What is enchanting about the mundane?

This last weekend while considering ideas for my "Enchanting the Mundane" project, I saw this little guy sitting on my dining room table. What happened next was indeed very exciting. I spent the next two hours bending, twisting, arranging, and otherwise manipulating my collection of water bottles that I dug out of our recycling bin. These are some of the images I managed to capture:

It was as if these water bottles became beings, 

and they had stories to tell.

Earlier this week in my Beat Generation class with Alex Caldiero we had been talking about Dada artists such as Marcel DuChamp and Kurt Schwitters. They were interested in creating art from that which one might not believe to be artistic materials. For example, DuChamp was famous for "readymades"; a piece of which was a signed white urinal which was then displayed and continues to be displayed as a work of art. Schwitters created art entitled Merz Pictures ("merz" coming from the word commerz or commerce that had been stripped of its COMmercialization) that were often made of recycled materials put together in a montage or collage.

To me, their work is the essence of "enchanting the mundane", and it served as a great inspiration for me and my water bottle experience. Here is a short video of an interview with DuChamp. The first part is in Eglish; the second part in French (if you don't speak French, you can stop watching when he starts speaking French). There is a great shot of his famous work: "Fountain" in this video. Also, listen to what he says about finding objects of indifference (starting at 1:15):

I think I got it!

The images above are only a taste of the story told by my water bottles. I shall share the rest of their story in my "Enchanting the Mundane" project: Consumed or it could even be called, Wasted.

~L

The Moon in the Man

The Moon in the Man

This is my newest collage art piece, called The Moon in the Man. Inspired by the two loves of my life...the moon and this man.

2015 images with a punch

I've been creating and curating images and memes this year for my new blog at zanyzen.org. Most are my own images though I've also included a few public domain images that just punched me in the gut. Though I have written a fair amount of copy in my blog, I still believe that nothing says what you are trying to say better than an image. Images just have a way of reaching directly into a person and stirring them from the inside. I am sharing here a good mix of nature and every-day images from some of my travels to New York, Oregon, and Hawaii. Some of them have very little adjustment while others are very manipulated. I also have enjoyed playing off of commonly recognized images to introduce ideas that might not be so common and using words themselves to create images. Please enjoy!

Got Pride?

Gay or Straight, we got pride! This is an interesting debate I have seen on facebook this week, and the imagery is interesting too!

The debate in a question: Is posting a Straight Pride image grounds for flack from the gallery while posting a Gay Pride image is okay? Important to note here that posting Gay Pride images may receive a different type of flack than posting a Straight Pride image. The first may receive negative comments about same-sex relationships while the latter may receive labels of bigotry.

Perhaps this quote helps to understand the negative reaction to Straight Pride images:

pinterest.com

In terms of images themselves, colors and symbols play a big role in sending distinct messages, and certain colors and symbols are adopted by causes/groups/etc. for recognition of meaning and message. Think of commercial branding.

Check out the images below and notice the use of colors, shapes, and symbols in addition to and in consideration with any text. Consider the whole message as well as the underlying messages. What is being said without being said?

To consider: There is of course the use of the word Pride and the symbol of the rainbow, which both bear importance since this word and that symbol have become associated with LGBTQ groups. Interestingly, most of the Straight Pride signs out there tend toward gray or use of black and white with only a small percentage using rainbow colors. Black and white symbolic of right/wrong in addition to attempting to reflect the opposite of a colorful rainbow? In the second to last image, the word "straight" appearing under the curve of a rainbow makes for an interesting antithesis, and in the last image, the symbols are paired with biblical reference, but perhaps not one that makes the most sense here?

sodahead.com

walkingchristian.com

deviantart.com

Thoughts? What messages are you reading in these images? And what of the debate? Are straight pride images an example of co-opting the opposition's powerful and now traditional imagery? Co-opting words/images has been a common technique of opposing groups to undermine the power of associated imagery/signs throughout history. Many claim this is what's up.

what do pictures want?

WJT Mitchell asked, "What do pictures want?" The obvious answer might be "nothing" because it is a picture not conscious being. However, I think his question invokes the idea of Barthes' "death of the author" here in terms of asking what the image is arguing without asking what the producer of the image is arguing. Like Barthes, he is asking us to set aside authorial intention and look at the finished product in deciphering what it "means". To do so, puts less emphasis on what the author or producer of image was trying to do and instead puts the emphasis on how the viewer of the image perceives it. This also allows us to pull from our visual rhetoric tool box in interpreting images. 

As I think more about this idea, it makes me wonder how much rhetorical effect is actually planned in a given image. I suppose it matters to ask who produced it and why they produced it. However, answering these questions will not represent the entire story. Knowing the "audience, purpose, and context"--the rhetorically necessary givens, definitely helps when one is asking what the image wants the viewer to think or feel, but these terms are all related to authorial intention and may or may not touch the actual affect that an image has when viewed by any given person.  

Here are a few affective images I have selected for possible work with "the usual suspects" project:

dispatch.com

flickriver.com

http://www.ourtime.org/vote/

http://hummersandcigarettes.blogspot.com/2011/06/rightwingers-launch-insurgency-against.html

smosh.com

Affective Election Memes

Some of the memes this fine election year...

http://bindersfullofwomen.tumblr.com/

http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/577281_4588128257262_144278014_n.jpg

http://bindersfullofwomen.tumblr.com/

memecrunch.com

http://runt-of-the-web.com/best-ryan-goslings-feminist-memes

fanaticforjesus.blogspot.com

diylol.com

facebook.com/theother98

facebook.com/theother98

eugeneweekly.com

huffigtonpost.com

Here is a link to a site where they are calling for artists to collaborate on a visual campaign supporting Obama in the upcoming election. There are many pieces of political Viz Rhet to check out.
Click here.

Spitting Pictures-Rudy Burckhardt

A take off of the idiom, 'spitting image', spitting pictures are images that "get me" in some affective way. That is, they make me feel something and they draw me into them because I identify with them somehow. The image gets me emotionally and it also gets me in that it seems to understand something about me.

Images have a powerful way of connecting with us through identification. The really cool part of this is that often we aren't quite sure why an image "gets us" the way it does.

This week, I found the work of Rudy Burckhardt (1914-1999), Swiss-American photographer/film maker. His work from the Beat Generation, circa 1940s-1950s, depicts the commercialization and industrialization overtaking the importance of individual lives in America.










Love his work!! Hope you love it too :)
~L

Did I Enchant the Mundane?

Well, my project is complete, and I loved the experience. It was a bit of a roller coaster ride in that I wasn't sure how to do it, at times I hated it, and at times I absolutely fell in love with it. I am happy to have done it, and I have learned that sometimes you have to have faith in creativity and in the parts of your brain that you don't consciously recognize in order to make something like this come together.

Take a look and please let me know what you think. Would love to know how it made you feel, what you thought of it, perhaps what it made you think about or what images you might have attached to it, etc.