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          ARRoGANT                CoURiERS      WiTH     ESSaYS

Grade Level:       Type of Work           Subject/Topic is on:
 [ ]6-8                 [ ]Class Notes    [A proposal for an       ]
 [ ]9-10                [ ]Cliff Notes    [advanced art project.   ]
 [x]11-12               [ ]Essay/Report   [                        ]
 [x]College             [x]Misc           [                        ]

 Dizzed: 07/94  # of Words:3,200  School: co-ed public   State: NY
>>>Chop Here>>>>
        First off, I need to propose my theme that will 
encompass the majority of my art works in my stated media.
Out of painting, print making and sculpture, I am choosing 
to work with the latter for two main reasons.  One, I'm not 
that great at capturing visual ideas on the somewhat 
two-dimensional surface of paper or canvas.  Adding to that I 
thought that sculpture would allow me to have a greater 
release of creativity as my work can explode into the third 
dimension with many added features.  After pondering upon 
ideas for a theme, I hit upon four major factors that I want 
to incorporate within my work.  Firstly, I want it to make a 
definite immediate visual contact with the viewer through 
use of thought provoking forms and features.  Next, I may 
wish at times to incorporate audible stimuli to further draw 
the viewer into my work.   Thirdly, I want some interaction 
of the sculpture with the viewer, so that they can make a 
more intimate contact with the piece through tactile and 
kinesthetic action, so that they thus may "get into it" more 
and begin to experience some of the passion & feeling that I 
put into my work as it is thus conveyed to and impressed 
upon them.  

    As a title theme for my year's work I have come up with 
"Multifaceted Interactive Involvement With The Electro- 
Magnetic Spectrum."  This includes many different forms of 
radiation, light and waves.  I am also integrating sound to 
give an added flair.  Some practical project examples that I 
intend to carry through and actually construct can be found 
in ideas 11 and 12.  As my topic theme is fairly limiting, 
this is quite challenging, but great, as it allows me to 
create many different forms of work, all tied in to a common 
specific point.  I thought it also might be interesting 
though if I deviated slightly from the main theme and as a 
secondary little theme chose something to do with the people 
in the class surrounding me.  There are six in total, 
including myself and the teacher.  There are six sides on a 
cube and this gave rise to idea for a project.  The final 
result of this co-relates to idea number 9.  Soon after, 
idea 10 followed as I got to thinking about the "average" 
student of art.  This can also include the teacher, because 
no matter what level we are, we still may always learn more.





    One thing I seem to find is that by working around the 
late night/early morning period, my creative juices just 
seem to flow better and I get a lot more productive work 
done.  Also I need many special tools and thus maybe I will 
spend the majority of my project time in my room where I 
have all the things I need all around me.  That way I can 
also work in bits and pieces, working whenever I get the 
inspiration to do so.  This way, my art will benefit in the 
fact that it was made in the most fruitful portions of my 
labour.  It can also be made more enjoyable this way, if I 
know I don't have to work within a structured time on the 
project.  Maybe the time I spend in the classroom can be 
spend on finishing touches with paint and other items that I 
don't have available to me in my room.  Also I can do 
sketches and drawings of improvements and modifications to 
existing proto-sketches.

    I have had considerable difficulty finding a main 
mentor, first of all because I think my style is fairly 
obscure, and I also use such a variety of materials, that I 
couldn't seem to locate an artist that I could relate myself 
and my work to.  By a twist of fate, while looking through 
Canadian Art magazines, I came across an article titled "The 
Body Electric."  This article describes Jana Sterbak, 
originally native to Czechoslovakia, she came to Canada in 
1968 at the age of 13.  She has been educated in New York 
and Vancouver, having also lived there and now shifts 
between Montreal and Toronto, where she frequently exhibits 
her work.  In a way she reminds me of Van Gogh in that she 
creates her work for herself, and then attempts to impress 
the vigor and zest that she feels with her work upon others 
in an enthusiastic way.  She utilizes many different forms 
of materials, and likes to use electricity to her advantage 
to bring some life into the piece.  One piece of her work 
that I really enjoy is entitled "I want you to feel the way 
I do."  This sculpture, while seemingly relatively simple, 
is associated with a lot of strong feelings of the artist, 
and through her work she is attempting to impress them upon 
you, the viewer.  As you approach the piece, a motion 
detector senses your movement and activates the power to the 
projector and the nichrome wire that encircles the wire mesh 
frame.  The projector shows a message on the wall that 
helps convey the feelings of the artist while the nichrome 
wire surrounding the wire mesh heats up like a toaster, 
giving off a wave of heated air towards the viewer.  If this 
doesn't draw your attention to the piece, not much else 
will, and it serves it's dual purpose quite well.




