Archive for the ‘studio visit’ tag
In Production – “Mediated Idols”
Mediated Idols – work in progress
Yesterday, I had a studio visit with folks from Museo del Barrio which gave me an opportunity to assemble current work and talk about it. My focus over the last few months has been a combination of hand-drawn animations and wooden sculptures which will come together in a new media sculpture series titled “Mediated Idols.”
Earth Explosion – roughly a third of the stills from a short animation
About “Mediated Idols”
The editors of DE-WESTERNIZING MEDIA STUDIES, Curran and Park ask the following questions in the book’s introduction:
1. How do the media relate to the power structure of society?
2. What influences the media and where does control over the media lie?
3. How has the media influenced society?
4. What effect has media and new media had on the media system and society?
In considering these questions, my initial response is cannibalization. Historically, the cannibalization of one civilization by an emerging civilization. In contemporary reality, the transformation of highly mediated popular culture by either youth subcultures or ethnic specific cannibalizations that transform globalized pop culture in unexpected manners.
In creating the “Mediated Idols,” I am studying artifacts from the pre-Aztec city Teotihuacan that had far reaching influence geographically and through time. As I look at these Mesoamerican artifacts, I am as well studying contemporary popular cultural icons that fade only to reappear in new formats. “Mediated Idols” will combine the physicality of past artifacts with virtual representation and data of contemporary life. As stand alone sculptures, “Mediated Idols” will present greater attention to material and form than the “Undocumented Drones.” The animations will also have greater coherence with the sculptures.
Other images from the studio visit…
Studio Visit, June 2014
“from Somoza to Ortega”, roughly a quarter of the stills from a short animation