graffiti, other art, and ideas for display

This week I displayed some more faces, looked more at graffiti artists, along with other related artists, and expanded my ideas for display.

What I Did:

Time Calendar:
1.5 hours putting magnetic nauseated face on The Cube and recording reactions
3.5 hours making Saran wrap nauseated face, putting it on my glass apartment door, and recording reactions
1.5 hours watching Exit Through the Gift Shop
1 hour making a list of sites to put my faces and materials and attachments to use
2 hours researching artists

                                                          Shepard Fairey, Obey Giant

                                           Jeff Koons, Balloon Dog (Blue)

                                                    Jeff Koons, Basketball

                                                    Jeff Koons, Hoover Celebrity III

Overall, this week was a success. Even though I had some issues that kept me a little shy from accomplishing the required 10 hours of work, I still made some progress that will really help me in my IP journey.

What I Accomplished/Discovered/Encountered: 

Notes about The Cube are listed in my last blog entry, but the Saran wrap nauseated face is new. It probably got the most reactions from people, because it was seen by a lot of drunk college students. I live right next Backroom Pizza, which accumulates a line of people until 4 am, and I left the face on my door all weekend. Especially at night when it's dark outside, but the light shines on the inside of the door, the face is illuminated and can be seen much better than during the daytime. There was a lot of laughter and many people wondered if I drew the face directly onto the door.

I had never seen Exit Through the Gift Shop before, but graffiti has been a real interest to me lately, so I rented the documentary and watched it this weekend. It is a great film and I came to find out many different graffiti artists out there along with different reasons for why they are doing what they're doing. Some artists don't even really know why they are putting up what they are, but it is just the thrill from the act of tagging public things that makes them do it. Of course, there are some great statements that some artists make too. I always thought that graffiti artists like to remain anonymous, but some actually want people to know who they are. Shepard Fairey was who I connected with the most in the film. His Obey Giant stickers and graffiti have similarities to my faces, and I like this quote from him: "The sticker has no meaning but exists only to cause people to react, to contemplate and search for meaning in the sticker."

Jeff Koons is another artist that I looked at that has similar messages in his work about making the viewer think differently about the material object. His Balloon Dog piece is a lot larger and made out of metal instead of an actual balloon, the Basketball piece is made out bronze, and Hoover celebrity III is brought into a different light by literally putting a light behind it and hanging it on the wall. Especially with his Balloon dog, his work reminds me of Claes Oldenburg.

I did not know much about Marianetta Porter, but when I talked to her on Tuesday, I got a lot of good insight for my project. I ended up talking with her for an entire hour. Her work includes African American history and culture, but what relates a lot to my project is that she also works with what is revealed and concealed in African American material culture. She really liked my idea of having my faces on site specific objects that say something about the object. She suggested that I make huge lists of every site to put my face and every material and attachment that I could think of. Then, connect the dots with the best material and attachment for each site, and after going out and doing all of these things, I will have a better sense of what I like to do and what I want my faces to say. Here are some of my ideas:

Sites:
bike racks, bar bathroom mirrors, all my apartment windows, bridges, trees, fire hydrants, telephone poles, A&D couches, windows and stairwells, mailboxes, bus stops, public computers, construction sites, and billboards

Materials:
paper, Saran wrap, cloth such as denim, cotton, and silk, newspaper, pillows, wood, glass, hard plastic

Attachments:
magnets, static cling, velcro, safety pins, tape, glue, stitching, poster putty, nails

What I Think I Will Do Next:

I will use some of my materials and attachments to make at least 2 faces that I can put up in as many different places as I can.

The Cube

Reactions from The Cube:

I got many reactions after so many people came to visit The Cube today. Immediately when I put the face on it, a group of people came up, realized that you could move the face around, and made the eyebrows into a mustache. I left it like that for a while, but then decided to change it back into eyebrows. To my surprise, a minute later, another group of people turned them back into a mustache... Interesting. Many people took pictures of it and with it. There was also a tour that went on, which was really funny because the the tour guide was not expecting to see the face,  and when he spun the Cube around all the people in the tour were very confused about it.

I was sad to see that after I turned my back for about 5 minutes, a group of people stole my eyebrows. Really? Just the eyebrows? I didn't get it. So there are good and bad things about making my magnetic facial features. It's good that people can interact with the art, and I can take it down if anybody has a problem with it. But then again, people can steal them if I leave them up without monitoring them at all times.

 This is a picture that Rebecca Tulis found on Facebook and sent me. This is after another group turned the eyebrows into a mustache.

