13. JUNE 13
FOAM (The Underground Camera, Maätita + Saija, Curiel, Hoàng)

* HUNGER WINTER exhibit
How can a camera be revolutionary? Can it still be as revolutionary now as it was in WWII, or are things different now? How and why are they different? (Internet, AI image-generation software, photoshop). cf: Sontag's "Regarding the Pain of Others." What happened when journalists showed graphically violent video footage from the Viet Nam war? Why didn't it magically make the war end?

Mediated vs. Immediate. Sometimes media actually buffers and shields us from the immediate.

* Video Projected on the ceiling with the dancer and the trees
Who was that dancer supposed to be?

* Upstairs ECOTONE exhibit
What is an ecotone (in science)? Did this exhibition remind you of others we have seen? (Ecoshroom, Magical Realism).

How do you make your art get entangled with extra-human entities and systems? Symbolism/Metaphor, Science, or simply brute force direct encounter -- try shaking tentacles with an octopus; place fungi directly on a metal substrate and let it create an acidic print; tie sharpies to the limbs of different kinds of trees, place paper under the limbs, and let them draw pictures when the wind blows.

/////////////

HUIS MARSEILLES (Plaum, Séeberger brothers) 

Artist Plaum (the illusionistic photographs)
What is trompe-l'oeil?
How might you as an artist make your 2D media more 3D-ish? One way is to create the illusion of 3D. You can tell you have achieved your goal when a photograph of your work does not capture what the work is doing in person.
How does this artist achieve 3D effects? Shadows, dimensional objects, actual wallpaper.
Why does she choose this simple/minimal subject matter? To focus us on the illusion effect rather than the subject matter itself.
Who have we seen that also uses illusion? Magritte. How is he different?

* Paris photographs in 1906.
Who took pictures of their hostel bathrooms? If every picture is of an epic object, history loses track of ordinary surroundings.

----

sontag reading
How is ordinary photography always primarily surrealistic? (stops motion, freezes history to be seen later)
According to Sontag, what is the strangest thing about photography? (creates a parallel, simulated world)
According to Sontag, why can't a photograph alone (without captions and a historical context) create a moral position? (it just is what it is.) examples? exceptions?