VISA 0120 Foundations Media: Computation + Art

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Script for Faunce Arch Day Tours (Historical, Present, Future):

HISTORICAL – Diana Friedman
Today we celebrate Faunce Arch for its contribution to brown’s history since it was built in 1904.
Faunce House was originally named Rockefeller Hall when the west end of the present building was erected in 1904. At Commencement 1930, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. gave $600,000 for the enlargement of Rockefeller Hall, requesting that the building be renamed Faunce House as a memorial to President Faunce who had died in January.

In the early 1980s changes began to return the building to its purpose as a student center, as Faunce House underwent a major renovation, designed by architects Goody, Clancy and Associates.

Faunce Arch has seen many historical events that occurred at Brown University. For example, when the news of Japan’s surrender came in 1942, the ringing of the University Hall bell brought students out of their dormitories to unite with an impromptu band in a parade to the Pembroke campus, where the women joined the procession which went down Thayer Street and stopped at the flagpole for the singing of the “Star-Spangled Banner.” The students proceeded underneath Faunce Arch. Classes were suspended and a convocation called in Sayles Hall, at which Bruce Bigelow delivered a moving speech citing Brown’s contribution and honoring those who had died.

Furthermore, during the general unrest of the 1960s, during the Vietnam War, a student strike in May of 1970 followed upon the announcement on April 30 that Unites States troops had entered Cambodia, and on May 4 of the unfortunate death of four students shot by National Guardsmen during a demonstration at Kent State University. On the evening of May 4, after a speech by Senator Jacob Javits of New York, a mass meeting on the Green was held to vote on a strike in protest of the war. The next day a rally of 1,500 students in Meehan Auditorium demanded that the University take a stand against the action in Cambodia. The procession went through this very arch. This event was exactly 39 years ago today

PRESENT – Rhianna Shaw
Even though the Van Wickle Gates are the official entrance to Brown University, Faunce Arch sees a lot more activity throughout the year.  In fact, when I first visited Brown over three years ago the first piece of Brown property I stepped onto was right here.  I’m sure I’m not alone in that.  If one considers the ends of the Brown campus Pembroke and Wriston (sorry Perkins!), Faunce Arch is pretty central in connecting them.
Today the arch is occasionally used for arch-sings by various a capella groups, particularly at ‘First Friday at Faunce’, a student-run activity that happens on the first Friday of each month.  On the 4th November last year the arch saw masses of students flood through it as they all paraded onto the Main Green to celebrate Obama’s victory and then proceeded to march through it and around campus.
Faunce Arch is also a focal point on campus, with a giant, detailed campus map and bulletin boards displaying posters of events to come and photos of events past.  The airport shuttle runs from it, everyone arranges meetings under it; people even take shelter under it!  Our celebration today is just a way to give something back to Faunce Arch.  Thank you Faunce, and thank you all for coming!

FUTURE – Jina Park
There are currently a lot of new plans for renovations at Brown University. One of the upcoming renovations include renovating Faunce House to create the Stephen Robert ‘62 Campus Center at Faunce House.
A Boston-based architectural firm, Schwartz/Silver has been selected to design and execute the $15-million renovation. The firm specializes in two types of projects – renovation of historically significant structures and construction of modern buildings. Schwartz/Silver designed Princeton’s Andlinger Center for the Humanities, which required dramatic interior renovations of two 19th-century buildings while maintaining their outer facades. Andlinger was hailed as a major success when it opened in 2004.
Together with the student resources and services center located in J. Walter Wilson which was also recently renovated, the new Campus Center will represent the realization of key objectives in the Plan for Academic Enrichment:  fostering a greater sense of community at Brown and more effectively integrating the academic and co-curricular lives of students. The campus center’s construction could result in Faunce being closed for all of the 2009-10 academic year, and, with a host of other projects set to be completed in coming years, will change the daily lives of most Brown students.

When asked about the Faunce House, Schatz said he has been drawn to the building’s iconic arch. “Almost every student who takes a class during the day has to walk through the archway at some point,” Schatz said. “It’s both a gateway into the green and also a focal point for visitors.” Director of Student Activities Ricky Gresh has put together a planning committee composed of administrators, faculty, undergrads and students from the Graduate and Medical schools. Their first meeting included a tour of Faunce. “I’d never realized how broken up the building was,” said Eleanor Cutler ‘10, campus life chair for the Undergraduate Council of Students and a member of the committee. If you take a look around and begin to notice how separated Faunce Arch is to the Faunce house of which it is a part of, you might not be very surprised to hear that, to make the building more connected and accessible, there are plans to make entrances through the Faunce Arch, which will make it a even more public and active space at Brown. Whereas now it is just a passageway that connects the main green with waterman street, it will also become an entrance way into the newly renovated student center after the renovation.
Therefore, Faunce Arch Day is also an attempt for us to recognize and appreciate Faunce Arch as the way it is now, as it will undergo changes starting next academic year. We hope that by having this tour, you have had a chance to think more about and appreciate Faunce Arch. Thank you very much and happy Faunce Arch day!

