture much due to it being full of overwhelming meanings and words, however I feel I will learn more in the next few lectures onwards about Science and Art.

He shown us loads of different pictures of space inwhich one really captured my eye – “the Nebula”, the Nebula is just this beautiful form of gases and stars, its now often put on clothing because its so beautiful. I can’t say I was inspired by it but I certainly loved its beauty. He began talking about the scale of zooming in and zooming out, with a picture of a couple who are laying down and they zoomed out as far out as the Milky way at 10(25). Then they zoomed in at 10(-15) through a hand and shown the insides of DNA – I found this part very interesting as it shows that we aren’t as small as we think we are – compared to the universe we’re as small as the atoms and microbes on our skin, if not smaller! I think it really puts it in perspective at the scale of everything. Sadly, it was at this point I got completely lost and couldn’t understand anything else – I’m not saying the lecture got boring or anything (Everyone wouldn’t stop asking questions it was that interesting!) but I couldn’t understand the majority of what he was showing up to that point. I look forward to the next lecture about Science and Art and I hope to learn a little bit more.

I have attached a picture of the nebula.

BRIAN GRIFFITHS. 26/03/15

Brian Griffiths lecture was actually the most fun I’ve had in a lecture and I actually got a sense of “Time” in the Gravity lecture unlike some others.

First thing he did was get someone in the audience to announce every 15 minutes that 15 minutes had passed, this was to slow time down so when you are having fun keeping in mind that 15 minutes hasn’t passed, you’re having fun and time is not flying passed you which I thought was a very clever way of doing it and it really made sense as the lecture was both fun and slow. Brian started by showing an image of Bill Murray (In an amazing checkered patchy jacket!) I felt connected with Brian as his humour and way of thinking is very similar to mine, he created this huge computer like system out of random pieces of plastic and cardboard, it looked like it was straight out of a cartoon and you could hardly tell it was made of plastic and cardboard. He then showed us a piece he called “The Bone Shaker” which was this huge truck-like thing compiled of different shades/pieces of wood he had collected all over the world, the truck wasn’t even hollow – he had random holes placed around the truck with different objects in them which he collected throughout the world too, it was really interesting. He also created Death Masks out of Bill Murray’s face and made hundreds of them and each one of them had a different “disguise”, he could craft disguises out of the same Death Mask material and put it over the Death Masks, I thought this was pretty humorous but I couldn’t see any real link in the piece apart from the disguises were parts of time? Like one was Egyptian, one was Rome ect. He then showed us a piece he called “Beneath the Stride of the Giants” which was VERY similar to the Bone Shaker but instead of it being a truck, it was a ship with similar holes filled with things, however the things they were filled with was things he collected which had facial expressions and eyes which looked THROUGH you, not at you, I liked this piece a lot however my favourite piece had to be his London Underground sculpture – what he did was he put loads of destroyed-looking objects on one end of the platform and made like an obstetrical course for the imagination, this REALLY hit me hard as I love using my imagination and I could relate to this so much and I could tell if I saw it in person I would have a great time just, staring at it and pretending like Im doing the obstetrical course. As much as I loved the London Underground piece, it still left me wondering the health and safety hazards around the piece, in case people actually tried it out and got hurt really badly – however the materials he used may of looked old, but infact they weren’t he deliberately made them look old for an imaginative effect which added more to the imagination. I enjoyed every minute of Brian’s lecture and really hope to see more of his work updated, he was funny, he made sense and most importantly he made us all enjoy it, not to mention he made us enjoy it whilst somehow slowing time down – fantastic.

MICHELLE ATHERTON. 26/03/15.

Michelle started the lecture with a very random video of a woman who was singing but it was obviously sped up as she sounded like a chipmunk, as the video went on it suddenly went to slow-mo and just turned scary, her voice went deep and could still barely hear the lyrics – the thing which was scarier was when it went into normal speed and her voice was normal, she sounded really upset and the song was in another language, then it quickly returned to the happy chipmunk-like voice again. I was confused by the start of the lecture as this wasn’t really brought up again and left me confused, but I found this video to be pretty powerful. The video was called “Pipilotti Rist – I’m Not The Girl Who Misses Much” and I will attach a link to the video at the end of this post.

Michelle’s talk was all about a man called “Walter Benjamin” and from what I got from the whole lecture was the context of “Aura” around a certain object and this was brought up heavily in the seminar. She talked about how the power of reproduction changes our relationship with the original artwork, which I agree with but it does depend if you want the artwork to be exploited because once it hits the internet – EVERYONE can see it, copy/paste it as a whole new piece – I feel this makes the original twice as important as it was before, as people can try and fake it but it will never be the original – the copies could be in the hundreds – thousands even but you can never do a full perfect clone of the original. We got asked how we’d feel if our work got copied and me personally, I would be happy only if I was credited or known as the original artist, however knowing my work was so good to actually have someone make a copy and claim its there’s is very ego boosting. During the question time, I asked Michelle for her thoughts on “aura” and she never answered, she started talking about the aura and continued to talk in Walter’s view of it when I asked for hers, I was also pretty confused as to what aura meant and I have a fair few theories: Aura could either mean the feelings or presents that the piece gives off, could be warm fuzzy feelings, a feeling of sadness, nostalgia or any feeling in general with it just being in the room, being autonomous. My second theory is that “aura” could mean that it could be a piece which gives off a certain vibe like a religious item with all this meaning and value when in fact its just a standard not-moving object. The topic of objects giving off auras and the power of reproduction giving us a different relationship to an art piece is very interesting and I hope to discuss these topics in more depth in the future.

