The Improbable Monument

Consciousness Monument

Introduction

In a world where we are constantly bombarded with mind-numbing thoughts and ideas, we sometimes forget that we have our very own individual thoughts and ideas. We need to step back for all of it and take some time to ponder things for ourselves. The Consciousness Monument commemorates and celebrates our individual self and gives us a moment to become more aware of our self and presence in the world.

Background Information

“Consciousness” is can be defined as: a sense of one's personal or collective identity, including the attitudes, beliefs, and sensitivities held by or considered characteristic of an individual or group; subjective experience; awareness or wakefulness; the ability to experience “feeling”; the understanding of the concept “self”; and the executive control system of the mind.  The consciousness, is something considered to separate "intelligent life" over "non-intelligent life" and is something of a mystery to humans themselves.

Monuments everywhere commemorate something specific: a person, an event, etc.  It is erected to represent an important event in a culture's past, and sometimes, the comes to symbolize a culture itself.  Monuments are often "larger than life" and is meant to transcend time. However the Consciousness Monument will commemorate nothing in particular, except for what your consciousness wills it to.

Description

The Consciousness Monument is an interactive monument, allowing visitors to walk inside to escape into their thoughts. Though many people would wander inside not knowing what to expect, they'll only find themselves alone with their consciousness. This is meant so that people can take a moment and become conscious of their own consciousness.

The Consciousness Monument itself is a pure white, permeable, gelatin-like hollow dome. What is meant by permeable is that people are able to walk through the dome walls, and enter inside. Inside, will also be pure white, with a soft light. Inside, nothing can be seen except for the white glow of the dome walls, no defined ceiling, floor, walls, or corners, no shadows are cast, and no sound travels. This is to represent our minds, and the nothingness is to clear our bodies of any outside forces, and the person inside is only left alone with his or her thoughts. Even when people enter into the monument, inside is only the individual, no one can see another person.  

The size of the dome will be as big as space will allow in the particular area that it will be in.  The monument is also not site-specific, but it's preferred to be in a large metropolitan area, where it is largely populated and busy.  It will give the monument more meaning and significance, as the purpose of the monument is to provide an escape from all that.  Because of the gelatinous nature of the dome, it will easily fit in any shape and space allowed for the monument.  The monument can also be located indoors or outdoors, the material needed to be able to withstand cold and heat, wet and dry, and direct sunlight.

The Consciousness Monument is meant to represent, signify, and commemorate the consciousness, and anything related to it. To give a different aspect to the monument, a little section may be added, where outside the monument is a descriptive plaque, that changes to a different event or person, important, relavant, or not, that constantly changes.  Each person that enters the monument, would have something on their minds to ponder as they are inside the monument.

The importance of this monument is arguable, but perhaps it is the most important monument to be erected because it celebrates the one thing that makes any other monument relevant and important to individuals.  Without the conscious, monuments would just be buildings, it is what gives us the ability to tie a sentimental meaning to physical, non-living objects.

a possible building top location 

List of world's top 20 Metropolises 

Benefits

The Consciousness Monument is for anyone and everyone who has consciousness.  Those who will benefit most from it are the people who are able to find a purpose in the monument, as an escape from outside forces and able to focus their energies inside. Even those who do not see a purpose in it now, it will definitely become a part of their lives someday.

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possible skeletal structure of the dome, it would be covered with the gelatin substance

"Dome over Manhattan" by Buckminster Fuller

 

SPREAD THE LOVE, THE LOVE MOVEMENT

Love Movement Toy Art Show

The Super Frog Gallery in New People Building in San Francisco's Japantown is hoping to hold an art show called the Love Movement.  Japanese artists Shin and Nao sent blank vinyl toys to over 50 artists couples around to world to paint their own message of love.  The show is FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC from December 11th to January 16th.  On opening night, Shin and Nao will fly in and will feature a Japanese beatboxer, a live painting by Shin, and an animation by Shin and Nao.

Love should be everywhere in our daily life. 

Because Love is invisible, and we can’t touch it or buy it, we usually pass over it. 

Modern society lacks Love due to a lack of communication. 

If I want Love from someone, and I don’t give the person Love, it’s unfair. It’s wrong just requiring Love from someone. 

If you start giving Love to people around you, Love will be everywhere, and we can live happily. 

If the world were to embrace the Love Movement, it would solve many problems we have. 

