I didn't manage to watch the street performance because I had class at 7pm and I ended class at 9pm. I met my friend but we didn't manage to take lots of pictures because it was really crowded and I was pretty embarrassed to take a selfie. But, I took pictures of the works that I find interesting.
I find this work by Choe U-Ram fascinating. It is a kinetic sculpture. The work titled "Una Lumino Portentum" is made of motor, LED, acrylic, CPU baord, polycarbonate 360(w) x 48(d)cm. Born in Seoul, Choe loved machinery as a child and worked at a robotics company after college. Inspired by the philosophical concept of Emergentism, Choe was led to consider possible systems of communication living organisms which exist in the absence of an organisational structure or hierarchies of power. Emergentism explores the emergence of new, unexpected properties irreducible to interactions within and between parts of a system. This work consist 51 shiny flower-like individual units with translucent shells. The units of Una Lumino Spiritus produce pulsating clusters of light as they communicate with one another. Operating as individuals, each unit is not programmed to follow a set pattern, but is rather triggered by perturbations in its vicinity, thereby setting off chain reactions.
Choe's work engages a fanciful dialog of aesthetics and machinery and explores themes of biological transformation, flight, and movement. Motors, heat and light sensitive materials add to the intricacy of Choe's kinetic sculptures. I like how the flowers are blooming slowly. I just feel like I'm watching a real flower blooming. And I wont be surprised that 50 years later, the world will be filled with synthetic flowers. With technology, some of us might even feel like we don't need to rely on natural resources anymore. The world is different now, it's about moving forward and heavily depending on technologies to create a better future. I must say that although technology is useful, it is still not everything. And I have seen technology controlling a lot people nowadays. Shouldn't us, humans with emotions control technology? It is just not right to be seeing the opposite and having the fact living in world filled with technologies ruling and distributing the society. I have to agree that with technology life is sightly easier but technology makes us lazy too. I have nothing against technology because I do use it but I do not let technology take control of me and my life. Most of just take advantage of technology and hence, they grow lazy each day. We should use technology wisely not blindly. Some people are also taking advantage of having the fact that people rely on technology so much that they could hack and leak information easily through the use of technology.
I think that this work is very interesting but there are no images of the
actual umbrella being used. I couldn't find information and videos about the performance art too. So maybe, this performance art was only a
proposal or maybe it didn't turn out as planned. I like the concept, it is a
genius piece and if I were to improvised it, I'll definitely make an app for
the umbrella. When the umbrella is used, users can open the app from their
phone and see the nearest shelter, spa, shopping mall, cinema or a hangout
place to have a warm cup of tea while waiting for the rain to stop. The
umbrella will also be able to detect other nearby users who are using the umbrella.
And users will be able to chat with one another via the app and meet up at any
nearby shelter or cafe's. If you're rushing and you're stuck somewhere and
desperately need a cab, the umbrella will start to light up to give signal to
taxi drivers that you need a cab. With the umbrella, users will get a clearer
picture of what or who is around within a proximity. eg, taxi, other users,
cafe's, mall, cinema, spa, shelter. Hence, nobody will complain or mention about
having a bad day on a rainy day because you can either get home fast by booking
a cab or win yourself a date plus if you're new in town or lost you can always
can an overview of a clearer map and explore new places. Rainy days aren't bad
afterall.
While scrolling through my facebook timeline, I actually came across another video on solar powered umbrella. It claimed that the umbrella is for Muslims pilgrims but I'm sure anyone could use it too. It has a gps system to hep pilgrims locate each other, a fan, usb, flashlight and usb outlets. I think that this is more interesting than the umbrella.net project proposed by Cohen and Moriwaki. This umbrella could really come in handy when its dark or scorching hot. I hope the inventor would consider about having users like other races or religion besides only having it used by Muslims. This is a brilliant idea but it would be even more exciting if anyone could use it.
Tracey Moffatt is an Austraian photographer and
filmmaker. She then moved to New York and began her career as an experimental
filmmaker and as a producer of music videos and continued making films. Her concern with power relations is demonstrated in
the series Scarred for Life (nine offset lithographs, 1994), which juxtapose photographs of children with text,
mimicking the layout of Life magazine during the 1960s. Useless,
1974 (1994; priv. col., see B. Reinhardt, ed., p. 21), shows
a young girl cleaning a car in a suburban setting; the text beneath reads ‘Her
father's nickname for her was “useless”.' In the late 1990s she focused on the
relationship between Australian Aborigines and white colonial settlers. The
highly atmospheric seriesLaudanum (19 photo-engravings, 1998; Frankfurt, L. A. Gal.), shows the relationship
between a woman and her aboriginal servant. Based on Pauline Reage's erotic
novel Story of O (1954), it presents two actors posing in a variety of
locations around a large house, suggesting sexual and power relations laced
with narcotic hysteria. The use of photogravure and deliberately flawed prints
heightens the ambience, informed by late 19th century photography as well as by Expressionist cinematic techniques of shadow and distortion. The
typically dreamlike quality of these works creates a space in which actors can
embody wider sexual and social conflicts. Moffatt has held approximately
100 solo exhibitions of her work in Europe, United States and Australia.
