the cruellest month

speech recognition: it works surprisingly well

2009-09-29T02:12:27Z

so a while ago the keyboard on my laptop was broken. it's made it really irritating to try to do any work on this computer. but I finally figured out that I can install speech recognition ... or rather set up speech recognition ... on this computer. so now I'm trying to use speech recognition to write this entry, and it's working pretty well. it's not very good with punctuation, but all the whole entirely satisfying.

right now I'm watching house. I really liked this season premiere in the institution but I was kind of like how can an institution be like that .... wouldn't there be more people like house there?

anyway I don't really have anything actual to say and it's kind of hard to think and use the speech recognition at the same time. I did want to say That the stress thing at work has gotten a lot better. the Celexa that my mom gave me has worked pretty well. I am also getting more used to it at work and to the people there. today I spent the whole day working on a pretty complicated word press installation and I really liked doing that. it was actually a good day.

I have also been trying to get more involved in art scene here. I've been going to galleries and art walks / open studios, and last week that met with volunteer coordinator for a community art charity here. she was pretty great. I also went to a social media panel last week. one of the speakers talked about the software that the company I work at makes and it turned out that he's involved in an organization that connects artists with board positions and businesses in Calgary. I hope I'll be able to get involved in that because it sounds fun .

O. K. I think that had enough dictating for one night. I am pretty impressed, I am must say.

Veil Musings

2009-07-26T00:06:48Z

I just wanted to get these veil musings out.

Since book five I have been very bothered by the Veil. Not necessarily what it is -- I always thought that it was a gateway to the land of the dead was something we could probably assume.

Instead there are two things that bother me:

Why was it in an amphitheatre
Why didn't Harry obsess over this, like he did the mirror or the death stone?

The first one isn't a big issue -- apparently it wasn't an execution chamber, and I just can't think of why it would be easy to study an object in an amphitheatre like that. You would think a lab would work better, unless the veil is supposed to be like a podium where the dead give guest-lectures at the ministry, which would be awesome. But I don't think it's likely, so it seems silly to have it in an amphitheatre to me.

The second question is the one that drives me up the wall because it seems so illogical. Both Harry and Dumbledore, who are arguably the two main characters, are obessed with deaths in their families. Both have exhibited weakness to the idea that they could communicate with the dead, whether something as static as watching their images in the Mirror of Erised or as hopeless as dragging them back with the death stone. And the veil, and Sirius' entry into it, was very sudden and very unlike any other death we've seen. Since Harry doesn't know what the veil is exactly, why would he accept that Sirius had died? He seems to think of it as the same as if Sirisu had been avada kedavra'd, which he can't have been because he didn't die as soon as the curse hit. No, Bella's curse threw him off balance; it didn't kill him. And since Harry can hear the voices of the dead, and is obviously upset with the deaths in his life to the extent that he obsesses about other means of contacting them ... why does he just dismiss the veil? I don't think he should have gone back there, but I do think it's illogical for him to have assumed that there's nothing there for him, or that Sirius is dead in the normal way. I think Hermione or Dumbledore should have talked him out of it -- or he should have just put it off until after killing Voldemort and after his use of the death stone and trip to King's Cross I don't think he would have wanted to go back, but before that?

I wouldn't even be surprised if Dumbledore had created the veil -- apparently it is sort of like the death stone, except the death stone brings them back without the archway. And Dumbledore so easily did something so foolish for the prospect of contact with the dead. It just makes no sense at all that Harry would glom on to the mirror and stone and ignore the most concrete way of contacting the dead he's ever seen! I wouldn't have been surprised if Harry had wanted to pull an ariadne, tie a string around his waist and walk in!

That just seems like such a huge characterization hole. I have trouble dealing with it. Maybe that has contributed to my hatred of OOTP.

katho @ 2009-07-18T19:22:00

2009-07-19T04:05:35Z

I don't know how long it's going to take me to write this entry or why I'm doing it really. but. (note: apparently at least2.5 months)

I'm back in Calgary now -- inlaws and my dad came around my birthday to help Ryan and I move home. It's definitely strange being back. I miss the people I met in Vancouver -- I was just really getting to know them well because we spend the last four months working like crazy on the grad show.

I have lots of pictures of art and things to show, but I'm too lazy right now.

I'm working. doing web design but it's stressful -- just did my first site design for a client, of course it wasn't the mockup that was picked, instead they went with an orange thing I didn't like at all compared to what I did. But I can always repurpose it later. I haven't made it through my probation, but it's been so stressful I would still be choked if I get booted in a month, but at least I would have some time off.

I've been reading a lot lately. Last thing I read was Ferney by James Long. It was fine. I liked the premise more than the characters -- but there was enough science to it that it bothered me that Long ignored the whole issues of memories and learning actually changing your brain physically. I don't know much about it, but I think I've read that as you learn new things, your brain changes, more pathways are made between neurons and stuff. So how could would it be possible physically to transfer memories from one life to another? And how is it logical that she only remembered being female in most of the book? I suppose they normally pick babies of the sex they feel most comfortable as but will pick one of the opposite gender if necessary. I guess they might sort of have a choice about it sometimes.