Saran Wrap, lamination, and magnets

Time calendar for this week:

3 hours making a sad face on Saran Wrap
6 hours making my nauseated face, laminating it, and making them into magnets
1 hour researching graffiti artists

                                                     Graffiti found in Detroit

                                           Banksy's graffiti found in Detroit

What I Did:

This week I found a new material on which to draw my faces. At first, I thought it was only going to be drawing on paper in the end. But after I explored the possibility of Saran Wrap, I think that this medium will also be not only fun to draw on but a clever medium as well. I also made a nauseated face, got it laminated, and then made them into magnets, which I will put on The Cube shortly. After getting feedback from he group in our critique on Thursday, I researched graffiti art and artists, specifically Banksy and graffiti that has been found in Detroit.

What I Accomplished/Discovered/Encountered:

I really liked the way that the Saran Wrap looked on the window of my studio, especially from the outside. It made it look like I drew or painted right on the window. I found out, however, that it does not hold up well on the outside of the window, simply because the wind blows it right off. For some reason I did not think about this factor. So whenever I put these pieces up, I must put them on the inside of buildings.

I also like how the nauseated face turned out. The hard lamination makes it pretty much indestructible, so if I were to go along the interactive route, I would not have to worry about anybody ruining them. They can also withstand the rain that has been coming down lately.

For some reason, I never thought to get influence from graffiti artists, but I think there is a lot of commonality in our work. Although my pieces are not meant to be permanent on objects, there is a certain kind of anonymity that I like to incorporate into the displaying of my faces, which is what Banksy other graffiti artists are known for. Graffiti artists' artwork also varies in size, style, and what kind of statements that are being made. Sometimes the artwork is just to beautify the area, and sometimes it is to make huge statements about certain topics, like Banksy does in his graffiti about the trees being gone from Detroit.


What I Think I Should Do Next:

Shortly, I will put up my nauseated face on The Cube and watch reactions. I also want to make another face on Saran Wrap and put it on my apartment entrance door since the door is glass. I live above a popular late-night pizza place that is swarming with drunk college students after the bars get out. I want to make either a sick face (possibly puking) or something else that especially drunk people will respond to and then put that up tonight and tomorrow night when I know there will be a lot of people there. I will also continue to discover more things about graffiti that I can incorporate into the content or context of my work. 

Dumpster Face

What I Did:

Break down of the week:
1.5 hours making my face into magnets
1 hour putting face on dumpsters and watching reactions
4.5 hours making a large sad face
7 hours writing my proposal/ researching artists and sources/ creating my timeline

I had wished that the dumpsters that I put my faces on were a lot more full like I see them all the time, but unfortunately I think trash day was only a day or two before I decided to do this. I sat by both dumpsters (one located next to the parking structure by my house and one in the diag)for a half hour each. I wished that I had gotten more reactions than I did, because most of the people who walked by either did not see it or just didn't have a reaction to it. I did get a big sense of pleasure from the people who did smile or laugh or point to it though.

I also put my face on a gross vent on my roof next to a huge wall of grease drippings, because I have always been disgusted by my roof. Even though nobody saw it, I still liked to see it there for a second. And since they are magnets, I can stick them on any metal surface with ease.

I just recently finished my large-scale sad face as well, which I plan to put on the doors of Borders soon.

What I Accomplished/Discovered/Encountered:

Through my experimentation and then viewing the reactions, I realized a few things. One was that people walking outside are a lot more in a hurry than the people I watched in the bathroom, which makes them less able to see the work. Another thing I realized was that my face blended in to the green dumpster a lot more than the black one because the graffiti that was on dumpster made the face stand out less. I also thought that since I was sitting by the dumpster, people might have known that I put the face up, which might have made them a little uncomfortable to react to it, because I was looking at them. And finally, like I said before, I wish that the dumpsters were more full and looked grosser to make my message come across clearer. All of these things made me want to improve the way I displayed my face.

Most of my time this week was spent writing my proposal. The artists that I researched for my sources have really inspired me and have made me think of different possible directions that I could take my project in. Two artists that I have newly researched are Claes Oldenburg and French artist JR. They are both public artists.

 

Dropped Cone, Claes Oldenburg

Oldenburg's sculptures of inanimate objects relate to my idea of giving inanimate objects a personality and to make people think differently about material objects. His sculptures are humorous, which I incorporate a lot into my work. His work has made me think about the possibility of getting away from faces.

 

JR, Faces of the Favelas

JR is an artists who I have recently discovered whose content is very similar to mine, but whose context is very different. He takes photographs of people's faces, blows them up, and pastes them on buildings and structures. His reasoning for this, however, is to bring attention to these certain people by making them models for the day usually because of their hard lives and bad living situations. His work has made me think of the possibilities of changing the meaning behind my faces and different areas to put my work. 

