Artist statement for the Final project

 Jonathan Crary’s essay 24/7 addresses the problems of capitalism that is restless and wastes everything. 24/7 symbolizes the intention of the endless consumption, human's desire, and control to human’s ability. On the other hand, there is sleep as a symbol of the nature that is in harmony with human's life in the essay. Jonathan Crary shows us how important sleep is to humans as many examples of sleeplessness research through his whole essay. Sleep provides to people another energy source like food. Sleep could mean to people the rest or recharge. Sleep that we need shows human is influenced by the ecosystem. The desires of humans have been substituted other things, yet sleep still remains that can’t be replaced. That means sleep cannot match with 24/7 universe that sleep has no necessity or inevitability.

 Today, people have used the night time because they could control the light after the Industrial Revolution. This has brought many impacts to people. The history of lighting in the Chapter ǀ shows that urban street light by 1880s gave people safety from dangers at night and the economic benefit of many activities. The light at night means that people could work extended hours and produce more goods.  However, we couldn’t answer the question as if people’s life is improved by the results of the decrease in sleep hours.  Sleep can’t be eliminated but it can be wrecked and it gives us bad influence when we tried to remove it.

Why do I think that sleep is important? Sleep gives me new energy. Without sleep, I make mistakes easily and make wrong decisions. I have experienced that sleep can’t recover it several times when I sleep less for doing an urgent thing even if I sleep more later.  In addition, I realized while I raise my children. Their behaviors were not right when they sleep less. They threw a tantrum without a reason. They had caught a cold easily. We have to spend more time and energy if we sleep less.

On the top of that, Jonathan Crary stressed the importance of dreams in his essay. People have dreams while they sleep. The average person has three to five dreams per night. Many people in the modern world don’t believe their dreams connect to their inner life and they think that dreams consist of meaningless images and contents in their present life. However, many scholars have insisted and researched that dreams may have to mean for inner growth toward super-ego that people want to be perfect as a whole creature. They focused on the way to find to ‘inner growth’ or ‘self-understanding’ of people and that is the observation of the dream. I totally agree with their opinions and find one of the solutions from the dream as the recovery of people from widespread materialism. I have worked with my dreams as a theme for a long time.

The 4^th chapter of the article brought the importance of the dream.  As I mentioned earlier, I believe that my dream reflects my consciousness to connect self- understanding.

  Fish in my work in this semester are also the same situation. Several years ago, my brother came and told me that he ate a fish and the taste was like beef in my dream. I really wondered about the meaning of the dream after I woke up. Two weeks later, I got a call from my father, and he said my brother has fallen and he was diagnosed with leukemia. The dream symbolized the warning of the loss of my brother.  One year later, he has passed away. Because of the dream, fish is unpleasant but a warning sign to me. In fact, a fish in the dream is normally a good meaning for people. In dreams, a big fish is swimming in clean water, it promises new discoveries, achievements, good luck or profit.

 However, as a mother, I worry when I feed fish to my children. Fish maybe not a good food in these days. We know fish is healthy for our body but these days, fish is harmful because it is contaminated by pollution. Maybe, this situation that we can't eat fish influences my consciousness eating fish is dangerous. I can't explain exactly the reason. Moreover, I don't know how my dream told about my brother's condition even I have lived in the U.S.A. which is far from Korea where he was and why fish came into my dreams.

 Maybe may consciousness wants to tell me that eating fish is harmful these days. I thought it warns me that be aware in your life and it tells me that keep thinking what is important. After I read this essay, I drew several images. I wanted to draw some fish figures but I don't know how to connect the images into my work before reading the article. I was really pleased that I could make the image that I want. I printed and painted about fish in the dream. I tried to express that we, human want to control nature, including sleep, as the sun in the box or a cage. But we are dying inside in spiritual like fish of skeleton.  As an artist, I wish that many people have an opportunity to have the interest in their dream after they appreciate my work and they keep trying to understand their inner growth out of the influence of 24/7 universe.

Week 14: electronic waste

……Jennifer Gabrys has pointed towards the complexitites of this new metamorphic economy, and its material, persisting nature: ‘recycling does not remove remainder or wastage; instead, it displaces and transforms waste….

