Madison+W+Spring+2016

=Madison Williams =

Final Project: Counter Monument
**P**roposal

This proposed anti-monument is intended to represent the cultural phenomenon of riots. There is a murky space in which riots are tolerated/intolerable, sanctioned and unsanctioned. The anti-monument will take the form of shards of glass, ranging from a few feet tall and wide to tiny fragments. The glass is jagged and sharp, in irregular shapes that result from shattering a large window. These glass pieces are scattered, apparently at random, over about a 5-meter radius through the small wooded area between Constitution Garden and the Reflecting Pool. There is no signage or explanation for the anti-monument, and it is intended to be walked on and through. This makes it an impractical and somewhat dangerous space for the viewers. The lack of signage also means that although I, as the creator, have my own conception of how the space should be viewed, each visitor will have a unique interpretation of the installation.

The placement on the National Mall is important, and the meaning is twofold. First, the Mall is famously a site of peaceful protests, both large – such as the famous 1963 March on Washington – and smaller, more niche rallies that never make national news. These demonstrations require licenses, express permission from the government, to be held in this public space. Thus, they are sanctioned. However, many riots originate as peaceful, licensed protests. I am interested in where the line is between protest and riot. At what point does it transition from acceptable to unacceptable? Is it when a few protesters get louder and angrier than the establishment is comfortable with? Is it with the first act of blatant physical violence? Is it when private or public property begins to be destroyed? I hope that the placement on the Mall, in a space next to the reflecting pool, a popular protest location, will make visitors consider the line between a culturally acceptable protest and an unacceptable riot.

This is not, however, intended to condemn or pass judgment on protests or even riots. They are an imperative expression of public sentiment, be it majority or minority opinion. Additionally, riots seem to be a somewhat natural expression of human emotion and psychology, since they have been recorded in almost every culture since the ancient world. However, they are considered to be an unacceptable sign of social decline and cultural inferiority. Often, riot behavior is associated with poorer, minority communities. This brings me to the second significance of the Mall location. Riots are not exclusively the product of lower class communities. They originate as reactions to middle- to upper- class white concerns, such as the outcome of a sporting event. However, the larger impetus of these events is kept away from pristine, “safe” environments. By placing this anti-monument in the wooded area between Constitution Gardens, which is an idyllic man-made romanticization of the founding fathers, and the Reflection Pool – a recognizable symbol of American Patriotism – the phenomenon of ‘riot’ is brought into a space previously considered “safe” from the implied violence and lawlessness. An additional interpretation can be to contrast the depiction of violence in these small-scale events to the large-scale glorification of wars – in which far more people are wounded and injured – that occurs in the nearby war memorials. There is an irony and hypocrisy in this fractured view of violent events that I hope to highlight.


 * C **omposite **I **mages



**C**oncept **S**ketches  



Augmented Reality Project

 * T **<span style="color: #61062c; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 25px;">rigger **I**mages

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<span style="color: #61062c; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 25px;">**G**if **O**verlays



<span style="color: #61062c; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 25px;">Counter-Monuments
<span style="color: #61062c; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 25px;">**R**esponse

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; text-align: justify;">This article, "Counter-monuments: the anti-monumental and the dialogic by Stevens, Franck, and Fazakerley, discusses how the word "counter-monument" is used to describe various sculptures, structures, or symbols which reference historical or contemporary cultural phenomena, ideas, events, or people. They are best understood by how they relate to traditional monuments, which are generally glorifications of historic events or people. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; text-align: justify;">When reading this article, I began to think about how I have always defined "monument" and "memorial". I did not use the term "counter-monument" or "anti-monument," and so I think I substituted "memorial" for "counter-monument." However, on reflection, I realized that the space "memorial" occupies in my own vernacular does not line up with how it is used, for example, on the National Mall. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; text-align: justify;">In my head, a "memorial" is something which is meant to remember an event but not necessarily glorify it. If the Washington Monument reminds us of the glory of our first president, the Vietnam War Veterans Memorial is intended to remind us of the great cost and loss of the Vietnam war, and all the surrounding events, but not to glorify the war itself. However, this does not stay true for the other "memorials" on the mall. The Lincoln memorial, largely concerned with the civil war and the emancipation of the slaves, does not highlight the pain and continued struggle for civil rights of the newly freed slaves; rather it glorifies the white male figure, Abraham Lincoln, who is credited with emancipating them. If anyone doubts whether this, or, say the Jefferson Memorial, is not actually a monument in the purest form, a comparison with the Greek temple form is elucidating. The Lincoln, especially, is an incredibly literal translation of the greek temple form. The vertical orientation has been shifted to be horizontal, but the huge seated figure of Lincoln dominates the cella just as a huge seated figure of, say, Zeus, king of the gods, would have in ancient greece. This is an intentional parallel made by the neoclassical architects. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; text-align: justify;">Before reading this article, I had never thought about how I interpret the words "monument" and "memorial." Although there are clearly, as this article points out, issues and complexities with the use of the term "counter-monument," it is nonetheless extremely useful to have this term to describe those objects which at least attempt to deviate from the standard monumental glorification.