Creating the timeline and writing my proposal also helped me to breakdown my project into different sections where I can experiment and figure out just what it is that I want to accomplish for my project. I think exploring with different mediums, larger scales, interactivity, making different kinds of statements, displaying my work differently, and different ways of documenting my project throughout the semester can help me narrow in on exactly where I want to take my project by the end of the semester.

What I Think I Should Do Next:

For next week, I want to make my sad face into window clings and put it on Borders windows. I also want to make another face to put on a different object, possibly a nauseated face on The Cube. I want to see how these different facial expressions on different objects change the way people's reactions are. I want to take all of my findings from the dumpster experiment and perhaps improve the way that I display my faces.

Midterm Proposal

If inanimate objects had emotions and could express them, how would they do it? What would they say? And how would an audience react to these messages? These are questions that I have wondered recently, which have brought me to my idea for my IP project: I want to give inanimate objects the ability to display their emotions through facial expressions and possibly dialogue and then note physical and emotional reactions from the public. Inanimate objects embody certain traits through their material, their aesthetic appearance, and how they are used. These attributes can give the object a human-like personality. I have decided to take these thoughts and bring them into reality by actually putting specific, large-scale facial expressions directly on objects out in public.

            My project will have a social aspect through the relationship between the objects’ emotions and people’s emotions. I expect that people will have a strong reaction, whether it is through laughter, surprise, disgust, or anger, every time they see everyday inanimate objects with faces communicating a very human idea. By exploring these physical and emotional reactions from the audience, I will get a better understanding of the connection between human emotion and material objects. Will the viewers feel an emotional connection to the object the face is placed upon or will they simply feel an emotion from the large-scale facial expressions?

            In order to accomplish my project, I will use paper, pens, and colored pencils that I already own to draw the facial features, but I will need to purchase magnetic sheets in order to attach my drawings to metal objects. I also need money to laminate my drawings or to make them into window clings. To pay for these materials, I will use money that I have set aside for school supplies, and I will create these in my studio. My projects will be displayed around campus and downtown Ann Arbor on many different objects.

6 Important Sources and References

1) Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen

            This couple is important for a few different reasons. Their large-scale works of objects bring about the topic of material culture. Having them so large also makes them humorous in a way that my giant faces are. Also, more recently, their public work has a relationship between object and site, which my faces will have with the objects to which they are attached.

2) Terry Borders who makes Bent Objects

            The way he creates a personality for the objects is a bit different than my idea, but I love his style and humor that he incorporates into his art. He attaches wire limbs to the objects and sets them up in a scene to display a type of emotion and personality that the object might have or a situation that they might be in.

3) Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture by Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright

            I have been reading this book for my Visual and Material Culture class this semester. It has many topics that are relevant to my work such as interpretations of images, advertising to people on the go, pop art’s social critique of consumer culture, and commodity fetishism. This book makes me think about material culture, which is very interesting to me, in ways that I never thought about before.

4) French Artist JR

            He puts photographs of eyes and faces on buildings and structures. It is a much different concept from mine, because he is bringing recognition and confidence to people around the world who need it most. He makes people living on the bare minimum models for the day in his artwork. The similarities of our giant faces and the differences between our concepts have made me think about the possibilities of taking my concept in a different direction.

5) Tim Burton

            His illustrations and creativity have always been an inspiration to me. His dark humor really shines through in his drawings of characters, as they are distorted, odd, and very intriguing. I have always respected and related to his creepy humor very much.

6) Real faces and facial expressions

            I do not think it would be fair to draw human faces expressing emotion without looking at real people expressing real emotions about real topics.

Week-to-week timeline:

Oct 8            make a sad face and put on Borders

Oct 15            make more faces and put on other sites

Oct 22            think about interactivity and displaying dialogue

Oct 29            think more about the documentation of reactions to my project

Nov 5            think about statements the faces could make

            *Nov 10 Grant Application Due

Nov 12            explore other ways to communicate dialogue

Nov 19            explore other ways to attach the faces to objects

Nov 26            explore other materials to draw on than paper

Dec 3            explore different drawing styles

            *Dec 5 IP Faculty Consultations- Materials Due

Dec 10            formulate ideas, where do I want to go with this?

