Anthony McCall (b: 1946) is a British born artist based in New York City. He is well known for his solid light installations that challenge the traditional model of films by bringing attention to the light and projector by discarding any kind of story or plot shown on a projector screen.

McCall studied graphic design and photography at Ravensbourne College of Art and Design in England from 1964 to 1968. After graduation he was active in a London film-makers cooperative and made films documenting outdoor performances, often involving fire.

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Based on feedback from last week's visit at a school, I improved my car design and made it twice as big. See photos below:

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Our next machine is the CNC. CNC stands for Computer Networked Control, and works kind of like the Hand Router except it is controlled by a computer and not my hands. Our assignment was to build something with this using 'pockets' and 'contours'. The computer aided machining (CAM) software calls a carved out hole a 'pocket' and a cut line a 'contour'.

This was a challenging task. I had to go back and forth between the shop's CAM station and the CNC several times. The first trip back was because I forgot to set the depth levels to a negative number. Without that the CNC will mill the air above my wood. After I got that corrected I had some difficulty setting up the machine. John and Shreiya helped me turn the machine on and attach my wood to the CNC bed.

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The Woman's Building was a center for female education in the arts that operated from 1973 to 1991. The goal of the center was to develop new art practices and an artistic community that supported the needs of women.

“It was an opportunity to be empowered. We could learn skills that we never learned before, and more important, that we could just create our place in the world, which is really what the Women’s Building represented. It’s a public center for women’s culture. That we live in a world that is very male dominated, and the art world was certainly not serving us as women artists. We were very invisible and that we could carve out this little space that would be our space, and not just our space privately, but our space publicly. To say, ‘Here’s what we are making as women artists. Come see.’” - Cheri Gaulke

I created a short 10 minute presentation on the Woman's Building to share with the class. It is available here.

Gordon Matta-Clark was an artist who was famous for cutting holes into existing buildings to create art. Defining his artistic practice “Anarchitecture,” Matta-Clark directly addressed the social conditions of his day and presented them in a way that made people pay attention to something they would otherwise ignore.

Matta-Clark studied architecture at Cornell from 1962 to 1968 but did not practice architecture in a conventional manner. After college when he returned to his native New York (1969), he was disturbed by the conditions of his day and wanted to address the social problems. At the time there were a lot of decrepit and vacant apartments. There was a large homeless population and garbage littered the streets. In Matta-Clark’s words, “I have chosen not isolation from the social conditions, but to deal directly with social conditions whether by physical implication, as in most of my building works, or through more direct community involvement. [2]”

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The Songs for Sabotage exhibition at the New Museum presents the work of a collection of young artists from around the world. This exhibition attempts “a call for action, an active engagement, and an interference in political and social structures [1],” but only some of the work presented seemed to relate to that goal. Nevertheless, there are many talented artists included presenting a diverse collection of work.

Diamond Stingily’s E.L.G. (2018) addresses our social problems with a large metal swing set with a single swing. On the support beam directly above the swing is a single brick, positioned in such a way to threaten someone below if someone were to use the swing. Given that children most commonly use swing sets, it seems to reference the danger children face in the world today. The work also includes a metal ladder on the side of the swing set, leading to nowhere. I understood this to represent the lack of a clear future children face as they climb the metaphorical “ladder of success.” Stingily’s social and economic background from growing up in Chicago influences her work [2].

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This week I milled aluminum with the Othermill. Here is the result:

I really like the Othermill.

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This week I was busy writing Python code to download and store data and JPG files retrieved from Google's Streetview API. I am happy with my progress. I can reliably download data and images from Google without any problems. My code begins with the latitude and longitude of a start location and will download all of the available Streetview data within a specified radius linked to the start location. It will crawl the dataset from one location to another, testing if a new location is within the given radius, querying neighboring locations, and downloading the panorama images.

Next I need to make sure I am storing the data in an accessible way. I expect to download many images over time and want to organize it in such a way that I don't have to download anything a second time. I am using a SQLite database to store metadata on the downloaded data. This will keep everything organized and retrievable. Once I have this done I will let it start downloading data for multiple locations as I begin stockpiling data.

I am on track to meet next week's milestone of having something ready to feed into a Neural Network for a style transfer.

Tania Bruguera is a Cuban-born performance artist and activist. Her work challenges the people who experience it to consider and understand the oppression of the Cuban people under the Cuban revolution and the resulting Castro regime.

Bruguera’s work, purposefully titled Untitled (Havanana, 2000), is set in a long dark tunnel with sugarcane lining the floors. This first took place in a military bunker previously used for prisoners and executions during the Cuban revolution but was quickly shut down by government authorities. The setting was recreated at MoMA using actual concrete walls and sugarcane lined floors. A television on the ceiling shows decaying video of Castro hugging his people and playing the role of a benevolent, powerful, and gracious leader. This contrasts with the lives of Cubans after the revolution.

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Cristina Iglesias is a Spanish artist and sculptor who builds pieces that conflate interior and exterior spaces and materials. Her work is reminiscent of nature and encourages the viewer to experience the serenity and calmness of the natural world, reminding us of its constant presence.

Iglesias initially studied Chemical Sciences in 1976 only to switch paths to ceramics and drawing in 1978 [1]. Her father was a scientist and she was always fascinated by science, but in school she was also becoming interested in art. In her words, “I liked it but at the same time I was developing also reading and drawing and being interested in art and and then I realized that I wanted to dedicate myself to it.[2]” She then moved to London in 1980 to study Sculpture and begin her art career [1].

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