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Artists: Marlee Bruning & Lissa Mazanec

Public spaces are crucial for the fomation of community and the interaction of different social groups. Green area is a place of refuge in urban environments. This installation made people think about their daily interaction with public space. People placed balloons as symbols of their appreciation of public green space. As the day continued, more and more people came to celebrate what is often taken for granted.

My final piece was on display from Wednesday May 6 to Monday May 11 outside of List Art Center. I chose this site because it is a more quiet and more private space that would allow for a better appreciation of the bottles’ music.

Despite the bad weather people got to interact with it.

I included a sign that would invite everyone to play.

I wrote clear instruction with two sample songs to encourage people to play with confidence. I also invited the public to write instructions for songs of their choice.

The bottles were numbered to facilitate people’s interaction.

I was able to receive responses from three people.

Here is the firs song someone wrote. It is titled “Stairway to Heaven” :

A second person wrote a song called “A Vous Dirais Je Maman”:

A third person found one of my bottles to be off-tune. The note says: “The 5 doesn’t sound quite right in the Ave Maria but perhaps it’s just me.”

Here is a video of how my second sample song, “Cielito Lindo” is supposed to sound:

Here is another video of people interacting with the bottles:

The structure was able to withstand three rainy days. Unfortunately it could not withstand the windstorm from Sunday May 10.

Sadly, the structure had to be disassembled and recycled

It was a great pleasure to see people enjoying the musical qualities of my piece. Although I was not present to see all the people who played with the bottles, it was exciting to read the comments and collaborations that people made despite the unfavorable weather.

I also noticed that people struggled to read the numbers for the sample songs. Perhaps bigger numbers and an indication of meter would make the songs easier to play. Additionally, I noticed that the bottles are loud enough and could possibly be installed in a more public space in order to receive more responses.

My project explores the narrative of the hidden space, and the tone and associations that are established by a space’s aesthetic components. Inside a quiet clearing of stones and a swing (tucked behind bushes on the corner of two well-traveled streets) is hidden an oddity: a large wooden box suspended above the swing and coated in soil. The box appears solid except for a translucent hole in in the top, which allows a diffuse light to illuminate the interior. The inside is viewed by kneeling on a cloth mat and inserting one’s head into the box. Inside the box is a model of the space around the box itself- a tree assembled from twigs and string supports a small wooden swing, in front of an arrangement of stones similar to the one in the real space. The tiny replica is an attempt to add an element of fantasy to the original space, through rescaling into a more extremely intimate enclosure, as well as through quality of light (the single diffuse skylight and a green LED that the viewer is instructed to turn on).

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Artists: Marlee Bruning & Lissa Mazanec

Public spaces are crucial for the fomation of community and the interaction of different social groups.  Green area is a place of refuge in urban environments.  This installation made people think about their daily interaction with public space.  People placed balloons as symbols of their appreciation of public green space.  As the day continued, more and more people came to celebrate what is often taken for granted.

Life in the urban environment is stressful. A multitude of problems like pandemic outbreaks, examinations and deadlines, succeeding in the working world and many, many more are constantly putting a strain on our minds and bodies. Without proper care and relaxation, it would leave us exhausted and drained of the zest for life. Han-soap is specially designed to provide soothing relief, a source of detoxification and de-stressing. With a unique DIY kit packed with all-natural, lush and edible ingredients; the recipe for refreshment is up to you. The ingredients combine to make a wide array of body scrubs, facial masks or exfoliate to suit your tastes. Han-soap will alleviate the tension from your hectic life and do it with delicious fragrances and a little pizzazz.
It truly is food for the senses.

My project strives to be a bastion of support to the students at Brown; to lighten the mood through the public engagement of therapeutic art. The idea is to create a source of relaxation that is safe, fun, non-toxic and just the smell alone is enough to soothe a burdened shoulder or two.
The audience makes the soap themselves using easy-to-follow recipes and I would provide any assistance if need be; or there may be some convenient take-home kits too. The end result is then conveniently packaged and portable to be shared and enjoyed.

