Artwork #1: Score

Trace

Turn on your computer

Fix a piece of paper on the mouse pad

Tape a pen to the mouse

Start playing games

Change the paper or stop when you want to stop

Observe the path of your mouse movement while playing the game recorded on the paper

Artist Statement

My inspiration comes from Yoko Ono’s grapefruit. The book’s content is simple and straightforward, but readers can feel a kind of romance and sincerity. These “Poems” are discovered from every corner of life, and even some unobtrusive things can be given important significance, which makes me choose to observe one of my most common things in life from an unnoticed angle. So I began to observe the computer keyboard and mouse because these are the props I use every day. After a long time of use, I found that several commonly used keys on my keyboard were obviously worn out, but I usually don’t notice that I often use them during play.

The results of these almost unconscious behaviors may be more evident than I thought. I want to use a visual way to record the use of the mouse. People will find that the mode of mouse movement in different game activities is also different, and there is a significant gap in the length and density of lines presented by high DPI and low DPI settings. Even if you play the same game on the same device, results can vary from person to person. At the same time, I think this will also change the behavior of “playing video games,” from short-term preservation to long-term preservation, from personal experience to an art form that others can understand.

When I was doing this score, it gave me a new understanding of my subconscious actions. When I was fully focused on the game, my actions were not what I thought they would be afterward. I originally thought that the moving track of the mouse should be smooth and coherent, but in fact, most of the turning points are stiff and sudden. At the same time, in the game, I pause the mouse in several specific areas more frequently than I thought. When I perform this score on the same game again after a period of time, the pictures composed of these separate and broken lines look very similar to the last time. From this I sensed a pattern hidden beneath the randomness, which is a very wonderful experience.

Make a self-portrait

Destroy it

If It is a drawing, rip it to shreds

If it is a sculpture, smash it to pieces

Gift what remains to a friend

Artist’s Statement:

I struggle with my self-image, so I wanted to do something with self-portraits. I liked the idea that a self-portrait can be in many forms and styles, so I decided to leave that up to the reader. I specifically suggest a sculpture to let the reader know that it doesn’t have to be a drawing. The idea of destroying a self-portrait is cathartic for me. It is also pretty poetic. As for the last line, I wrote it because I think art should be given away to people, not necessarily for free, but the artist shouldn’t hang on to their work forever. Not only that, I just like gifting things to friends, so I think gifting a destroyed self portrait would be really fun to do. The reason the score is formatted the way it is is due to inspiration and influence from Yoko Ono’s scores. I really enjoyed her slightly ambiguous and rhythmic style and wanted to imitate it in this score. I hope I was successful.

Light Painting

Install your camera onto a tripod. 

Set shutter speed to 10 seconds, aperture to f22, and ISO to 100

Turn off all of the lights in the room.

Go in front of the camera.

Hold up any light source and perform a dance.

Artist statement: The purpose of this piece is to create free-flowing and random yet unique art pieces. This is inspired by the avant-garde artists who defy the rules of mainstream notion of art and use pouring paint to create their own form of art works. As I read through Yoko Ono’s Grape Fruit, her score of “painting to be stepped on” interested me. When she uses random footsteps on the street to create paintings and artworks on a canvas, it inspired me to transfer some kind of movement into a still painting. Using a pitch dark room as a black Canvas, and bright neon light as the brush, the performer will be able to move in a 3D space and create a one of a kind 2D light painting.  By transferring a spontaneous dance in a room to a light painting, no one would know how the result is going to come out until the camera finishes processing. I think each result of this piece is an unconfined piece that cannot be replicated ever even with the same performer and photographer. From a personal perspective, I fell in love with photography because through the lens of a camera, I can frame and capture things that human eyes sometimes cannot perceive. The more long exposure photography I take, the more amazed I am by some of the creations I made with just a camera. I am able to pause time and capture some of the most spontaneous moments that happened in my life. Just like these light paintings, these paused memories are unique artworks to me that no one else can replicate. 

1. Find a musical instrument. If you cannot find one or own one, then make one. You do not need to be able to play the instrument.
2. Improvise something; a short rhythm or melody will worm.
3. Record the improvisation.
4. Repeat the improvisation until you’re sick of it.
5. Wait a day.
6. Play the improvisation again until you’re sick of it.
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 until you one day forgot to perform the piece.
8. Play the original recording once.

