Week Three

Inspiration

The background image here.

Mio and Mao: A claymation series by Misseri Studios.

By W. Scott Forbes

Work

Radio Music for Phillip

Reading Response: Implicit Meanings- Metaphor and Symbol, Michal Ronover

I have a problem with artists who insist that their work is highly metaphorical when it looks like all they did is shoot a video of some birds and add in the sound of a heicoptor.

I have a problem with people who believe in a collective human conscience.

That being said: I think this reading had a lot in it for me.
"First, metaphors are inventions ofthe artist's imagination. Second, metaphor meaning is a product of the viewer..."
This was an astoundingly profound insight to me. In the natural world things exist, things to be responded to. I personally have a hard time looking at art and knowing inherently that the fig branch to the left is a reference to Giotto's second most obscure work. But this is invention. This is the human need to see connections where none are, except in other humans. And that idea is extremely freeing. I don't think it's wrong if I miss what the artist was trying to allude to. And I don't think it's wrong if I see something deeper than just what's there. This is a cerebral game played far outside the world of the piece itself, having little to nothing to do with the existance of the art object, simply with the purpose for it's creation, which probably evolved during fabrication. Metaphors are all around us, but none of them are real, and that's totally okay.