 I felt really uncomfortable while I was reading ‘Electronic waste’.  I worried about our environment but also involved in the situation that I was also making the electronic waste. Then, do I not I buy the electronics? That isn’t possible. However, I could save the environment if I buy things that I really need them and use them for long time regardless of fashion.

In addition, U.S.A. needs a state level system like South Korea to save the environment. The South Korean government enforced the ‘volume-rate garbage system’ and recycling from 1995, before I came to America. I felt guilty when I threw away recyclables, such as papers, glass bottles and aluminum cans after I was living here, because I already grew a habit of assorting recycling in the trash. I was pleased that my subdivision district recommended neighbors to join the recycling system several years later. 

I was shocked that I had to trash broken electronics in America. Why don’t Americans fix and reuse broken things? The reason is that labor charge is very expensive in America, and usually products are made from China where the labor cost is cheap.  People in Korea can get after service from each electronics companies when electronics are broken.  That service could help people not only saving money but also saving environment. I wish the government provide many systems to save our environment.

Week 13: From Pong to Planet Quake

Playing video game has become a major entertainment of 21^st century. The video gamers turn to the modders for their satisfaction in the DIY maker culture thanks to the advent of the personal computer. It isn’t an one way culture from makers to consumers.

 I confronted some video games in the middle of 1980s in Korea. There were many video game space for children in the market area. Playing video game in PC was possible after 1990s. I couldn’t meet the role playing video game fever because this sensation happened after I have lived in U.S.A. The first video game, ‘Space war’ was appeared in 1962 by Steve Russell. He couldn’t expect the economic possibility of video games. PC games were developed a major companies, but  modders improved and developed the PC games for personal enthusiasm. They have been doing this without profit for their pleasure. The modders have developed the game for their leisure and engaged in developing new games but the benefit from the game is for major companies. The modders develop games regardless to the benefit, yet there is some capitalists abuse the modders’ innocent enthusiasm. Is there a win-win situation on each side?  

Week12: Traumas of Code

I kept thinking why is the title of the article ‘Traumas of Code’ not ‘Traumas of symbol’. This is because I think that traumas could relate with symbols. However, I could tell now. Symbols have changed in the meaning depend on the culture or personal experience, and have multiple meanings. Yet codes are fixed in meaning and they can be to solve in only one way. In addition, Hayles focused on the code as mediators computers and human to overcome trauma.

Hayles quotes Joseph Weizenbaum’s ‘Computer Power and Human Reason’ in the last part of her article. That maybe the book has the key point of her thought. Dr. Weizenbaum’s secretary chatted with the ELIZA computer program, even though she knew the computer’s ability. Why did she do that? I would want to know the reason why people want to talk with a computer. Why do they not talk to people? Hayles agrees with his opinion that people shouldn’t give computer abilities like human being. However, as she mentioned, computers have the human’s faculty, now. They overpower human’s abilities. These parts in her article “…more and more code is written by software programs rather than humans……..In this guise they are seen as interacting positively with humans to provide transmission pathways for the articulation of trauma. In other ways, however, they are taking over from humans more of the cognitive load, a maneuver widely perceived as an implicit threat to human autonomy and agency…” that really made me terrified.

Week 9; When taste politics meet terror

….As The Critical Art Ensemble defense website points out, historically these laws- ‘Charges of mail and wire fraud’- have been used when the government could not prove other criminal charge… Joan Hawkins

There were restrictions to art created by the politicians in Korea during the period of military autocracy. South Korea is a democratic state that guarantees freedom of expression like America. In the article ‘When Taste Politics Meet Terror’, we knew that Steve Kurtz was arrested and released for bio-terrorism without evidence after 9/11. This incident was related with overreactions about the terror. It is not same situation-not the terror-, but Korea has undergone a preposterous period under dictatorship. In the period, there are many worse incidents than ‘the charge of mail and wire fraud’ of the critical Art Ensemble’.  If the people who serve dictatorship felt disobedient, they overreacted. That could be found anywhere that under autocracy in the earth.