Sorry, that wasn't coherent.

I saw Half Blood Prince today; now I'm going to reread it. But I wonder if I should start with DH to reread. I haven't made it through the last three a second time.

Ah life

2009-03-16T05:33:15Z

I wanted to post about my art this semester but then the semester happened, haha.

I think I'll do a recap when I have a chance. Which will probably fall around April17th. I will be back in Calgary on one of the days between the 30th of April and 2nd of May, and I would like to have a Small Birthday Get Together with whomever is in town. Sound OK?

Layout! Clouds.

2009-03-05T06:43:36Z

Posting a layout for the non-competitve layout challenge. I hope this works out.

Title: Clouds

Screenshot:

Images are hosted on Tinypic.

To Install:

Go to http://www.livejournal.com/customize/
Choose "Bookworm White" Theme
Choose "3 column -- Content on left" under "Choose page setup"
Save your changes.
Click "Customize your theme". Most of these settings don't matter; you can set them however you like.
Click "Custom CSS"
Select "No" from the 'Use layout's "Base Weblog" stylesheet' dropdown box.
Enter http://glass-slipper.net/lj-extras/clouds-css.css in the "Custom external stylesheet URL" box.
Click the Save button.

Design Portfolio -- critique requested!

2008-12-08T22:04:11Z

Hey guys,

So I've finished up my design portfolio to send out to people as I look for a co-op term in Calgary for the summer. PLEASE give me feedback! I need it, and I want to get a job being a DESIGN STAH so I need the trickedest-outest design in freakin evar.

Job hunting on your own is so scary. But I think I'm better at it than I was before co-op. And if I get a good job this time i may never have to do it again because I have gotten several web design opportunities just from UBC after doing the co-op site.

Here is the small version:

Larger version after the cut

If anyone knows of any good communities I could post this to for crits please let me know.

Painting -- the class, not the medium

2008-12-02T02:05:09Z

I'm feeling really nervous right now. Even though I got a lot of good news today. [ETA: I don't know what day this was -- possibly Friday? I don't remember what good news I got on Friday.]

It's the end of the semester so that's always the root of my nerves. I think I may need to stay up late and just post this; it's different from how i usually feel at the end of the semester because I'm a little bit surer of what I'm doing, but of course there's a whole lot of self-doubt that's creeping creeping.

At the end of October I entered an art contest for Arts Instructional Services and Information Technology (Arts ISIT) -- we were supposed to make a 'image' sort of thing that answers "What is Technology". Anyway I did my thing in like an evening and I couldn't think of anything interesting to do (I haven't really illustrated in a LONG TIME because we are illustrative work is Highly Discouraged in my classes). Well maybe I could have, but it probably would have been a digital project. Anyway I won a white spot gift card, and the guy who won the grand prize is in painting with me. I would show you the subs but mine is terribly embarassing, but I thought whatevs, and I guess that was the correct thing to think because I did win the gift card *shrug*.

Today, December 1st, my show at the AMS gallery opens. I am really really glad that Phil* came by on the very first day because now I don't have to be nervous about when he will come by to talk to me. I wish he had actually really tried to talk to us one on one during the course of the course though. I might have made some more changes. I did try to talk to him but he's sort of hard to read so .... yeah. Anyway what he said was really useful and gives me a good starting place for next semester, but it leaves me totally not sure what grade I've gotten in the course, and I basically need an 80 or above because I'm doing honours. So I'm worried. But as he left he said grades are never set in stone and they can always go back and be changed -- I said I would remember that. So I know I have a path of recourse if worst comes to worst. I'm not sure it will, I'm not sure what I'll get, and I knew what he was talking about and it was a pitfall I knew I was risking but I felt like i needed it anyway and I think I did learn a lot -- got what I wanted to get out of it, so we'll see. We'll see. But it did sound like Phil expected me to continue making art and that if I went forward more with what I was doing I could make things that are good, and he said I have good ideas and he liked my sound pieces (one of which is definitely failing in execution right now).

* Phil is my painting professor. He's got a really weird sense of humour; he's hard to read and I don't have any real idea how I'm doing in his course. He's also very theoretically rigorous -- the guy who won the Arts ISIT thing is probably not doing very well in the painting class because he's not very into theory or conceptualism.

Photos from some of what's at the show after the cut ...

From VISA490 images

My approach to art

2008-11-11T23:08:34Z

One of our assignments in Sculpture/Printmaking (don't ask) is to write a short (500-1000) word essay on our approach to art. I thought I would post what I have so far. Any comments are welcome! The last paragraph is a bit of an orphan; I liked how I worded it, but now I have stated the thoughts earlier. So i will need to graft. But eh.