Artist’s Statement:
Prior to this class, I was not aware of scores, so my entire understanding of them is largely informed by what we’ve discussed and read for this class. Yoko Ono’s scores are the ones I am particularly familiar with given the readings, so my score’s format is largely informed by her style. John Cage was also a partial inspiration, but primarily with how he dealt with music rather than by any specific piece or aspect of his style. The title and thematic goal of the score is actually inspired by the song Sing from Sesame Street and the lyrics “Sing/Sing a song” which to me carry a very “anyone can do it” attitude that I was inspired by. When writing this score, I wanted to find a process that I was both familiar with yet accessible to a large number of people, and making short works of music by tapping out a rhythm or plucking on a stretched rubber band is something I enjoy doing while bored. I then extrapolated that process, treating it like composing a song, with some of the ideas behind this being how a song can change over the course of being written, how the things we remember change even over short distances, how repeating the same process that once seemed stimulating can become boring and irritating over time, and so on. In actually performing the score, the rhythm I tapped out was intended to fit a 5/4 meter which actually changed as I performed the score on my own over the next couple of days. The rhythm gained a beat which changed the meter to 6/4. This change was actually an intended goal of the score, as I wanted to capture the way a piece of music can change based on memory. If I were to iterate on this score, I’d probably expand its scope to a large group of people, maybe around ten, and have them all perform an improvisation collectively. Over the coming days, they would individually continue the score until a week had passed where they would then present what they remembered the improvised piece as.

When I initially pitched my score in class, something felt wrong. It didn’t feel like it reflected what I wanted my projects for this class to be, and I felt empty repeating the score that I had created with the only inspiration being that I like dice. As I paced around in my apartment after class, I remembered part of Diary of a Wimpy Kid that resembled a score. A teacher tasked the class with designing a robot, specifically what functions a robot should perform. The first thing that the class thought of was words that the robot shouldn’t be allowed to say. And as they got caught up in writing down a list of swears words the robot wouldn’t say, eventually class ended, and all they had to show for their work was a list of swear words. While I quickly realized that I shouldn’t replicate that exactly, I liked the general idea. I then remembered a bit from the podcast Chapo Trap House where one host jokes about shooting a movie trailer designed to be really popular at the time, but once people buy tickets and watch the movie in the theater it’s just him saying “I lied, there’s no movie, but hear me out and why I should have the money to buy a samurai sword”. I decided that something like that was more appropriate for class as a fun final iteration of my score.

With the assurances in class that happenings count as art, and that as long as you do the readings and turn in something based on them you can get a good grade, I went to work on constructing my actual score. I wanted to work in the question of whether or not I cared about my grade into the art, such as using it to create an expectation that I did make a video of my score being done only to tear that down by having it be the rickroll video and hastily writing up a score after my presentation as a last ditch attempt to save face but then showing that that was part of my actual score which had been written before class.

If my commitment to this class and my grade in it remains unclear let me clarify. I did not read or make any attempt to acquire Grapefruit by Yoko Ono until the day before the playable iteration of the score was due in class. When I did look through it, I only planned to try to use it to relate my dice score to the room piece during my presentation, which I didn’t end up doing anyway. However, I did follow Yoko Ono on twitter well before this. I’m not saying that my piece was some revolutionary art independent piece independent from these past movements. On the contrary, I think it reflects that same spirit. Despite my procrastination of Grapefruit, I did do the other readings, and similar to the music created using modified or broken instruments, my presentation was the result of a modified and broken score. The meta-score of “Perform a happening consisting of lies, deception and trickery. Write a score documenting the process after the fact” served as a mechanism to modify and break my original score, which resulted in the drawing and video I presented in class.

Attached below is the link to the presentation I showed in class, the score I hastily wrote up after, and the score I wrote up before showing that it was planned the whole time.

Presentation

Actual Score

Actual Actual Score

Proof I followed Yoko Ono on Twitter

Addendum: I saw the “Let’s Try This Again” email and I kinda sent some mixed messages pertaining to doing the readings so I’d like to add a new point. I remember in class the patch to the nude raider patch that added the Duchamp goatee to the naked Lara Croft model was mentioned, and although I didn’t say it at the time, I remember that patch was also mentioned in the Games As Art reading we were assigned that was written by none other than our great professor Celia Pearce. Furthermore, I am channeling the spirit of that patch right now. This addendum is the patch to a patch goatee added onto my dumb score project, which I have argued above is already a modification to the idea of scores themselves. The only difference is that my original project did not objectify or sexualize women. If this difference is enough to refute my claim that my work pertains to the art, readings, and themes of the class, then that is a sacrifice I probably should make rather than try to argue that my original project objectifies and sexualizes women.

Addendum Documentation: