simple outlet for help with thesis proposal

Thesis help- this is an outline for a proposal


The work and the thesis do different things.
There are also different approaches:

A prospectus (in arts disciplines) states an idea for a creative work and predicts specific ways that it can be successful. To state the idea, make clear what skills you will use, how it will work, and what it will demonstrate or illuminate in dialog with other art work. To predict its success, articulate a need for the work, and your reasons for making it, drawing support from existing artwork, theory, and/or criticism. A good prospectus persuades an arts institution that it ought to present your work and support it financially.

FROM UCSC: LOTS MORE GOOD MATERIAL ABOUT THIS HERE INCLUDING A PROSPECTUS OUTLINE AND EXAMPLES

ESPECIALLY READ THIS: http://danm.ucsc.edu/web/resources/student/ThesisProspectusOutline/Samples#IIx2e.1x2e.x20.Statementx20.ofx20.broaderx20.aims

from OSU is this: A thesis is an extremely formulaic type of writing.Every thesis follows pretty much the same organizational structure.

There are four primary parts of every single thesis. They may vary a little as to how many chapters each part has, but every thesis has at least one chapter covering thesis four parts.

1. Introduction: Don’t mess around with it! The only purpose is to introduce the research. You will outline the problem you intend to investigate, state the aim of the research, limit the scope of the investigation, and provide an overview of what lies ahead. 3-5 pages is usually sufficient.
2. Background: The purpose is to position your research into the context of what has gone on before, what is currently taking place, and prove you know how research is generally conducted in this area. This is generally where your literature review goes. You might have chapters that cover the brief history of the topic area, current theory or practice, and/or results of any preliminary studies you may have carried out to help define your problem.
3. Your Own Work: This part is really comprised of two parts nearly always: Your methodology and your Data and Analysis. Your methodology is the design of research developed to test hypotheses or answer questions developed from the background section. Your Data & Analysis is just that, the data and results of your methodology.
4. Synthesis: This is your new contribution to the body of knowledge and is usually handled in two parts. This first part is a discussion that examines your work (part 3) in light of the background you presented (part 2). This may lead to the development of a new model or theory. The second part is a set of conclusions that should arise directly out of the discussion and and respond directly to the aim of the work stated in the Introduction (part 1)

Miniaturized Stories of Minimized Historical Events

Canadian artist TALWST is exhibiting his miniature dioramas at the Art Gallery of Mississauga in Ontario Canada. The gallery describes his work as "miniature dioramas (that) insert marginalize narratives from contemporary culture into the Western Art canon, creating prototypes for a responsive diversified and inclusive history." See his box dioramas at booooooom.com as well as the AGM's artist profile for further information.

I thought his work is interesting because it was in direct contrast to the "bad art" box that I made for class and has some direct correlations to the abyssal theory readings that Sarah has shared with me.

His work calls to light historical events that surround social issues of racism and oppression, events that present-day Western culture would rather forget, or sweep under the rug. This is a classic example of present day abyssal thinking theory where anything that is unwanted or culturally unpleasant to deal with is minimize, marginalized, and ultimately made invisible by the dominant cultural media and its cultural leaders.

  

Constructed from ornate jewelry boxes filled with hand-painted meticulously crafted scenes these pieces take on the role of artifact or cultural fetish in the way that they contain a history and story that can be closed and put away both physically and symbolically but also opened and revealed and put on display in a gallery or museum to provoke thought and conversations on the topics they address.

Society of Control

do we live in a society of control? I just watched Citizenfour last night and tried to soak in the numbers - the numbers of numbers collected, data stored, names and digits handled. the Bifo essay

here are some artworks that reflect on these questions. A video about Deleuze's concept.

here is another one: 

Society of Control. com 

http://societyofcontrol.com/index.htm

The WIND by Eija Liisa Ahtila

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd4V8wGGjp4

Grants for Artists

This should become a page of resources eventually, but here is a start.

Artist grants.
"Making art is expensive business, and working artists look for any financial help they can get. To supplement the costs of fabrication, art materials, studio space, and travel, one of the most popular sources of funds is fellowships and grants. For our ongoing series on resources for artists in these tough times, ARTINFO has researched the many funding options available in the United States, and compiled a handy guides of the ones that are within reach of the average artist.

As with residencies, which we covered in two parts (Part One and Part Two), we discovered that there are tiers to fellowships and grants, and not all are created equal. Some of the most prestigious and hefty prizes are the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, the MacArthur Fellowship, and the Larry Aldrich Foundation Award. Each come with big money grants — but they are also available by nomination only. When it comes to grant money that is attainable by open application, the pool is wide but the eligibility requirements also vary greatly — from awards for making comic books to small grants to publish limited editions of artist books written by women. The list below is a diverse and eclectic sampling of what is out there, but there's likely something in there for everybody."

