Response to Paula Levine's Seeing the Past in Present Tense

The article starts out with a colorful anecdote of the author driving in California, and ends with her searching for a hidden monument in Germany.  Before we get to the end though, she makes a lot of interesting points about monuments and their relation to human history.  Paula reminds us that monuments are not only there to look nice, but to remind us of our own history.  Without remembrance or history, a monument is reduced to a simple statue or structure.  After relating some older American monuments to even older European sculptures the article shifts gears a bit, getting into contemporary monuments, and how their definition has changed and expanded post 1960s.  The Vietnam veteran memorial is mentioned, as is the AIDS quilt before detailing the focus of the article which is a monument against fascism in Harberg, Germany.  The monument is very interesting and unique, in that it acts like a contract that people sign as a promise to strike down fascism should it ever arise again.  The tower would disappear in the decades after its construction, and I thought this was the most interesting part of the monument.  This is how contracts truly work, you sign the contract, put it in your desk, and you forget about it.  It's up to you to stay true to the contract, even after you have already forgotten about it.

In the end, I think this was a very well written, descriptive article that raised many good points about monuments and their changes in definition and purpose throughout history.

Trip to the De Young Museum

A couple weeks ago I went to the De Young.  I have been there before, but not in the last couple years so a lot of the stuff I saw were new to me.  The Masters of Venice exhibit was there, so I got to see a lot of really great Renaissance art that I've only seen pictures of.  It also helped me study a bit for my art history classes, because some of the pieces at the De Young we studied in class.  Multitasking!  I also saw the African art, and I thought that was really cool.  I'm always intrigued by works of art that have a purpose besides being art... such as masks, shields, or ceremonial tools.  A lot of the African art displayed there were things like those.  My favorite display was the Al Farrow Cathedral however, which is a model of a cathedral made entirely of bullets and gun parts.  I really appreciate the symbolism in the structure, in fact I was so fascinated I must have spend at least 20 minutes looking at it, there's even a human spine inside of the cathedral door!

Google Earth Project Evaluation

Working on this project has been really fun for me.  I was generally satisfied with the way it turned out, and I had no problems working with my partner from Canada.  We made a facebook group for our project and planned everything out on there.  It was originally Melanie's idea to have our project involve the colonization of Mars, and I thought it was a good concept so we ran with it.  I think the work was divided equally so there were no problems within our group about that.

We did run into some challenges though, I had some difficulties making a smooth tour in Google Earth, and if I were to go back and do anything differently, I would spend more time making better camera movements during the tour.  I envisioned an epic fly-through across the surface of mars before revealing the city, but I wasn't quite able to get this result in the final product.  All in all though, I'm satisfied with the result and I learned a lot about the functions of Google Earth.  It was also great being able to work with someone in another country and be able to communicate effectively to make a project, that's a pretty unique experience for me.

Google Earth Art

I found this photo on deviantart.com and it looks like the artist took screen shots and made a digital collage of different views of land on Google Earth.  I think it's a very interesting and creative piece and I'm tempted to try to do something like this using Photoshop.  It's not something I would hang on my wall but it's inspirational because it's rather simple in its creation but I've never thought of doing anything like this before.  Very cool.

Another artist I found that does art using Google Earth was Clement Valla.  His works are very compelling to look at, and even simpler than the previous picture.  They are effectively just screen shots of scenes in GE, but they are taken at an eerie perspective, with an almost illusory atmosphere to them.  My favorite of his works that I saw was a collection of photos of bridges that drape across crooked surfaces.  Here are some examples of his work:

I really like this guys stuff.

The third artist I found is Jon Rafman, who uses mainly street view on Google Earth for his pictures.  His gallery has everything from car crashes, violence, arrests, simple patterns, to an ET looking thing.  Even a couple people flipping off the street view camera cars.  His work is particularly interesting to me because when I first discovered Google Earth I spend hours looking for interesting scenes in random places.  I found a few things, but nothing of the magnitude of what Jon Rafman has in his installation.  Here is a link to his gallery: http://googlestreetviews.com/installation_pics.html 

Trip to the Audium

Last weekend I went to see The Audium, a sound sculpture theater.  I wasn't sure what to expect at first, and what I experienced I couldn't have predicted.  The entire theater was filled with speakers, and the place had a definitive 1970s look to it.  Once the audio started, they sounded like they were form the 70s too.  Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it wasn't what I was expecting.  It was a cool experience, but I think they could do a lot more with the performance as a whole.

The 70s feel is cool, but it makes the performance seem stagnant, like it's been played for 40 years.  Which it probably has.  I think with some new sound engineering and contemporary sound systems they could have many different pieces so it's not the same performance every time.  All in all, it was a good place to visit with friends and I enjoyed the experience, but it's not something I would see again.  Not with a $20 price tag at least.

Improbable Monument

I contemplated a couple different ideas before deciding on what I was going to create as a monument.  I have always been fascinated by ancient cultures and anthropology, so I wanted to do a monument that involved these interests.  I decided that I wanted to make a monument that would commemorate a culture whose time has passed.  It always saddens me a bit when I think of ways of life that have been lost to time, and I think we have a lot to learn from ancient peoples.

After doing some research, I learned that the Ohlone people were a group of tribes and villages that lived in Northern California, the San Francisco Peninsula included.  The Ohlone were a large group with almost one hundred villages that collectively spoke eight different languages.  During the late 1700s their population would drop dramatically before almost reaching zero in the year 1900.  I read that human skulls were of great religious significance to them, so I made a monument of a giant skull, surrounded by four pillars to create atmosphere for the piece.  The whole monument would be made of stone, with the pillars using darker stone.  The estimated cost of materials is around $10,000, not including the labor for sculpting.  I have decided to place the monument in Golden Gate Park, because it's a fitting place and it would add a sense of mystery and intrigue to the park.  Preferably, it will be in a somewhat hidden spot, giving the viewer a sense of discovery when they first find it.  On the base would be inscriptions in the Costanoan language calling for people to remember those who came before them.