            *Dec 15 Presentations

Dec 17            over break, put my faces on things in Grand Rapids

            *Jan 5 First Draft of Written Thesis Due

Jan 7            2D vs. 3D

Jan 14            try an even larger scale

Jan 21            think about other body parts (hair, nose ears)

Jan 28            still think about other body parts (arms, feet)

Feb 4            try just humorous

Feb 11            try just seriousness

Feb 18             indoor vs. outdoor

Feb 25            campus vs. residential areas

Mar 3            older people vs. college students vs. children

Mar 10            think about the possibilities of using these as advertisements/posters

Mar 17            make more faces, display, document

Mar 24            make more faces, display, document

Mar 31            make more faces, display, document

            * Apr 3 Work Due to Gallery Installers

Apr 7            displaying my documentation

Apr 14            formulating thoughts, writing

Apr 21            finishing writing

            *Apr 22 Final Written Thesis Due

                                                                           My drawn face on a dumpster 

                                                      Claes Oldenburg, Dropped Cone (Cologne, Germany)

                             Terry Borders' Bent Objects, Kiwi Getting Ready for the Beach

 

JR,  Favela Morro Da Providencia, Rio de Janeiro

 

                                                               Tim Burton, Untitled

10/11 critiques and suggestions

All and all I received some really good feedback today with good suggestions of where I should take my project. The people in my group liked the site-specific aspect of my project. Some exciting suggestions that I received were to make my faces more interactive. Magnetic words that go along with the magnetic faces would be a good idea so that people can come up with their own sentences that relate to the faces and they would also be able to move the face in whatever configuration they choose. Other exciting things that came up were to make more faces that could go in either funny places or in places that don't have people just walk right by in a hurry. Suggestions were a yawning face in a library, an energized face in a coffee shop, a nauseated face on The Cube, and a throwing up face in a bathroom such as NYPD where people would be getting food late at night drunk.

All of these exciting suggestions are also challenging for me. It was harder than I thought to put my faces up in public, because I felt very awkward. I think that it will be harder yet to engage with people to make them interactive and also to put them in places where people will be sitting there for a while watching me put up my work.

I am really trying now to break out of my shell because I would love to create these specific projects to both further my project as a whole and to test different methods in order to narrow in on what I intend my purpose to be.

Beginning to Go Public

What I Did:

This week, I drew more faces and put them up in the bathroom at the Art School. Then I came up with a plan to go even more public.

Here is how long I spent on each topic:
3 hours drawing more eyes and mouths on notecards
1 hour coming up with dialogue for the faces and places to put up each one
.5 hours spent in the bathroom putting up faces on the mirror, towel paper dispenser, and inside the bathroom stall and then noting people's reactions to them
.5 hours researching artists
6 hours drawing large facial features
1 hour talking with people about how the faces and dialogue makes them feel


These are faces with very different expression that I wanted to put on specific objects in public places.

This one is intended to be a public computer...

This one is intended to be on a trash can...

The next three were (or are intended to be) on a public bathroom mirror...

This one was on a paper towel dispenser...

And I have not yet decided on this one....

Here are pictures from inside the bathroom. They are not good quality, because I wanted to do it fast so nobody would see me. I had a strong sense to have nobody know that I made these, because I wanted to see their true reactions. I did not want them to think that they were being tested by the person beside them carefully making glances in their direction.

From here, I got some good feedback and suggestions. One of the suggestions was to make the faces large scale so that I can put them on large objects such as the shower that I illustrated before. I did some research and found large stickers of faces from nouvellesimages.com. Here is a sticker that you can place on your wall for a decoration.

                                                      Mona Lisa by ARTHUR

 I decided to make my own large face that I can put on a wall or a large object. Each facial feature is a little over a foot wide.

What I Accomplished/ Discovered/ Encountered:

After experiencing the reactions in the bathroom of the Art School, I realized that I love to get big reactions from people, whether it is making them laugh, gasp, be disgusted, confused, or angry. There were a few reactions in particular that were very strong. One girl laughed, took a picture of the faces on her phone and told me she just wondered who made these. Another woman read the paper towel dispenser, which said "You better not use too much paper towel," and then turned around to use another one. Someone else took down the sign in the bathroom stall that said "What did you eat??" alongside a disgusted face. This experiment made me want to go even bolder and try to get even more reactions from the audience. The experiment along with suggestions from others made me want to go bigger scale, which brought me to my large scale face. I felt that the size and the detail of the large scale face would really shock people and evoke more of a reaction than the small eyes and mouths. I was right in this assumption when I brought classmates into my studio where the face was displayed and all of them basically had a surprised reaction at first and told me that it creeped them out a little bit. I also want to go more public with my faces to get a bigger audience.


What I Think I Should Do Next:

With my large scale face, I want to make them into huge magnets and put them onto metal things in public. This will allow me to be able to take them down with ease in case anyone yells at me for it. With this disgusted face, I want to put it on a dumpster. I want to make a few more faces to fit other objects. I walked by Borders today and thought how great it would be to place a giant sad face on the doors. Since I used to work there, I thought it would be even more fitting, and feel that not very many people would be opposed to this. I want to make statements with my faces and make people think about the decisions that they make. Americans throw away so many things because we are such a consumer society, and it is partly because of society that Borders went out of business.