LINK
Surdna Foundation Grants for socially engaged art

Paul Thek's Teaching notes

Paul Thek’s "Teaching Notes"

The following is a transcription of Harrell Fletcher's invaluable transcription of Paul Thek's "teaching notes," contained in Fletcher's booklet Thek's Teaching Notes. The notes were generated for a "4-D Sculpture" class at Cooper Union taught by Thek between 1978-1981 (a core class in Cooper Union's curriculum at the time, as Flectcher explains in his introduction). Fletcher's booklet, published at his request by Publication Studio for an event at the Whitney around the current Thek retrospective, comprises a transcription of the artist's notes, and responses generated by Fletcher's 2007 studio class at Cooper Union, which (for lack of a better term) reenacted the content of Thek's original class based on the notes. Being particularly interested in the teaching practices of artists and writers, I find Thek's notes extremely curious, both as a document of his teaching practice and inasmuch as they reflect his larger aesthetic concerns and processes. I also find attractive Thek's approach to art through questions and exercises, which may instigate a process of self-discovery, interrogation, and dialogue with others. Namely, one's students.

Paul Thek’s "teaching notes":

Name
Age
Birthdate
Place of birth
Position in family
Nationality
Religion
Education
Hobbies
Career plans
Parents’ education
Parents’ birthplace
Parents’ religion
Where do you live now? With whom? For how long?
What income do you have? From what source?
What property do you own?....

continued below

Dean & Britta (and Andy)

I thought this would be a good place to post this...
Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips created a soundtrack of new songs and covers to accompany Andy Warhol's "Screen Tests" shot at The Factory in the mid-1960s.

Archive Matta Clark

great website http://arttattler.com/archivemattaclark.html

Critical Intelligence in Art and Digital Media

Can digital art practice do more than propagate technical progress and provide affect stimulus in estheticized production-cycles? How can cultural intelligence work to provide an informational context
for others and apply technologies of the imagination to tell another story?

Konrad Becker
reposted from Nettime
(this is a draft posted on the list serve Nettime. Especially for Nick and Stacey and others working with dispersed social media/visualization tools-- what kinds of reflections can 

The creative imperative has become a dominant force. With culture as an economic engine in post-industrial societies, artistic practice diffuses into business practice and the realm of the Creative Industries. In the shift of the economic focus toward a dematerialized value creation, innovation cycles of planned obsolescence and estheticized experience design turn into standard market models.
In creative cities job profiles demand "creativity" for even the most mundane tasks. Dreams, of everyone being an artist, turn into nightmares of internalized gouvernmentality.

Just as Situationist tactics have been appropriated for advertisement, Tactical Media concepts of the 1990's are now Public Relations and viral marketing standards. Dissent is easily appropriated in the new
spirit of capitalism and todays critique is tomorrow's business. Creative Industry appropriations of estheticized boutique activism offer affective relief with a maximum of inconsequentiality. While
effective strategies of resistance and critical interventions need to
build on an understanding of the past, the change from disciplinarian
institutions to a society of control transformed the playing field.

In new control regimes the traditional disciplinarian modes of
preconfigured enforced categories and educational indoctrination
give way to the fluid mining of cognitive response and reaction
flows. Electronic networks and intelligent materials weave into the
fabric of social space and into infrastructures of urban places.
Embedded in ambient Big Data intelligence, proprietary protocols
and orchestrated devices exploit the individual. Density and speed
of digital networking veils paradoxical effects of increasing
fragmentation, segregation and asymmetric relations.

Not merely tickling cultural taste buds but providing a critical instance of reflective intellectual work, artists as agents of intelligence demystify the power of media over matter. New forms of collective practices that intervene in processes seem more interesting than past models of individual genius. A practice that offers a
critical technical intelligence and a critique of representation
by mapping the flows of ideas and power is necessarily based on
cooperation. Are there forms of cooperation outside a creative class
and a digital proletariat modeled on ecstatic internet bubbles?
What are models of critical artistic practice in a fluid field of
post-Fordism? What are potential roles of cultural agents in societies
saturated and structured by powerful communication technologies?

The Contingency of Illuminated Music

Some thoughts on Todd's sound/light interaction piece.

I documented this (poorly) on my phone:

The setup is simple enough: a single, bare lightbulb mounted to a stand, a flight box with a portable amp/speaker, a 1/4" cable, and an iPad. What belies this gear is an interaction between the digital and the analog, between sound and light, operated by hand and at the subject's discretion of position. And it is here that I think a very interesting intersection occurs.

Sound, generated by the iPad, operates the light, that fluctuates voltage based on the sounds volume. Pitch didn't seem to have an immediate effect since the light was varying in degrees of brightness, louder sounds made the light brighter, a lower volume sound was dimmer. In turn, the iPad's sound is affected by the light.

