Event 2

Ticket from Event
The event featured Texas artists and their performance works, created to celebrate simple, human-made objects. The idea behind this theme, “Odes for a World in Search of Joy,” is inspired by “Odes to Common Things,” a book by Pablo Neruda that allows one to appreciate the simple things in life, such as an ode to the present, an ode to age, and an ode to broken things (David).






The artists all expressed their own perspectives on the topic through multimedia art. There were poems, visual art, animations, short films, and music. Artist Jay Duffer created a choreography on the concept of salt. 


Salt by Jay Duffer (Taken from the Event)


Artist Jonathan Fielding and Brenda Withers’ “Spec-Ulation” took an interactive approach to the concept of glasses. They interviewed several people about their experience with wearing glasses and shared the stories behind their glasses and their memories associated with them. 


Spec-Ulation by Fielding and Withers
(Taken from the Event}



A piece that stood out to me most was one by Ruben Carrazana, titled “What’s in the Box.” He showed video clips of multiple characters opening different types of boxes, such as an engagement ring container, a picnic basket, a backpack, and a box of flour. 

What's in the Box by Ruben Carrazana
 (Taken from the Event)


The event made me realize that so many things are taken for granted in our day-to-day lives, however, these little things and moments can inspire so much joy and gratitude. In the current state of the world, with our technological platforms often leading us to feelings of isolation and emptiness, the theme emphasized the importance of rediscovering the beauty of ordinary things and ordinary tasks. 


This event made me think back to Walter Benjamin’s concept of “aura.” It is an example of how mechanical reproduction of art enhances the uniqueness and aura in art (Davis), rather than destroying it. Although I initially agreed with the sentiment that technology removes the authenticity of art, it can be used as a tool to remind ourselves of what truly matters to us (whether that be appreciating the value in the ordinary, raising awareness for sociocultural issues, or better understanding a topic that we’re passionate about). The rapid growth of technology has provided us with a promising third culture with a wide array of new ways of expression and communication (Kelly).


Benjamin notes that “even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be” (Benjamin). If these art pieces successfully reminds us of the ordinary things surrounding us that we often overlooked, is it truly lacking presence at that moment?


Perhaps the loss of aura isn’t an absolute negative consequence of industrialized society. Rather, art can serve at the forefront of helping us understand how the world shifts over time (Vesna).




References


Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. London: Penguin, 2008. Print.


Carrazana, Ruben. "What's in the Box." Digital Image. Odes for a World in Search of Joy. 1 May. 2021.


David, S. “Ode to Common Things.” Medium. August 29. 2020. Web. 


Davis, Douglas. “The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction.” The MIT Press, 1995. Web. 19 Oct. 2012.


Duffer, Jay. "Salt." Digital Image. Odes for a World in Search of Joy. 1 May. 2021.


Fielding, Jonathan. Withers, Brenda. "Spec-Ulation." Digital Image. Odes for a World in Search of Joy. 1 May. 2021.


Kelly, Kevin. "The Third Culture" Science 13 February 1998: Vol. 279 no. 5353 pp. 992-993. Web.


Vesna, Victoria. “Medicine pt1.” MedTech + Art. 22 April. 2012. Lecture.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Event 1

Image
Last week, I attended the Metropolis watch party for the Robotics + Art week.   Metropolis, a silent science-fiction film directed by Fritz Lang in 1927, is set in a sharply divided futuristic dystopian city that consists of wealthy city planners and an exploited working class that operates the machines that power the city. The film follows the journey of Freder, the son of the dictator who runs the city. Freder falls in love with Maria, an advocate of the working class, and attempts to help the workers. Meanwhile, the dictator orders Rotwang, a scientist, to construct a robot that looks like Maria to ruin her reputation and avoid any rebellion. The scientist, however, creates a geminoid of Maria to control the workers to promote a revolution.   The characters and landscapes in this film are filled with symbolic dichotomies. Take the setting for example. The overworld (inhabited by city planners) is portrayed as a beautiful elevated landscape, with skyscrapers, bright lights, ...
Read more

Two Cultures

Image
I’m a TCK, otherwise known as a “third-culture-kid.” I was born into a Korean family, grew up in China, and attended American international schools since the age of 8. I grew up building an ambiguously assembled identity of my own through multiple intersecting worlds. When I started my college career, I naturally gravitated to pursuing cognitive science, a field that could provide me with a similar interdisciplinary experience. https://www.madisonzeller.com/cultureclub Discussing philosophical and artistic implications of human thinking requires the application of computer science and statistics to model the way our minds work, evolutionary psychology to uncover human behavior, and behavioral neuroscience to understand what happens in our brains at a molecular level. The beauty of the field lies in the ability to examine phenomena from different perspectives without the dissociation of sciences and humanities.  https://www.carleton.edu/cognitive-science/ This isn’t to say that s...
Read more

MedTech + Art

Image
  Image of app prototype A few months ago, I was part of a startup team building a smart clinical nutrition app. The goal of the product was to allow healthcare professionals to calculate energy and macronutrient requirements, as well as feeding (oral, enteral, and parenteral) for his/her patients. This app would allow dietitians to securely store calculations and notes for each patient without needing to do the calculations by hand each day. This product truly demonstrates the interconnections between technology, medicine, and art in the modern age: user experience design elements were implemented to create a simple interface for medical professionals to use, with smart recommendations based on clinical guidelines and collected data. As explained by Professor Vesna, this shows that the med-tech space has grown immensely over the last few decades (perhaps as a response to our increasing desire for a healthy body and mind), promoting the collaboration between designers, engineers, a...
Read more