I like John Cage

            Let me begin by saying that I like John Cage. I’ve never met the guy but I like him.  His work has definitely challenged me to broaden my definition of what music is. Cage has really raised some questions for me. Are you ready for some really deep thoughts? As human beings we experience a piece of music in time. What if God (I believe in God) experiences music differently? If God exists out of time and views time differently than couldn’t all the sounds in the world be viewed as one big piece of music? Think about it, if you took a song perhaps and made the tempo really, really slow than it wouldn’t really appear to be a created piece of music with rhythm, harmony etc. Couldn’t all the sounds from the dawn of time be exponentially sped up and maybe appear to be a deliberate piece of music? Every voice, the chirp of every bird, the sound of every leaf rustling in the wind, every drop of rain, every cry, every foot step, the sounds of every war, and, well you get the point. Perhaps all of time is one big piece of music. I wonder if John Cage ever thought about stuff like that, I think he probably did.

            Ok, next thought. I was intrigued by Cage’s method. Cage relied on chance for many of his pieces. I think of how often I get so caught up on my work ending up just like the picture or sound I have in my head.  I admire how Cage embraced things just happening by chance. He allowed himself to be free to things just happening in his work and didn’t feel he had to make everything fit into society’s preconceived idea of what music has to be like. I was also intrigued by Cage’s unconventional method of notation. I’ve always been intimidated by making music because I had trouble reading it from an early age. The thought never occurred to me that I could write music in a way that made sense to me like John Cage did. I saw a documentary about Kanye West once and he, like Cage, writes his music in his own format. Both of them use a very unconventional but visual way of writing music. I’d like to develop my own.

            I think anything can be music. Have you ever noticed how little kids just like banging on things? When I was like a year old or something I loved to take the pots and pans out of the cupboard and bang on them like drums. According to my mother I absolutely loved it and got so much satisfaction out of it. I think John Cage was onto something very innate in human beings. We are born with a fascination with creating and experiencing sound. As we grow we develop certain tastes and expectations from music and loose that childlike wonder with just making sound without any preset idea of what it is supposed to sound like. I think Cage was reversing that tendency in himself and encouraging others to do so along the way. I think of some more modern electronic artists I like Aphex Twin, Plaid and Square pusher who have taken similar albeit less extreme approaches to making music this way. I’m sure when many heard these artists for the first time they replied, “this is just a bunch of noise.” How much more would they be challenged by John Cage. I think Cage’s work was really about sonic liberty at some level.

            The biggest thing that struck me about John Cage was the fact that he collaborated with a lot of people and they all really liked him. I think you’d have to be a really likeable guy to get so many people to work with your unconventional methodology and challenging ideas. But that’s what we see in John Cage’s career.   That’s something a lot of artists lack. Cage didn’t cop an attitude when people didn’t get him. He kept right being nice and easygoing and people were drawn to him despite his unconventional methodology. I want be like that. I want to be like John Cage.

Getting it is not the point-Matthew Barney's "The Order"

After viewing Matthew Barney’s “The Order” from his  Cremaster series I was struck with the dilemma of not knowing what to write about it. To be honest my initial reaction was “what the f**k is this!? I don’t get it. I was going to write about how the whole thing was a sort of representation of a video game of sorts. Barney begins on the bottom floor and must make his way through the various “levels” of the Guggenheim. Perhaps the “cat woman” represented one of the bosses he must defeat and maybe the guy shoveling the Vaseline was supposed to symbolize the “timer” that is so prevalent in many video games. I could rack my brain all day long to try to figure out what the piece is about but is that really the point. Is “getting it” really the point?

            I can remember the first time I heard certain songs, viewed a piece of artwork, or saw a certain movie and didn’t “get it.” Take music for example. When the Beatles released “I am the Walrus” I’m sure many people didn’t “get it,” but the song became insanely popular and revered. Although many people have spent a great deal of time trying to figure it out, and that is half the fun, it wasn’t the only thing that made it good or stand out. Pop Music more often than not has certain elements that make it successful. There has to be progression, a chorus, harmony, rhythm etc. Likewise film also contains many elements that make it successful. One element is conflict. The main character in the Cremaster series has obstacles and enemies he must defeat, it may not be clear to the viewer what the point of the obstacles is but it is clear that they are obstacles. Another element in film is narrative structure; the viewer has to know the sequence of when things are things taking place. The Cremate flows sequentially; the plot unfolds as the main character experiences it. We may not know exactly what everything means but the plot is progressed in a certain order. Another element is suspense, although the threats in the order are not always clearly defined the viewer is made aware that they are indeed threats.