For the past three years, my most common approach to art has been to be presented with a question, think of some angle of it that I find interesting, and then try to think of some way to address that in a visual mode. Of course this is because I'm a student, and normally I'm trying to fulfill a project. Now that I'm in fourth year -- and a few times in second and third year -- I have the opportunity to come up with some art ideas completely on my own, and how I approached that was to think about what I'm interested in and the themes I have gravitated towards around the projects. A lot of the work I did, even when presented with a project to fulfill in the last three years, had to do with thought and cognition. So now I'm trying to work with these ideas in more depth so that I understand why I gravitated to them so consistently. What I have discovered in this process is that I'm really interested in the “space” just beyond what I understand. I can't speak about that “space” specifically -- these are ideas that I think must exist, or spaces on the outside of ideas I've read about, or ideas insinuated by poems or fiction, but that I can't completely wrap my mind around them yet. Because I can't wrap my mind around them, I can't talk about them, and I've found that most of my reading on these subjects doesn't satisfy me; I am left feeling like there's something in the space that I still don't completely understand that is important.

I had this feeling very strongly last week while I read about Ludwig Wittgenstein's ideas about sense and nonsense. I have been fascinated by “nonsense” for a long time, and it's probably connected to my fascination with things I can't quite understand, and part of it, I'm sure, has come from reading books like Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Outside, Over There, Where the Wild Things Are, and Edward Lear's The Owl and the Pussycat as illustrated by Hillary Knight, as well as by T.S. Eliot's poetry and Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club, Invisible Monsters, Haunted). Anyway, what I was reading about Wittgenstein is that speech about things that can't be “represented” -- which includes logic, which doesn't “picture” anything itself, and a whole host of ideas that might not “picture” the world – which means that many ideas, including most of philosophy, that make “sense” in general, at least in my understanding of sense, which is roughly ideas or thoughts that can be adequately explained in words. It seems simplistic, or exclusionary to me to put so many ideas that make functional “sense” in the realm of “nonsense”, when for me, the “nonsense” should be the space for those "things" that can't be completely spoken because they can't be completely understood. I don't agree that there isn't any point in speaking about them, if that's how one wishes to work them out -- because I've gotten this feeling of a glittering, full nonsense in many talks where I just didn't have all of the background to understand everything as it was being said. The talk earlier this year on the Somnatic Sublime was one of these experiences, and to a much lesser extent, the Thing Theory talk had elements of it. Talking about them fills them out a bit, and for me, filling out the parts that you can talk about makes the part you can't somehow more tantalizing because you feel you are getting closer. I do this sort of exploration in my head in words, but I also find it fruitful to make art about or within these spaces -- I don't need to fully chart or explain the spaces before I try to work within them, and the unfixed quality that art retains where philosophy or an "ology", in the attempt to be understandable, must relinquish to a certain extent gives me comfort that I don't need to completely chart that space, that it is still important and interesting anyway, and also gives me hope that maybe someone else will understand the art differently and be able to tell me something about the space I didn't know (and make it that much more interesting). I am, as you can see, quite torn (but in a pleasurable or interesting way) between wanting to understand and finding things I don't understand interesting, at least partly because I don't understand them.

That's basically how I approach artmaking – I like to explore ideas, to play with them, and if they are ideas that I don't understand myself that's when I feel like I'm pushing myself the most. I normally don't feel safe making work based on ideas I don't fully understand, especially because I'm so used to critiques where I need to speak specifically about all aspects of a work, and I don't feel like there's room for me not to know things, but I hope that I can move past that. At school I think I have to understand the art I'm doing, or the ideas the art is based on, but I'll learn more about those spaces I don't understand if I do let go of that control and try to charge out into the unknown. I don't really want to fill them in and elucidate them, but I want to feel the spaces and see what I can make out of them, leaving them -- not empty, but full of air that might melt into solids.

I think that this is why I like to read fiction and poetry more than I like to read philosophy. In philosophy, the goal is usually to fill in those spaces, and often I am left with the spaces I thought I would read about still glinting at the edges of my thoughts. But fiction and poetry are doing what I like to do too – feeling around in the spaces for glimmers that resonate.

Election

2008-10-14T06:46:52Z

This is going to be a very short post because I have crazy amounts of homework to do as I was in Calgary this weekend.

However, I need to express my confusion this election -- not about how I want to vote, but how I should vote. I'm in a close riding (last by-election, which I forgot about on election day, the liberal won by 151 votes over the conservative) in Vancouver. There's also been a well-publicized push for Vancouverites to vote strategically to get as little blue in parliament as possible, and there's also been a large swell of such initiatives across the country. But I'm NDP at heart, and part of growing up with values that went against the tide in very conservative Calgary, I feel like it's my responsibility to the democratic system to vote with my values, not strategically. This was important as I got used to the idea that I'd be wasting my votes (Canada's government is decided by which party has the most seats in parliament. Each seat represents a geogrpahic area, and the representative is determined by which representative gets the most votes in that area. There are four parties that run candidates in all areas, one that only runs in Quebec but has a lot of support there, and several areas that have independent candidates or candidates from smaller parties. So if you don't vote for the winning canidate in your area, your vote basically doesn't count. And all the parties that support electoral reform to something reasonable like proportional representation, where seats would be based more closely on percentage of popular vote, are the ones that don't benefit from the current system and will thus never be in power). So now I have to decide by following my conviction that strategic voting perverts our ridiculous electoral system further (by causing voters to misrepresent their beliefs) and waste my vote and possibly let a conservative get this seat, or vote strategically, possibly help prevent a conservative from getting the seat, possibly not have my vote wasted, but not have my values represented in parliament -- because the Liberal platform is closer to my views than the Conservative platform, but the NDP are the closest to my views.

