Artist Response #4: Computer Art Therapy

Before I came to St. Mary’s, I had often heard of the different and beneficial methods of art therapy, but I really only considered it to consist of drawings and paintings. But, over the past few years, I have come to understand that there are many other forms that can also play a helping hand in improving the overall well-being of the human mind. One of these methods that I have really found myself working with a lot is the use of digital video.

Video art therapy is seen in the Computer Art Therapy world as being a form of psychotherapy that consists of making video that will then be used as a mode of communication. This type of therapy can be really helpful for people that have a memory or time in their life that they want to express, but rather than talking about it, they create a video as their platform. For instance, some people who have suffered something extremely devastating in their life may not be able to actually talk about it because it is just way to stressful to express in words. Their voice is presented through their use of their video making skills.

The artist that I did some research on for this form of art is a guy by the name of Bobby Warns. Bobby, an amatuer filmmaker, went through the process of creating a video tribute for the family of a military vet. This use of art helped improve the very difficult situation that the family was going through, showing the many benefits that the digital video format can produce.

I think the first thing that intrigued me about this topic of art therapy is the personal connection that I have with it. After I graduated high school back in 2004, I was involved in a near fatal car accident that put me in a coma for two months, etc. When I left the hospital, I didn’t feel the need to speak to a psychiatrist about what I went through, but instead, preferred to express my frustration and pain through art. My art therapy began with drawing with pen and ink, and then started to progress into digital photography, and then I combined those two concepts into the use of digital video.

Artist Response #3: Michel Gondry

Michel Gondry is a French Academy Award-Winning Film Director and screenwriter. He has directed films that include Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind and also music videos for artists such as The Chemical Brothers, The White Stripes, Radiohead and Foo Fighters. He has also created many commercial advertisements and even created the style of film called “Bullet Time” that was used in such movies as The Matrix and Blade.

I remember seeing Gondry’s work for the first time when I saw the video for Foo Fighter’s “Everlong”. I instantly noticed that his type of style was very different from most videos that I remember seeing at that point in time because he was using this surrealistic method of visual communication. But, it wasn’t really until I came across the videos that he made for Daft Punk (“Around the World”) and The White Stripes (“Fell in Love With a Girl”), where I really took an intense interest in the type of work that he does.

I think what intrigues me the most is how he takes certain situations that the viewer may have come across in their lives without really noticing them, but the way that he edits and composes the various frames, makes those familiar situations, unfamiliar. Whether he is using legos, or reversing the playback of a sequence of images and playing it forward, he is manipulating the way we view the world (especially in a New Media type of perspective) and the reality that we have come to understand and trust to be authentic.

When you see his work, in most cases, you will have to ask yourself, how is he doing this? A question that came to mind over and over when I saw his White Stripes video when he used his animation of legos.

His work has inspired me over the years to start mixing it up with music and digital video. I have also been inspired to stretch the limits between the familiar and unfamiliar aspects of what is considered normal in our realistic view of the world.

Artist Response #2: Diane Ludin and the human body

I first came across the work of Diane Ludin about two years ago when I took a class on Visual Thinking in the Digital Age because I was investigating (for a project that I was working on at that time) how some artists incorporate different varieties of scientific and medical concepts within their work to create a statement on how such topics are seen in the public audience. I was introduced to Ludin’s work because I was amazed at not only how complex her methods are but how she is able to put them into her own terms - her own way of communicating to a larger audience based on her investigative and methods of research.

A lot of her work is based on dealing with the building blocks and the foundation of the human body (DNA and the human genome project) as well as different varieties of diseases (Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Hodgkin’s, and HIV:AIDS); she has created many different interactive computer software programs to illustrate her ideas such as MemoryFlesh2.0, Viral Portraits, and I-Biology to name a few. Through this approach, she artistically creates a powerful relationship between the communication and information of these Biotechnological issues and how they are currently being presented to the media by the masses in our contemporary society (especially through the internet).

My background is far from the medical atmosphere, but over the years I have been fascinated in how it can be applied to digital art. Viewing her work, I have especially been inspired to view art in a different perspective. The thought that is brought to mind in regards to this is how the media has a tendency to guide our opinions on how we look at the benefits of a certain “miracle pill”, but three or four years later, new research discovers that the miracle pill also has the ability to cause cancer or some kind of terrible disease or illness. To apply this to art, I think it would be interesting to stage several types of graphically blown-up versions of microscopic slides of certain disease spreading bacteria, and disguise them as being the “miracle drugs” when we are only temporarily being disguised from the danger that lurks beneath the cancer-spreading surface.