DADA, EXPERIMENTAL ACTIONS, INTERMEDIA

People discovered their values are wrong when World War I happened. The immorality society was lost hope. Therefore a global movement has been appeared since some artists called for anti-nationalistic and international. The strong style is the combination of sense and non-sense. For example,  a poetry has different typefaces and sizes. The readers speak out on the basis of phonetics with different loudness and rhythm.

Painting or Performance?

Intermedia cannot classified the art work into any existing media. The new thing is to take different characteristic from different media and challenge the boundaries.

Modified ready-made objects and combined with other objects can be a new art work. This changes it function and change people's concept that usual things can be unusual.

Photo-montage gives new meanings from the new combination. Everything can change its meaning.The structure,dimensional, perspective etc are different in a work so to achieve the perfect states, technique is required. 

The central experience of Dada is to stimulate one's creative by the use of flexible chance which is the mixture of rational and non-rational and go against the conscious mind. Art is a meaningful platform for realizing the society and era.

Dada is internationalism, equal value of all materials , destroy traditional limitations and communicate with the audience.

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Experimental action is mainly separated to chance operations and open works.
The specific situation with unstable results is random and strong organisation.

1.Chance operations
Example:
freewriting
bulletism- shoot ink to the canvas and paint base on the ink
coulage- pour liquid material to cold water so that it will solidify
decalcomania- cover a paper on the wet paint
frottage- portray the trace and develop the work base on it
exquisite corpse- assemble many words and images
cut-up technique- cut some words from a text and rearrange to be a new text


It's the adventure with rule-based and game-like. The free association helps artists to dream without censorship. Although the composer has some planning, immediate action increases the possibilities of chance.


2.Open works
Performers have the strong role and also a lot of freedom has been given so they can decide what the works like. Even they the same score, 2 performances may not be recognized since the big different.

Walking in the Dreams

Date:18-6-2015  Venue:Hong Kong Heritage Museum  Exhibition: Walking in the Dreams

1.We first watch the 'On Air' done by Kingsley Ng on ground floor. It's about 'smog', some may be the pigment dissolved in water, some may be the dry ice's fog or candle's smoke. Their shape and color are always change so it is fancy. However, the soundtrack is actual which are the traffic sound, singing, pray, whisper etc. It's like a person who is being tempted by the fickle and colorful smog but the surrounding is preventing he/she to dream.


2.Then we went to the first floor as most of the works are being exhibited at there. Ordinary Cavemen's 'Real Estate' is a large project. Many big boxes composed his 'house' and a sky picture is fixed at the center which is ridiculous and crowded. He has ironically revealed the current situation in Hong Kong that almost everyone work hard everyday to pursue their dream home. Yet, what they gained finally is not their supposed before. The picture reminds us that enjoy life is more important than being a house slave.

3.Lighting artist Wong Chi-yung's 'A Half Remembered Dream' is located at the centre of exhibition area. The bundles of wood as the enclosure developed some room while the wood transmit some light out. The inside space is mysterious and become a contemplative room. We always trust the reality since the light and in fear of dark. However, we produce light in the dream by the use of feeling and memory. Thus dark night is not terrible on the contrary this is a chance to soothe and fulfill our mind and body.

4.So Yan-kei affected by the national history and religion created the 'Five-colored Droplet'. She reappeared her dream and try to interpret the meaning of colors connecting with her faith.

5.It is easy to influence people's sentiment by using music. Samson Yeung is interested in Robert Schumann's dream. On the basis of Song of Love, he has a new interpretation to emerge Schumann's dream and inner world.

6.Sara Tse's 'Flying'
Her ceramic kites are made by her old diaries and letters. The meaningful process is a farewell to the past and yet a reservation of memory. For fear of facing the burden, we escape. However, we can eliminate fear through art. Dream reminds us the memory which look like forgotten.

7.Tam Wai-ping's 'Dream no Dream'
A desk, a chair, a book, a window, this is a normal studio. When we continue to pace, another similar studio is in the room. There is a mirror between 2 studio formed the corridor. It is true that we usually cannot distinguish the reality because of the sophistication. Dream is a mirror and reflect our true thoughts. We have two worlds  to performed the conflict, weakness and darkness.

8.Kacey Wong's 'Unbroken Passage'
A motor bike is tying up by many ropes while the scene is still the endless tunnel. It is silence and quietness until i took up the phone, sound of the wind came out. I completely entered into Kacey's dream and feel the sense of helplessness. We have different limits in the society, those limitation like the ropes restrict our action though we want freedom. Although we may disappointed when we wake up, dream provided enough relaxation space in the lifelong trip.

9. Adrain Wong's 'Dream Choreography'
What animal we dreamed is always the sign of our mind which is the nature and power. Adrian interviewed some animal communicators and choreographed the meeting for animal. The secret message only can be understood from animals' stand. I took up the headphone and appreciated the video and installation performance.

