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Cadillac Ranch It Up

Jasmine

Wednesday, Feb 28, 2018 - 11:42:15 pm

Cadillac Ranch (1974) is an installation commissioned by Amarillo billionaire Stanley March 3, and created by the Ant Farm. The Ant Farm is a group of artists and architects from San Francisco which produced experimental artworks. Ant Farm uses different art forms such as architecture, performance, sculpture, installation and graphic design while documenting all these on camera in order to Read more →

Categories: Research

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Randall Packer

Mar 01, 2018 - 10:30:17 am

Good job! Yes, you are right, Cadillac Ranch was originally conceived as a "roadside attraction," installed along the famous Route 66 in Texas, which is an iconic highway that is perhaps the most American of all highways for its many tourist attractions. There was even a television show called Route 66! And yes, Ant Farm had a love of the automobile, they all grew up in the 1950s and 60s when car culture was at its height in America and probably around the world. I am curious why think they buried the cars upside down? What does that say about planned obsolescence, one of the critical aspects of the work. The interview with Chip Lord wasn't mentioned, which would give you additional insight into this class work. However, this is ver good research!

ANT FARM: CADILLAC RANCH

Tan Xiang Rei

Wednesday, Feb 28, 2018 - 10:09:26 pm

@ REI

Ant Farm staged Cadillac Ranch Show in 1974 along U.S. Route 66 Texas. Ten different models of Cadillac cars were half-buried in a row, nose-first in the ground, at a sixty-degree angle corresponding to that of the Great Pyramid of Giza, in Egypt. Each car features one step in the evolution of the tail fin from 1949 to 1963 Read more →

Categories: Research

Tags: Ant Farm | Cadillac Ranch | reading

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Randall Packer

Mar 01, 2018 - 10:34:38 am

Good work and glad you made reference to the interview with Chip Lord. Yes, you are right, Cadillac Ranch grew out of the obsession with cars that was prevalent in the 50s and 60s in America, and of great importance to the Ant Farm artists. And you are absolutely correct that the placement of Cadillac Ranch was very specific to Route 66, to become what they referred to as a "roadside attraction." One thing that would have strengthened your conclusion was making mention of the participatory nature of Cadillac Ranch, which essentially turned the work into public art that inspired social interaction: which ties in very nicely with our study in Experimental Interaction.

Parodical or Commentary?

Bella Dai

Wednesday, Feb 28, 2018 - 09:09:59 pm

@ belladaiyunlang

Ant Farm (1968-1078) was founded as an architecture, graphic arts, and environmental design company by Chip Lord and Doug Michels (1943-2003) in 1968. The group of adventurous artists and architects based in San Francisco identified themselves as part of the underground culture in the late sixties and seventies. That how the company name was made.

We wanted to be an Read more →

Categories: Research

Tags: MEDIA BURN | PARODY | THIRD SPACE

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Randall Packer

Mar 01, 2018 - 10:43:28 am

Bella, I love your conclusion! What a great comparison to today's technology of the mobile phone. We should ask the class this evening how many would like to put their foot through their phone. Maybe this could be an artistic project you can stage as a challenge to our dependence on mobile communications! Seriously, this is an excellent research critique, well researched, and you captured the issues quite well. You even made mention of the fact that they used TV to destroy TV, an excellent observation, but it might have helped if you had described how they did that. And what was the significance of the speech, the 4th of July staging, the patriotic gestures, etc. So they not only put their symbolic "foot" through the television set, they also challenged the spectacle of the mass media.

The Day that Cardillacs Stands up

Elizabeth Quek

Wednesday, Feb 28, 2018 - 06:51:38 pm

@ A blog for Liz

Artwork Review

(Source taken from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Ranch#/media/File:Cadillac_Ranch.jpg)

Title: Cadillac Ranch

Artist: Chip Lord

Year created: 1974/1994

Medium: Installation

Overview

Cadillac Ranch is an installation of 10 Cadillac’s buried nose deep in a line, in the dirt along route 66 west of Amarillo.

