ANT FARM: CADILLAC RANCH

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 in a statement about innovation in a technological era, the American dream, and the absurdity of consumerism. 

Ant Farm — a collective of radical architects who were also video, performance, and installation artists but, above all, visionaries and cultural commentators — offers an intriguing look into the conceptual activity of the late sixties and seventies – Constance M. Lewallen

Ant farm was an avant-garde architecture, graphic arts, and environmental design practice, founded in San Francisco in 1968 by Chip Lord and Doug Michels. Having foundation in architecture, they aim to combine music, modern dance and architecture thus allowing them to create radical works work.

In the case of Cadillac Ranch, Ant Farm comments on the consumerism habits of Americans after the war. As stated in the interview, there was a automobile craze in the 50s as manufactures switch from producing war related consumer goods to consumer products. there was a craze of modifying and altering the cars. In fact USA was the largest exporter of automobiles. The planting of 10 Cadillac, a luxury car, itself is a bold statement of the mass consumption of goods. In addition, the site of this artwork further solidifies this notion. Stage on a plot of land owned by billionaire, Stanley Marsh, this shows how little the value of the cars meant to Marsh. Through such as ostentatious presentation, Cadillac farm was able to call attention of the passerby easily. Many stop and partake in the work by adding graffiti to it. In which Ant Farm regular adds a new coat of paint to cover up the graffiti.

DIWO: RESEARCH

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 changed the role of the artist and the viewers.

TIME AND SPACE:
In the case of the time and space, the internet has allowed artworks to transcend into the third space. A imaginary space which bridges two different parties in different physical or first spaces. A very good example that we have studied is Grand Thief Avatar by second front. through the virtual reality game they manage to collaborate and create a performance piece, despite all five artist being based in different parts of the word.

Second Front, Grand Thief Avarta

Similarly in Furtherfeild, the work DIWO Email Art, strips the work and the artist of their physical space. instead of staging and creating the work through the third space, the email art, makes use of the quality of the world wide web to eliminate the physical space. After completing their work, the artist would send an email to the a inbox with all the other email art compiled. together they form a real time art creating process. through these examples we can see how art making has transcended time and space through the third space.

Furtherfeild: Email Art

ROLE OF THE ARTIST
The role of the artist has been greatly challenged by the notion of DIWO. The traditional context is the artist as a creator and the viewer on the receiving end. however through DIWO the boundary of such notions have been greatly blurred. Artist are now able to engage the audiences in the process of art making. Now the artist do not play a major role in determining the outcome of their works but the audience do. For example, both Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece and Marina Abramović rhythm 0, greatly relies on the audience interactions to determine the outcome of the work. Without the participation of the audiences, their works would have been unable to come through.

Yoko ono’s Cut Piece
Marina Abramović, Rythem 0

At the end of the talk, Mark Garret also pointed out that the role of the artist is ever-changing, and urges the students to explore and combine different aspect and medium of the art. Later Packer also urges the students to refrain from secluded in their studio creating solo bodies of  art. But instead explore and question these concept in a freshly through collaboration, directly engaging and connecting with the  issue.

IMAGE THROUGH TYPE: R

IDEATION AND SKETCHES 

R was the first design that I started out with. At the very beginning I was very inspired by this studio ghilbi fan art, celebrating the 30 anniversary by Milena Młynarska.

greatly inspired by this I set of to create my Disney version.

preliminary sketches
refined sketch

The vertical part of R is made up of the willow tree in Pocahontas, and Rapunzel tower with her hair. the curved part of r is made of Peter Pan’s ship and Tinkerbell. the last part is made up of pride rock with Rafiki holding up Simba. As much as I loved this design, I decided not to use it for two reasons. 1. this style of rendering is very flat unlike my other isometric vectors. I generally like having my work as a body instead of having individual pieces. 2. This isn’t really practical, there is too much details to be completed in the then 4 week project. Hence I decided to create a isometric version of Disneyland.

 

For this design I wanted to play with gestalt, I wanted to hide part of the form R but still allowing the viewer to recognize the form. for this form I incorporated it into the roads and river of the theme park.  I wanted to incorporate elements of the Disney train and their river safari into the piece (both of the rides are one of my favorite when my little brother starts getting tired).

