Last Project- RUNWAY ART SHOW-

It was such a good time the last day presentation, Here are all the pictures i took. Enjoy

some inspiration for you as you work. ideas we have covered this semester, roughly ... 

We have a RUNWAY

All - an artist has been kind enough to loan us a specialized flooring to use as our runway this April 29.
We should treat it with the utmost care. That means: *models only* on the runway.  : ) 


Best,
DR. T. 

Mechanization turns cookies into cutters and genericism explode

Thinking back from last class, in my process of creating my zip-tie light, I thought about the mechanization and the generic yet unique qualities i'm trying create with my light.  This made me think of how architecture today is morphing into a general design quality of futuristic with organic qualities.

What happened to all of the variety?  What happened to making things more than just plain walls and open spaces?  Where is the home, where is the personality of design?  Architects are building the shells of an egg, but an egg is not an egg without the yoke.  Without the yoke, the egg is something that can be broken and smashed and forgotten.  Design has progressed towards a generic quality of design; beginning from the industrial revolution to the ideology of the “American Dream” founded by the creation of Levittown, to now the Ikea mentality of cheap mass produced products.  Though in form building design has progressed farther away from the cookie cutter bland generic Levittown house, it is following the trend of organic crazy shapes such as those created by Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid.  There is nothing truly original since, the internet makes it so that any original idea is quickly dispersed and made into a general lack of consideration. 

Political Prisoner

I was reading about Ai Weiwei and found him an example of political prisoner.

I first heard about him when he had his Sunflower Seeds installed at the Tate Modern Turbine Hall, London last year. "The work consists of one hundred million porcelain "seeds," each individually hand-painted in the town ofJingdezhen by 1,600 Chinese artisans, and scattered over a large area of the exhibition hall.^[31] The artist was keen for visitors to walk across and roll in the work to experience and contemplate the essence of his comment on mass consumption, Chinese industry, famine and collective work."

Recently I heard from TED and other sources that because of the anti-country art works and his activist protest against the government, first surveillance cameras were installed outside his studio, then he got beaten up by the police, detained from leaving the country, imprisoned, and his studio was destroyed by the Chinese government.

I love his work as an artist and really appreciate his courage to stand up against the authority regardless of the threats to his life. I recommend you to watch the video below if you're interested in his story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vX8OM7f9sE

A brief biography of Ai Weiwei from Wiki:

Ai Weiwei (pinyin: Ài Wèiwèi; born 28 August 1957) is a Chinese artist and activist, who is also active in architecture, curating, photography, film, and social and cultural criticism.^[1][2] Ai collaborated with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuronas the artistic consultant on the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympics.^[3] In addition to showing his art he has investigated government corruption and cover-ups. He was particularly focused at exposing an alleged corruption scandal in the construction of Sichuan schools that collapsed during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. He intensively uses the internet to communicate with people all over China, especially the young generation.^[4] On 3 April 2011 police detained him at Beijing airport, and his studio in the capital was sealed off in an apparent crackdown by the Chinese authorities on political dissidents.

News on Set Design/Props

Hi Students,

FYI's: 
You are in charge of bringing pedestals and any props you'd 
like to decorate our exhibition space.

Using tables for our runway is not going to possible - safety is the concern.


Have a great week and get your Artist Statements to me as soon as you can.


Dr. T.

A design competition - Queer Fashion

Hi Students,

I am organizing the Saturday night fashion show for this, below.  

UCLA is offering prize money for the best poster. 

--

UCLA LGBT Studies Poster Competition.  Prize: $500. 

Deadline:  Monday July 25^th, 2011

The topic of the conference is “Fashion” which we interpret very broadly to include the fashion industry, fashion history, and ways of ‘fashioning’ or making selves, families etc.  You can put the word “Fashion” on the poster anywhere you want. 

The poster should contain the following text. 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

UCLA Queer Studies Conference 2011

Fashion

October 14 and 15, Royce Hall, UCLA

Keynote Speakers:

Jack Halberstam, Monica Miller, Mignon Moore,

Karen Leigh Tongson, Deborah R. Vargas

Closing Performance: 

“Queerture: A night of rocket science and fashion design”

with artistic director Tania Hammidi

Organized by the UCLA LGBT Studies Program

For more information see www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/lgbts

Contact lgbts@humnet.ucla.edu

---------------------------------------------------------

We are hoping for a poster that is strongly multicultural.  Other than that, we don’t have requirements for the style. 

Size: 8 1/2 x 11

(Ideally, you would also be able to adjust it slightly so that it could be printed as either

11 x 17 or 8 ½ x 11.)

Send as a jpeg file to contact below.  Should be available as a vector file with as high a resolution as possible.  (It should allow us to blow the image up to larger poster size.)

Should be somewhat flexible so that you can, for example, add a name later if we need to. 

You can see other examples of posters and can also get a sense of the papers presented at the conferences from--

http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/lgbts/events/pastconferences.html

Email Catharine McGraw at mcgraw@humnet.ucla.edu

415 Portola Plaza

146 Humanities

Los Angeles, CA, 90095-1384

(310) 206-1145