Its almost as if they were droven off a cliff and plunged head first into the ground. Now useless, the owners wander off looking for help and Read more →

Categories: Research

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Randall Packer

Mar 01, 2018 - 10:50:07 am

I like your description of how it appears that the cars in Cadillac Ranch were driven off of a cliff into the ground. And I also think it's an interesting observation you made as to the fact that the cars have been in the ground longer than they were on the road. You might have made mention that this gesture was intended to remind us of planned obsolescence, the very nature of the evolution of the tailfins. As we know, technology becomes outdated at such a fast rate, perhaps even faster today with our digital tools and mobile devices. I would also like to encourage you to consider in your conclusion, that what is truly important about Cadillac Ranch as a public artwork is how it became interactive and participatory with the viewer. People were encouraged to paint it, add graffiti, etc., So that ties in very closely with our study of interaction. Also, references from the interview with Chip Lord would have given you an added insight into this amazing work. Nevertheless, you captured it very well.

Burn Media BURN

ROS FARZANA

Wednesday, Feb 28, 2018 - 03:43:44 pm

@ Farz

Ant Farm started in San Francisco in 1968 Chip Lord and Doug Michels. In the interview with Lord Chip, they sported ‘hippy’ culture along with their media van. An art work ‘A hundred TV sets’ is something similar to Media Burn(1975), where the TV sets were built in an Read more →

Categories: Research

Tags: media | performance | political

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Elizabeth Quek

Feb 28, 2018 - 06:57:09 pm

I like the way you described the art work and its purpose. Its very detailed yet very easy to understand.

Randall Packer

Mar 01, 2018 - 10:57:23 am

Very good reference to the media spectacle of Media Burn: the use of the political speech, the national anthem with the crash-dummies holding their hands over their hearts, all staged to create a mock-real representation of the very media spectacle they were critiquing. And yes, you are right, the critique included the idea of media as propaganda, intended to create an EVENT, in its elaborate staging. I'm not sure I would refer to the car as a "political car," in fact the car that drove the artist-president into the parking lot was more of a "political car." I think rather they were attempting to create something more like a spaceship, with the countdown, as though the crash-dummies were astronauts. Otherwise, very good piece.

DIWO: RESEARCH

Tan Xiang Rei

Wednesday, Feb 28, 2018 - 10:47:47 am

@ REI

DIWO (do-it-with-others) refers to the practice of having a joint project, where like minded people collaborate together. In the case of Furtherfield, they aim to connects people to new ideas, critical thinking and imaginative possibilities for art, technology and the world around us. Through DIWO, we have striped art making from the contrails of time, space and even drastically Read more →

Categories: Research

Tags: DIWO | furtherfeild | third space | Yoko Ono

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Randall Packer

Feb 28, 2018 - 07:38:37 pm

Very good connections between the performance work of Marina Abramović's Rythem 0 and Yoko Ono's Cut Piece. You are absolutely right that both of these pieces blur the boundaries between the artist and viewer, transforming the viewer into an active participant. This is essentially the idea of DIWO, to include the viewer as a collaborator, and to introduce interaction between viewers who become in many instances makers of the work. Whereas Grand Theft Avatar is indeed a collaborative work, I think you could have better emphasized this idea, rather than concentrating on the virtual space where the work takes place. In fact, the players in Second Front are a great example of DIWO and it would have improved your essay had you pointed this out. I'm not sure what you mean by mail art stripping the work and the artist of their physical space. This needs more explanation. Also, I would try and develop a stronger conclusion, remembering, that the focus of the essay is on collaboration and participation through the process of DIWO. Yes, it's true that this has the potential of bringing the artist out of solitary studio work, but it is important to be explicit in your final statement about collaboration, and how it directly engages and connects the issues. I agree, but how exactly does it do this? How is DIWO more connected to the issues than the lone artist at work? This is a very interesting question you raise!

Is this burning an ETERNAL FRAME?

Tan Yue Ling

Wednesday, Feb 28, 2018 - 10:31:18 am

@ MoonlingGraphics

|| The Eternal Frame (1975) is a videotaped reenactment of the assassinated of John F. Kennedy’s assassination by Antfarm which seeks to draw attention to the power of the mediated image.

Antfarm is a collective of radical artists founded in San Francisco in 1968 by Chip Lord and Doug Michels (1943-2003) that sought to rebel against the conformative style of art Read more →

Categories: Research

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Randall Packer

Mar 01, 2018 - 11:06:27 am

A very philosophical research critique! I feel this statement is very thought provoking:

Eternal Frame sought to explore the power of the media to immortalise such a historical moment and ingrain it into the minds of people by converting a real-life event into a processed memory via the media.

