Critical Art Ensemble analysis.

While reading the Critical Ensemble introduction I couldn't help but be reminded of the caricatures of artist that are so often portrayed. The artist who uses the art world vernacular in a way that becomes absurd and almost incomprehensible. I think that this feeling came about when the author started to describe the disdain of being called artists that the members of the Critical Art Ensemble felt. The worry of being named, and therefore being categorized, seemed to go a bit too far for my tastes. I feel like a name does not necessarily have to define a thing or a movement. It just helps those who are not apart of the movement to give a way to voice their observations of an otherwise unknown thing. The identity does not have to be a permanent and unchanging.

What I did however, find interesting about the tactical art movement is the fact that they value the work of the amateur. Many other art forms require skills that have to be practiced and honed into something that is high above what an amateur can produce, and that is one of the things that makes it stand out and worthy of the title art. Those who have studied art can be jaded, while the amateur, because they have not been trained to approach ideas in formulaic ways can bring something new to the work. In the article this idea is expressed in the quote, “Most important, however, amateurs

are not invested in institutionalized systems of knowledge production and policy construction, and

hence do not have irresistible forces guiding the outcome of their process such as maintaining a place

in the funding hierarchy, or maintaining prestige capital.” With the CAE, the only thing that one needs to bring to the table seems to be a willingness to participate in the movement. As a collective the CAE works together and it is the skills of the group, not of the individual that is important.

There is an issue of lasting documentation with the CAE since their work cannot be preserved. It can only be told in second hand mediums such as video and photographs. While this can be quite frustrating, as it deteriorates some of the experience and intended impact of the work, it can help preserve at least part of what occurred, as a record. As a photographer, I constantly find my work to be only second hand records of experiences that leave much of what occurred out of the frame. I can understand the worry that these narrowed fields of vision have an effect on how the recorded events are perceived but it is better to have a record of some sort than a completely ephemeral experience that does not reside anywhere other than memory.

The Marching Protestors-INB analysis

The Infernal Noise Band, or INB, is a great example of what music can do for a crowd of people. Music has always been a way to reach crowds of people but INB took it a step further than performing on a football field or in a parade, like most marching bands do. The INB decided to lend their music toward a cause they believed in. The article by Jennifer Whitney didn't describe the cause that they were protesting for but instead focused on the means that the INB tried to contribute to the protests in Seattle but in a way I'm not sure that the specificity of the cause is very important to the story of the INB. The cause that INB may have fallen by the wayside in the information we were offered but the effects and ideas behind using a marching band to draw in a large audience can still be considered in their approach to the realm of public performance art.

While I've always heard of protests involving music, I had never heard of the use of marching bands integrated into them. Most of my knowledge about how music has been used for talking about a cause has come from things much more commonly seen, such as charity concerts. The Topp Twins, a New Zealand pair of lesbian twins who have used their music, songs about causes they support, to make a difference in the world, also comes to mind. But marching bands come with a completely different aspect. The mobility of them creates a wider possibility. Their mobility allows them to enter and exit both private and public spaces while performing help keep them from being stopped and banned. The more area that they can cover, the more new listeners and potential followers they can pick up on their route.

In their preparation the INB went to the lengths similar to other marching bands. They struggled to learn steps and music, to find the ideal drum major and to keep a practice space that doesn't cause too many problems. Where the INB differ is their choice of venue and how they are perceived by their audiences. While most marching bands that we are used to are affiliated with a sporting event, helping keep up the spirits of a crowd and adding to the atmosphere of an event that everyone has made the conscious decision to attend. The INB, and other radical marching bands, set themselves apart by, instead of rallying up crowds that are there to support the same thing (although that does happen), they are there to help draw attention to their cause, to draw people into it. Marching bands are usually reserved for school campuses, sporting events and parades, while INB tried to spread out to more unconventional venues such as the streets of Seattle where the police are gassing protesting crowds, or inside of an unsuspecting Starbucks. As Jennifer Whitney points out about the INB's Starbucks performance, the message they were sending out was one that said, ““Hey, normal life ends here folks, there is a marching band in your Starbucks, you’re not going to work today!”. The INB were trying to shake up the average and bring more attention than would have otherwise been directed to the protests they were serving. The INB were giving these unsuspecting observers a chance to witness something that they would have never expected and would give them something to talk about for an unspecified amount of time. In this way the INB were not only reaching an audience of those who were in their location, but also creating a word of mouth about this spectacular event that they were unexpectedly a part of.

