Is this, like this?

For the past couple of weeks I have been working in the sculpture studios trying to finish a piece for a show we put together that opened last Friday. During this time I pretty much spent all of my time working; I did nothing that wasn’t absolutely necessary and towards the end I found that I could even cut out sleeping at least for a little while. I basically sacrificed my entire life to this one pursuit for a while and as stressful and unpleasant this may sound it was actually kind of enjoyable. There were a lot of other people who were doing the same thing as me, so we all went a little crazy and spent all our time in the studios together working, and it was all by our own choice. We could have gotten away with spending less time making our respective objects, but we wanted to be there working on them, and when we were away from the studios even for a little while we were anxious to get back. I haven’t decided yet if this kind of totally obsessive behavior is a good thing or not. I happen to be lucky enough to be majoring in the thing that I obsess over, so I have a little bit more freedom to spend so much time on it. I think that idea of being totally immersed in one thing, spending all you time on it is really interesting. I love finding people who have totally dedicated their lives to something. A lot of the collectors that we have looked at in class have done that, and I think that collectors and artists have a similar sort of obsessive devotion to something which I’m sure is very idiosyncratic and may not be understood by many others who are not equally obsessed with their own projects.

Chocolate and Peanut Butter

I’ve already written a couple times about artists who use unusual materials to create their artwork. Vic Muniz is another artist who uses materials not usually associated with art making to create his pieces. He’s used everything from chocolate, sugar, and peanut butter to dirt, and even clouds to make his images.
For an exhibition called Cloud Cloud, Muniz had a pilot sky write line drawings of clouds onto the sky above Manhattan and Miami. Muniz was on the ground as the clouds were being made photographing the cartoon like artificial drawings in clouds of clouds. So the image he was trying to recreate became the actual object.


Muniz has also made a series called Equivalents where he manipulated cotton balls to make them look like animals or praying hands and then photographed them in a way that makes them look like old photos of clouds. His work has so many steps and elements involved that it becomes impossible to categorize him as strictly a sculptor, painter or photographer. Just as Muniz is impossible to identify a lot of his work has the same type if identity conflicts. Is it a cloud, a cat, cotton the lines between the differences blur. There's a really video of Vic Muniz called Worst Possible Illusion on his website under the section for Pictures of Clouds where he talks a lot about his work and his thought process.

Muniz’s work has a great since of humor and irreverence. He looks at everything in his life as a source of inspiration and allows his ideas for work evolve from what he encounters. In his TED talk Muniz tells a story about how he became an artist and it began with the fact that he was born in Brazil included an awards ceremony, a job at an add agency and a fight among other seemingly unrelated non art experiences. I like the idea that events in your life can have totally unforeseen consequences way down the road, but they were still working together to get you the point you are at now. In my philosophy class we learned that the world is deterministic which basically means that while we can make choices in our daily lives it is predetermined how everything will work out. I kind of like this idea because it can allow you to believe that everything happens for a reason. You cannot say, “well what if I had done this instead” because you couldn’t have done anything differently. I am an extremely indecisive person and I find it takes a little of the pressure off the decision making process.

Choices

I recently listened to an episode of Radiolab about choice. As the would has developed the number of choices available to us in a daily basis has increased exponentially. This seems like it would be a positive development, but it may not be. Sometimes there are so many possibilities it becomes overwhelming and inhibits our ability to make an informed decision. In the program they spoke about George Miller’s paper “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two,” which states that the average human is only able to hold on to about seven pieces of information plus or minus two in their working memory at any given time. This is why so many of the numbers we have to remember are 9 digits or less. If we have to try and deal rationally with more then 7 factors we are unable to focus and use our good judgment is easily overridden.

Researcher Baba Shiv did a test where he asked participants to remember a set of numbers and then walk across the hall and recite the numbers. Some subjects were given only 2 or 3 numbers to remember and some were given 7. As they walked down the hall they were stopped and offered two options for snacks, either a fruit cup or a piece of chocolate cake. In a overwhelming majority those who were remembering 7 digits chose the cake while those who were only dealing with 2 chose the fruit cups. Baba Shiv believes this is because our rational brain can only deal with so much at one time. If it is totally occupied remembering a series of numbers the emotional side is able to take over and the subjects choose their emotional choice over the best rational choice. Its a little scary that our logical decision making skills can be so easily overridden with only 7 items, just think about how many different things we try and keep in mind even when we are making small decisions.