Vindicta et Honore

http://www.thaynebohman.com/vindicta

Re: Jeff Soto

Jeff Soto's artwork incorporates many common themes and symbols found in graffiti and pop culture, such as skulls, weapons, and butterflies, along with just the idea of oft-repeated symbols between different pieces, similar to a gang's graffiti over an area. Some of the pieces are also painted on the sides of buildings, like most graffiti is. Some pieces include text slogans, with the art taking secondary importance to the message conveyed by the text, similar to advertisements. While they want you to see and enjoy the art, the art really only serves the purpose of underlining the meaning of the words.

Re: Mariko Mori

Her works seem to show a mixture of past and supposed future cultures, with references to ancient Buddhist traditions and ceremonies along with modern (at the time) interpretations of future styles. All of these aspects are taken to extremes, though. The outfits in Birth of a Star and Head in the Clouds are both reminiscent of futuristic clothing depicted in shows and anime from that time period, but even more outlandish than most of those. Burning Desire is a literal take on the words, and mixes ancient Buddhism with modern references to the then-popular and still widely-used term "moe" which is Japanese for "to burn" (specifically as in desire). Miko no Inori, (literally, "The Priestess' Prayer"), also has a mix of past and future, with the miko's clothing not at all matching with traditional styles, but still playing with the ideas of a miko's spiritual role.

Re: Martina Lopez

Martina Lopez' works are all taken from her own physical memories - family photographs. Using the people in the photographs, she creates new stories by combining them with unrelated images in order to evoke a different sort of emotional response. She said that she uses her own history as a base for the images, but anyone is free to interpret them how they want.

Visually speaking, I find the work kind of odd. The mixture of black and white with few-toned color backgrounds creates an interesting juxtaposition, but it makes the people look like they are just pasted on over other pictures, or that someone colored in the backgrounds and left the people alone. It kind of gives the impression that the people are forever frozen in time whereas the environment and world around them continues to change.

Re: Dystopia

This series is showing skilled use of the clone, stamp, and other similar tools of Photoshop, or perhaps another image manipulation program, in order to mask the main facial features of each of the subjects: namely the eyes and mouth, but also the nostrils and eyebrows. This removal of distinguishing features leads to a series in which all the subjects resemble one another. Certainly, there are still differences, but no picture is recognizable as any specific individual anymore. When paired with the title of the series, "Dystopia," these images represent a world in which people are losing their individuality, following the crowd, or else being viewed as less than full humans by outside forces. The idea is reminiscent of classic works such as "Brave New World."

Map of Commutes

The map details various information on the class members' commute to GMU.

Infosthetics images

View the original

I found this map series to be very interesting. It definitely shows a lot about the person whose map is being shown. Exactly what it means will vary for each person - sometimes people will have a lot of red just because they are popular and so many people follow them without personally knowing them, sometimes it would mean that they just don't want to bother with returning requests, etc. There are many meanings that can be read into the map, but it always says something.

Re: Denis Darzacq's "Hyper"

These photographs were taken in various shopping center aisles. Some at the grocery store, others in hardware or home furnishing stores. These are centers of travel and daily life - places where ordinary people come every day to do ordinary things. All the people in the pictures are young, and are caught in the middle of various extreme motions. At first, it looked to me like several of the pictures were taken in the middle of an elaborate fight scene, with one of the participants off-camera, and the one shown having just been knocked back or down, falling through the air. Not all the pictures matched this feel, though, and after reading the description, I could see that they were indeed doing some sort of street dancing.

By pairing the ordinary scenery with the not-so-ordinary poses of the subjects, this series seems to convey the idea that such actions are in fact ordinary themselves. People who are truly being themselves all the time will feel more free to do things like dance even in public places, and should not be thought of as eccentric for doing what they love.

Re: Teun Hocks

The photos seem to all be taken in such a way that they twist our perception and fool us into thinking we see something that isn't actually there. Most of them have painted backdrops that were designed to make it look like the person standing there is actually in the scene. Some of them replace expected objects with others to fool the eye - for example, the ticket booth glass has been replaced with a mirror so it looks like there are two of him there, and the "hole" in the floor is actually just a black circle laid on the ground. For the mouse hole and cat, the hole is sized to fit him, and the shadow of a cat is just projected on the wall. All the photos use similar tricks. My personal favorite is the one where he is sticking his head through the painting, since the trick was camouflaged so well.