Although, I doubt that most protestors would not have lasted long if they had tried to use the interior of a Starbucks, a privately owned space, for voicing their causes, the INB got away with it. Perhaps it was because they were presenting themselves in a way that caught everyone off guard by their unusual approach to it. Or perhaps they were just too quick to perform and then exit the Starbucks before anything could be done to stop their impromptu performance. Either way their tactics seemed to be perfect for their desired effects.

The choice to use music in their protesting may have been one to change up the normal routine of chanting and yelling but music reaches crowds in ways that other displays do not. Music is so far reaching that anyone who could hear the INB would most likely be brought to wonder about the source of it and to perhaps go to explore the reasoning behind it. Since music is usually an experience that is crowd oriented protests seems to be a natural home for a marching band. Music invites the listener to dance, to sing, to contribute and join in. Chanting and yelling at a protest may have some of the same invitation, music is much more welcoming to new comers. The excitement and mood that music invokes is much stronger. Observers of a protest may not be as likely to participate but to hurry past without learning about the cause which is being protested. Music creates a sort of bridge to draw people in from the side of observer to the side of participant.

Although, while reading the article by Jennifer Whitney I was a little concerned with the idea that the band would create more chaos in the crowd than there already would be. The idea of raising the volume of the protest, of invading private spaces such as Starbucks, and of marching along police lines with the expectation of getting gassed or maced seemed to me to have the power to be very disruptive. After reviewing all the material thoughtfully I decided that this initial evaluation was unfounded and that perhaps the organized procession of the band lent something to the chaos in a way. However, with most performance arts, it is hard for me to judge without actually having experienced it myself.

Walk assignment- 5/31

I felt like today was the perfect day for this assignment because I was going to be out of the house more than usual.  I decided to spend the entire day looking everyone I encountered in the eye.  I knew this was going to be a particularly hard task for me as a person with social anxiety.  I usually try not to draw the attention of strangers when I'm out in public and I feel like eye contact is a direct invitation for interaction.

The first half of the day I went to multiple stores to go shopping.  I had to remind myself multiple times not to look away from people and I noticed my immediate instinct was to look away from people.  But as I got more used to the habit of looking straight into other people's faces I began to realize that a lot of people will either smile as an acknowledgement of my interaction and then look away.  Others would just avert their gaze and keep walking.  The cashiers were the ones that seemed to be the most willing to return my gaze.  I like to think that they appreciated me looking into their eyes while interacting with them because they are often not acknowledged in this way.

The rest of the day I spent with my brother, his girlfriend and my grandmother.  We went to get an early dinner together and this was where the eye contact got so much easier.  I found that my brother's girlfriend was the most likely to maintain eye contact with me and I'm not sure if it was the eye contact, but she talked directly to me more than anyone else. 

All in all, even though it was a really difficult assignment, I feel like the exercise in interacting with other people really helped me exercise my social skills.

Walk 5/28- I walk in your name

For this walk I asked my mom to chose who/what I should walk for and how I should proceed on my walk.  She decided that I should walk in memory of my friend Jake who passed away from melanoma almost exactly six years ago.  I wasn't surprised that she chose for me to walk in his memory because it was a great loss for both of us.  For me it was losing a friend that I had grown up with and for her it was the loss of a child she had watched grow up only to have his life cut short.  

When I asked my mom how I should proceed on my walk she gave me the directives to take a cup of coffee with me (as Jake was never without it), and to spend my walk thinking only of memories of Jake.  She also gave me the specific direction to only think of happy memories of Jake.  That part of the task proved to be harder than I had anticipated due to the amount of memories that I have near the end of Jake's life that are less than pleasant, as any one who has watched someone die from cancer will know.  Instead I forced myself to think about earlier memories of watching Power Rangers, and high school memories of leaving campus for lunch with our large group of friends. 

Personally I was relieved that my mom did not suggest that I try to raise awareness about skin cancer because, although I am very vigilante about reminding people to wear sunscreen and I will remind people the dangers of tanning, I feel that most people here in the desert are already aware of the risks.  I felt that I wouldn't make much of an impact on other people but by thinking about Jake and my memories of him I was helping prolong the impact that his life had on me.  I felt like he would try to do the same if our destinies had been reversed. 

Project 2- Inside/outside

For this assignment I considered the ideas about graffiti that I learned from the documentary Style Wars.  Some of the aspects of what I took away from the graffiti/hip-hop culture was their desire to get their names and work seen by as large of an audience as they could.   Since the 70s and 80s the ways of reaching a large audience has changed greatly due to the internet.  The internet can be considered a public space that is greatly accessible to everyone and can reach a world wide audience.  The ideas of using tags of nicknames have also been created on the internet with the use of usernames.  Many people, such as myself, use the same username on every site, making it easier for myself and my work to be identified. 