–Nao

Many creators put their Love into this exhibition. Please feel their Love. 

Giving Love will bring even bigger Love back to you. 

We can spread Love. That is the Love Movement. 

–Shin

BUT THEY NEED YOUR HELP! The event organizer is hoping to raise at least $3000 help to bring the artists to San Francisco.  The pledges come with a prize from custom digital signatures to personal mural of your and your love's name displayed in the exhibit to custom-painted, one-of-a-kind vinyl toy.

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I somehow feel very strongly about this and want to support it very much, even though I have not heard about these artists until now.  I, myself, may even pledge $50 to support this event (and to get a cool Tshirt).  But for sure I'll find my way to opening night, because it's always fun and a good opportunity to meet the artists and see them in action.

Monument Intervention

Groupmates: Luis Pascual & Shizuka Mitsumura

For the Monument Intervention project, we have to choose a monument site and carry out some kind of intervention that draws attention to that particular place.

We started off with Luis's project, carried out in Golden Gate Park.  His idea was to draw attention to the statues, by dressing them up.  His original idea was to dress up the Gandhi statue down in the Embarcadero in a cape like Superman or Batman.  But he decided to go with Golden Gate Park instead as there are more statues to work with.  We didn't have a cape on hand, despite having Halloween just passed, but I brought a few costume items with me that could be fun to dress up the statues.

 

The First Statue, Apple Press Monument

Me and Shizuka dressing up the 2nd statue, and a few reactions from passerby

 

 The Second Statue: Don Quixote and Sancho Panza kneeling in front of Cervantes

The Third Statue, Robert Emmet, the young Irish Patriot

Reactions from passerbys

Recording the Robert Emmet statue

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Next we did my project, which also happened to take place in Golden Gate Park.  My idea was to sit down somewhere in a public space, and get comfortable as if you were at home, watching entertainment through a "TV" which was a cardboard box fashioned into a TV with an open back panel and screen.  The idea was to watch life through a TV much like what more people do at home, watching life through TV.   The location where I set up my little TV happened to be a stage in Golden Gate Park, the Spreckels Temple of Music.

The "TV" is that little red thing to the right.

Spectator's View in the seats in front of the "Bandshell"

A couple came up and took a picture with the TV in it.

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Lastly we did Shizuka's project, which took place in Union Square.  Her project idea was to post up Civil War photos with shopping bags photoshopped into the image, around Union Square.  Since the ice skating rink was set up, we put the pictures up on the heart monument on the northwestern corner of the Square.

Me and Shizuka putting up the photos.  The photos consisted of the American flag with the Macy's logo in the middle of a circle of stars; Abraham Lincoln and two others standing with Nordstrom bags at their feet; and Civil War Union soldiers standing with Forever21, Sephora, and other shop bags at their feet.

View of Heart Monument, we had to wait til no more people were taking pictures of the monument.

This photo to me is absolutely priceless.  A woman poses with her shopping bag from Nordstrom while one of the images below her depict Abraham Lincoln also posing with his shopping bag from Nordstrom.

Shizuka decided to put the images up on the backside of the heart instead.

Retooled Logo

Volvo logo as of 2006, an automobile car company, untouched

For this project, we were asked to take a logo from the real world, and retool it and change it into something else, to create a commentary of our society or of the company itself.  I decided to use the company logo for the car manufacturer "Volvo."  When I first saw a commercial for this car company, my first reaction to it's logo was, "that's sexist!" looking at the Mars symbol that the company used, which also is a symbol of the male gender.  Taking that idea of the male symbol, I decided to retool Volvo into the female symbol, Venus, and change the the word "Volvo" into "Vulva" which is the word for the female external genitalia.  

Doing some research on both the terms and the history of Volvo, I learned that Volvo was originally a Swedish car manufacturer that also made construction items.  The logo we see today was originally the logo for Volvo's line of ball bearings, using the symbol of Mars, which also represents iron, to state that's what their ball bearings were made of since iron is a very strong metal.  The symbol for Venus represents the metal copper, with this in mind I was going to change the greys in my retooled logo to browns to represent copper, but copper is an inferior metal to iron, and I did not want to imply that women are inferior to men.  "Volvo" and "vulva" also stem from the same Latin root "volvere" which means "to roll."  In the case with the company, they used the conjugated form meaning "I roll" and with the case of the female genitalia, vulva literally translated to "wrapper" in Old Latin.

