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Monday, September 19, 2011

Rut #3 - Matter of Words

What struck you as creative?

I really loved Adam Bateman's stuff in this exhibit. The giant book sculpture was cool, but I actually spent more time looking at the piece that looked like an ariel view of farmers fields and the video in the corner. I totally passed by it the first time, but what looked like fields in the one piece were actually words in extremely tiny print and repeated in different directions. Patches that looked like they had vertical tracks actually had the word vertical repeated over and over, etc. I happened to come at a time where I saw the very end of the video otherwise I would have passed by it. But the video was a loop of Adam Bateman sticking a bunch of books in a washing machine and then watching them go through a cycle.

What made the pieces creative?

I love these pieces because they are things we see everyday in the same context and think nothing of it, but Adam Bateman has found a way to put a really crazy spin on them. I see and use the word vertical all the time, but never have I thought to put the word vertical in a vertical orientation and make art out of it. I see books all the time but never have I thought to stick them in the washing machine. His art twists the way we see everyday stuff and that is why its creative.

How do you think the artist got these ideas?

I don't know Adam Bateman, but after reading a few chapters in "how to get ideas," I can say with confidence that he is probably child-like a lot of the time. He just sees the world differently. How else would he have gotten the idea to put books in a washing machine? He was probably doing his laundry at the laundromat, reading a book and said, "what would happen if..." I imagine he has a wild imagination too. When he hears someone say that books are, "admirals through the storms of life," He probably got a mental image of books floating through the ocean and said, "why not?" So while I can't say for sure, I imagine that seeing the world through child-like eyes and taking things very literally with a wild imagination led Adam Bateman to these ideas.

4 comments:

  1. I agree with the washing machine idea being creative...also i felt like it showed that even though the medium for the words were destroyed and the print was no longer legible that the ideas still exist and they won't go away like in Fahrenheit 451

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  2. So deep! Yes ink is constant is what i think it said in the description, but the internet is even more permanent! Scary and wonderful i think

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  3. How creative was the idea to put books in the washer. Again, bringing two familiar things and creating something new with them. It was a cool piece.

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  4. i like that you put what we are learning in our book and applied to the artist. they ARE real ideas, and Adam showed that they work. i still struggle with APPLYING everything that the book says, so thanks for the reminder

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