    Another mentor, Rockne Krebs, who was born in 1938, has 
used different gas lasers to produce another much admired 
piece, called: "Day Passage."  This work uses several red 
helium/neon and blue/green argon lasers and mirrors which 
the many beams are bounced off of and reflected from the 
mirrors to create a large constantly changing light show in 
a L-shaped corridor.  While this artist had the assistance 
of the corporation Hewlett-Packard for this project, this 
work was done in 1971, before I was born, but technology has 
advanced so significantly since then that I could put 
together a low cost similar light sculpture without any 
additional help.  In fact, I have already designed an 
interactive light sculpture whereby the spectator may alter 
the laser light forms through the manipulation of controls 
on a panel. 

    Next, another artist with a similar style to mine is 
Sebastian, a Mexican born in 1947.  Like myself he is 
interested in the production of transformable sculptures 
that the viewer can manipulate to change configurations 
within the piece.  Now that I really look, I see that there 
are many possible mentors, and that I can be quite choosy.  
But I might as well detail the styles and works of some 
other artists whom I find encompass at least one aspect of 
my personal style.  Robert Irwin was born in 1928, and 
enjoys using light and shadow forms in his work.  In 1968, 
he created an untitled piece that effectively hides a 
plexiglass disk within the shadow patterns of light and 
colour that are projected on the wall through the use of 
four lights to provide illumination from behind the disk.  

    Len Lye was born in 1901, and thus is either quite old, 
or has passed away since the book that I consulted was 
published.  He was interested in exploring movement through 
art, and created several pieces that either moved through 
the turning of cranks by spectators or by electrically driven 
motors.  At the age of 64, he created a kinetic sculpture 
with stainless steel wire mounted in a wood base.  The base 
rested on a motor, and rocked gently back and forth creating 
the effect of grass blowing in the breeze.  Thus, the 
composition is entitled: "Grass."  These artists combined, 
make use of sculpture that uses sound, light and movement to 
go a new direction in art.  This could be described, 
together, as Kinetic Intermedia, and so I believe I have at 
last found my niche in the art world.



    Here are some random ideas for projects: 

1.  An interactive laser system, whereby users may control 
various beams of light through the manipulation of motors 
and mirrors, to create their own personalized light art 
form.

2.  A light box with many different openings and cut-outs, 
allowing projection of various light and shadow forms and 
their interaction upon each other.  -Possibly add color 
filters and a creative surface upon which these light forms 
are to be projected, creating a greater contrast and giving 
rise to many imaginative patterns and pseudo-three 
dimensional light sculpture.

3.  Is a true three dimensional light sculpture actually 
possible using our current technology?  Sure maybe with 
multi-million dollar real time holographic laser projection 
systems, but is it possible to create a compact photon form 
relying on using scrap parts and ingenuity?  Would it have a 
definite projection surface, or could it be visualized in 
plain air space, maybe relying upon condensed carbon dioxide 
vapour in which to carve traces and impose visual phenomena 
upon?

4.  A fiber optic (just thought of: possible sculpture 
title: "Fiber Optrix") sculpture, through which many 
different wavelengths of light could coarse, in either a 
steady or a variable frequency oscillation pulsed state.  
Could incorporate a fixed or variable speed motor to vary 
the rotation of the whole piece of work.

5.  Robot head.  Either purchase a department store 
styrofoam wig display head, or make one from clay? (probably 
too heavy for purpose, but could be hollow), or by wadding 
and taping newspapers into the form of a head.  Then 
transform it through such methods as silver metallic spray 
paint or aluminum foil, to give it a metallic base, and 
adding found objects such as electronic junk to create a 
dazzling three-dimensional sort of surrealistic artwork.  
Some of the electronics could be functional, and provide 
even more exciting visual, audible or kinetic effects.

6.  A sound sculpture made by collecting various materials 
and objects that produce different sounds.  The work could 
then be arranged as to be visually attractive, and could be 
sort of "played" by the viewer, somewhat like a music 
instrument, or could be electrically operated upon the 
viewer arranging some sort of built in puzzle that is a 
piece of the art.