"Vulva", my version of "Volvo", retooled

And She Moved Through the World... A Google Earth Tour

And She Moved Through the World KML FILE

And She Moved Through the World KMZ FILE

Tour by Angeline Bautista

Music by Chris Gonzalez

*Please make sure you have Google Earth downloaded*

This Google Earth Tour takes you to the very famous landmarks of the World that I would like to travel to someday.  It begins on the location of our classroom, in the Fine Arts building of San Francisco State University.  Then off we travel to these locations:

• Mount Rushmore, Keystone, South Dakota, United States of America
• Buckingham Palace, Westminster, London, United Kingdom
• Palace of Versailles, Versailles, France
• Vatican City, Rome, Italy
• Pyramids of Giza, Eygpt
• Taj Mahal, Agra, India
• Kyoto Imperial Palace, Kyoto, Japan
• St. Basil's Cathedral, Red Square, Moscow, Russia
• World Trade Center, Lower Manhattan, New York, United States of America

After visiting those locations we come right back to where we start ed, in the Fine Arts Building.

The music that accompanies the tour, is a rendition of David Graham's "And She Moved Through the Fair," played live while the tour was recorded, by my boyfriend.  I chose to play this particular song because it sounds very adventurous and good music for travelling.  Also this song explores similarities that "Eastern" and "Western" music are, and that there was a connection between the two seemingly different musical worlds.  And with the tour, I explore places in both the Western world and Eastern world.

Alter Ego, Internet Identity

This project with guest artists Liz Rossoff was all about identities and the Internet.  In this assignment, she had us all create a fake identity and establish a presence on the Internet.  We did this through creating an email and "facebook" accounts.

My "alter ego" is a girl named "Katherine  Martin," a name I came up by asking my boyfriend for random names that comes to his mind.  She's a young lady, has a cynical outlook and a dark personality and sense of humor.  She's quite antisocial and quite a wonder that she even joined a social networking page.  She doesn't talk to anyone, doesn't update much, and has a few "friends" added.  When creating Katherine, I imagined how I would be like if I continued liking the things I did when I was in Middle School.  In middle school, I went through a "dark phase" and was obsessed with all things "gothic" and "dark" and thought I was different from everyone.  For my image, I took a picture of myself, but I put on heavy, dark eye make-up, made myself really pale; I basically put on clothes and make-up that I normally wouldn't wear to make myself look like a completely different person to those who know me.  It was actually a bit difficult to act and remember what it was that I liked back then and why.  It made me think of how I am now and how I changed as I age.  My interests are radically different from back then, but my personality actually pretty  much stayed the same.

If you'd like to add my alter ego to facebook, her email is katskage@hotmail.com

Response: Culture Jamming by Marc Dery

Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing and Sniping in the Empire of Signs

by Mac Dery

"'For Sale' signs already litter the unreal estate of cyberspace. A New York Times article titled "A Rush to Stake Claims on the Multimedia Frontier" prophesies "software and hardware that will connect consumers seamlessly to services... [allowing them] to shop from home," while a Newsweek cover story on interactive media promises "new technology that will change the way you shop, play and learn" (the order, here, speaks volumes about American priorities).  Video retailers are betting that the intersection of interactive media and home shopping will result in zillions of dollars' worth of impulse buys: zirconium rings, nonstick frying pans, costumed dolls, spray-on toupees.  What a New York Times author cutely calls Communicopia ("the convergence of virtually all communications technologies") may end up looking like the Home Shopping Network on steroids."

 Marc Dery writes an essay about culture jamming the media back in the early 90's, when the World Wide Web was still blossoming.  Culture jamming is the disruption of media: news, advertisements, radio, television, just about anything that feeds us information, taking control of our own minds.

I chose this passage because at present, it is exactly as it says it is.  Today, a predominate function of the Internet is shopping.  You can buy just about anything on the Internet and have it delivered to your doorstep.  You can shop for the newest electronic devices, the latest fashions, even groceries and take out food.  Items can even be auctioned for on Ebay, purchased in warehouse prices/bulk, and bought and shipped from around the world.  And it's true that the easily accessible at-home-store has resulted in millions of dollars being spent everyday.  But online stores are not the only way we area exposed to consumerism on the Internet, all of our favorite websites have ads embedded on the pages, on the top, sides, and/or bottoms, literally surrounding our viewing space with advertisements for just about anything.  Even on social networking sites, Facebook being the latest example, give private and personal information of advertising agencies so they'll be able to put advertisements targeted to you and your interests specifically in your window.

