Event 3- Weak or No Signal

For my last event I thought I would do something on campus at UCLA and incorporate everything I’ve learnt over the quarter.  I attended Weak or No Signal, a UCLA design Media Arts final MFA showcase of the graduate’s works of 2018.  The exhibition was showcased at the New Wight gallery at UCLA’s Broad Art Center, May 17^th until Mat 31^st. I attended the event on Thursday 24^th. I had never been to The New Wight display center, but I believe the showcased was displayed in the perfect location on campus. The doors of the Center opened right out onto the sculpture garden of UCLA campus.  This is really interesting as I had incorporated the sculpture garden for my very first blog of the quarter and enjoyed revisiting for my last blog so I really enjoyed attending this event as I felt it tied in all of the aspects of the things we have learnt this quarter. 

As stated in the pamphlet of the show it “ articulated contemporary subject matters, from hyper-mediated social relationships to artificial intelligence; technological utopianism; and the increasing fallibility of the image.”

The Show was very interesting to me showing over 22 different art works.  Some of the works were interactive and others posed a lot of different questions about technology and how it interacts with art.  For someone who doesn’t know a lot about art or technology I struggled to understand a lot of the concepts, as they were so abstract.  It is clear that these artworks focused on a certain aspect of technology however, one would focus on sound or video and this was interesting because each showed different aspect of technology and its interaction with art.  One of my favourites was the video works by Christina Yglesias.  Her concepts about the how imagery and romance are explored and created in cinema were very intriguing. She was very interested the particular kissing scene from the silent 1926 film “Flesh and the Devil”.  Her recreation of the one particular open-mouthed kissing scene with three actors was very interesting as she put her own twist on how she viewed the scene and what it meant to her.  The second part of her work was a rendition of the film “flesh and the devil” cutting articular scenes and putting them together to explore the films original source. By placing these two worked together but giving her own thoughts on the film she recreated an old historic film into a new piece of art through technology and this is something I can relate too.

The event was hard for me to understand from my lack of knowledge of the DESMA world.  However what I found interesting was how technology and art were incorporated together to make a statement. I really enjoyed attending this event because it definitely took me out of my comfort zone and allowed me to do something I would not have done otherwise.

Sources:

Commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:UCLA_Franklin_D._Murphy_Sculpture_Garden_picture_4.jpg. 

“Flesh and the Devil (1926).” IMDb, IMDb.com, www.imdb.com/title/tt0016884/

“Graduate Studies.” UCLA Department of Art, art.ucla.edu/graduate/index.html.

maps.ucla.edu/campus/.

“UCLA Design Media Arts / Calendar.” UCLA Design Media Arts Full, dma.ucla.edu/events/calendar/?ID.

Photos of the event were taken on my iPhone.