Public Art Theft

Public Art Theft

The video posted above is a great example of where vandalism and public art exist in tension with one another - and potentially conflict.

"The History of Loss" is a public art King Edward Station on the Canada Line in Vancouver, Canada. The piece is a $250,000 piece of art work, and is essentially a display case for many small replicas of VW beetles.

Because of the theft, the insurance company whom has insured the piece is saying that the risk may be too high for repeat thefts because of the nature of the piece. They are saying that it is probably the result of a prank - though I like to think that it was an avid VW fanboy who is pleased that he has a piece of VW for himself!

The Art of Eating

This past Thanksgiving I, like many other people, ate way more than I normally eat. As great as everything was, I was literally miserable for two days afterwards from all the sugar.

So, keeping our art theme in mind, I was wondering if anyone had made an art out of eating?

A quick google search led me to The Art of Eating: an independent magazine about all the best food and wine.

I started thinking about how cooking was a great way to incorporate many

different themes in art that we've been discussing in class. For example, it can been seen as art itself (take a look to the left), either literally for purposes of art, or less literally with dual purposes for consumption.

In addition to the artistic nature of the presentation itself, actually cooking can been seen as a type of performance art in some cases: I'm thinking those awesome Hibachi places where they make volcanos out of towers of onions?!

Thai vegetable/fruit carving is one of the most artistic forms of food art, in my opinion, and examples are readily found on any cruise ship. If you don't have access to the buffet lines at the Royal Caribbean right this minute, check out this site: Simply-Thai.com for some awesome watermelon sculptures.

WEEBLY!

So, Dreamweaver was awesome, no doubt about it. It's a really great way to make a website, and it was really helpful that we had someone sitting there teaching us how to do it along the way.

That said, WEEBLY IS EVEN MORE AWESOME!

It's a drag-and-paste website that makes Adobe CS5 look SUPER HARD.

Needless to say, our group unanimously decided to use Weebly instead of Dreamweaver. It seems like Dreamweaver would be a great tool to learn how to use - but I just don't think there's enough time if you aren't already proficient in using the software! I've heard that the other Adobe products can be difficult to learn how to use, though they do make some really powerful software.

I can't wait to have a finished product - it will be neat to see what everyone comes up with as themes - I know we had a little bit of a difficult time narrowing down on one!

Guerrilla Girls of Science

I thought the Guerrilla Girl readings were really interesting to say the least. I remember hearing about them a while back, and the role of the female in art, as well as the role of the female artist is something I haven't thought much about. It did remind me, however, of a similar sex difference that is seen in science fields. There are so few women in science (compared to men) who go on to get Ph.D.'s, conduct postdoctoral work, or much less start running their own labs. It's also really interesting to see how women conduct themselves in the sciences (particularly around labs) compared to women of other fields. In all of the labs I've been involved with, women don't really wear make up, get dressed up in skirts or high heels, or do their nails like women from other "more feminine" fields do. I feel like in science, the perception is that to look feminine is to look dumb, and that's such a shame.

DREAMWEAVER!

I've made other websites for classes before (CS), but I've never been exposed to Dreamweaver. I just think that it's SO COOL!

I actually have a website that I bought to put my resume and stuff on for grad school applications - but I had NO IDEA how to edit it!

I'm so glad we went to the tutorial today! It was really super-helpful.. I was afraid that we were just going to have to learn how to do everything for a website on our own, and now I feel like it will be a much easier and even fun project!

Here's a link to some Dreamweaver tutorials for those of us who are more technologically challenged:

http://www.entheosweb.com/dreamweaver/default.asp

Group Outing to the High

Today our project group went to the High together (except Drew -- I hope you did well on your test, Drew!) and we went to the Titian exhibit, and also toured around the Dali exhibit as well as the permanent 20th century collection. I wanted to post my favorite picture from the exhibit here.. Venus Rising from the Sea... I'm basically obsessed with the ocean (and mermaids), so seeing the original at the High today was really a treat for me.

I thought the way that they painted all the walls in the exhibit red was really interesting, and a really effective choice. I noticed on several of the paintings, there were a lot of dark tones, light tones (like on skin), and then a bright red shirt. The contrast of the red walls to the painting and (mostly) gilded frames was really nice.

I also noticed that they were getting some of the Persistence of Memory pieces for the Dali exhibit beginning on the 12th! I hope that I have some time to go back and see those pieces again! They are definitely my favorite.

Art at MIT

This past weekend I went to MIT for the iGEM competition there. We were touring around the city and taking a lot of pictures... One of the really neat things about MIT's campus is all of the interesting architecture there! This first building down below were actually dorms on the campus, I think. The second picture is of a statue that was in the middle of campus. I really enjoyed the different architecture that was found all over the "older" city -- Atlanta's buildings and architecture (as well as the foliage and green space surrounding the city) just has such a different feel than Boston.

To anyone who hasn't travelled up that way, I would definitely recommend doing so whenever you get the chance!

Painting on a Petri Dish

As a self-proclaimed scientist, I don't usually spend a lot of my brain space on art, especially before this class, though I consider myself kind of versed in art. I mean, I'm not ignorant, I've looked at art.. but not really thought about art. I just had a passive stance, but now I've been really noticing art -- and how it affects things -- more frequently. I was reminded of this fact recently, when a girl whom I work with in lab, was talking about "painting" with RFP (red florescent protein). Shine a UV light on bacteria, and wherever the grow- they light up! She "paints" phylogenetic trees" on petri dishes -- they look so neat! I didn't have a picture of one of her trees, but I did find this picture of a beach!

The artist/scientist, Nathan Shaner, made this "living painting" of San Diego in 2006. He used the E. coli to express florescent proteins GFP, BFP, mTFP1, Emerald, Citrine, mOrange, mApple, mCherry, and mGrape. I think this is a great example of a really unique form of art, it's active art -- transient (those bacteria wont live forever on that plate), sciencey, and all kinds of goodness.

ENJOY!

Final Comments on Visual Essays

I wanted to make a final post on the visual essays that were presented in class; sort of as a before and after. When we were first beginning, like I said in my first post about the visual essays, I was pretty concerned/trepidatious about the whole project in general, how it was going to progress, and how it was going to turn out.

One of the things that was mentioned in another post, and in a response in class was how interesting it was that the projects presented a lot of the same pictures (naturally since we are on Tech's campus), but presented different perspectives of the same element of art: for example the interactive nature as well as the impermanent nature of side walk chalk art around campus. Or, for example, the campanile, and how it was a memorial, or the height of it, et cetera.

The one statue on campus that was highlighted the most, I think, was the statue of Dean Griffin, shown here. I found another picture online, and liked how there was actually an element of visual art in it: someone has put a flower in his breast pocket!