Any advice is much appreciated. I'm really having a crisis here. I have no idea what to do tomorrow.

Stuff

2008-09-29T05:48:59Z

OK, I'll try to be a good blogger. To some extent.

I decided to take the digital video course. Here are some images I made for it. I like some of them -- I didn't hand them in, though -- instead I did a sound piece. The project was about the "space between stillness and motion" .. I slowed down and modified myself singing Summertime (a lullaby and maybe thus a "still sound") and then cut it into ten pieces that are supposed to face in and out of audibility. It's meant to be displayed basically in a dark closet, one at a time, so that the sounds barely straddle the audible.

From Project 365

I want to talk about what I'm doing in my other courses but I'm too tired and have too many other things to do. So soon!

ALSO: HEARTS ++++ : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EdaLfJjDuE&feature=related (thank you girls guides of Canada)

Wow I'm a horrible blogger

2008-09-08T08:35:43Z

What the last time I posted was in July.

Anyway I don't think I'll worry much about drawing a day this year. I'm going to be killing myself with all of the things I'm doing, much of which will involve art in most ways, so I'll just do what I need to do.

I should try harder to be here. I have lots of things I need and want to say and get feedback on and so on too ... so I'll start doing that. Also I want to start bringing my camera around with me and photographing randomly; maybe someday I will get better at it.

So not that this is interesting or .. what have you ... but here are the courses I'll be in this semester:

Italian Studies 413 -- Dante (Commedia / Vita Nuova). Not in Italian on my part, but a fun class and an elective credit. Dante is awesome. I'm hoping I don't have to drop it because it's my 6th course and as it's an elective could be replaced with something else later, but it will be a very fun elective. No essay! Just "id quizzes" and an exam and that sort of thing.

Art History 464 -- Japanese Visual Culture -- totally lucked out that they are running this seminar;all of the projects focus on the main essay, which is great becuase there will be a lot of chance to refine it and no requirement to research anything else. Prof has a difficult to understand accents but it will be mostly discussion.

Visual Art 480 -- Theory. Not sure about this one. Have not had this porf before, may be a lot of work, Theory generally is.

Visual Art 450 -- Printmaking / Sculpture -- need to get up early to speak to Prof about this one; missed first class volunteering at orientations. have plan, however.

Visual Art 430-- Painting / Drawing -- Do not have concrete plan for this yet but have several possibilities depending on how other classes fall out. More on this later.

Visual Art 470 or 490 -- This is one where I'm having a bit of a dilemma -- do the directed studies course and have a show for it, or do the digital art course that is likely to be like a course I've already done but slighly more interesting and may involve time spent in the lab video editing (kill me) and move the work for the show to painting and sculpture. I don't know what to do.

even on the internet, I'm shy

2008-07-06T05:12:27Z

I'm working on essays (no seriously. I've got one "finished" for Monday -- Ok, it'll need polishing and maybe a bit more facts -- but it's one of my very first research papers -- and I don't really think of art history essays as research papers even when they are called that ... and I'm working on a film studies paper for Friday ... ) and in between sort of lurkifying on friends' blogs, and you know what. It is really weird to comment on the 'real' blogs of friends. I feel like I shouldn't be interfereing in what I think of as a community of practice of which I am not a part. Whereas LJs are more personal, so when people post well-reasoned thoughts here (which they usually do), I feel like I am enough a part of their community to comment.

I don't have a 'real' blog (I barely have an LJ ... ). I would like to start one in the fall of 2009 after I have finished classes. I think writing a blog about the Calgary art scene would encourage my participation in it after I don't have school to make me participate, however peripherally / passively, in the [much larger] vancouver art scene. I generally think of blogs (without the same community features of LJ/Livejournal) as more academic/professional, whereas a livejournla might easily include both your academic musings, discussions of fandom, as well as general journal and keeping-in-touch with friends stuff.

And then tumblr / flicker are interesting bridging methods I guess, or something.

I am too entertained by the internet as an interesting intellectual musing point (and potential inspiration / medium for art).

Also I'm kind of wondering about my writing skills. I think they improved, or could have improved, or improved when I care, a lot during my technical writing co-op because I'm not a very concise person and that definitely improved it. But lately I feel like I don't care much about what I'm writing, and I don't get a lot of intrinsic joy from the act of writing, like some people I know. Actually a lot of the time I'd rather be coding, come to think of it (or drawing, but that's a little more obvious) which is kind of silly.