This design wasn’t really well thought out. I kinda failed to plan so I planed to fail. I decided to scrap it and re-do.

I realized the reason why I had so much trouble conceptualizing for Disney was because of the influx of reference I had. I wanted to incorporate so many things into the design that I had no idea what to focus on. So instead of working for Waltz Disney, I decided to work for myself. I’m going to make y own Disneyland.

I decided to use the motif of a storybook as thats the first medium of waltz Disney works I was first exposed to. Also I staggered the lands by creating three tiers the top tier is the castle, second tier is the forrest and the last one is the village. I was inspired by the set up of many princess stories.

And then I hit another crisis, color combination for the background. So I played with cloud picker and tried to find the best color.

In the end to maintain the color scheme I decided to go with secondary colors of either orange or purple.

purple version
orange version

In the end I preferred the orange version and changed the books to blue for a greater contrast and emphasis. I added the rainbow as a homage to waltz Disney castle

FINAL ILLUSTRATIONS

Image Making Through Type: X

IDEATION: Sketches

As a child, i didn’t grow up having much barbie and dolls. I guess, my parents really wanted me to be a guy, that why they gave me really boyish toys. So instead of having the fantasy of being a princess, I was out about, playing in the garden, watching power rangers and transformers. The one toy that my father loved buying for me and my sister is lego, and I hated it. I just simply couldn’t follow the instructions. But as a child I distinctively remembered that my father got us a huge lego set, which allowed us to build and design houses. needless to say, I was the assistant handing my sister the right pieces as she build them together.

inspiration for 1st design

So my first idea was too create a house in the letter form X. However that didn’t go too well as seen by the sketch below, my foundation of perspective is way too week to pull the design and technical drawing for it to look semi realistic.

yeah I kinda gave up on it

So then I went to the web and typed: toy maker and images of workshop popped out. Then I begin thinking: who has a workshop? Santa.

reference piece for Santa workshop
reference piece for Santa workshop

But what if I create a machine that make toys instead? So I set out sketching and referencing robots to create my machine.

preliminary sketch
refined version on isometric paper

I liked how the conveyor belt formed the bottom half of the X and the arms of the machine formed the upper part of the X. However I was really afraid that the arms were too organic and wouldn’t show the X structure so I created another version.

secondary idea

this time I used conveyor belts to feed part of the soft toys to the machine at the top while it churns out the finished product and package it at the bottom. While this design showed the form more clearly, I preferred the design above as it was cuter and more interesting. I thought that I could, make the arms more rigid, to show and emphasize the geometric and rigid structure of the x in the first design.

Illustartions

more rigid arms
more organic arms

So my worries are through and they back fire. The rigid arms did nothing much to help suggest the letter form X and looked awards instead. so I decided to revert back to the more organic arms instead. Then Joy suggested to me that I could have ribbon feeding into the machine from the back to complete the X form, while making it seems like its part of the wrapping mechanism.

Well that didn’t work out too well. I had no idea how to illustrated cloth in vectors without using more than three colors while preventing it from looking like a clip art. So I tried to use the distort tool along with the gradient tool in Illustrator to create the look above. However the sudden use of gradient caused a conflict in styles which look oddly placed. so I decided to remove it and incorporate elements of the second design above to salvage the illustration.

I decided to use the conveyor belt idea in the second design to form the upper part of the X. to be honest, I felt that the letter form could be better expressed if I pulled the conveyor belt on the top to meet in the centre. However that would cover up the arms of the machine creating the soft toy, hence I decided against it.

In the beginning I wanted to have a little girl interacting with the machine to add a bit of character and cheekiness.

first sketch

I begin sketching this with my Wacom in photoshop.

illustration

But then I relied that her posture and her anatomy was super flawed so I redid her. In addition, I felt that she was way to stiff and decided to make her lie down in the end.

second sketch
final sketch

I have no idea why, but when I did the sketch digitally the proportions and anatomy are very flawed. So I lowered the opacity and hand drew them instead.