I think even Ant Farm has difficulty explaining the meaning of the work. But this statement speaks to the idea of how the event lives on through the mediated image, just like 9/11. These kind of iconic images are burned into our consciousness, thus memorialized, never to be forgotten. The Zapruder Film, which the Enternal Frame was based on, did exactly that, such that the artwork made critique of that phenomenon through its re-enactment. I thought your essay captured that idea very nicely. My only critique of your essay is that it may have strengthened it by adding more detail about the event itself, how it was staged, the fact that it was done in Dealey Plaza, the site of the assassination, and interestingly the reaction of the bystanders in Dallas, many of whom were there when it really happened. How haunting is that!

Burning Out

Nadiah Raman

Tuesday, Feb 27, 2018 - 12:22:33 am

@ ♡♡♡♡♡

Media Burn was an art performance piece organised by a group of artists and architects called Ant Farm. In the piece, a customized 1959 Cadillac renamed the Phantom Dream Car was driven into a bank of television monitors as seen in the image above, causing an explosive collision thus the term, Media Burn. It was driven by two men (artist Read more →

Categories: Research

Tags: american culture | ant farm | media burn

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Randall Packer

Feb 28, 2018 - 09:17:39 am

Nadiah, very good research critique. You are right, they staged Media Burn as a news spectacle in order to make it seem "real." The question, you might consider, is how do the elements of the political speech, the news crews, and the patriotic elements all combine to make the event seem real? And yes, you are right, they used the media to attach the media, to make a comment about the power of the mediated image as expressed through the mainstream media. Good job collecting all the research and putting it together in a compelling form.

Art as a Social Commentary

Daphne Ngatimin

Monday, Feb 26, 2018 - 06:49:09 pm

@ Daphne Ngatimin

Ant Farm Artists: Chip Lord, Doug Michels, Curtis Schrier, Uncle Buddie

Based as an architecture and design group by Doug Michels and Chip Lord, in 1968, it looks into the conceptual activity of the late 60s/70s. It breaks through the walls of traditional architecture into the new media. Ant Farm involves themselves in the youth’s culture embrace of communal Read more →

Categories: Research

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Randall Packer

Feb 28, 2018 - 09:22:45 am

Very good commentary on the way that Media Burn was staged to create its own media event as a critique of the media. Glad that you were able to draw from the interview with Chip Lord, who did in fact describe the elaborate means they created to produce the Ant Farm depiction of the media spectacle. I am curious about your closing statement. Yes, this was collaborative (doing with others), but I would be helpful to understand better how the collaborative process manifested in the creation of Media Burn. It might have been a little stronger to have ended with how Ant Farm produced their work as social and cultural commentary, which is exactly the point.

[EI] Ant Farm - Media Burn (1975)

Francesca

Monday, Feb 26, 2018 - 09:49:57 am

@ Francesca

About Ant Farm:

Ant Farm is a collective of radical architects who were also video, performance, and installation artists but, above all, visionaries and cultural commentators. They are called ‘Ant Farm’ because it was the perfect metaphor to describe them – they were an active underground architecture group and collectivity was a way of life for them.

Media Burn (1975):

Media Burn (1975) Read more →

Categories: Research

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Randall Packer

Feb 28, 2018 - 09:29:14 am

Very good piece. Your discussion of how Ant Farm staged Media Burn, as further elaborated by Chip Lord in our interview, was intended to create a certain authenticity in the spectacle of the event: including the flags, speech, 4th of July, and all the ritualistic trappings of a media event. Good point about how they involved the audience in their video to comment on the work, lending a certain participatory element. I am also glad to see that you included a mention of the Inflatocookbook, which was intended as a DIY guide. I might have been useful to describe more specifically how the cookbook might have achieved collaborative DIWO results, but I am very pleased you included it in your critique, as this as this support the interdisciplinary nature of Ant Farm's work as a media collective.

Jocelyn

Feb 28, 2018 - 05:02:17 pm

ACCESSED NOT ASSESSED!!!! Just joking. but really, not assessed. I like how you brought up the cookbook, and i would love to have a look at it thoroughly. Also, I like how you brought up the fact that the audience were part of the documentation of the Media Burn! Very DIWO.