Also sometimes I think I plan my life too much. Although my plan is not very specific after graduation, so I have only planned out the part of my life that I have to plan out anyway and is only a year away. But throughout my undergrad career I've felt like, in general, I had a way better understanding of what was going on, academic-bureaucracy-wise, than my classmates. But my classmates are art students, and maybe most of us are a little less intentional than I am.

Ok, essays. Tradition / modernity in Michael Collins and Angela's Ashes, here I continue to write about you!

cupcakes!

2008-06-22T07:18:44Z

Type your cut contents here.

The best meme ever (because it's actually full of useful info)

2008-06-19T00:22:57Z

So I saw this meme on bzzinglikeneon's eljay and I think it's an awesome meme -- this is what I really want to know about people. So please do the meme too!

You know how sometimes people on your friend's list post about stuff going on in their life, and all of a sudden you think "Wait a minute? Since when are they working THERE? Since when are they dating HIM/HER? Since when???" And then you wonder how you could have missed all that seemingly pretty standard information, but somehow you feel too ashamed to ask for clarification because it seems like info you *should* already know? It happens to all of us sometimes.

First Name: Kath[ryn]

Age: 21

Location: Vancouver, BC

Occupation: Currently, I guess, student. I'm in the co-op program (my degree / major is BFA Honours Visual Art), and right now I'm on a work term as the "Web Design and Projects Assistant" and the UBC Arts Co-op Office. I'm redesigning my co-op program's site and moving it to Typo3. I was really happy to get this job and it's been really awesome so far.

Partner: Ryan. August 5th is our 2nd anniversary.

Kids: None yet, thank goodness.

Brothers/Sisters: I have one brother who will be 15 this year. He's just finishing up grade nine and will be going to Western. He likes art too and wants to get into videogame design, I think -- so he plans to head to ACAD after high school.

Pets: None.

List the 3-5 biggest things going on in your life: Other than work, I'm taking two classes right now. In the fall I'll be doing a self-directed study type class, so I'm exctied about that (I'm planning to try to go through my art that I've done in uni and remix it to figure out what I'm actually doing here). If all goes well, I'll be facilitating a Student Directed Seminar in the winter term about contemporary art in Vancouver where we'll put on an art exhibition that reflects on the art we see in Vancouver. I got asked for a second revision of my SDS proposal, in kind of a "send us these revisions and we're intending to accept you" sort of email -- process is new to me so I'm not really sure what it means though. Next summer, I'm planning to move back to Calgary with Ryan, so in September I plan to start actively looking for a co-op job in Calgary -- hopefully a web design one. I'm also working on four freelance projects ... this is why I haven't been active online recently ...

Where and for what did you go to school?: I'm almost a fourth year at the University of British Columbia. I study visual art. Er, if you can call it studying?

Parents: My mom and dad live in Calgary. My mom is a family doctor and my dad writes computer simulations for oil wells. They are hippies and like to sing folk songs.

Who are some of your closest friends?: Ryan, of course. Kendra. I really miss Rox, Erin, and Lynn. My main social circle is the other co-ops and, during the school year, the Visual Arts Students Association, but I wouldn't say I've made friends here the same way I made friends in Calgary, although that's primarily due to how my life is structured now versus then. UBC is actually a notoriously lonely school. Online, I still talk to Mike (Neo) quite frequently. I wish I had more time to foster online friendships, I miss having tons of stuff going on online :(.

And the code to post it yourself:

I know I don't have a bunch of techies on my flist, but just out of curiousty, have any of you worked with typo3 before?

More sketches

2008-06-16T07:25:58Z

So I want to finish my co-op terms in Calgary next summer.

But there really aren't many co-op jobs posted in Calgary, and there definitely aren't any doing web design, which is what I'd like to be doing.

So, I'm going to do a self-directed work search. My web design network is much much stronger here in Van, though, so if any of you know anybody, or something, please let me know. LJ probably not the greatest place to ask, but I'll cast my net wider later.

on to sketches.

Internets

2008-06-09T05:33:49Z

My internet is acting slow, but it is totally not, and it's making me aggravated.

Here are some thumbnails:

I hope I can actually GET 365 things posted by the end of August. Probably not likely to happen.

</div>

KRAZY @ VAG

2008-05-20T05:02:18Z

Work is continuing as planned. Work is nice for making one feel competant.

Also, here's some pretty dismal sketches; but i'm trying to catch up.

I went to KRAZY at the VAG today. I liked it -- it was still a survey show, but at least it was surveying something less ubiquitous than trees, and was organized in something resembling a logical manner. I was standing in from of a wall of 4 animated movies. One of which was Dumbo. and the scene was Baby Mine. And I was just about to cry even though I couldn't hear it because the sound went to headphones. I was also not pleased than Second Life was not mentioned in the video games area. But I'll have to go back, definitely.

school is done

2008-05-11T08:19:55Z

So school has finished, and I started my co-op term as the Web Design and Projects Assistant at the Arts Co-Op Office. It is nice that it uses some skills that I actively cultivated / taught myself. Technical writing went well, they seemed to think I was good at it and stuff, but it was just so boring. I did pretty well in my classes, though, which feels good. I was taking six.

