Wall+Text

toc =Art History 495 - Independent Study=

New Vision
Art History 495 has been an exciting laboratory for special students to explore contemporary ideas in art and culture.

Spring 2008 For Spring term 2008, three students, Lee Le, Socheata Kong, and Kimhoan Chu, explored the Art of Networks. Networks have been vital to human art and culture for seemingly all of history. Jesus Christ had a compelling message, but it was really Paul's social network that put Christianity on the map. Myriad other examples exist across the ages. For all of the power networks have had in the past, it is only now, in the age of the network, that we have become so keenly aware of, and analytic of, our networked existence.

In a robust and diverse look at the webs of our worlds Le considered the visual and linguistic dynamics of social networks; Kong explored photo--graphic networks of human relationships; and Chu constructed massive paper sculptures of fractal networks.

Fall 2008 This term two students are examining Urban Culture. Tiffany Evans and Christine Johnson are considering the Art of the Street. The art that the public is so aware of and inspired by, but which, despite recent gallery and museum inroads, is proportionately underrepresented in the art world. Their general purview is wide: from garage bands to hip-hop culture, but their specific project is focused: to produce, during the 2008-2009 academic year, a documentary video on Graffiti Women in Los Angeles.

Research and pre-production on this project is now underway. Today in the Merlino gallery they present graffiti writing on canvas - a hybrid medium that is empowering from some perspectives, and oxymoronic from others.

Graffiti Writers write under a tag name rather than their legal name. Most avoid associating their legal name with their tag name due to legal ramifications. We therefore have not added wall "tags" to these canvases as each canvas //is// its own wall "tag."

//The Art of The Network//
As the first decade of the 21st century comes to a close, we take the opportunity to consider the art and culture of this, the age of the network.

Projects last semester explored the worlds of online social networks, photographic manifestations of real-world social networks, and the physical/sculptural realm of normally mathematical fractal networks.

The work on display today is from two new projects for Fall 2008:

Tiffany Evans is documenting the art, culture, aesthetics, and pragmatics of the network of women graffiti artists in Los Angeles.

Christine Johnson walks the liminal space of human interaction in online virtual space in her examination of how network topographies and online design encourage or discourage participation in these environments.