Johnson Museum Field Trip

1. Type A: Barrier

This piece to me, is based off power and how our world is based off how power-hungry we are. The description bases a lot of it's meaning through government and male competition. This to me symbolizes male suppression and how men in society are taught to protect their wives, make lots of money, be the strongest, and be the best. Men are then unable to break this barrier and do what makes them truly happy because society makes fun of happy men, they consider them to be flamboyant and having low testosterone. These concrete sculptures are white and tough, which is what the ideal man is. They also must protect: their country, their lives, other people's lives. They are also a form of construction (changing or building something new), while everything changes around men (women empowerment, racial acceptance), men stand their ground and make sure everything is under control. This is a very powerful pice, which sums up a lot of american historical history and emphasizes that this in fact is a man's world, but I hope that it also means it doesn't always have to be that way, which is why their are spaces in between.


2. Cinemania: Harun Farocki and Holly Zausner

This piece was so much fun to watch representing the factory struggles and major industry periods in life. There are 12 televisions lined up by date. In this piece the people seem to be struggling because they all are in an economic crisis at some point/points in their lives. Their are different countries so it seems to be indicating that these struggles occur everywhere all over the place and people react the same: walking fast, into their factories with large fenced in areas or walls. In each of these videos there is a sense of barrier, they are struggling workers trapped in the economic system created by man. There are a couple videos with bikes in the indicating farther/quicker ways and routs of travels. They also portray the working women, in the earlier films the women are maids and housewives and in the later decade of films the women are shown in more business attire.

Johnson Museum Response 2: Harun Farocki

Harun Farocki’s “Workers Leaving the Factory in 11 decades” is entirely composed of appropriated video. How has his installation changed the meaning of the original films? Respond in 150-200 words.

"Cinemania" at the Johnson Museum: http://museum.cornell.edu/exhibitions/cinemania-farocki-zausner.html

Johnson Museum Response 1: Type A

Consider the piece Barrier at the Johnson Museum and one single-channel video from the artists’ website. Identify the ideas and concepts that are similar between the pieces, and discuss how the different mediums affect the way that ideas are expressed. Your response should be 150-200 words.

Artist Website: http://www.typea.us/
Johnson Museum: Type A-Barrier

My Point of View- Jason

Sequence 1 from jasonraymonds426 on Vimeo

Melissa Rice Symmetry in Darkness POV

This is my point of view video. In it I tried to capture the symmetry in nature at night. Although most of my clips don't necessarily capture symmetry in the nature, I edited to try and create the artificial symmetry through the mirror effect. I liked how it created a darkened atmosphere in my videos in regard to symmetry. It is almost asking the viewer what their point of view on symmetry is, and how the concept of artificial symmetry creates a difference. I tried to look up various examples and articles but they made me think of symmetry almost not how symmetry should be, since symmetry is never fully symmetrical. 

Child- Kaila's POV project

My point of view video was meant to represent a curious child. This child is exploring his outdoor surroundings. He represents the innocent, wondrous mind of a young boy. This video was meant to capture the idea that children can become absorbed and intrigued in the simplest of things. Everything is new and interesting to them. They have no stress and pressure to distract them from some of the most fascinating things in our environments. Young children can find beauty in something as plain as a brick wall or a muddy puddle. Adults on the other hand would walk by these commonly seen images with no care in the world. They are things they pass by daily and don’t acknowledge. My goal was to open my viewer’s eyes up to the fact that there is beauty everywhere in nature that the observant children in the world appreciate more than the rest of us.

Frank Lawrence's By Day and By Night

With the different ways we look at the world as humans the most important factor in how we perceive situations and make judgment calls is the time of day and the amount we can see.  There's a reason that nearly ever horror movie takes place almost entirely at night and why Halloween is celebrated by "trick or treating" at night.  The amount that we can see changes everything, things that we can see completely scare us much less than things that aren't entirely clear to us.  My project was meant to explore the ways we understand different situations by day and by night.  I wanted to ask the viewer, would something that scare you at night scare you during the day?  Some of the scenes are incredibly dark and hard to make out but the most important thing to remember when viewing my piece is to look for the shadows moving around more than seeing the actual actor walking around.