Artists in Culture Jamming

The art of Culture Jamming is a fun one, and this project reminds me of a website that I visit once in a while called "Hacked IRL" which is a collection of images and videos of culture jamming found everywhere and anywhere.  I don't think all of these are done by a single artist, but rather done by anyone with paper and a pen, and who happen to find something worth jamming.  And the jamming does not happen with just media ads, it happens on bathroom walls, bulletin boards, and even the street pavement.  Here are a few examples of my favorites:

 

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Another artist, or image really, that I came across the Google while searching images for logos is this one which more can be found on http://marioav.blogspot.com/ .  I can't say much about the artist, because his blog is in a different language.  But looking at the images, I can tell he is a graphic artist and he did these logo mashups for fun.

Extended Body

This is myself, my physical body with interpretations of extensions outside of my physical self through technology.

This photo was manipulated through photoshop, and gathering of images.  Each modified element in this photo has a symbolic meaning, it represents my relationship to technology and how it enables me to reach far beyond my fleshy capabilities.  The "hair" is actually a bunch of wires, cables, cords, the lifeline that connects technology to each other and to is source of power, electricity.  It shows how we are always connected, and is a source of it's life, much like the umbilical cord and the baby in humans.  The mouth, is covered by a screen, as through technology, sound is possible thought not necessary, humans contact each other mostly through voice and hearing, but with machines communication happens through non-verbal code, no sound is produced nor received.  The screen, instead of voicing messages, displays words, like communication over the Internet is through words.  Even emotions and tone of voice is interpreted through the use of syntax and punctuation marks, for example " :) " to represent a smile, and ALL CAPS to represent yelling or anger.  The glowing eye, is the glow of a screen, constantly absorbing all the I see.  Lastly, the world around me has become so digitized, I represented that by pixelating the area around me, including my boyfriend, whom I can also be with both virtually and in reality.

This is me in the real world, with my boyfriend being all ghostly behind me.

Chance Results

My project results from my chance:

Mine turned out to be a little alien invasion on my planet ("a" for "angeline").  But it must be friendly because that little kitty astronaut doesn't seem to mind.

My results from Jon's chance:

[to be posted]

I have it in physical form, I haven't taken a picture of it yet.

Chance Recipe

My Recipie

Interdeterminancy Project – Create your own portrait

1.     Go to http://www.dafont.com/themes.php and look at the “dingbats” section. In another window, go to http://www.random.org/ and set the min and max to 1-21, and generate a number.
1.Alien 2. Animals 3. Asian 4. Ancient 4. Runes, 5. Elvish 6. Esoteric 7. Fantastic 8. Horror 9. Games 10. Shapes 11. BarCode 12. Nature 13. Sport 14. Heads 15. Kids 16. TV, Movie 17. Logos 18. Sexy 19. Army 20. Music 21. Various

2.     In that category, use http://www.random.org/ again and set the min and max to 1-10, to determine what font to use. You'll use the pictures corresponding to the letters of your name. Upper or lower case is ok. You may download the font if you wish.

3.     Next, go to http://www.searchforancestors.com/utility/dayofweek.html and enter your birthday to determine the day of the week you were born. The day of the week will determine what color you'll use for your dingbat-font name, as follows:
Sunday-Red ; Monday-Orange; Tuesday-Yellow; Wednesday-Green; Thursday-Blue; Friday-Indigo; Saturday-Violet;
Any shade within the same color family can be used for the font.

4.     Using any medium, create a “self-portrait” using the images retrieved from the dingbats spelling out your name. The color corresponding to the day of the week you were born will be your main color theme. The portrait can be of anything, as long at those elements are included.

5.     Have fun with it!

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Jon's Recipie

Stencil Chance Art

1.    Go into iTunes and make sure your shuffle songs setting is on.

2.    Play any song to get started.

3.    Skip to the next song

4.    Listen to or get the lyric for that song.

a.    If no lyrics. repeat step 3.

5.    Write down or circle the first 6 nouns (or things) in the song.

a.    If it’s “you” use a picture of yourself

b.    If it’s “I” or “me” use a picture of the artist.