I am hoping to get back into a bit of activity. I'm in two classes this semester -- a film studies course and a geography course, to get some electives that I missed because of co-op. The geography course is interesting ; I am a bit scared of the attitude of the film studies prof.

This was a cool video I happened upon on Zune-Arts.net.

I have been drawing as much as possible recently ... this is a sample. I think I'm going to be in painting/drawing next year, which will be really nice.

I should be (and am!) working on stuff ...

2008-04-09T09:59:06Z

For some reason it's been pretty hard for me to be very rigorous these past couple of weeks. Just the last two. I'm not totally sure why -- maybe I'm noticing it more than usual. I felt like I let my last gallery review go a bit, but that may have been because last time I did one I got comments that it was too much like an essay.

Maybe I'm just running out of steam. It's not even creative steam, it's just general steam.

Anyway I found a cool online portfolio of someone who recently finished an animation degree at Emily Carr -- Jordyn F. Bochon. Also she has an LJ sketchblog, which I had friended but I totally don't remember: yfrontninja.

The ECIAD grad shows are awesome. I particularly like the design portions.

Anyway I finally bought a domain name involving my name! For not it is going to be the yves klein inspired final theory project, but then later it shall be a real portfolio, and glass-slipper.net can be given over to random silliness. Or you know, weird hobbies and stuff I don't really want on my portfolio ...

Also does anyone know a good place to post videos that isn't youtube? I want to show some of the videos I made for my digital video course, but very few have used much original footage, and I got tons of footage from youtube. I think my fight club project is definitely fair use (if it is not, Martin Arnold is in trouble), but I'd rather not post them on such a huge site.

More art project rambling

2008-04-06T20:20:03Z

So the nice thing about my digital video class (I am going to have to upload some of them somewhere and let you all see them) is that the prof is totally awesome about giving you feedback about your ideas and stuff like that.

So we were talking about the projects we were going to do for our final projects. i said Fight Club was one of my favourite movies and he said I should do something about fight club.

So now I'm thinking about something to do for my fight club digital video project and I figured it would be more productive to post it on LJ and get any passing feedback y'all have than not and try to come up with something in a vaccuum.

Here's why I like fight club

in a lot of ways i find it kind of gen-x-nostalgic, from the point of view of someone who isn't genx but is entertained by the extreme emoness
I find it hilarious for the same reasons.
I think I like fight club for the same reasons I like TS Eliot and Waiting for Godot. I find them all hilarious.
I got into fight club in grade 12 (when i got into tse too) and I guess it was kind of a formative period for me (or whatever)
As I am sure many of you know, I did this gigantic project in grade 12 about Fight Club and the Wasteland that I still love ... I had so much fun working on that project. Grade 12 in general was good times, so it's quite likely that some of my fightclub love has something to do with that
I also find grunge entertaining in much the same way I find all these other things entertaining. Same with modernist literature (esp Great Gatsby / The Stranger [Camus])

So I'm not completely sure what that means or how I could make art out of it. We had to do presentations on video artists. I presented on Douglas Gordon, who does a lot of projections using existing footage. Sometimes he plays one film several times, out of synch, and sometimes he plays too apparently thematically opposed films over top of each other and in doing so "reveals how well they actually work togehter". He also did 24hour Psycho, which was about how well you know it and the anticipation created for things you know are coming, and about your own personal relationship with films. We also looked at Martin Arnold (wikipedia / Alone on youtube) which is also, for me, about personal relationships with films and the space between the details that can stick with you and the entire film. Not sure whether that's a critic-sanctioned reading of his work, but that is rather immaterial at the moment.

So. What could I look at in this project?

I might like to look at the worldview and related it back to TS Eliot .... it would really be a video art version of my project, but I really liked that project and I think there's something interesting implicated in a realisation of how similar depression is over vast timeframes where the causes seem totally different but are similar. Also I get a lot of [perverse] joy out of that comparison, somehow, so that might be interesting to explore too ... the intersection between this sort of very (now) cliched and over-the-top depressed worldview which is, I think, for me, existent in both those works but that then translates into a huge source of entertainment for me, reading it a bit (or a good long while) after the fact. Also, I think the way in which I identify with these worldviews is pretty ... weird or ambivalent, so I think that might be an interesting thing to explore by trying to bring out the sorrowjoyhumour in both works (or just fight club)

Also, on wikipedia, there's this quote about the movie: This film is now popularly considered to be an uncompromising critique of humanity's loss of identity through mass consumerism. I think this is one of the things my prof was talking about when he said that Fight Club is a movie that deals a lot with stuff about its time and captures the mood and so on. I think that was what he said.

Anyway I think I'd like to do the sorrowjoyhumour all existing at once in tension thing. I think that might be (at least for me) the most pertinent thing about the movie, and the way in which it captures any sort of zeitgeist. I'm going to watch the movie a few times and email my prof about it. I would love to bring The Wasteland into it, except that I think it might be too complicated. Also I seem to bring The Wasteland into many, many things, which I suppose is because I like it so much.