While I was considering what social scenes I belong to I could only come up with a couple of answers that related to websites only.  While I have friends outside of the internet I rarely socialize with them in what could be considered a regular social scene.  Through websites such as Shuttercal.com and Reddit.com I have found that my social groups have widened due to shared interests created by these websites.  

With these ideas in mind I decided to create a burner that would depict my username using paint and paper.  I then decided to incorporate this imagery into websites that I frequent to add to the visual identification of my username (meltedsquirrel) , in much the same way that a tag would bring notoriety to individual taggers.  I used a bold outline and tried to use bright shades of red to incorporate a small part of style taken from graffiti. 

Walking Assignment 5/24-Cocooned vs Engaged

For this walking assignment I decided to walk around the Reid Park Zoo. I wanted to choose a place that would have plenty of walking and plenty of people in which to be surrounded in. For the cocooned section of my walk I employed sunglasses, an ipod and occasionally turned to my phone to send text about my zoo experiences with one of my friends.
My observations of this experience of cocooning myself from my environment were these:
 - People didn't take much notice of me, often not even looking at me.
 - When the shuffled music of my ipod began to play a song which I had a strong memory connection to would cause my mind to wander away from anything I was observing at the time. Instead I began to think about past experiences and my mind would become occupied with those thoughts.
 -While wearing sunglasses I was much more likely to watch other people without a feeling of being intrusive.

For the engaged section of my walk I removed my sunglasses and put away my electronics and walked through the entire zoo by myself.

 My observations follow:
- The zoo is a much louder place than I remember it being. There were kids yelling, peacocks and other birds making noise, an occasional speaker playing music to enhance the mood of certain parts of the park, as well as the occasional audio tour being played from speakers.
 -Being able to hear the conversations around me pointed out things that I had not previously seen, such as animals which I had not been able to locate were being pointed out by others within my hearing range. -People were much more likely to acknowledge my presence and apologize if they almost ran into me or blocked my line of vision. Forcing myself to make the occasional comment about where animals were located in their enclosures to others who did not seem able to locate them got me smiles and polite exchanges. However, the lack of sunglasses made me much more apprehensive to look people in the eye.

Sounding Out the City Analysis

The excerpts from Sounding Out the City by Michael Bull brings up many interesting ideas about the barriers and connections created by the use of personal stereos. The article created some strong realizations of truth for me on the nature of musical devices and how they are used in public situations.

The reading on personal stereo use struck me as describing a circular problem that shutting oneself off from their surroundings both creates and prevents. Many of the people interviewed in this article describe themselves as shutting themselves off to the world using their personal devices, such as walk mans, and thus creating their own world. These devices discourage the interaction of others by separating the user into their own mindset and by helping to block out the unwanted elements of their surroundings. However, many of the interviewed device users also say that their device helps them to feel less lonely when they are, in fact, participating in activities alone. One user described going on her bike rides just “me and Scott Walker” referring to the singer on her cassette tapes. It's an interesting point that therefore, the stereo devices that are separating these people from others by creating a barrier are also creating a false sense of company for them when they have to face the world outside their houses alone. As someone who suffers from social anxiety, I have used an ipod many times to help put myself at ease when surrounded by strangers but it was not until reading this article that the idea of this is a very common and shared experience. While I am more likely to fumble with my phone to create a sense of being accompanied, I can also recognize the need to create a sense of companionship through technology when I am thrust out into an unfamiliar situation.

The section of the article about gaze was especially thought provoking as it described many people who, while using a personal stereo device, feel free to let their gaze wander in a way that they feel is less intrusive than if they were not walled off by their music. The thought that blocking off one sense to allow the more thorough use of another is not one that is altogether surprising. However, the article seems to describe a zoned out gaze that is not really connecting with what they see so much as the person letting their mind connect to what they were listening to.

As a photographer I have gone out shooting many times by myself with nothing but my camera and an ipod. I find that the use of familiar music helps me block out the distraction of new sounds in an unfamiliar surrounding so as to focus on only what I am seeing photographically. Maybe I am in danger of projecting the mood of what I am listening to into what I am photographing but that is an idea that I had not considered until reading this article.

Altogether this article presented me with ideas that I feel are deeply connected to myself and my own actions in a way that I had not considered before. While the technology focused on may be out of date now, the occurrence of these habits have grown far more widespread and are very present in everyone's interactions in the world and play a very prevalent part in our society.