This is a convergence of light waves and sound waves. Sound waves, much longer and "slower" than shorter, much "faster" light waves, is a interesting example of the way in which these two properties or "states" can and do interact. While both can reflect, refract, be diffused and absorbed, light travels through a vacuum while sound requires a medium to emit through. In this piece, the interaction between both is brought to attention and they become dependent on one another.

How does this question musicianship? This is an "instrument" that can be played. The performer's proximity to the light, ad as it seemed from the demo performance, angle and direction of approach also seem to affect the sound output. These positions could be mapped and recreated, and performed according to a score, with the intent of creating a unique sonic and visual effect. With experiment and practice one could come up with an interactive light-and-sound instrument that, depending on the options with the audio software on the iPad, be almost limitless with possibilities.

What are some of the "dependencies" about this piece? The light depends on the sound for activation, but he sound is also dependent on the light as well. Are both balanced? Is there one quality that might have a value or advantage over the other? Which one starts it, or how is it started? Is there a "primer" of some kind like the bulb on your lawnmower engine that you push in order to prepare the engine for its first step of combustion.

A larger deployment? A field of these lights mounted with enough room to move between them, and a map or other process to follow to create a sound and light "symphony". Perhaps the lights are arranged in a matrix, so the performer could have better access to a field of lights that, for example, where of a different wattage or type than the others. I assume that a frosted 60w incandescent bulb would have a differet affect on a light sensor than a clear 200w lamp; or fluorescent or halogen or mercury vapor or any number of light-emitting bulb.

Could pitch be represented by color (like a multi-led)? I've been looking into LED and Arduino-controlled devices. The possibilities for multi-color LED are extensive. Does this iPad and software react differently to colored light? Part of a Net.Art project I'm working on this semester has to do with local weather data and the creation and composition of colors based on this changing data. How might Todd's piece behave if the light source was colored, or maybe always changing colors?

How does this piece intersect the analog with the digital? This is an excellent example of how the analog (light, sound) interact with the digital (processing of both of these signals). Like I've said it provides an intersection, a crossroads where the two media meet, and they then rely on eachother and constantly change based on the gesture of the performer. Even in this stage of its development, the possibilities for the use of a piece like this are clear and, happily, without definition.

Response To Nick's Work

This response is being posted on behalf of Ryan due to technical difficulties

The response to Instagram has been overwhelming not only on the consumer side but to the academic mind as well. It seems that I haven't had class this semester at some point in the hour we end up talking about Instagram. I believe this be for two reasons, one, the social network side of the app and two, the nostalgic filters and how they function in our current culture. For myself the interest the lies in the social networking aspect of Instagram. It's the ability to share ones thoughts and views through the use of images and apply a filter to either obscure it or heighten it. Slowly but surely more and more artists are using Instagram as a database in making art, whether its mixing a single image with multiple filters till the image is no more or appropriating images from Instagram by doing simple word searches. With regards to Nick's work he took an approach that I have yet to see when making art in the context of Instagram.

            When I first started looking at Nick's four images, all four images looked to be bad light leaks from the camera. The images where very small about the size of a medium format negative. Which is the actual size of an Instagram image. So at first I thought they were contact prints and it wasn't until Nick said they were from Instagram that I became more aware of the intent of the images. By looking at what was in front of me I would of never thought these images where from Instagram. They looked like photographs I use to take with my Holga camera with the mixture of whites and oranges in the images. Nick grouped his four images into two double sided glass frames with black edges, each frame had two images in it with the images stacked vertically upon one another. For myself framing the images this way treated the images like precious objects that are to viewed almost on a scientific level. What I mean by this, it reminds of going to museums and viewing the large butterfly’s that are collected for research. When I think of Instagram, I think of it as a large database of images of ones lives in images and don't think this type of framing works with images taken or made on Instagram.

             When thinking about Instagram and how it functions as an application on a smart phone I had to go back and read Lev Manovich “The Language of New Media” specifically chapter two. It deals not only with GUI (graphic user interface) but also the function of cut and paste. The filters in Instagram are really the same as the filters in Photoshop, click and paste. A person just doesn't have the options to get into the detail of the image but one can download or purchase filters for photoshop and those filters will work the same as in Instagram. Instagram's filters are a cut and paste function but where people come to a divide seems to be the labeling of the filters which goes into the nostalgic language of photography. To myself the labels are really nothing more than apart of GUI of Instagram. It's how the filters make the photo look and feel that draws my interest and how amateur photographers choose to use these filters.

            Ultimately I feel Instagram is about the continual building of a database of images that is taking place all the time and what we can draw from the images. In regards to Nicks work I think there have to be more images and what I mean more, is hundreds of images. This I feel would show the simplicity of the filter and how nostalgia can now be easily applied. Nick could keep the same basic image and simply remix it over and over but how those images would be displayed could be thousands of images laid upon the floor.