6.    Roll a die and see what the number you roll is.

7.    Find a picture of that noun (or take one of you own)

8.    Open Photoshop

9.    Isolate the image you want to use

10.                  Make it Black and White (Ctrl + Shift + U)

11.                  Go to > Image > Adjustments > Threshold… change level to -44 and press OK

12.                  Go to FILER > Artistic > Cutout…

a.    SET: Number of levels: 2

b.    Edge Simplicity: 3

c.     Edge Fidelity: 1

d.    Press OK

13.                  You will cut out the black parts.

So connect the white places

If you don’t these parts will fall out

13.                  Some places will be too difficult to cut out so make it as simple as you are willing to cut.

14.                  Print the stencil out and tape it to a manila folder.

15.                  Use an exacto knife to cut out the black parts.

16.                  Now you have your stencil

17.                  Pick a card out of a deck of playing cards.

18.                  Whatever color the suit is, paint that on a surface.

19.                  If it’s A-6 Use spray paint

20.                  If it’s 7-K Use pain and a brush.

21.                  YOU’RE DONE

Here is a link to a stencil making video if you have trouble.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1004625/how_to_make_stencil_with_photoshop_all_versions/

 

Google Earth Artists

Researching a little on artists who use Google Earth as a source or medium, I found two particular artists that use Google Earth in interesting ways.

Google Earth Landscape Art
The first artist I found was Evert Schut.  He paints oil landscapes, but with a different perspective: an aerial, satellite view of landscapes.  He paints these landscapes with a some abstraction, but the vibrant colors and the natural patterns and shapes that occur in earthforms make the piece look more than just a landscape.

Where on Earth is Waldo?
Just as the title implies, this artist created a virtual game of Where's Waldo.  Melanie Coles create a fifty-four foot long painting of Waldo, and set him up on a rooftop, in hopes of getting his snapshot taken by Google Earth.    She also made instructions for her Waldo open source, so that many other people can create their Waldo's and set him up all over the world.

Sol Lewitt's #25

"The artist may not necessarily understand his own art. His perception is neither better nor worse than that of others."

 Sol Lewitt derived 35 sentences, many consider it manifestos to Conceptual Art.  Sentence number 25 rang particularly true to me.  Often, when I finish a piece, and asked to explain, or talk about it, I usually just draw blanks in my head, and just say "I don't know, it just kinda... happened."  I don't really understand what I do in my work, in terms of what it looks like in the end result, but I usually am able to give a detailed step-by-step talk of the process of my piece.  I know that my art usually starts with an idea, a theme, a concept, and techniques or media I want to practice with or try out.  From there, I run with it, so to speak.

An recent occasion I can remember of this instance was in a Intro to Textiles course I took over the summer, here at State.  We had just done our final project, a surface design piece on a yard x yard piece of cotton, using all the techniques we had used.  On the last day of class, we did a cumulative critique and displayed all our pieces.  With my surface design piece, I dyed the cotton a teal blue, then made a swirly-patterned stamp and discharged the fabric with it, repeating the stamp in neat rows.  After that, I silk-screened a candle-bra/chandelier silhouette with a metallic dark purple textile paint, and on top I used a fork to make small dots for a pearled-string with gold and silver metallic textile paint.   I had to explain what it was about, what I had in mind when making the piece was that I wanted to use my stamp, and when seeing the swirls, I wanted to make it something elegant, so hence the candle-bra.  When I think of something elegant, an image of a candle-bra comes up.  As for the color pallet, when discharging the teal, it make a purple color, and I really liked the way the teal and purple look together, so I made the candle-bras purple.  When I was finished with it, I was trying to think of kinds of things that the design can be used for, and I thought of maybe a wallpaper, or upholstery.  One of my classmates, read more deeply into my piece and commented how he liked how the placement of a candle-bra, an item that is placed hanging on a ceiling, has been displaced and placed on a wall.  Or as an upholstery, the juxtaposing of two, or three different elements of a room placed together on a single room item.

My classmates view on the piece was better than mine, as I did not have any view on it at all.  And at the same time, my view, as the artist, on the piece would be no better than his. 

delicious

I also have a delicious to pair with blogger!

Follow me: http://www.delicious.com/angelinbeans

I think it's kinda funny using a blogger which is Google-based, and delicious which is Yahoo-based.

About

As a new Conceptual and Information Arts student, this blog is to track my progress and ideas as I go along with my projects.

I hope I will someday become successful in what I'm doing, and actually figure out what exactly I am doing by the time this course is over.  Please come along with me in this experience!