However I felt that there was a contrast in style. my vector illustrations were all isometric, thus giving it depth. However, my human illustrations were flat and somewhat 2d-ish from the lack of shades. So I decided to remove her in the end.

FINAL PIECE

final illustration

Image Making Through Type: concept

CONCEPT

So when I first got this project I immediately though of the jobs that I could pick from. But I realized that the period of time when we got questioned on our dreams and aspirations the most was during our childhood. We had many big dreams and aspirations when we were younger, however some aspects may have been twisted or fantasied. For example, I’ve always wanted to be a chemist when I was 7. I thought all they did was to pour chemical from one flask to another, create an explosion, or make poison. So that spurred my concept for this project. I based it off my childhood aspirations with a bit of spice and magic.

JOBS THAT I’VE CHOSEN

  • Chemist
  • Disneyland  Imaginner
  • Secret Agent
  • Toy maker

These jobs that I have chosen are some of the many childhood aspirations I had while growing up. Some of them are even jobs that I wish I could do as an adult.

LETTER FORM CHOSEN

Right of the bat, I wanted to only chose one alphabet for each occupation, for two reasons. Firstly, I wanted to keep things simple, and focus on incorporating the letter form into the work. secondly, it reminded me of the alphabet placards that we taught children alphabet and spelling with. Which tied in nicely with my concept.

Also I decided that I wanted to spell my name abbreviated in the four designs, X, R, E, I.

I decided to use “X” for the Toymaker, as it was more structured and I thought of stacking legos to create the shape. I assigned Disneyland to “R” as it was more organic, and I thought that the magical elements would work well with the fluidity of the form. Thirdly, I assigned chemist to “E” as I thought that the form allowed stacking and thus creating chain reactions. Lastly I gave “I” the occupation of Secret Agent as I thought that the form resembled a secret operation base building.

Telematic Embrace

So for this mini project, professor Packer had us to think about negotiation, on collaboration, where the class sync up their actions and create a composite image. I had to sit out on this project, as adobe connect was not working on my laptop.

Creating the composite image was hard as seen by the constant exclamation in the rooms. Co-ordination for the different letter from required flexibility and communication.

The one composite image that I really love was when the class started pulling object out with the same color. Everyone in the class has such drastically different personality, but to see everyone pull a object out with the same color was very interesting. The object varied so greatly depending on the personality of the person. For example when the class had to pull out a pink object some of the girls pulled out pencil cases, wallets, make up, phones but En Cui, didn’t had a object. from that one image you could almost see our personalities in that picture.

However the part that I found the most intriguing was that, we were all in the first space, but we chose to ignore it and enter the third space. And even in the third space the arrangement of each person is jumbled up, thus distorting the distance between partner in the first space. for example Francesca maybe sitting next to Jocelyn, but in the third space, Jocelyn and Francesca are on the opposite ends.

 

research critic on Jenny Holzer’s Please Change Believes

Jenny Holzer’s please change believes, is a work base on the world wide web, where she invites the audiences to contribute and change the given truism. Her body of work focuses on the delivery of words and ideas in public spaces. These short truisms are very direct and are very obvious for us.  However, by inviting the viewers to change the truism, it forces the viewers to pause and think about the statements and their experiences.

This decentralization of authorship, location, and narrative foreshadows the nonhierarchical and nonsequential forms of interactive and networked media that expand and realign the boundaries of time, space, viewer, and artist to create new kinds of collective experience and social engagement. – Randall Packer

Open source has truly allowed artworks to transcend time and space. Through the use of the world wide web, images or information of art works can be accessed anytime and anywhere. People no longer need to travel to museum or gallery to view the art works. Similarly, in Holzer’s work, the internet allows viewers interact and contribute to the artwork regardless of the location or the time difference.

I especially love the use of truisms. Truism are so relatable to everyone, regardless of their culture or education level as it is a common experience. However, by allowing the viewers to edit and change the base statement, it widens the perspective and scope of the artwork. Some experiences are unique to each culture or through personal experiences . The sharing of this tidbits of information widens the scope and depth of the artwork.