Wednesday 18 April 2012

Cindy Sherman Transformations

Cindy Sherman Transformations

Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman is a contemporary artist who explores modern identity. She works as her own model in different character forms from amusing to disturbing provocative to elegant. She uses a lot of makeup prosthetics wigs and clothes to create these different characters and then photographs them herself. She gets her inspiration from films, T.V, magazines the internet and history to influence her characters. They come from her own dreams and desires of being somebody completely different.

Lotte Reiniger

The art of Lotte Reiniger

This is a video about the artists technique on her shadow play animation. is goes through the steps and techniques to create her unique animations. although it is a simple idea it is amazingly effective with no speech in her work it is still easy to understand the story. This is one of my favourite animation techniques and Lotte Reiniger is the founder of shadow play. We are experimenting with this technique in my animation class as our final project so i have been researching a lot on her. She is very interested in fairytales and has done Hansel and Gretel shadow play animation along with any others.

Lotte Reineger


Papageno By Lotte Reiniger

Lotte Reiniger - (Link To Website) is an animation artist that adapted the art of shadow play to cinema. Her technique is so original and unique to her she was the founder of this animation technique. She cuts out silhouetted characters into sections so each arm hand and legs are all separate pieces of paper helps with the movement of the figure.She pierces small holes in relevant places and are then connected with small wire hinges so the arm, hands, legs and head can move freely. once the character is completed she can move him to a lit animation table to start creating shadow play animation. The figures are then slowly moved and a photo is taken then moved a fraction more then photographed and so on, after a lot of patience and time the figure moves bit by bit eventually creating an animation of papageno the bird catcher. This technique is such a simple idea but very intricately made needed with lots of patience. 

Semiotics Of The College Student

Semiotics Of The College Student

I found this video on youtube where someone has copied the video of Martha Rosler's "Semiotitcs Of The Kitchen" and changed it to a video about "Semiotics Of The College Student". This is video displays shallow stereotypical objects that are seen as typical college student life. I thought it was good because it is stereotypical student activities that explain student life like alcohol and Facebook and it has a bit of humour to the video. 

Monday 16 April 2012

Semiotics Of The Kitchen


Semiotics Of The Kitchen By Martha Rosler

semiotics of the kitchen is about a woman going through the letters of the alphabet of utensils in the kitchen. The video displays the kitchen in a stereotypical home showing a traditional female role. But Rosler has injected a sense of violence into the video by stabbing the air or table with some of the utensils she's displaying. She has replaced the typical domestic meanings of the kitchen and changed it into a video with actions of violence and frustration. "when the woman speaks, she names her own oppression." - Martha Rosler 1975 http://www.ubu.com/film/rosler_semiotics.html
The typical signs of domestic instruments, the food production company and the stereotypical role of the domestic housewife progresses to anger and violence which is portrayed in this video. I also found another video inspired by "Semiotics Of The Kitchen" called "Semiotics Of The College Student" which is showing what typical college students are grounded to.

Martha Rosler

Martha Rosler

Martha Rosler -(Link To Website)
Martha Rosler's most recognizable work is her photomontages, collaging the domestic lives of women, war and politics. She has also done some video art "Semiotics Of The Kitchen" 
Martha Rosler started off as a painter and had an interest in photography at the same time. She started thinking about how you could have "..... on one page you could have a picture of some terrible atrocity of war and on the next page they'll be an ad for a sofa, and i got the idea to put them together...." - Martha Rosler Cut and Paste Video 
This is how she got the idea for her photomontages by looking at newspapers and how they can have adverts next to images of war and death. The contrast between lives and culture. She is completely outraged by war and she started montaging about the war in Afghanistan like when she did work about the war in vietnam. She is saying that we are deluding ourselves with these adverts of everyday things and how perfect and beautiful everything is at home and yet we invade other homes and destroy them. She says "... we are responsible for this, this is us telling ourselves that life is beautiful at home and this is what we do abroad." - Martha Rosler Cut And Paste Video.