<span style="color: #61062c; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 25px;">Augmented Reality Concepts
<span style="color: #61062c; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 25px;">**I**dea **1** <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; text-align: justify;">As an art history major, I love learning more about the stories behind paintings and artists. However, sometimes I worry that all this research and back-story and analysis is taking the most basic level of art enjoyment away from me. Once I have studied and written about a painting, that knowledge forever impacts how I think of it. I'm separated from that most visceral appreciation of form and color, apart from art historical context. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; text-align: justify;">That's how I came up with the first idea for this augmented reality project. I have written upwards of 20 art history papers, and each one impacts how I see the objects it's written about. For this AR project, my idea is to superimpose the papers I wrote - either as text or as images of the printed papers - over works they are about (or related works) in the National Gallery of Art to reflect how scholarship can cloud my experience of enjoying a painting. I'm also considering adding an audio component of a voice-over talking about the process of writing each paper - the time I spent in the library, the procrastination - because internal commentary also effects my experience of the works. <span style="color: #61062c; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 25px;">**I**dea **2**

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">I like the idea of having a still image that seamlessly transitions to a video, like a glimpse into the reality behind a still image. However, I'm having a difficult time thinking of what exactly the images and videos would be. I'm considering going the route of everyday routines or normal occurrences, but it might be more interesting to make a somehow surrealist video from a mundane image. <span style="color: #61062c; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 25px;">**I**dea **3**

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">My third idea is to have location-bound videos of popular or famous or otherwise meaningful places in a more general, cultural capacity, and film people talking about their personal connections to the site. Their stories or associations with the place would function to show how places with one specific connotation mean very different things to different people - not necessarily in a large, philosophical way, but on a micro level related to their small memories and associations.

<span style="color: #61062c; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 25px;">AR[t] Magazine
<span style="color: #61062c; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 25px;">**R**esponse <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; text-align: justify;">I am somewhat familiar with the use of augmented reality in art spaces, and I new some of its use within galleries and in the world to create art not visible to the naked eye. The use of AR in an art gallery setting is particularly interesting to me because I like the idea of playing with the gallery space, and what it means to ‘exhibit’ something. It allows an artist to create images or sounds within AR that are not immediately obvious, which changes how a person would see the space. For example, last semester Claudia Lamy created a work for a show in Gallery 102 which looked like a simple, abstract black and white oil painting, but doubled as a QR code of sorts, and through a certain computer program one could see a rendering of a three dimensional image through one’s computer webcam or handheld device camera.

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; text-align: justify;">I also think the use of AR to create art images outside a traditional exhibition space is a good use of the augmented reality technology. While augmented reality within a gallery or museum can challenge how exhibition space is used, augmented reality art located on private property or in a public park challenges how exhibition spaces are defined. It also brings up the issue of how, exactly, to define rights surrounding augmented reality art. Is it acceptable to locate an AR art piece on someone’s private property without the owner’s knowledge or permission? Is it acceptable to locate an AR art piece on public or federal lands, like the National Mall? Where is the line drawn?

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; text-align: justify;">One implication of augmented reality technology that I had not thought of prior to reading though this magazine was the use of AR as a tool to protect or maintain elements of cultural heritage. I have recently become very interested in the cultural heritage issues surrounding ISIS in Syria and other areas of the Middle East in the past year. ISIS has destroyed countless monuments that were not only important historical and archaeological sites, but which continued (until their destruction) to be important community centers for some Christian, Muslim, and Jewish populations in the areas. One example is the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, where the Temple of Bel, a pagan temple-turned-church-turned-mosque was recently decimated. Although AR cannot, obviously, undo this destruction, it may be beneficial to use the technology to project an image of what it would have looked like, before the temple was destroyed, to help future generations understand what was there, and to preserve some small scrap of personal heritage.

<span style="color: #61062c; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 25px;">Cinemagraph
<span style="color: #61062c; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 25px;">**V**ersion **1** <span style="color: #61062c; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 25px; line-height: 0px; overflow: hidden;"> <span style="color: #61062c; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 25px;">**V**ersion **2** <span style="color: #61062c; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 25px; line-height: 0px; overflow: hidden;">

<span style="color: #61062c; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 25px;">**S**urrealist **C**omposition: Source Images
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 * [[image:MW Source Horizon Trees.jpg width="143" height="118"]][[image:MW Source Snow 1.jpg width="146" height="120"]][[image:MW Source Snow 2.jpg width="147" height="122"]][[image:MW Source Squirrel.jpg width="175" height="120"]]

1-3: Personal Photographs 4: http://www.torange.us 5: http://farm8.staticflickr.com 6: http://digitalcollections.nypl.org 7: http://ecx.images-amazon.com 8-13: https://upload.wikimedia.org 14-15: https://pixabay.com ||
 * Source Image Credits:

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<span style="color: #61062c; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 150%;">Surrealist Composition: Progress Image 1
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<span style="color: #61062c; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 150%;">Writing Exercise


<span style="color: #82073a; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 150%;">**D**escription **1**

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; text-align: justify;">This image above shows a young girl standing in a flat, open plane. The grass is greyish-brown and patchy, like the silent and barren land left by a fire or drought, and it recedes into a blurred atmospheric perspective. The horizon line is obscured by far-off hills, which merge with a sepia toned sky. The sky is full of dark, low clouds, as if a storm is rolling in.

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; text-align: justify;">The girl stands in the foreground with an inky bird perched on her shoulder. Her face, hair, and bunches of flowers are the only pops of brightness in the composition, and they are forced up toward the picture plane and almost into the viewer’s space by the receding darkness behind. The girl has fair skin and freckles. Her strawberry blonde hair is in two long braids, and each is tied by a large pale blue bow. The warm tones of her hair stand out against her simple navy dress, which has a peter pan collar and three-quarter-length sleeves. The bird on her shoulder has deep purple-blue feathers, and both she and the bird both stare forward, out of the composition and directly at the viewer. One of the girl’s hands hangs down by her left side; the right hand is obscured by a large bouquet of cream and orange flowers.

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; text-align: justify;">The flowers are each large and vibrant, but they seem to droop in the girl’s grasp, reaching towards the ground where more flowers lay in a pile at her bare feet. There is an ornate Victorian-style beige birdcage sitting on the ground to the right of the figure. Inside, more flowers are piled, these similarly pinkish-orange and cream colored. There is no bird inside; the door of the cage has been removed, and it lies haphazardly on the ground. Presumably, the bird that belongs inside is the crow-like bird on the girl’s shoulder. However, this bird is plainly too large for the cage’s small door.

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; text-align: justify;">The scene is eerie and unsettling. The girl's clothes are too crisp and clean for her desolate surroundings. The flowers seem too luxurious and loud for an environment so dry that not even grass can properly grow. The empty birdcage, the too-large bird, and the ominous sky combine for a disconcerting affect. This girl should not be in such a dark and foreboding landscape alone, making the viewer wonder why she is there. The girl herself gives no clues about the answer; her expression is difficult to read, and may show worry, resolve, or fear.

<span style="color: #82073a; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 150%;">**D**escription **2** <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">The sky has the ominous darkness of an impending storm, but the entire plane is bone-dry. Wind whistles across the grass and around the girl’s ankles, but the air around her head and torso is silent and still. It’s neither warm nor cold, and the sky presses down on the scene with the pressure of a summer thunderstorm. There’s an odd hush over the landscape, not even the bird caws or rustles its slick feathers. The motionless air doesn’t have the freshness of nature. It tastes dusty, like the dirt underfoot, and smells stale and musty like a closet that has been forgotten. The bright flowers are jarring against the colorless landscape, but their vibrancy doesn’t seem to do anything to buoy the young girl’s mood. She makes no indication of moving from her spot on the rough ground; she seems rooted to the spot. Her gaze is fixed hard on the viewer, as if she is imploring him or her to do something, but just what that is – what emotions lay beneath her eyes – is murky.

<span style="color: #61062c; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 150%;">Surrealist Composition, Week 1: Colorized Image
<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">For the colorized image, I found two photos that I liked. I'm not sure which one I will use yet, so I have included both of them.

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">The first image, below, is from the New York Public Library database. Something about this image reminded me of some Magritte works I have seen, like the Lovers series. It's such an innocuous image, but something about the way both figures are looking straight towards the viewer could become a little creepy. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">This second image is also from the New York Public Library database. I like the idea of putting an image of a dancer in an unexpected location. It's not a particularly innovative idea, but it might make an interesting composition nonetheless.

