Response to Yoko Video

This video, I felt was extremely powerful because Yoko essentially allowed the audience to make the performance. In the beginning I sensed as if each member of the audience was not trying to take any leaps while cutting pieces of clothing off of Yoko. The members of the audience were also staying clear of cutting areas around certain parts of her body such as her breasts. From this I thought it was curious how no one made any crazy decisions with cutting even more off of Yoko and instead, just cut small pieces off.  Until the end when the one man, who took the most risk with cutting her whole top off. With each individual cut, made by a person, I felt could really describe a person with either being careful or daring. I found it really interesting how Yoko basically made herself so vulnerable and allowing the audience members to just cut her clothes off of her. I think this video can relate to how sometimes in society people will let others literally control their lives while they just stand there. When in Yoko’s performance she completely let others control with what they wanted to do with her while she just sat there and watched, not saying a word.

The Hand

I decided to draw this for the chapter, "The Hand," because the hand was the main focus of the chapter. So essentially, I felt as two people shaking hands would be a good meaning that could exemplify the chapter. When meeting people for the first time whether it be seeing a palm reader like mentioned in this chapter or even being introduced to someone at a social gathering, the first instinct is to shake the persons hand saying hello. 

Body Sculpture: Happenings

Link to video

Going into this project, I definitely had some trouble with what wanted to create to go onto my body. First, I decided I wanted to make something that was going to on my head and then came to the idea that it would involve my hair. I had then went out and bought a light fabric and was going to braid it into my hair and then keep extending the fabric down into one long braid. Once I had braided one fabric into my hair, I continued the braid down with different colors and different fabric materials. After I got it all braided together and laid out on the ground, my next step was figuring out what kind of movement I wanted it to do. First, I was testing it out by throwing it off the second floor of the art building to the ground, but had trouble deciding what to do once it was thrown off.  I began messing around with the long braid and came up with the idea of rapping it completely around my head. For my recording, I started out with having the fabric already being rapped around my head and then began slowly unwinding it off. Once the fabric was completely off my head I sat down on my knees and started to wind it up in a circular motion around my arm to exemplify the length of it more. Overall, I was very happy with my decision on using this idea for my body movement project.

The Skin Has Eyes

Why I decided to draw this picture is because in the chapter, "The Skin Has Eyes," it talks about how when you see something it can make you remember something and a specific touch that along with it. So I wanted to draw this eye and have the reflection of a city in it as if the person is reflecting a memory through the city.  

Memento

One memory I can remember perfectly is the day my nephew was born. He was born in 2013 and I chose this memory for this project because he is one of the most important people in my life and always makes me happy. We were only allowed to use three materials for this and our memory had to reflect through the objects. I used the glass jar to represent how fragile he was when he was born and just like when handling glass, having to be very careful. The stuffing in the glass jar symbolizes how babies adore toys and with my nephew especially, he loves stuffed animals. I also have the stuffing coming out of the glass jar to exemplify the amount of love I have for my nephew, which to me is an overflowing feeling. On the bottom of the jar is blue ink that represents my nephew from a physical appearance being that he is a boy. I wanted to add some color to my memento and felt as if blue was an appropriate color that would stand out and represent my memory still.

Architect Design

When creating my design I wanted to have roman, modern, and gothic architecture be the influence for my piece. Even though I had time periods to help influence my work, I still had difficulty with the starting point with my design. I knew I wanted to involve strings with what I was going to create, so I started to attach strings to two pieces of foam board, going in a cross over pattern. After, I extended the bottom with a piece of balsa wood going horizontal to give it more balance. From there, I wanted to start working on the underneath so I created two sets of stairs out of foam board that reflected each other. I ended up extending it more horizontally with another piece of foam board and from there I placed two pieces of foam board vertically behind it. Although, if I had left it how it was then it would have still looked unfinished and empty on those two sides compared to the middle of the design. I went back to what I did in the beginning and created more string work, but used white string instead to establish a contrast. To let the string stick out more I painted the bottom and top foam boards black. Even though I had difficulty in the beginning with my design I was extremely pleased with how it turned out in the end.

Changed Soap

Take away: Cut up the soap 

 Take away: Put into the microwave

 Add: Blue Ink 

 Add: Liquid Gesso

 Add: Nail Polish

 Add: Tacks

Take Away: Put into the freezer 

 Take away: Dropped on the floor

Final changed soap with base

While doing the changes to the soap, I went in with a very open mind with the type of alterations I was going to do to it. I picked the changes as I went along, instead of making a list and doing them in order because I felt as if it would make for more of an interesting outcome. In the end, after the changes had been made I then had to think of base to create that would work with it. A basic base is what I ended up going with since the soap itself was interesting enough to not have anything else added to the base to take away from it. So I just stuck with two pieces of wood that I painted white and stacked on top of each other. I then placed the two big pieces of the changed soap on each piece of wood and balanced some of the broken off smaller pieces on needles.