Childhood map

Re: Eric Johansson

Most of his work seems to be surreal simply for the sake of surrealism. Many pieces take classic impossible shapes and just show his own rendition of them, such as the "Penrose lego" and "Crossroads." These sorts of illusions have been done countless times, particularly by M.C. Escher, but also by many others. Other pieces take expected images and situations and make them somehow unreal, such as "Arms break, vases don't," which is just as the title says.

Some of his pieces deal with definite conflict between humans, nature, and cities or civilization. In "Strange forest," and "Big laundry day," for example, it seems to show that civilization has spread so far that it has become the norm, and basically replaced nature. In "Homo sapiens" and "Fishy island," he is showing a deeper connection between humans and nature. The messages are that humans come from the earth, and the earth on which we live is itself alive, in the two pieces respectively. In "Zip city," it shows a conflict between cities and nature, but also between cities and people, as the tractors (and presumably their riders) are positioned to be retreating from the incoming city as it zips up. So in all, there doesn't seem to be a cohesive message except that perhaps people, nature, and civilization all interact with each other, and no one thing is dominant in every place.

Re: "Drop Dead Gorgeous"

This series of works is focused around the danger of human vices. Gluttony seems to be a prime target, since many of the items are food (often candy), but also just generic indulgence, with things like soaking in the bathtub.

There are a few possible interpretations. He could be using women to illustrate that women in particular seem to take these things seriously, perhaps to an unnecessary extreme. So this could be viewed as a hyperbole of how many women think about things like eating oreos, gummy bears, etc., and actually be trying to show the absurdity in it all, since it is rather obvious that those sorts of things couldn't possibly kill you in the ways shown in the images.

Alternatively, he could be entirely serious about it all, and by showing the supposed eventual effects of such things (death, either physical or spiritual) at the same time as the cause, he is trying to say that people are moving willingly towards their own slow deaths caused by excess.

Re: Alexander Apóstol's "Residente Pulido"

When I first looked through the images, I didn't notice anything remarkable about them at all. All I saw was a bunch of old buildings, probably warehouses of some sort, and possibly abandoned, due to the poor condition of some of the structures. After hearing the explanation that he removed all the doors and windows, I went back and looked again, and definitely saw them differently.

I think the idea is interesting. To me, it conveys a sense of isolation. Particularly on the ones with window frames or sills still visible, having the actual windows removed, it seems like he's trying to say how people hide themselves or their things away from others. Some of the ones where the edits are less obvious, though, seem to be more of a commentary on the blandness or bleakness of modern cities. The buildings are generally very plain and run down, with a uniform concrete gray, which definitely draws focus to the industrial nature of the environment.

Re: Charles Cohen's "Buff"

First of all, I don't think this really qualifies as art. I find the whole thing highly distasteful. Yes, it is obscuring something even worse, but it's still bad enough as it is. Anyway, the implications of subtraction:

• Anonymity
• Lack of individuality
• Expendability/replaceability
• Altered or misdirected focus
• Impersonality
• Purity (because of the pure white - perhaps for the idea as a whole, though not for this application)
• Concealment
• Secrecy
• Emptiness
  

The other similar pieces in the Analog section were much more interesting and thought-provoking to me, since they aren't immediately tinged with disgust. They allowed other emotions and ideas to flow more freely.

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

re: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/

While I harbor little love for Google as a company, I must say that easy and rapid access to information does not inherently make us more stupid or less able to focus or process such information. Their stated goal of making a search engine that will allow people to find exactly what they're looking for immediately is admirable, and I think has far more positive applications than negative.

Concerning the author's first main point, I frequently read online, scanning for desired information, skimming from site to site; however, I also find myself frequently engrossed in hours upon hours of focused reading. While it is true that it is generally not books (though it sometimes is), it is still reading on a single subject, so my point is still valid.

As for the internet and easy access to information changing the way people think, that is probably true. Once again, though, I don't think it is necessarily for the worse. Learning to skim material for important pieces is crucial nowadays, and fast reading and the ability to quickly intake various subjects have always been useful skills. As long as people don't skim exclusively, there's no problem, and most people do still sit down and read whole articles and such if they are actually interested. Both before and after I began to use the internet, I would skim articles in newspapers, magazines, or whatever else I happened to be reading, and only actually stop to read a full story if it interested me. I haven't noticed any great change in behavior or thinking, only a shift in how much skimming people do - but that's only because there is so much more to glance through than there was before. People still read full articles under the same sorts of circumstances as they would have before.

So, basically, no. Google isn't making us stupid. It might not be helping much to make us smarter, but it is certainly increasing knowledge, and the changes it promotes in thinking are probably only lateral, rather than actually being any better or worse.