Here is the link to the slideshow of the project – a step by step process of setting up my booth and of people experiencing the project!
Han-Soap Slideshow

Here is the video documentation of my final project. I’ve uploaded it to youtube since the file size exceeds the maximum file size for the blog (if i were to compress it to a size small enough to fit on here it would look terrible, it’s about 9 minutes long). Thanks to Daniel for acting as camera operator for the project.
This experimental performance took place on Sunday May 2nd in Manning Chapel (without permission) at 10:30 pm. The performance is meant to be an exploration of the absurdities of religion, particularly Catholicism, and the effects of religious indoctrination.
Please leave comments on the video to let me know what you thought of it.
For more information about the project see the pdf I posted previously.

watch here

The Tree of Knowledge
5 May 2009, in Brown University’s Rockerfeller Library

Influenced by Bill Viola, Guy Debord, and East Asian Philosophy, my final VISA Project drew from questions of collective knowledge and our experience with it. How do we as students here in Brown’s ‘centre of knowledge’ – the Rock – understand what we do, what we study? What does it mean to understand or to know something? How does one reach such understanding such knowing?

Poem 1, placed around the rock to entice participation:

In our centre of knowledge,
Bring a mind and explore this
Brain
We share.
Start with a Josiah search for
Clarence Irving Lewis’ (opinions and an)
“Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation,”
And see what kind of knowledge you can [bring]
Leave with.

Poem 2, placed in “Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation”:

Theory
Smear me with it.
I want facts,
Hidden but also those which I can understand.
Teach me how the “secret life of plants”
Works, maybe then I
Will understand
Will know
My Plant life
My roots
Too.

Poem 2 with ‘edited’ page about knowledge:

Poem 3, placed in “Secret life of Plants”:

Down the branches,
I want to drift to the edge and back.
Now I know that,
I know how,
But still I am not sure.
Maybe aisle walk down this branch to the next.
Keep walking down (going up)
To Knowing.

Poem 3 with ‘edited’ page:

Path of ‘leaves’:

Final Display, including looped stop motion, comment book, and information sheet:

Stop Motion:

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Comment Book:

Information Sheet:

About the Piece

With influences as varied as Bill Viola, Guy Debord, and East Asian philosophy, my final VISA 120 art project draws from questions of collective knowledge and our experience with it. How do we as students here in Brown’s ‘centre of knowledge’ – the Rock – understand what we do, what we study? What does it mean to understand or to know something? How does one reach such understanding such knowing?

As within Bill Viola’s Tree of Life (1997) piece, I have chosen a concept that both digitally and physically engages people in a journey to explore what they already know. For me, this idea brings to life the notion of knowledge a priori vs. a posteriori, or what one knows prior to versus after an event. As with any piece of art, a viewer’s own mindset, opinions, and understanding of the subject matter will affect their interpretation. I explore this concept in detail by looping a video that displays different lines of a poem. At any given moment that viewers watch the piece – I’ve estimated I might hold their attention for a minute or so – they will encounter a new part of the poem. Thus the knowledge they leave with, or the ideas they take away, may vary from those of others.

From Debord, I found myself influenced by the notion of one of the Situationist’s fundamental ideals, the dérive. Debord writes, “One of the basic situationist practices is the dérive [literally: “drifting”], a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances. Dérives involve playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects, and are thus quite different from the classic notions of journey or stroll.” This “drifting” motion or wandering has its roots in multiple other philosophers, yet what my piece gained from this reading was the very awareness of ones action during this movement as well as the sense of play. I hope that the poems placed within the specific texts might have aided in awakening more “psychogeographical” senses, but I suppose that only the participant might judge this.

Finally, it was through my vague understanding of East Asian philosophy that I began to consider how I might represent knowledge pictorially. A tree, a natural creature that grows over time with the necessity of other elements (water, light, etc.), struck me as incredibly similar to our collective process of knowing. Again, our knowledge is fleeting in many respects, and as I depict in the stop motion film, decays, rises, repeats and continues living.

Thank you for participating & please leave any comments in the book found here.

Isabel Parkes

Wish Forest Documentation (link to pdf file)

By installing the wish tree in a space that people come for solely practical reasons I tried to offer the public an opportunity for a more personal connection to the space and also to alter the public space by changing people’s mood from being stressed out and worried about everyday hassle to being able to look at the bigger picture, i.e., the future and the bigger world surrounding them.

I chose to translate my favourite video, starring Muffy and Linette! I played with the humour of the video using a MousePressed function. I felt that it was perhaps too simple so tried adding other functions to the it, but it wasn’t as effective, so I removed them.