more Mark Tribe - Carpark

An aerial shot of what Tribe launched into action on the morning of August 31, 1994. Some of his slightly older work, but intruiging nonetheless!

A team of local artists, including Mark Tribe, were invited to launch this enormous project on the campus of Southwestern College in San Diego, California involving the everyday
use of cars and the numerous parking lots that surround the campus. Throughout a 6 or so hour period on a normal weekday morning, a dedicated team of 50 something volunteers and "professional" parking attendants stationed all around the various lots directing every single person that sought to park on campus into a specifically designated lot according to the color of their car. Organized into dark blue, blue, light metallic blue, silver & gray, black, beige, brown, metallic
rasberry, yellow, electric blue, white, aqua, green, and red, the campus soon became transformed, from the everyday mass of people in cars struggling to find the best space in the lot closest to their destination, to a working piece of installation art that created a more interesting, interactive, and thought provoking environment for the thousands of people involved. What a neat project to pull off!

I'm drawn to this piece first of all, because of its size and the obvious effort and organizational skills it took to create. Traffic has always been something I have been interested in, simply because it is something that I deal with on a daily basis, like most people, and it is something that is always changing, moving, causing, affecting, preventing, and creating. Especially in parking lots, driving a car and being in traffic can become something incredibly complicated. And for Mark Tribe to think of a way to completely break down the complexity of traffic patterns, and driving attitudes and personal decision making, into something as simple as the color of a car's paint job is kind of amazing in a way. And considering he did not even know how people would react upon entering campus that morning to park their cars, I think that Tribe made quite a bold statement about what it takes to completely change a system, a normalized way of going about doing such a routine action. Also, he suggests how it affects us and creates a spark for creativity, and even lightens the mood in what can be a really frustrating situation at times. Many people had really positive and excited reactions to the project. I know I would be excited to park my car with all of the other silver cars!

http://www.marktribe.net/art/carpark/

Mark Tribe

Mark Tribe is the founder of the online resource for new media artists, Rhizome.org, that we are so fond of here in class. So, instead of using his wikipedia site to try and look for other artists, I thought that I would check out some of his own stuff....... Here is some of what I found:

Star Spangled Cover

This was a video projection/installation piece that he did in collaboration with New York guitarist Andre Lassale and Greg Tate. He videotaped Lassale doing a complete remake of Jimi Hendrix's "Star Spangled Banner" that he played at the Legendary Woodstock (which is amazing as a single musical performance in itself, I know). But then, he created two separate copies of this video that would then be projected onto the same wallspace from two different projectors, except that one copy of the DVD would be completely out of sync with the other copy, creating this blurred and mashed up version of Lassale's performance that created a visually appealing and almost psychadelic moving image to go along with the audio of the song. And to make the installation more apporopriate, and perhaps more completely unified, Tribe projected these two videos against a background contemporary image of Yasgur's farm, the very farm in upstate New York on which the Woodstock concert of 1969 took place.

links to both video clips of the performance and installation here:

http://www.marktribe.net/art/star-spangled-cover/

To me, this is quite a bold performance installation piece, even if it doesn't even come close to being as epic and intense as what Woodstock itself was for many. I think Tribe is making an interesting comment on what Woodstock meant for those who attended, those who didn't attend but lived to see the history attached to it, and even what it means to us today - this famous legacy of the 60's, hippies, anti-war movements, and psychadelic explorations, all culminating in the massive 1969 multi-day festival. By creating two separate projections of the same video, Tribe touches on this idea of psychadelic images, feelings, and experiences that people most likely were touching on themselves back in the day, especially during the Jimi Hendrix performance of the Star Spangled Banner. This installation reaches out to the two senses that probably rendered the most clear for everyone at Woodstock, sight and sound. And by projecting this video on top of a modern-day picture of what the Woodstock sight looks like today, Tribe is bringing the history of Woodstock back on a new and creative level, one that allows viewers to question the meaning of the past and how it relates to our culture and experiences today. The fact that people perform recreations of the songs performed back at Woodstock, which is obviously not surprising because they are utterly amazing, but the very fact that this happens, that we keep loving and listening to pieces of audio art from 4 decades ago says something about how we live as a society today. And, as someone who is a fan of old classics like Jimi Hendrix, I am quite fascinated by what Tribe has done here.


More work to come from Mark Tribe!



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Tribe

more Jeff Crouse - Gearbox!

http://gearbox.mediashed.org/


Gearbox is tutorial and resource site that provides the public (well, people who sign up for membership) with loads of information on how to make cheap films using recycled or found items from your surrounding environment, in order to imitate professional, higher cost techniques for making films. Ex) using a fishing pole for getting a higher up, crane-type shot. This is an awesome way to put the power of art/film making into the hands of the everyday viewer! It also encourages people to really expand upon traditional and professional ways of making films or getting shots, while at the same time reusing and recycling stuff we don't have an everyday use for. Yeah!

http://eyebeam.org/projects/gearbox

Self Portrait (Project 2)

Here is some visual documentation of my process in creating this final self portrait:

Jeff Crouse

Finger Olympics!

http://www.fingerolympics.com/

Project 1 revised

I changed a bit of the background, added some more shadowing in some areas to minimize the overall "Photoshoppy" effect, and did some minor editting on the color balances in the entire image.

Evan Roth

T.S.A. Communications

Evan Roth is a MD/DC based artist and activist interested in creating art via digital means through the exploration of popular culture and the media, ways to culture empowerment, and succeeding beyond media based laws for the purpose of transforming the dynamics between the everyday person of the public and the authority of the media and government affiliated organizations. He has been featured on numerous occasions in Sundance, various museums, and even on television.

"T.S.A. Communications" is a more performance/installation type piece that Roth has been undertaking and continuing throughout his world travels. It is based on simple 8.5" x 11" metal sheets that have messages cut into them, specifically designed to be put into his carry on luggage and sent through the X-Ray scanner of airport security, allowing the official to read the message. By doing this, Roth creates a clever way of transforming the normal airport security experience into a twisted situation, involving subtle but very meaningful dialogue between the airport patron and the security official. Examples of such messages are, "NOTHING TO SEE HERE", and, "I AM THE FRONTLINE OF DEFENSE, DRAWING ON MY IMAGINATION TO CREATIVELY PROTECT AMERICA FROM HARM". The focus here is on switching the role of the airport patron, from a very passive, no name person, floating through among the masses, to a quite active participant in the interaction between the person and security.

http://rhizome.org/object.php?49311

I think this is quite a bold thing to do as an artist especially in today's post-9/11 society, where airport securities are to be taken as seriously as possible. But Roth is not in any way a threatening antagonist who might be trying to push the boundaries between people and security in a dangerous manner. This is what I enjoy about this work. The messages are subtle, but at the same time scream loudly. The technical aspects are very basic: inscriptions on small metal sheets designed to be picked up by security X-Rays. I think Roth successfully pushes the boundaries between people and security, but only enough to make you question what it means to have a hierarchy of roles, the role of a higher, authoritative position such as a security official in contrast with the passive anonymous person of the public who must adhere to certain rules as set by the higher role. It certainly brings out the idea of freedom of speech, and how far this can be pushed and fought for in such a delicate situation. I think the ramifications of this artist's work could be very negative, leading to trouble with not just airport security but the law, although he is obviously very aware and accepting of such possible consequences. He is an activist artist, after all.