Heh, I was reading my old posts from 2004 / early 2005, when I finished the Fight Club / Wasteland project, and wow was that ever a while ago, and how ridiculous do I feel about it! I can't believe third year will be over in a month and that I might graduate by the end of 2009 and that I might actually successfully come out of four years of working myself to insanity with a BFA Hons Visual Arts. Then I will move back to Calgary, do web design to pay the bills, and be involved in the art community and have some kind of artistic practice until I know enough about what I am about to begin thinking about getting an MFA.

I don't know if I said anything about this on LJ, but I got a co-op job for this summer back in feb. I'm going to be working as a 'web design and projects assistant' at the co-op office, redesigning their website and promotional materials. I am really excited about it.

And because I am in that don't-want-to-make-an-imageless-post mode ... new etching ... not finished yet.

So my plan is, when I finish my classes I will start catching up with project 365.

katho @ 2008-03-31T09:32:00

2008-03-31T18:20:39Z

my glasses broke and i'm gluing them back together (hot, I know) so I've set the text size ridiculous huge so that I can see it. It's trippy.

I wanted to get input from all of you on some of the art projects that I have to finish in the next two weeks (argh).

The Gaze

So for my studio theory class, I've got a 'summary' due on Friday. We're 'summarizing' three articles: Michel Foucault's The Eye of Power (from Power/Knowledge, summarizes a lot of the stuff about the panopticon from Discipline and Punish, Laura Mulvey's Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema and Coco Fusco's The Other History of Intercultural Performance. All of these works are about gaze -- Foucault is about how Victorian prisons created a system of control based on gaze where watched can do the watching and create control of bodies by the gaze, and thus control of minds. Laura Mulvey talks about the gaze in cinema with respect to women and fetishization and Lacan's mirror stage and basically control through gaze in film. Coco Fusco's article is about her performance piece, The Couple in the Cage, in which she and Guillermo Gómez -Peña were exhibited in a cage in various locations on the 500th anniversary of Columbus, who apparently started human exhibition.

Anyway clearly the gaze is really important in all of these articles. We can either write an essay (which is probably the less impressive thing we can do, but it's only worth 12 percent, but I don't know what I got on my last one ... ) or do some sort of art project. I have two ideas for the art project: one is to do something with a circle of mirrors and then maybe a lightbulb in the middle (so it would have the format of the panopticon ... not sure if that's too simple) and then paint faces of many different people -- maybe eight -- on the mirrors. so they would all refelct back and forth on eachother and change or imprint on the other faces. Or I could do body parts because it's so much about how the reflections change bodies. It would be cool to use video instead of paint, because then each could really move and change, but I'm not sure how on earth I would do that. Or in I could get bent glass and then film and use the light to throw the images on the film around. But I don't have that stuff. But I'm worried about how kitschy painting on mirrors might be, except that it makes a lot of sense for the concept ... I want, I guess, to create a model or realization of the combined functioning of all of the gazes discussed in the three articles.

Another idea I kind of had with this was to do something about how sound controls or sound's place in the system of control, because sound is, I think, kind of hilariously neglected in our systems of control -- especially because I think often when we're thinking about control of society, we think about all the signs we can use to do so with sight and how sight can do that, but of course you get as much information through sound and it's not just talking that controls you -- it's not, of course, completely neglected, but I don't know if we think about how much we're controlled and how much we control each other through visual cues and control than by sound; so I thought it would be cool to create an installation about that. Maybe I would do something where I would darken a room (a small room, I think) and then create a track of sounds that are part of our control systems as well as sounds that are not, to make us more aware of the space between sound and sight in how the society that Foucault describes is structured.

Anyway let me know what you think about those two ideas. I'm not really sure what I would write about, unfortunately -- or maybe fortunately -- because all of the ideas are fairly similar and, though ubiquitous and important and so on, there's not a lot of tension between them that I could talk about. Maybe I could talk about the things each one forgets. But I think the art project would be more impressive ....

Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility

In the same class we've got a final art project too. This one I've been thinking and talking about for quite a while. We're supposed to make an artwork that responds to some of the issues we've been talking about, and I wanted to deal with aura / authenticity and charlatanism (we read Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and about Yves Klein's zones of 'immaterial pictorial sensibility'), and I wanted to bring it to the internet because art on the internet and issues about its autheticity, saleability, etc, are important. Also I was entertained by the idea that some conceptual artists would, in total seriousness, sell certificates of authenticity with their conceptual works, as one of the cool things (for me and, I thought, for a lot of them) about conceptual art was that it was a bit more resistant to the artwork and that it was beyond or outside of authenticity.