For example, the novelist, Soosan Han, wrote a novel released daily in parts ‘The street of Desire’ in the Joong-Ang Daily News in 1980. After 300 days of writing, he wrote about a security officer who had a pride that he served in the army. However, Han’s expression about him was very cheap, a part of common pride among Korean males who served in the army. Everyone could notice that wasn’t indicate about rebellious power of the dictatorship. Yet, he was arrested by National Intelligence Agents, and tortured. Not only him but also his colleague, Jeongman Park, was arrested and tortured because he was Han’s friend. The writer, Soosan Han quit writing, and went Japan and Jeongman Park has passed away in 1988 because of the aftereffects. They were not North Korean spies, terrorists or politicians who opposed the dictatorship. They were innocent writers. The ridiculous thing was the action of the people who thought the novel was written for criticizing the military dictatorship. The more preposterous thing was the people who had brought up a problem.  They were staff sergeants, not the high-ranking officials.

Out of its mind, crazy. Schizophrenia. Schizoanalysis….

I think The critical Art ensemble members were fortuante, at least, they didn’t tortured and die.. and they have supported by many artists and scholars. 

Week 7; Fantasy about a cyborg mother

There are many comic images that I watched when I was young about a cyborg mother when I think of it. There were normally computer systems to take care of people’s needs. Why didn’t I  think at once that an incubator could be a cyborg mother?  In the movie or cartoon-especially Japanese Manga-, the characters of cyborg mother were really hideous. They were jealous of the real mother, tried to manipulate children’s fates or tried to kill, if they couldn’t have the children. Jaimie Smith-Windsor’s cyborg mother is an externalized  womb  under control-statist technology. Normally a cyborg mother is expressed in externalized emotion of mother, in other words, the possession of children and control in SF movies or SF fiction. Why do movie scenario writers or novelists express as incapable mothers to the cyborg mothers? The image of mother, usually, sacrifices many things for her child like Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Story of a Mother’ who sacrifices everything for getting back her child who was taken away by Death. I wonder why the writers have written that a cyborg mother is incapable. It may be that they wanted to suggest that a cyborg mother as a symbol of imperfect technology by humans and the writers hoped that people would control technology.

The Five Obstructions

The Five Obstructions (2003) Danish film by Lars Von Trier and Jøgen Leth

Why did Lars Von Trier ask Jøgen Leth to make the five movies with obstacles? Why did Jøgen Leth hesitate every time when he heard the instruction from Lars?

In the Fifth films, Lars said “to help Jøgen to be perfect....” In his monologue, I could understand the reason why Lars asked Jøgen to make movies with obstructions. To be a perfect human, he has to overcome his situation whether good or bad.

It was really uncomfortable when I was watching the movie, because, I really understood the situation. When people get older, they get used what they have done through their life. The people could get perfect professional achievement like Jøgen Leth in a certain area, yet they don’t want to try new things after they gain  reputation, because they afraid to lose their fame. If I were him, Jøgen, could I do that? Could I try to overcome my achievement to be a better person? Celebrities could sense more obstacles than commoners when they apply something in a new area because they are famous as professionals.  

This movie was an experimental movie which consists of 5 documentaries. It starts with that Lars suggesting to Jøgen to remake his movie, ‘The Perfect Human’. Lars gave him very difficult obstructions in the movie.

The obstacle in first documentary is that Las should remake the film in Cuba without setting and using only 12 frames. The first documentary looked like a music video to me. It was visually pleasant. Second obstruction in the film is making in the most miserable place in the world, and Jøgen should play ‘The Perfect Human’ by himself with eating scene. Yet, his mission was failed because the local people shouldn’t be in the scene. The third obstruction in the film is making the movie without a rule in Brussels as the punishment from the second film…which was the real challenge. The fourth obstruction was making ‘The Perfect Human’ as a cartoon. Jøgen said that he couldn’t..but the outcome was really good. It was really sensational. The final obstruction is that Jøgen should voice over narration as Lars directed.

Every time, for Jøgen, making movies with the obstruction was the real challenge. In his situation, his fame and his profession that can’t be ignored by the people’s appraisal, I could understand Jøgen’s pressure to overcome the obstructions. I was really pleased when I saw that Lars admitted to Jøgen’s achievement. 

The Final Installation 'Pulse'

The Final Installation in the 'Pulse'