Pipilotti Rist – I’m Not The Girl Who Misses Much video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJgiSyCr6BY

Stephen Wilson. 19/03/15

“Amatteur Time, Kids, Youth & Transitivity.”

I enjoyed Stephens lecture he was a very cheery man, however some of the pieces he was showing was a little out of my interest range. My favourite topic in the lecture was where he started talking about an anime which is dedicated to the Japanese bombing, an anime about a guy called Astroboy “The Mighty Atom” – I loved how they took an horrendous event and made it into a cartoon, not mocking what happened but taking it as inspiration and showing the world what happened through a cartoon character. He showed us another piece which caught my eye, it was a room full of industrial waste and amongst the industrial waste was a hidden golden necklace – I forgot who made this piece but I do like it, the piece makes me think “The diamond in the rough” but instead its “gold in the waste”. These two pieces were really the only things that interested me during the lecture, I would of preferred to seeing some of his work as he claimed to do pieces himself yet, he never shown any and I felt rather disappointed but did enjoy the overall lecture.

WILLIAM RABAN. 24/03/15

I sadly couldn’t take notes for this lecture due to the fact that they turned the lights out as we were watching a 60 minute film called “72-82”.

It was a very interesting piece of film, I loved the fact they used abandoned falling-apart houses as studios, this made me very jealous as I would love to work in an abandoned building. A fair few artists in the film talked about pieces they created in these studios, some using parts of the falling-apart house as materials. I can’t refer back to the film as I have no notes to reflect back on, however I found this film to be pretty great and would love to watch it again, it was well edited and put together.

The picture I have attached is from one of the artist who worked in one of the abandoned houses, who stored his motor bikes in the house too, in the same place where he painted.

Clunie Reid 17.3.15

I sadly didn’t get much from this lecture because there was a child behind me talking, which distracted me throughout the lecture however he left half-way through. Clunies work didn’t really interest me however I did appreciate the art that she made and the meaning behind them. The first thing she shown was a picture of two women laughing at two guys who were fast asleep – I couldn’t hear the meaning why because of the child, however I’m guessing she was backing up Men in general, this theory was boosted when she shown a picture with the caption “Trousers too tight, Heels too high” (2006). She then proceeded to show us some black and white images of naked women with edits over them she says she found on the internet, she exhibited them and displayed them using black tape which added more to what she was trying to display and using the tape was actually accidental which I found pretty interesting. She showed us an image of a guy laying on his side, an image I have seen on the internet before – shed edited this picture in many different ways because she loved it so much, I think she shown us 10 different edits of that image? It was very bizarre someone would find an image of a naked man laying down so fascinating. To bring her lecture to a close, she shown us a video of a rose dripping something, with loads of random flashing GIF images – some very pornographic but the pictures were on for not even a second, like a subliminal message – it left me with a headache but I found it very interesting. I did enjoy the lecture however I wish the child wasn’t so distracting, even when the child had left I found myself disinterested because I pretty much missed the start.

BEN JUDD. 12/3/15

Well firstly, great second name!

I found Bens lecture very interesting however, I felt it wasn’t explained as much as I would of liked it to of. He started off talking about Sea Cadets and how he see’s being a Sea Cadet as a “Constant Rehearsal” as they aren’t allowed to go out to sea, which is a pretty interesting point. He then quickly jumped to talking about Train Spotters and how he see’s them as people seperated from humanity, he went to Doncaster Train station with a camera and instead of taking photos of the trains, he took photos of the train spotters who were taking photos of the trains, a pretty clever project and then he jumped from that topic to visiting a Witch as he doesn’t believe in magic and all that. He sadly didn’t go into much detail with his experiences with working with the Sea Cadets, taking photographs of the train spotters or even how he really felt when talking to the Witch (Which he was warned not to go near by the locals…), the Witch told him to go in the shower with Eggs and Lime and to wash himself with them – he did that, came out and the Witch surrounded him with Eggs and Lime and performed a ritual using alcohol, he then jumped to his next topic  setting up his own religion which he didn’t talk about much, then jumped to “The Art of being Psychic”. He did a lot of topic jumping, some topics I didn’t really understand due to the lack of detail in the stories, when he was talking about the Psychics, Witches, Shamans and Magic, I found it really interesting because I’m a huge fan of the paranormal, he just stated he worked around it and gave no experience share of what he did and what not. I did really enjoy the lecture however I still feel dry and crave more detail to his stories.

