Assignment 2

1. Who are the 5 artists you chose?

Xin Liu

Julien Creuzet

Jacky Connolly

Dyani White Hawk

Jacolby Satterwhite

2. What were the themes the artist addressed about making work?

Xin Liu: The themes revolve around death and fighting for life in general. Specifically, when I watched the video titled, "Verging on Immortality," she uses a sculpture of a city landscape submerged in a solution from an unknown liquid to represent our quest for everlasting life since we cannot accept how nature is.

Julien Creuzet: The themes revolve around water as memory and repository. He explores Afrofuturism as well from a video called, "The new possibilities in Afrofuturism", The ocean uses a fictional sea creature to talk about colonization, movement, or migration. Afrofuturism is also emancipation. 

Jacky Connolly: The themes revolve around Simulated vs Physical Reality. She explores through "I Spy, AI" using AI and real life by drawing inspiration from I Spy. She uses the mirrored worlds of Digital and the Real, discovering how both can shape and reflect what it means to be alive.

Dyani White Hawk: The themes revolve around Interconnectivity and Oneness. She argues for the "Between Worlds" that we share a common world even though we have multiple cultural influences. It focuses specifically in Indigenous Art and explores what it means to be an artist through this focus.

Jacolby Satterwhite: The themes revolve around Technology as a coping mechanism to reroute trauma and find psychological ease. Using cyberspace is a unique take and lens of exploring and treating trauma as tactile and poetic.

3. What were the challenges the artists faced in making their work?

Xin Liu: The most difficult part for her was the submerged city sculpture, maintaining physical structures while allowing chemical processes to alter over time. 

Julien Creuzet: His video shows a challenge in communicating historical violence through non-linear and poetic forms. He relies on water to show the challenge of achieved or visible representations of history. 

Jacky Connolly: For "I Spy, AI" she uses AI images as well as real-world references. Working with machines is challenging since it has visual inconsistencies and uncanny valleys of AI images itself. She's also in the experimental stages, trying to figure out how it works since it is a new technology. In the comment section it is more so difficult thanks to the fear of AI itself so they reject the new technology as much as possible and not count it as art. It is an interesting time though and we are figuring out how it works and how we navigate it. Right now the technological period might move fast for AI but socially and morally not since there are no guardrails and we are testing the boundaries of AI.

Dyani White Hawk: For her work. There is difficulty in preserving indigenous culture while operating in mainstream institutions that categorize indigenous work as either historical craft or symbolic identity. 

Jacolby Satterwhite: There's a technical challenge of requiring advanced software for producing labor-intensive digital works and long production timelines. When explaining about his mother and personal trauma with cancer, it demonstrates the challenges that come with translating his experience into abstract and virtual form without losing emotional impact.

4. What were the inspirations you drew from the artists?

Xin Liu: "Humans cannot accept how nature is."

We can think and challenge our realities daily, and that's what keeps us alive today and thriving as a human species. I hope that in these current times men might have an awakening of their own to explore femininity and challenge the double standards for men. I have explored the idea that men are not gods since I know the pressures of being a statue on a pedestal to be worshipped daily, treated as a symbol rather than a person defined only by success never allowed to be human.

Julien Creuzet: "And in art, we have this place to rethink and make a new possibility."

I've always see art as a way to tell stories, I also see it as a way to challenge assumptions, usually not judging them by it's design choices. I experiment with designs since it usually gives off first impressions and then when I write them or learn more about them, you can appreciate it for what it's worth. I also tend to avoid same face or body syndrome as best as I can for writing appearances.

Jacky Connolly: "AI is coming up with this sort of doubled world that has it's own logic to it."

That's what I view AI when it comes to it being applied to art as an unexplored landscape. I often view it as a place to better understand concepts of what we want to envision before doing the actual thing. I don't view AI art as a claim of art being dead since I knew new technology causes fear to people like with photography threatening painters and them believing painting is dead but instead allowed painters to no longer be objective and can be subjective, creating the works of cubism and Impressionism. I view it as a tool to improve concepts of artworks and to adjust some stuff you don't want by your own hand. I also view it as a way to help artists with the production of art if used correctly, training the AI by themselves with their own art on a specific style instead of the slop where the AI trains on multiple art styles creating the slop it is. I also view it as a better way to seam it in together and works for simulations before commitment of the actually piece making it easier to refine it with human input for art. Right now it's difficult but I'm learning to accept it since I know that it's coming and that if I just reject something it's going to make me fall behind. For AI art I view them as better for concepts and simulation of what it can look like before committing to the actual human input to finalize and make it more flawless.

Dyani White Hawk: "What we desire as artists, what we wanna do, what brings us back to the studio day after day after day doesn't always match… what the market desires from us.”

Art is subjective and innovative at the same time. It never sticks to mainstream media of one style remaining that way forever. Every artist that wants to try something new would be ridiculed for it since it is unfamiliar but it breeds creativity. It also constantly challenges our realities of what we see in the world to develop a better understanding and change how we think and behave.

Jacolby Satterwhite: "Art became a form of therapy for me, a way to reroute personal histories and traumas"

Art works as a way to communicate what your feeling and an inspiration to help other people what you go through as well. It's also a safe way to explore trauma so you feel seen and heard while learning how to cope with it.

5. What were the things you would like to incorporate into your own work after watching these videos?

I love to incorporate using Art as a form of therapy and use it to challenge our realities on masculinity. I want to help find a way for men to find their calling in challenging the patriarchy by learning how to embrace femineity and unlearning godhood that many of them feel burden by to be perfect symbols to be worshipped and admired from afar. I want them to feel human again.