7.  "Self Recycling Energy Light" or something.  Needs a 
better title, but could use the idea of a small light that 
draws its power from the current produced by a solar cell.  
The solar cell could be "generating" current from the light 
that was falling upon it from the lamp.  So this is sort of 
a perpetual motion sculpture drawing upon an impossible 
concept.  Maybe incorporate something as to convince the 
viewers that it is really working.  eg. When they cut off 
the light path from the light source to the solar cell with 
their hand, the light goes out.  When they withdraw their 
hand, the light returns.  But this kind of defeats the 
concept, as even the simplest theory of this would show that 
the light would require an external source to start up the 
process.  Anyway, I'll spare the details, but the point of 
all this, is trying to brainstorm as many ideas for projects 
as I can, no matter how trivial or complex.  Then later, I 
can review them, and either discard them or build upon them 
to create a viable project design.

8.  Some sort of novel supreme interface, where there is no 
physical sculpture at all, but merely a hookup that allows 
the viewer to connect themselves to it, and adjust the 
controls for maximum overall visual effect.  Would provide 
visual phenomena without the use of photons as it directly 
stimulates the optic nerves via self-structured neural 
impulses coupled either inductively or conductively.  
Similar in theory to what researchers have call "flashing of 
the brain," in which we may thus produce intricate colour 
fractal like patterns in the form of phosphenes.  Maybe aid 
the work with a powerful audio soundtrack to assist in 
visualization of desired objects.  This is probably the 
highest form of visual medium, because it paints extremely 
detailed pictures in your mind with your own imagination.  

9.  A sort of modified "Rubix Cube", with the six faces of 
the people in class pasted on each of the six sides.  
Although this does not quite fit into the main theme, it has 
aspects of it, as it is certainly multifaceted, and allows 
interactive involvement as the viewer may pick up the 
sculpture and turn and rotate the columns and rows in each 
of the three dimensions.  (See figure 3, attached)

10. The pictures of the six people in the art class 
transferred onto acetate or similar, so that they may be 
projected onto a screen through the use of an overhead 
projector.  Now we have pictures one through six, and they 
may be layered down on the projection surface one at a time 
until they all are aligned with and over each other, thus 
showing a combined image of the six of us.  Here many common 
physical characteristics blend, and we see what might just 
be the "average" student in our class.  As this idea is not 
very time consuming, it could be combined with idea nine as 
well as a possible third idea to create one project.

11. This "Interactive Digital Sculpture" or IDS for short, 
relies on the effect of human body capacitance to vary the 
frequency of a tone as the user molds the mountain-like 
form of a putty-like substance.  This incorporates a device 
similar to that made by RCA in the 1930's to produce eerie 
effects for movies and concerts.  I have thought about what 
substance to use inside the elastic form, so that it would 
be sort of like those stress buster nurd things you see in 
some stores now-a-days.  I would want it to slowly creep 
back into its original form after handling.  Several things 
came to mind as a filler, including: silicon, not unlike 
that used in breast implants, a mixture of cornstarch and 
water to form a colloidal suspension, play-do, to even 
mashed potatoes.  Perhaps I shall settle with some form of 
putty as the others are either impractical in their cost, or 
they may rot.  Although I know some art isn't made to last, 
maybe mine could only last the length of time it took the 
filler material to go bad.  The attached sheets will enable 
you to visualize the final product. 

12. This sculpture gives the illusion of a rotating ellipse 
around a cylindrical form.  The mechanism is hidden from 
view through the usage of a clever backdrop, and the motor 
which controls the "fall rate" of the ellipse has a variable 
speed control.  Refer to attached sheets.                      

13. A sort of "cyborg" robot form, constructed with mixed 
media.  The materials intended to be utilized will include: 
circuit boards, chicken wire, wire, styrofoam, plastic, 
aluminum foil, paper, and anything else useful that I may 
find lying around.  Some enamel and spray paints will also 
be applied in the finished product.  This sculpture may or 
may not move, but most probably will include some aspect of 
electricity.  Refer to attached sheet.

14. A spherical or elliptical bottle filled with 
multicoloured undulating globular spheres, similar to that 
of a lava lamp of time past.  In this modification to the 
original design, the globules will change color through the 
use of colour filters, and the light which provides 
illumination to the bottle will have a variable frequency 
rate from approximately one to sixty hertz.  It should be 
noted that a frequency above about fifty-five hertz gives 
way to flicker fusion, and the lamp appears to be constantly 
on.  Possibly an audible beat could accompany the light 
pulses.

15. A high-tech futuristic weapon, sort of like those 
constructed for use by the army corps in the movie "Aliens."  
Would be mixed media, including PVC piping to give the 
effect of the multi-barreled weapon.  Now I know how to put 
those spent CO2 cartridges to good use.  Some silver and 
black spray paint would finish off its appearance, to look 
futuristic, but heavily used.

END.