CHOLE BROWN. 12/3/15

We already had a lecture from Chloe Brown a few months a go and she was equally as interesting as before, however I found this lecture and topic a lot more intense and interesting than the last lecture we had with her.

First off she did warn us that this lecture will graphic and full of disturbing images – however I found the lecture rather timid, I was expecting gore and really disturbing stuff but it was all below my expectations, sure some were very disturbing but not as disturbing as I originally thought.

After the warning, she shown us some paintings now, I’m not a huge fan of paintings however these specific ones really interested me. “The Graham Children” (By William Hograth) shows 4 young children all smiling and looking happy in a average rich home, however under close inspection, there are loads of hints of Death in this painting – this is due to the fact that one of the children (The youngest) in this painting passed away, once she stated that and said that there were hints in the piece, everything became clear – the cat in the background was waiting for the right time to kill the bird, on the top of the clock there was a golden Grim Reaper statue and by the girl who passed away was a basket full of cherries which represents death at an early age – VERY clever work, really found it interesting. She shown us these masks that were made for the dead as well and you had to be really rich to get one made, people used to build masks around the faces of the dead and give them to the moaners, this concept is really beautiful although at the same time a little creepy in my opinion. She shown another thing which sparked a lot of conversation in the seminar, it was the piece “Helena 2000” and what it was was some goldfish in a blender, the blender had one bright yellow button so it was like you were playing God – you decide if the fish should die or live, so many people were saying that they would press it and loads more people were saying they wouldn’t be able to live with themselves if they did, so many mixed reactions it was quite heated over a small art piece – incredible. I personally said I wouldn’t press the button, however I would press it if the fish was going to get flushed if it remained alive, giving it a quick and painless death rather than a slow flushing death. Another piece that got everyone discussing was a piece by “Guillermo Vargas”, I use the term “Piece” loosely. Guillermo Vargas exhibited a dog obviously starving to death tied to a rope in the gallery, with the words “You are what you read” spelled out in dog food on the wall, this did disgust me and made me wish I was there – me along with loads of others stated we would of scraped the food off of the wall and gave it to the dog, I didn’t like the fact that noone stepped in and done that – I’ve heard people say that there are loads of stray dogs out there which are starving to death, which is true but taking away its right to rummage through garbage and put it in a gallery tied up with no way of feeding itself is just cruel. On a bit of a brighter note, she shown this artist called Richard Mosse who done some video with a Infra-red lens, turning the grass bright pink and the rest of the landscape in a sunset like setting, it looked absolutely beautiful and looked like some kind of fantasy world, I would love to see more pieces like that. Chloe shown us other pieces of art that linked to death, some of bubbles in a room which is made from the wash water from a morgue and even a air conditioned room with the air from a morgue so its like you’re breathing in the dead, some really interesting pieces and a very interesting lecture and I look forward to our next lecture with her. 

RORY PILGRIM. 10/03/15.

I admire Rory however his work was sadly not in my field of interest, I did really like the signs he had created and the musical too however he was very “political” and that really disinterests me. He started the lecture off with a little breathing exercise and made use pronounce a phrase through breathing – we ended up breathing out the phrase “What do we hope to become?” and from then on, he started his lecture – I found this method of starting a lecture really interesting as it had everyone relaxed and at the same time he had his starting point out in the open. He stated that he is a person first and everything else second which is a pretty inspiring quote, he then stated that he once had a stutter and recovered from it, he has a huge fascination with words and speech which revolves around his work. I fell in love with the lettering in his work, the way the words flow through his pieces are really outstanding and the attention to detail on the lettering’s alone are amazing. My favorite piece by him was his “I guess we are not ready for this yet, are we?” sign which has the most beautiful font and design I have ever seen in a sign, the meaning itself is also beautiful. One thing about his lecture I found rather humorous was the fact he spent 3 years learning Estonian and he has never done a speech there despite now knowing the language, a student in the crowd pointed this out and made the whole room giggle along with Rory, it was a lovely relaxing moment. I did enjoy some of his work, the way he had the words displayed on the signs really shows his love for words as they stood out beautifully, but found myself disinterested in the political side of the lecture which was near enough the entirety of the lecture. Overall lovely lecture but sadly gained nothing from it.

EMMA BIGGS. 05/03/15.

Emma was a very very lively and “hyper” character, she really got excited with her presentation and as much as I admirer her enthusiasm, I found myself lost in the lecture not knowing which pieces were hers and which weren’t, because of this I got overwhelmed with information and just shut down into my own world. I did find her “Made in England” piece rather fascinating though, I really liked it – the fact that a piece of her work is now permanently displayed on the walls of a gallery is really amazing, I would love to have a piece of mine permanently placed in an area, like a piece of me will live on forever I find that concept rather beautiful. I find mosaic a really beautiful form of art, same with stained glass windows which she showed a lot of, I found the other pieces that inspired her to be very interesting and made me really want to create a mosaic piece which I may do in the future. After talking to my friends about the lecture and they all really enjoyed it and I can see why, her enthusiasm really kept the audiences attention and they loved it.