What I want to do is make a website from which I would "sell" a .jpeg file. This is kind of hard to explain so ... I'll give it a shot. I want to present it like you're buying super special fancy art. There would be a preview of the .jpeg so you "know what you're getting". That preview would be a small (maybe 100x100px), flat colour jpeg. Then when you "buy" the file (through paypal and maybe wp ecommerce) and you could download a 'hi res', possibly psd or tiff file that would would just be a gigantic flat colour. You wouldn't get any sort of certificate, though -- although I'm slightly worried that the larger file itself may count as a certificate of authenticity .... I want it to be like when you buy the art, what you get is just basically the knowledge that you own "it". Make the certificate as much a state of mind as the belief that the jpeg or the colour is art.

On the site I'd try to market it, as I said, as a great art project -- talk about its reproducibility and its immaterial nature as making it adaptable to any use the purchaser can print out the big file and make it into posters or get paint in that colour, etc etc etc. I want to buy a can of paint that colour and paint a bunch of panels and then hang them up in a room as a "show". I'd also use various articles about immaterial / conceptual art and frankenstein them together so that they seem to apply to the work I'm selling. I was also thinking that I would take money by donation, so that ownership would be 'open' to anyone -- rather than fixing a price -- or maybe fix a stupidly high price so that no one would actually do it because I don't expect anyone to but I'd have to give their money back.

I also want to make sure that it's just over the top enough that you'd at least get an inkling that it's silly. I don't want to be a real or successful charlatan, I want to make people consider the marketability of immaterial things and think about other online products and services you can buy that are kind of, to me, suspect in terms of their legitimacy as products -- for instance, money on second life or web space -- but then of course that's how capitalism works and to keep these things going, real resources are required -- but the real resources and what you pay for are hugely abstracted from one anther.

So I want to talk about artistic authenticity in a digital age; whether or not it exists and what the limits of ownership are. I also wanted to hopefulyl bring to mind other things you buy online and the trust and potential charlatanism implicated there, as well as buying things like music, where you can easily aquire them, so the only benefit you, yourself, really get out of actually buying music online is that you bought it, not that you can listen to it.

When I originally had this idea it seemed a lot simpler. A lot of this thinking would be under the surface ... I'm going to start doing the work on it today / tomorrow so I will post updates as I go. Thoughts appreciated -- especially as to whether this actually or clearly brings in any issues after Klein, because I think the digital-immateriality and not just artistic immateriality -- or rather the similarities between the two -- is something I want to address in the piece and if it doesn't come through I need to fix that.

Also suugestions for the colour are much appreciated -- would be hilarious if I didn't even choose the colour myself.

I also need a title for it. I am thinking of basing it on the colour. But I need to get the domain for it really quickly -- if I can't thinking of a good one I'll just use my name and repurpose it to a real site in a few months. I was going to get the domain through one of the 'free domain name' sites (which are a pain) just to make it as ... fake? as I can. Then if I want to keep the domain I'll move it to a real registrar in a year.

Here are some possibilities:

Video

I'm in a video class this semester and we've got a final project coming up in that class too. My last project was about stress and about working at 800 miles a minute, so I was thinking about possibly continuing that theme by doing something where I film myself sleeping for several hours and then compress it into a few minutes. I would also record the sounds around me for the same amount of time (during a busy and noisy day) and then compress it to the same amount of time. Or I could stretch the sleeping images out the same amount that I compress the sound ... I think the intent is pretty clear ... tell me what you all think ... blech sleepy.

Also some art!

That full version is really big, btw.

Art projects

2008-03-03T13:52:48Z

Hey all

Aaaah man, uni always hist me like a brick truck. Oh well, April 11 I will sort of be done and then I can do normal things again.

The most recent art project I did (art project?) was a summary for my Studio Theory class -- it's a 'map' of ideas about nihilism in art. I put it on diigo.com, which is this online research tool, and people can add to it. You have to sign up to diigo and either get the bookmarklet or toolbar to see all the annotations, but that's pretty useful because then you can highlight random webpages.

So all of you should go check it out: http://groups.diigo.com/visa381/

Thanks a lot guys. I actually have a halfway decent week this week, so yay!

How are all of you doing? Sorry I don't have time to keep up with LJ ... maybe if I burn out I would have time in the hospital ;).

arrrgh not posting

2008-01-31T07:56:42Z

Hey everyone,

i know i haven't been posting my drawing a day and so on, but i have been trying to keep up with it (although lately I have no idea how well i've done, i shall have to do some math. aaaand ... i redesigned my site for a job application. http://glass-slipper.net ... i am going to fall over and die, haha.

Anyway I have probably screwed project 365 out of the water but I will get it back on track, I will, I will.

katho @ 2008-01-12T14:46:00

2008-01-12T22:46:47Z

http://static.scribd.com/docs/6e184uoj6i90t.pdf

UBC Calendar contest

2008-01-10T21:31:24Z

Hi everyone -- I need urgent assistance! There's this UBC Calendar Cover contest, and I'd like to submit something. I've got a sletch of something I'm preparing especially for it, and then some of my project 365 stuff that I'd consider reworking for it. Here we are.

Thumbnails:

I've got more project 365 stuff to post ... proabaly do that later today :).

This is the one I'd be doing from scratch, I'll post another version when I've coloured:

Pin just happened to be there, heh.

These are the project 365 ones: