Last Words...for now
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As the last days of summer wind down, I am writing the last words of this particular digital journal. Of course there are never really any last words on a subject that have I thoroughly enjoyed exploring over a summer's time. My goal for the summer was to read John Dewey's book Art as Experience and connect what I was reading with art experiences in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Reykjavik, Iceland, and Paris, France. I sought to really look and think about how artists respond to, and confront, the culture they live within (or that lives within them).
New Work I have been inspired to create a new body of digital work inspired by my travels this summer. One of the things I found my self thinking about is the idea of capturing ordinary experiences in a way that is more dimensional than stills or videos can do alone. Inspiration for this project go back to cubism and the desire to portray multiple perspectives at once. Contemporary artist David Hockney, updated the concept with the technique he called "joiners." By photographing an entire scene (including the natural movement within) and stitching it together, the resulting image captures multiple perspectives, natural movement, and a heightened sense of reality. My new work will be an attempt to capture the concept of experience using the combination of still photography and videos. My goal is to enter a piece into the Currents New Media Festival in Santa Fe. Using photographs and videos of particular situations I will combine them to create an experience with multiple perspectives that showing the passage of time. |
We are, as it were, introduced into a world beyond this world, which is nevertheless the deeper reality of the world in which we live in our ordinary experiences. We are carried out beyond ourselves to find ourselves. —John Dewey Multiple Perspectives
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Paris, France, 2013, Jody Chapel.
Inspiration
What does it take to portray an experience? According to Dewy, "EXPERIENCE occurs continuously, because the interaction of live creature and environmental conditions is involved in the very process of living." How does one portray the idea of continuous experience in an artistic endeavor? How many moments does it take to make an experience? How does the passage of time, multiple perspectives and simultaneously occuring events figure into an capturing an experience?
The scene captured in my photograph on the left, caused me to think about all that goes on in a moment of time. I loved how I could see both above and below ground in one picture plan. I thought about how I could expand the picture plane to include more. More information, more movement, and more "process of living." This is my new artistic goal.
My notes (mostly complete) on Art as Experience by John Dewey:
Book notes (what I loved most)
1. Dewey, J. (2005). Art as experience. New York, NY: Perigee
What does it take to portray an experience? According to Dewy, "EXPERIENCE occurs continuously, because the interaction of live creature and environmental conditions is involved in the very process of living." How does one portray the idea of continuous experience in an artistic endeavor? How many moments does it take to make an experience? How does the passage of time, multiple perspectives and simultaneously occuring events figure into an capturing an experience?
The scene captured in my photograph on the left, caused me to think about all that goes on in a moment of time. I loved how I could see both above and below ground in one picture plan. I thought about how I could expand the picture plane to include more. More information, more movement, and more "process of living." This is my new artistic goal.
My notes (mostly complete) on Art as Experience by John Dewey:
Book notes (what I loved most)
1. Dewey, J. (2005). Art as experience. New York, NY: Perigee