'Nice Coloured Girls" a film by Moffatt has strucked all of us in
awe. It is a 24 minute long film.
Australia, 1987, 24 minutes, Color, 16mm/DVD Order No. W99136
This film explores the history of exploitation between white
men and aboriginal women juxtaposing
the “first encounter” between colonizers and native women with the attempts of
modern urban Aboriginal women to reverse their fortunes. Through counterpoint
of sound, image, and printed text, the film conveys the perspective of
Aboriginal women while acknowledging that oppression and enforced silence still
shape their consciousness.
Here's a short summary of the film I've
found online.
"In a large Australian city,
two young Aboriginal girls describe in voice-over their strategy for fleecing a
“captain,” a White man, taking advantage of him to treat themselves to a free
night on the town. We follow their maneuvers with amusement. The scenario holds
no surprises and indeed the course the action takes is entirely predictable
since this is not the first time the young women are up to their tricks. They
come on to the “captain” while making sure to get him good and drunk, then get
him to take them to a fine restaurant where they shamelessly take advantage of
his money. At the end of the evening, they skip off laughing.
We shouldn’t be fooled, however.
Their apparent victory or revenge is short-lived and seems more like a good
trick than a real reversal of the situation, for these Aboriginal women are
still confined to an inferior role, socially and economically. The counterpoint
is clear. While they play their trick on the “captain,” other images of old
drawings and idyllic views of untouched nature are inserted in the film,
suspending the main action. From time to time, a hand scribbles over these
images, challenging this version of the story and revealing contradictory and
ambiguous links between the past and the present. Putting history in perspective
in this way dramatizes the overt link that memory creates with the past events
and one’s interpretation of them. It also underscores the burden of a past that
has imposed unjust relationships that continue to perpetuate themselves in the
present because they are so ingrained in people’s behavior.
The second story, which goes back to
the 18th century, is also told in voice-over, by a man with a refined English
accent. He recounts the first contact between a group of White who had landed
in the unknown lands of South Wales and Aboriginal women.1 Speaking like an
entomologist, he tells of his surprise and curiosity at the sight of these
island women. His calm tone is an odd contrast to the seductive inflections and
excited delivery of the young women’s voice-over of the main narrative. The
English explorer is shown to be anxious about the wellbeing of the young native
girl he observes and describes for us, which emphasizes the indifference and
total lack of respect of young women vis-à-vis their hoodwinked “captain.”
Juxtaposing the “objective” narrative of the Englishman discovering a new world
and the adventures of these two sharp young women pitted against a stupid White
patsy, Nice Colored Girls casts an unforgiving light on the complexity and
inescapability of the ties between Aboriginal women and White men, ties that
are subject to the laws of colonialism from the outset and which never manage
to shake off that yoke.
The English observer’s version in
all its objective-sounding glory, which once suggested a different future,
belongs to the past. Now it is the young women’s turn to speak; it is they who
fuel the dynamic part of the film. Yet what do they really tell us about if not
the weakness of their social and economic place and their contempt for their
own, easily fooled captain. The rules aren’t quite the same but they perpetuate
the unpleasant whiff of colonialism." -Isabelle Aeby Papaloïzos
To me, this film is about stereotyping african women and that the title
'nice coloured girls" is just part
of sarcasm. Even, up till today, people still have this idea where all the african women are low class. They are uneducated people, strong, criminals and uncivilized.
I think that this is a racism issue and everyone should take the time to start
contemplating about this issue. Look at these pictures I've found on facebook
and on google.
It's sad to see how the media is not helping but instead they are
aggravating this matter. And most of the things that the media published aren't
true. It's just there to stir up anger among us and how irrational can humans
be by fabricating lies and making false accusation about other races and
religion. As an artist, this provoked me to make artworks and addresses on
issues like these and hope for a change. If the society remains like these, our
world will be a terrible place to live in and these affects all of us as
there'll be more war torn countries like Syria. This world is already pretty
much corrupted by the media along with ignorant and half-witted people like
Donald Trump. Therefore, I want to make a change and I want the world to be a
better place.