<span style="color: #61062c; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 150%;">Homework 1
<span style="color: #82073a; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 150%;">**R**esponse to //**B**ound **B**y **L**aw**?**//

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; text-align: justify;">Before reading this comic book, I did not know much about public domain laws. I knew that they had become much more stringent over the past few years, but I was not aware how ever-present they could be for artists. This reading made me think back to how copying was treated before the modern age, and it is very interesting how significantly this has changed. Although it is obviously a simplified view of history, it occurred to me that the philosophy “copying is the sincerest form of flattery,” and the many variations on that concept, was practiced more in the period from the ancient world leading up to the 19th century. Now, artists and corporations are much more territorial about their work. Although this makes sense based on the rapid globalization and rise of mass communication (and the Internet) over the past century, it still struck me as an interesting comparison. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; text-align: justify;">When thinking of a “bad” re-appropriation of another’s work, the artist Richard Prince popped into my head. Richard Prince has been in the news – or at least the art world news – a lot in the past year thanks to his notorious 2014 show “New Portraits” at the Gagosian Gallery. I saw many editorials and opinion pieces expressing outrage at this entire show, which featured printed images of Instagram pictures. Prince had found posts by other Instagram users, commented on them, printed them at a large scale, and hung them in the gallery as his own work. Although many contemporary artists feature the re-appropriation of other’s work, I think much of the outrage derives from a combination of what was seen as an egregious show of white male privilege (a rich, middle-aged, white man ripping off young photographer’s work); a total lack of creativity – almost laziness – on the part of Prince; and ignorance of the very online culture he was re-appropriating. While the show was clearly intended to send some message about Instagram and the larger social media culture, the specific message was unclear. That premise backfired, and instead revealed Prince as an out-of-touch artist trying to gain financially from an online culture he did not understand. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; text-align: justify;">To me, the most appalling part of Prince’s show was his use of photographs of young women. These were often sexually provocative in nature. The women use these images to convey an online persona that often leads to their own financial gain or personal fulfillment. While this has been called self-exploitation, and there are feminist debates over how beneficial or detrimental this promotion of sexualized images of ones self is, that is not what is in question here. The issue is that a successful white male is taking sexualized images of women and using them for his own financial gain. He gave them no credit, thus stripping them of their agency as the original creators and distributors of these images. Frankly, I find this act despicable. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; text-align: justify;">I think of Mike Kelley as an artist who practiced “good” appropriation, at least for the works by him that I know. A couple years ago I attended the Mike Kelley retrospective at the MoMA’s PS1. I was enchanted by the Superman-inspired Kandor sculptures. Set back in a series of dark rooms and seemingly illuminated from within, these sculptures are simultaneously eerie and playful, organic and artificial. Although I am not versed in the copyright and trademark laws surrounding Superman and his comic book world, I would assume that DC Comics has filed for some legal protection of its most famous character. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; text-align: justify;">One reason why I have no objection to Kelley’s use of Kandor in his work is that, from an emotional standpoint, I do not feel he had bad intentions in creating these works. Each of these little Kandors seems like a small homage to the comic book city, and a throw-back to a simpler time, before mass-franchising churned out countless crappy toys and movie after movie. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; text-align: justify;">Additionally, Kelley is borrowing from an entity larger than himself. Although he was a successful and very well respected artist in his own time, he never had the fiscal power or name recognition of the comic book corporation. Borrowing or even stealing concepts is much more accepted in a Robin Hood-like scenario of the little guy stealing from the big guy, not the other way around (like in Prince’s scenario). I admit that this attitude is in part a bias of my own liberal, anti-corporation upbringing. Still, I think it is valuable to explore question of why one form of appropriation is acceptable while another is not. Doing so may help us discover what we hope to gain from public domain laws.


 * **<span style="color: #82073a; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 125%;">About Me **

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 90%;">I'm a a senior from Berkeley, CA majoring in Art History and Economics. I have some knowledge of 20th century and contemporary art from an art historical perspective, I'm looking forward to being on the side of art practice rather than art analysis. Over the past few years I have done some fine art, but it has primarily been painting and drawing, so digital art will be a new challenge for me. Some of my previous jobs required a rudimentary use of photoshop, and I learned the basics of adobe illustrator a while ago, but thats the extent of my experience with the Adobe Suite. I have some HTML web design experience, though I have never written code before, so I am pretty familiar with how this site is formatted. As an art history major, I find it hard to choose a single period of art that is my favorite. That said, I love medieval art. Last semester I took a Byzantine art class, and I'm now enrolled in an Islamic Art class. I find the stylization, abstract patterning, and coloration of medieval art across Europe and the Near East to be more interesting and striking than the mimesis of later European work. Along the same vein, I have recently become enthralled and horrified by the [|recent] destruction of many structures from late antiquity in Syria. I find these acts of cultural violence to be a poignant reminder how the power of art and architecture can reverberate through time, even when the art is in ruins. I'm also really interested in the so-called "lower" arts of jewelry and textiles. These media are so under-valued, but can carry just as much meaning as "high" arts like painting and sculpture. ||