            I don’t think “getting” it is always the point. A piece of work will often resonate in the consciousness of a viewer without the viewer ever really “getting it.” In fact, the fact that the viewer doesn’t get it often makes a work of art more of a phenomenon and magnifies the impact. I certainly won’t be forgetting “The Order” any time soon. Food for thought… 

Reaction to Gregor Muir's Past, Present and Future Tense

            Upon reading Gregor Muir’s “Past, Present, and Future Tense,” I am convicted of the shallowness of my view of what new media is. Up to this point I would’ve labeled websites and digitally produced 2D and 3d animation as new media. This article has prompted me broaden that view. If I were to create a website with nothing on it but a white back round on it would that be accepted as new media? If so would it be considered “good” new media? Many of the works described in this article would not fit the bill as aesthetically pleasing. This in turn raises the question does art as a whole need to be aesthetically pleasing to be art. I think not. But I think it helps if it is to be accepted by the public at large. This truth makes me question what I want to get out of my time in E.M.A.C.? Do I want to make pretty pictures that make people smile and serve more or less as decoration? Am I here to just learn software to communicate others ideas and sell their products? Do I want to be like these artist who used these emerging technologies to expand the boundaries of art and force people to look at these mediums differently? I think I want to do all of these. Another thing that struck me while reading this article is all the new ethical questions that popped into my head. Is it ethical to film people jumping off a bridge to their death? Or is this a way of using art to draw attention to this occurrence? Is it ethical to create websites that people visit that leads them to think that something wrong with their computer? Is it ethical to use others work in new ways if it violates copyright laws? As I try to answer these things I’ve come to realize that I don’t have all the answers. Who am I to say what is ethical anyway. Am I responding solely to the art or the artist? Is there a difference? What do you all think? 

Reaction to Man Ray documentary: class one

Upon watching the documentary of the life and work of Man Ray I was really left with a strong desire to learn more about the artist, the Dadaist and their influence on artists today. I liked that Man Ray, like many artists, was less concerned with success in the cultural sense and more concerned with being true to himself and his art. I believe it was this character trait that really drew Man Ray the Dadaist movement. According to Wikipedia, the proponents of Dada believed that they were an “anti-art” movement in the sense that it was a rebellion against the contemporary academic and cultured values of art. Where traditional art was concerned with aesthetics, Dada ignored aesthetics. Through their rejection of traditional aesthetics the Dadaist hoped to destroy traditional culture and aesthetics ( Wikipedia, Dada.)

 While I don’t believe that Dada destroyed traditional culture and aesthetics it did broaden the scope of what is considered art today. I find myself often passing by art that doesn’t conform to my learned idea of what I consider aesthetically pleasing  Man Ray’s “gift” for example is a piece that I would have probably passed by and thought, “well, that’s cool. I guess,” without much thought afterwards. After learning more about Man Ray and the Dadaist movement I want to spend more time thinking about it and think about what the artists intent was. Maybe Man Ray had no grand message he was trying to get across and he did it just because he wanted to, maybe that’s the point. Regardless the work has become something that permeates my mind and causes me to question what art is. Things that make you go Hmm, eh? (CC Music Factory, 1991.)

                                       

            I especially found myself drawn to Man Ray’s photography and film work. I kept thinking of how much his work must have influenced others specifically Anton Corbijn. I wanted to see more of Anton’s work to really identify specific works that had a very Man Ray feel to them. I went back and resisted a lot of Anton’s photography and video work, specifically his work with Depeche Mode (80’s Synth Gods from Basildon England with a career spanning 20 + years. Best known for such hits as Personal Jesus and Enjoy the Silence.) Corbijn tends to eschew traditional glamour photography, instead favoring a rawer look, often in black-and-white. His subjects appear to be calm and far removed from everyday life. His photographs show raw emotion. His influential style of black and white imagery with stark contrasts on grainy film (sometimes referred to as “overcooked”) has been imitated and copied in such extent that it has become a rock cliché and a vital part of the visual language in the 1990s (Wikipedia, Anton Corbijn.) Anton Corbijn's sleeve deign for the 1991 Depeche Mode release “Personal Jesus” and Man Ray’s “Prayer” both have a similar feel to them. Both images are sensual by nature and have stark contrasts to them. I think the artists’ use of stark contrast heightens the sense of danger and hints at the voyeuristic tendencies in the viewer. 

         I also could not ignore the possible homage to  Man Ray’s photo of the neck of Lee Miller in Corbijn’s 1991 sleeve design for Depeche Mode’s “Policy of Truth."                                                                                                    

            

Man Ray like Corbijn preferred to capture their subjects in natural relaxed states as opposed to the more popular posed and airbrushed styles. Man Rays catalog cover with his finger in his nose really reminded me of Corbijn’s well-known photo of Miles Davis. Both artist embraced the oily skin, wrinkles and other so called imperfections of their subjects.

            Anton Corbijns video work also reminded me of Man Ray’s. In class we saw a clip of a Man Ray film with a woman with a set of eyes painted on her eyelids. Anton Corbijn did the same thing with his 1997 video for Depeche Mode’s “ Barrel of a gun. Both film/video works have a very similar avant-garde feel to them.

            I also found influences of  Man Ray’s “Emak-Bakia” in the set design for Depeche Mode’s 2005 world tour for the album “Playing the Angel.” Corbijn created a large steel globe with various LED’s would scroll by with various words such as “love”, “angel”,“sex” and pain. The set design reminded me of “Emak-Bakia” in the way Man Ray used moving text in his film. (Both works can be found on You Tube, sorry for the lack of direct links.)

                                            ( Set design for Depeche Mode 2005 tour.)

In conclusion, I’m glad I was introduced to Man Ray and his work. I’m eager to explore the influence of Man Ray and the Dadaist in my own work and other artists I appreciate today.