Musical Body Extensions

I think these amazing illustrations by Shawn Feeney relate to my interest in bodily extensions..although his are musical instruments extensions from the musicians that play them and mine are more physical manifestations of some psychological feeling..But I think they are amazing..and I love them...and I felt like I needed to post them here. They are amazing.

Japanese Device Art….ART with a capital A?

In Machiko Kusahara’s text Device Art: A New Approach in Understanding Japanese Contemporary Media Art, Kusahara introduces the importance of technology in Japanese artistic movements since the war. What I found particularly interesting is that words didn’t really exist in the Japanese language for “art” until the nineteenth century, although Art, most certainly did exist, some of the most well known include the wave woodblock prints of Hokusai.











Hokusai



When I think of Japananese artwork in my field, Metalsmithing, I think of artists who employ organic materials and forms, like the work I saw recently in Germany of Q Hisabashi Shibata or the lovely combinations of fiber and metal of Sayumi Yokouchi. Kushahara points out this could be because the Japanese come into direct contact with so many natural events like typhoons, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Japanese artists are very aware of the life and power of the earth around them and show respect for their environment as well as objects or tools they posses that reference the earth.










Q Hisabashi Shibata












Sayumi Yokouchi






Sayumi Yokouchi





Tools are particularly poignant in this essay because of the respect show for them by the Japanese, since they are commonly made from organic materials, and tools are an entry point in understanding how technology has come to be so important in Japanese art. The tea ceremony is a cannocial discussion in Art history classes taught at art schools all over the US and is recognized as a critical extension of Japanese art. Kusahara details a very simple robot or tea carrying automaton that was utilized during the Edo period in Japan, that would deliver a cup of tea when a full cup was set on top of it and when the empty glass was returned to it, it would turn 180 degrees and then return to its initial position. Kushara considers this the precursor to Japanese robots and perhaps an introduction to the Japanese desire to work with technology. I feel like this example is important because it relates to my questions about the level of craftness versus artness in an object simply because it serves a function. Japanese Device Art is struggling to be considered as high art because it serves a function, similar to craft which is also outside of high art, commonly has a function, but begs to be considered high art.




Kusahara claim’s the aim is to bridge the gap between high art, commercial products, design, science and technology by questioning Western notions of high art. As Osthoff utilizes Myron Kruger’s words in his essay of the work of Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica, “Many Aspects of virtual reality including full-body participation, the idea of shared telecommunication space, multi-sensory feed back, third-person participation, unemcumbered approaches and the data glove, all came from the arts, not the technical community (283).” So if Art has the authority to contribute to the scientific and technological community, why can’t experts in those fields contribute back to the arts and be considered themselves artists? If art is about constantly questioning itself, why does it hold strong to its title and not grant access to what should be clearly considered inclusive?

Final Project Proposal

My final project for this class will be an interactive costume.

I would like to:
-create a costume that interacts/performs/communicates between two people
-I would like my audience to know that they are watching an art performance
- I think the best space for that would be Kenilworth, preferably during an event there
-have this work be an extension of the ideas I am researching in currently in my practice
-relate to protection/antagonism as well as seperation/closeness










Ursula Guttman


I am thinking I would like to make an organ-like fanny pack/bag/purse that would hang off of the body. The fiber it is made from will either be compact at the beginning of the performance or limp and dragging on the floor. The pico device along with other prothestics needed for the performance will be inside the fiber material, hidden from the public eye. The piece will be activated by touch and when activated, extensions will extend beyond the body and bring form to the fabric that was either lifeless on the floor or crumpled up close to the body. Since the objective is about touch, the different places and amount of time touched will create different shapes from the fiber material. I am trying to decide also if there will be a specific dance like performance between two people and then others will be offered to participate or if that will be it.





Five Conceptual Questions:

1. Will the performance read as creating distance between two people in a longing sort of way or in a repulsive sort of way. I think the performance should answer this question. Based on how the performers react.

2. How will organs that protect by forcing people from being close read? I mean does that even make sense?

3. Why is touch creating barriers between the two lovers? What is keeping them apart? How far do I need to go to explain this, or can the viewer insert their own personal narrative?

4. How long should the performance last? How drawn out should each movement between the people be? How can these choices effect the impact of the performace?

5. Could the extensions attach to the performers? And could they then extend the pieces farther?


Five Technical Questions:

1. What materials could I use to successfully create a costume that is flat at the beginning of the performance and extended out at the end of the performance? Telescoping will definitely be my friend here, but what is the best material choice for the telescoping and what are the limits of the possibilities of telescoping here?

2. In what way could I use the pico to activate the telescoping? Turning? Pushing? Maybe the pico is what initiates the movement, but the performer follows it up.

3. Will I need to create a transistor in addition to the pico? If so, how the heck will I integrate the two?

4. I would like to be completely mobile. Is that possible with what I am trying to do?

5. Within the limitations of the battery life and strength of the pico, how far and how long can the turning or pushing of the telescoped extensions last?

Needed Materials:

Fabric
Telescoping materials (metal? Plastic? Fiber as well?)
Pico
A partner for the performance (preferably Matt)
Sensors that react to touch-possibly several


Production Schedule
4/2 (in process crit) have material investigations ready to discuss
4/9 pretty much figure out which materials I am using and have costume semi-built
4/16 start figuring out the electronic portion of performance
4/23 (in process crit) have attempt at electronic component ready to crit
4/30 performance rehearsals
5/7 final crit

Participatory Objects

Discussed through Simone Osthoff’s text, Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica: A Legacy of Interactivity for a Telematic Future.


Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica are both Brazilian artists who worked directly with the human body and viewer participation and are best known for their work from the 1960’s and 1970’s. Each artist has contributed to body art and interactive art movements in their own way. Lygia Clark’s work discussed in this text deals mostly with sensations of the body, but frequently with sight, or the loss of sight, in the form of goggles, masks and mirrors. Both Mask with Mirrors 1967, and Dialogue 1968, are Clark’s way of bringing awareness of the body directly to sight, or taking away control of sight from the wearer so other senses are heightened.

Mask with Mirrors 1967

Dialogue 1968

Oiticica’s work moved from an investigation of color, shape and space of three dimensional painting to active engagement of the senses in surroundings. Oiticica moved from making three dimensional paintings that activated space where the viewer had to physically move through them, to installations like Eden 1969, where the viewer was invited to interact (sometimes laying, sitting, or rolling around) in organic materials like soil or hay, heightening our awareness of smell and touch. This work makes more and more sense today, as sky scrapers are being built at record speed, and we lose more and more access to natural materials everyday.

Oiticica three dimensional painting

Eden 1969

Both of these artist’s work was important to the time because they were creating ephemeral moments that could not be captured and displayed in museum cases, which was unlike the work that was occurring at the time. However, I wonder after reading this piece, if this interactive body work has been going on since the 60’s, it seems like it has been done already. Maybe the future holds a resurgence of the object. Clark and Oiticica were framed as makine Brazilian work, just because it wouldn’t mold to western mainstream art of the time. That makes me want to reinvent the power of the object and somehow activate the object in a way that is totally different from what we see today.

Unruly Objects

Compared through Michael Fried’s Art and Objecthood and Damon Willick’s Still Live: Theatrics of the Keinholz Tableaux













Donald Judd
Team 3, 8
1968

















Robert Morris
Untitled
1969

Michael Fried addresses minimalism and specific objects, or what he calls literalist art through Donald Judd and Robert Morris’s work and their specific words on the subject.
Through Morris’s and Judd’s statements, Fried addresses the objecthood of sculpture versus the shape of painting. The key point in Fried’s discussion is when he addresses the beholder [viewer] of the work as being part of the work. I think this point is especially important for our work as makers of artwork on the body, since we consider the body on a physical scale since the work exists on the body. Fried says “the entire situation means exactly that, all of it – including, it seems, the beholder’s body (826).” Fried is concentrating on the points made by Morris and Judd that the viewers body is necessary in understanding the whole of their work. This makes me think of a discussion made by Glenn Adamson in the book, Thinking Through Craft, where he points out that the frame of a piece of autonomous artwork doesn’t always stop with the physical thickness of wood holding the canvas with paint up. This frame extends out to the space in the gallery, the carpeting, the lights and the street outside. Ed and Nancy Kienholz’ Still Live goes much farther to make the viewer aware that they are part of the frame. In Still Live the viewer must sign a waiver before entering because after moving around the space one realizes that there is a rifle pointed at your head with a warning that the gun is rigged to go off once ever hundred years. So instead of including the viewer in an abstract way, by making the work human size, the viewer is thrust into this direct confrontation aggressively staged by the artist. Willick also addresses the issue of theatre and theatricality, which the Kienholz work directly engages with because it is a staged work that is actively theatrical. The purpose, Willick argues is to “disrupt the common passivity of traditional art viewing in order to expose repressed aspects of everyday life… (23).” I feel like this active engagement with the viewer is more direct than a Judd or Morris work, therefore that theatricality is stronger in the installation style work of Kienholz than the objecthood work of Judd or Morris.







Ed Keinholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz
Still Live
1974












Ed Kienholz and Nancy Kienholz
Drawing for Still Live

Rebecca Horn: A dissection of touch as discussed through Lucy Lippard and Toni Stooss

Rebecca Horn is a female artist whose work inhabits the realms of sculpture, performance and video discussing feminism, the senses, movement and sensuality of materials on the human body through costume and extension. Lucy Lippard places her work in the “balance between communication and isolation, separation and interaction, distance and intimacy, self and other.” Her work provides a communication tool for the body through garments. Since we all exist in a physical body, we understand the limitations of the body to communicate. Horn’s body extensions are unusual but they ask us to reconsider the relationship between our physical bodies and our inner selves, as well as the relationship of our bodies to the world around us.



















In Finger Gloves Horn extends the body’s ability to touch with the hands, but at the same time distances the body from what is being touched; exaggerating one sense by sacrificing another. By distancing herself from others the work is implicitly communicating “fear of contact,” that Lippard discusses for its ritualistic historical reference. “Fear, in turn, is often the basis of ritual in primitive societies.” Fear is also used as an entry point in the pieces of Horn’s that draw attention to the face and then cover it.
















In Cornucopia, Séance for two Breasts, Horn’s fiber facial extension covers the mouth, creating a woven tube from the mouth to the breasts, individually. Not only is she creating a “sensensation of communication with oneself,” as Stooss asserts, “because the breasts are isolated, and also separated from each other, one’s perception expands triangularly, allowing them their individuality as two separate beings.” Most of Horn’s work has been rendered with some form of material that relates to the outer covering of birds or other winged creatures. Horn uses these choices consciously, claiming these material choices are “a means of tactile extension of the outer skin.”(Stooss 15) Therefore, Horn really does consider her work to be an extension of the body and not just an object resting on the body. These pieces communicate what the body cannot because of our perceived understanding of the physical body, as we understand it.

What I enjoy the most about these specific pieces is the way they allow the body to communicate. Instead of allowing objects to come near the body, Finger Gloves creates distance, which makes me look at the body as timid and full of fear of objects from the outside world. Observing the careful way in which her object makes the body touch, we reconsider the value of touch, and the intimate distance we posses to investigate objects. Cornucopia, Séance for two Breasts is an illustration for me about the importance of communicating with our bodies and not just ignoring them, specifically the feminine body and the ways in which it has been oppressed.