10.Leung Mei-ping's 'Dont Blame the Moon'
A moon is on the wall and gradually change. The naive children are talking about their dream. Under the moon, many worn-out toys are on the floor. We have dream when we are small, but we lost since many reason such as money, power, reputation etc. Dream is not a mistake. On the contrary, it is expensive. We should offer an environment for them to fulfill but not to destroy.

11.Joey Leung drew what she dreamed in day dream. Perhaps what she drew are strange and creative, it subconsciously expressed the society and self-distortion.

Painting & Conceptual Art

Dada artist Marcel Duchamp thinks that modern painting is too retinal.However, 'eye candy' is not the way to please because thinking is more important in art.Conceptual art emphasizes on the instruction or the produce process of the works.

instruction works eg. 1 smoke painting
Light the cigarette and let the canvas dyed in the smoke.



instruction works eg. 2 record posters
Paste the posters in the city and leave them a week.Then take photos of all the copies and leave them again for a month. Take the photos of them and repeat the behavior until you are fulfilled the result. Make film about the process of  posters disappearing and string all the photos together.

instruction works eg. 3 A+B paintings
A part of painting has been cut out from A and then paste it on the exactly point on painting B. Line up 2 works and hang them adjacent.

Art work is not completed until people realize the meaning. Although many different ways to interpret, there are some understandings the painters may not know. Therefore, instruction paintings do not have the model answer, they depend on viewers' imagination.

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In the past, painting was limited as painter should consider a lot that which elements and ideas could not paint. However, the breakthrough is that painters gradually choose some object as a sign to represent.Hence they can imply much but say little. To avoid being weak in pointing the focus, painters should eliminate some reality and preoccupy the instinctual.

So how to start talking about a painting?
1.compare to our impression-find out the contradiction and observance.

2.distinguish the property of art works such as 'intermedia' or 'specific medium' in order to realize ideas that artists expect us to know

3.move on to the content- figurative? abstractive? intermediary?

4.what draw your quick attention? what you see is what you think.

5.if you are the artist, what comments would you make?

CUBISM & SURREALISM

CUBISM
Cubism is not tended to present what the things you have really seen. It has 5 characteristics which the paintings have sharp outlines, monochrome coloring, stronger sense of object and volume, inconsistent shading and geometric elements, that are very unlike impressionism.


Cubists like to use simple geometry to have the combination and rearrangement of body, breast, arms etc. Also, they prefer to display the volume and form by controlling the brightness of few colors. With the help of divergent perspective, the objects seem like closer to viewers and sometimes one art work may include several perspectives to cheat people's eyes. Therefore, some content are artificial and does not make sense. 


Then Picasso developed the negative space which is the room between bodies so that there is no clear boundaries in the painting.

Cubism  is like a language. The sign system may be strange but the flexibility created different transformation and meaning.



SURREALISM

Some said surrealism is another field for people to have their true thought which is without any control and common sense. 
Some said perhaps the fantasy and reality have no clear-cut. The unconscious area of mind makes impossible become possible.


No matter how they define, surrealists change people's way of thinking.
Things can be fragmented without logic. Object become ambiguous that you do not know how to state. Scale has been played thus the paintings let you discover the details that you may miss out before.

There are adequate space for mind and subconscious in surrealism.

IMPRESSIONISM

In the past, the art works are focused on the gradual change of colors in order to display volume. Although it is not true to present outdoor objects, both inside and outside targets are presented by using this technique. Apart from depiction, ancient statues study is another practice at that time.

for example, in the birth of venus, the lightest color indicated the relaxation and sleepy while deepened hair revealed the purity. everything is soft and harmonious without abruptness.

Works will be selected by the organization of Art to display in exhibition or salon if they are adapted to culture and met up academic standards.




However, art is diversified. many artists try to break through a barrier for the sake of developing their ideal which is belonging to their own style. In consequence, more than half of the 500 publication have been rejected by academy. Therefore government held another exhibition -the Salon des Refusé to reveal the rejected works.


Those outside the academy artists have established the company. They became independent and the avant-garde art is experimental and anti-popular thus it provides adequate room for artists to discuss,share and criticize. Impressionists are no longer concerned about studio lights, lines and perspective. Light and colors are the elements because they believed that color is the only demand to human eye（innocent eye）. Hence they like to replace lines with colors and there is no more fixed color of an object since the light changing may shift colors.


Because of misty objects' outline, viewers become the active thinkers to share thoughts in order to interpret the patterns of colored light.


Though impressionists were being criticized that their style is illogical and irregular, it cannot be denied that their unique point of view offer different perception for us to discover the beautiful things which people missed out in daily life. The contents are not limited anymore but we can appreciate the experience of city life in the brushwork.

 
Another breakthrough has been created by impressionists is that art become a performance. Classical painters tend to conceal the brushwork however they are strongly appeared in impressionism works.  Impressionists true to present the effects made during the creative process for the sake of letting viewers to realize it. This influences the art circles that art is not only the medium to express reality but also a way to reveal the world existing in ourselves.