Close-[^S]-t Confessions
Tag: artist
Colour!
Here I wanted to take the idea of the geometric shapes and patterns and digitise the transgender flag in a similar way. I wanted to use colour unlike my previous work and make it very simple yet bold.
I like the first and the circular one the best. The reason I like the first is because I created it whilst thinking of pixels. Like blocks on a screen. The colours were displaced and slightly distort the flag, as if to hint that even the transgender flag works within a binary. By this I am reffering to the people who have spoken about being transgender and purposely feeding into binary stereotypes to ‘present’ their true gender identity (eg transfemale wearing lipstick.) I thought this was interesting and was something I came across also in Drag research in which sometimes stereotypes regarding gender were re-inforced.
I wanted to create some images that still presented the gender binaries, however play with them a bit and present them as less restricting and with more room to experiment. I did this by using a digital platform and taking blocks of colour and copying them into the other coloured areas of the flag.
I think it creates a visually digital appearence, potentially like a logo and is very striking and bold whilst still presenting the gender side that I hoped. 
This next one I liked for similar reasons. I am continueing to play with the idea of fluidity and rhizomes. Rhizomes are ofter described as being a bit like wavesin the ocean or like ripples in water. Instead of doing water droplets like I have done previously I wanted to just create a large ripple through the flag, as if to say that these binaries are just the surface. I really like how bold and simple it turned out, and how every different it looks in comparison to the more computer, digital themed ones. 
Chat Bot: Clever Bot #2
You can find the link to the full conversation here. In this conversation I spoke more about ‘coming out of the closet. http://www.cleverbot.com/conv/201804121742/WXHU868BGK_Hello
I have inserted a printscreen of one of the things that was said during the conversation. This remindeed me of the lGBT+ online communities on social media sites such as instagram in which the contemporary queer community has used as a platform and safe space to further its culture. A huge part of the evolution of the LGBT+ community is memes. These memes depict self deprication, self love and lgbt+ based humour that people probably will not find in hetero-cis normative spaces.
The exerpt from the conversatin I have created I have emailed to various lGBT+ instagram pages in order to see if it will go ‘viral’ or be seen in one of these communities.
This has lead me onto memes and queer culture. Memes are a digital form of language that is very visual based. It involves many aspects of traditional humour but with them emphasised even more due to the lack of in-person presense. For example, A meme uses an image, video clip or phrase that is copies thousands to millions of times and used within a specific context. Each meme has it’s own theme that usually involves either self deprication or self love. memes also extend to gifs and the use of text and video clips that are taken from their original context and used in a new setting.
This creates a visual language that is something I can experiment with involving gender and with the online queer community to explore these relationships further.
Term 2
This term I wanted to really focus on more the visual prescence of my art. I want to incorporate various cultures and their representation of gender throughout the world and history. I aim to do this with physical, traditional approaches to art such as collage, paintings and drawings as well as digital art.
I will involve news reports and statistics such as mortality rates and hate crimes as well as positive news and media exposure of the genderqueer LGBT+ community as I work throughout this project, and possibley involve famous historical figures. I would like all of these things to inform my work as well as help others understand more about queer and gender culture. I am currently working on an essay on gender in my philosophy module and this is somethign I would like to additionally impliment in order to play with text and binary and code.
I would also like to continue the videos with chatbots of making them self aware as well as interview more people regarding gender identity. Finally I hope to create a digital space such as further my youtube channel, create a website or create an app and instagram that allows people to interact and engage with my art work and be exposed to and educated on the gender and computer themes that I present.
I will do this to the best of the ability whilst trying to keep costs minimal. I hope that my creations are not only something I can be happy with currently for this year but also continue and maybe come back to in the future as it is a subject I believe is very important and interests me greatly.
Here I have responded to E.M Icaza’s work. I have taken one of my sketched and scanned it into my laptop before using the artist programme GIMP to sketch over the lines and create a quick digital drawing surrounding the theme of gender. I have used a similar colour story to Icaza’s work as I felt the colours both contrasted and complimented each other in both colour story and informed issues ( eg baby pink being assossiated with girls and sky blue with boys.) I did the hair of the painting I had done in pink in a traditional yet fun 50’s styling and left the body shirtless. The body is posed in a feminine way with the chest partly exposed however it can still be ambiguous as to the gender of the model. It is actually a male body however I did not want to empasise this. Then the background is the sky blue colour. I have smudged out the face not only because I felt the movement added to the picture however also because it really left it ambiguous and striking as to the gender of the model, and whether that really mattered.
Digital Art Response
Eduardo Mata Icaza
Image processed by CodeCarvings Piczard ### FREE Community Edition ### on 2013-06-27 23:07:45Z | http://piczard.com | http://codecarvings.com
Icaza is a french based artist who has explored ceramics, printmaking and painting. His main medium is painting. He has had an honorable shout out from the art world for his dissertation ‘The essense of nothingness’ and has had various shows around the world. His style of painting maintains a diffinitive, striking masculine energy with delicate colours usually that have drawn information and inspiration from both his French and Costa Rican upbringings.
Icaza explains that he enjoys playing with contrast, light and shadows. Not just in striking light forms however also in colour stories- from black and white to masculine and feminine colours. He also experiements with finished and unfinished pieces that seem to be left purposefully unfinished. This is due to his exploration of the themes ‘being or not being’/ life and death/ all or nothing.
These themes drew me towards his work. I think the colour stories he uses are something I can incorporate into my own art work- with the human form yet the baby gendered colours playing games within the paintings surrounding these forms. I additionally feel the unfinished aspect can leave ambiguity in the gender of the person within the piece compared to both the gender and the sex of the model.
Studio Thoughts
Some studio thoughts since writing about Baudelaire and things are the ideas surrounding issueist and informed art pieces. Some art pieces being with a political or informed motivation in the hopes that they translate an idea or thought that might be best repreented alternatively. Additionally it means that art can act as a second, universal language that does not require one given, spoken language in order to undrstand its meaning. The idea of art as a language, specifically a political language, is something that interests me, however as I have previously mentioned I do not want my art to become overshadowed by what it is informed by. I want both the production and process of making to be reflected in the work itself in addition to what it is informed by.
Sometimes as an artist you create something close and meaningful to you and it ends up become something bigger and more universal. You may make a painting that is simpley about your daily routine and it speaks to various audiences in a heart felt or even political or controversial manner. This then can translate into bigger issues that others connect with and see reflected within that piece, regaurdless of whether or not it is intentional. My main aim after thinking through studio is to just create. I want to be able to create and have a single theme and try to explore that theme within a diverse manner. Be it ‘loss’ or ‘LGBT_ issues’ I do not want to feel trapped with one set idea. Instead I want to explore the themes and the process of creating and making and see where that takes me and my creations.
Mona Hatoum
Blue Nude
To practise describing pieces of art as I see them beyond context and infromation.
Description: 16X20. Limited pallette with a stylised technique creating somber textures. There’s a hollowness to the piece and the use of brief yellow does not guide your eyes away from the ashy deep to mid blues. There is a sketched by paint-brush outline of a woman’s back, facing away with no other filling to her being.
Blue Nude – Picasso
Baudelaire
Baudelaire was a French poet, translator, essayist and art critic. His comments on art emphasises its importance to capture the fleeting experiences and moments, specifically in evolving urban areas and eventually coined the term ‘modernity’.
“By ‘modernity’ I mean the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art whose other half is the eternal and immutable…This transitory, fugitive element, whose metamorphoses are so rapid, must on no account be despised or dispensed with. By neglecting it, you cannot fail to tumble into the abyss of an abstract and indeterminate beauty, like that of the time the first woman before the fall of man.” – Baudelaire, ‘The Painter Of Modern Life’
I find this a very beautiful concept, encouraging artists to respond directly to the world and eviroments around them in very much the present moment with little other thought and information. Both him and Schiller refer to a ‘childhood artist’/ a ‘niave artist’ and also comments on ( to paraphrase) a genius being one who has a ‘childhood recovered.’I believe that in many ways this is something I have developed most with as an artist, learning that drawing inspiration and artistic strength from my creativity as a child is not immature but rather a great tool for both life and for creating pieces and events I am truly pleased with. As a child I would us shells on the beach and pieces of wood to create huge scale pictures and scultpures across the sand and wait to watch them get washed away. I would use string to draw in multple ways and make sculptures out of scrunched up paper. I would draw around the clock just because I wanted too, not because I felt I had to have everything perfect and in a specific way. I would make funny fake computers and books out of tin foil and old cereal boxes and was just constantly, constanly, using everything I could to indulge my free creative mind. The time I have been most frustrated with my art is the times when I have felt I must comply to a specific style and media forever just because and instituion told me so. When they started showing me ‘real art’ ass black and white drawing and nothing else. Use a ruler. Rub out all your mistakes. Don’t draw like that, draw like this! Somewhere along the way that sense of wonder and creativity wass lost from childhood yet slowy I have learnt to undo these things and embrace that which was antural in childhood and my work has only grown since, and so when Baudelaire talks about a true artist embracing childhood I can understand the importance of why he thought this.
Additionally this idea encourages us to just look and focus on what we see. Forgeet about the contexts for a moment in what/where and how we want to inform our work with such as political and social issues and instead take time to think about the literal. What do we see. What do we smell. What is the scale of it. What are the colours within it. What does it look like. Describe the literal and when creating take time to think of only the literal.
http://arthistoryunstuffed.com/baudelaire-the-painter-of-modern-life/
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/13847.Charles_Baudelaire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernity
Bea Kilduff 