The Unraveled Web

Degree 4.1a: Eric Johanni

Degree 5.1a2 Prosecutor-to-be Shannon Johanni

noreply@blogger.com (Carren) — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 16:43:00 +0000

Contrary to popular fiction (Liar, Liar, anyone?), lawyers are not all scum bags, some of them help defend the rights of the poor instead of negotiating mergers and buyouts.

Shannon Johanni, Eric's wife, is one such person. Like others in this blog, she began far from her chosen profession--as an engineering student at the University of Colorado at Denver. Though Calculus and Physics didn't phase her, she says it "bored me to tears."A Sociology class steered her in the right direction. She finished with a degree in Sociology and Women's Studies.

She also finished a master's degree in Public Administration there. She moved to Tucson right after for her brother, who needed a bone marrow transplant and someone to take care of him during his recovery period.

Then, she found herself back in Colorado and spent the next 2 years working as a victim's advocate in a shelter. "It was a lot of hard work with not a lot of pay, but I'd rather be happy than have $100,000" she said. 40 hours of work was not uncommon in her office.

As a legal advocate at the District Attorney's office, Shannon came face to face with more cases involving women. 80% of the cases of violent crime were domestic, Shannon shares. It's a statistic that is both worrisome in this day and age of empowerment. Along the way, she met and married Eric in 2005.

While she found her passion for justice, she realized being an advocate was not enough. "Working with the law, I saw a clear power differential," she said. As a victim's advocate, she would never have the legal right to stand with the victim and argue the case. Shannon shared her frustration at knowing the law, but being helpless to help her client argue their case. It was the same situation at the prosecutor's office, "The prosecutor makes the decision on all the cases. It was never my decision. It was a very disempowering position."

Being a woman who knew her own mind, she began applying for law school and eventually got into Syracuse University's College of Law in the same year, Eric, her husband did. Together, they embarked on a new city and a new direction in both their careers.

She shared that, for now, her sights are set on being a prosecutor. Some law students might prefer the cushy job in a firm, but Shannon is different. "I have a little bit of righteous indignation," she shares ruefully, "[Prosecution] not something you do not because of money or fame. It's about holding people accountable for their wrongdoing and making sure people are protected."

I don't know about you, but I'd like to have someone like that on my side.

Shannon is a strong woman unafraid to speak her mind--even when it comes to her husband's art. "That's the benefit of marriage," she says, "I can tell him, 'I don't see the value in this' without having to compromise our relationship."

"It's a pain in the a**," she says frankly of Eric's formula, "I'd be up studying at midnight and [Eric] would still need his picture taken that day. I didn't sign up for this project." Though she quickly adds, "I trust him to have his purpose--I'm just not getting out of bed to take his photo."

Connecting the Dots:

Degree 5.1b2 Doctoral student Carolyn Davis

noreply@blogger.com (Carren) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:19:00 +0000

I have guilty pleasures and one of them is definitely reality TV--or "reality" TV, I should say. I love parking myself in front of the boob tube to see Project Runway, America's Next Top Model, even Beauty and the Geek. I didn't quite get into Survivor or Amazing Race, but you know what I mean. If you're anything like me, then you probably have your own reality TV list.

What makes them so fascinating? That's the question Carolyn Davis asked herself. That's also the question that led her to the doctoral program at Syracuse University. From a glitzy-sounding life in Manhattan as publicist for such companies as MGM and Fox Searchlight, sh hied herself to Syracuse University to do research on reality TV.

She loves the genre so much, she's writing her dissertation on it."It's such a format for the age," says Carolyn, a gregarious, fast-talking hyperactive young woman, as she goes on about this medium viewers often take for granted.

While we're all glued to our shows, Carolyn says that not even the definition of reality TV is fixed. As Joanne also writes in her article for the Denver Post, reality TV isn't as real as audiences might think it is. "When is manufactured reality simply showbiz as usual?"

If even mass communication theorists don't have a definition for reality TV, how can we differentiate it from the rest of the packaged 1-hour shows we watch? Carolyn offers one question to ask. "To what extent do the characters exhibit agency within the narrative"

Unlike other shows where actors are told what to do and even how to do it, reality TV stars are usually given the setup, but not much else is staged. Of course, there are story editors and post-production editing, but whatever is captured on film really did happen. That's fodder for us to think about while still enjoying our own dose of "reality" each week.

Connecting the Dots:

Degree 4.1b: Ann Hirsch

Degree 4.1a: Eric Johanni

Photo from: Flat Rock, NZ

Degree 5.1a1 Installation artist Olivia Robinson

noreply@blogger.com (Carren) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:40:00 +0000

What keeps us separated from one another? After more than 2,000 years in existence, huge leaps in technology, the advancement of civil rights, and the feminist movement there is still something (or things) that keep us apart.

I wrote about this a few years ago for a Philippine broadsheet and years later I meet Olivia Robinson, an assistant professor for the Fiber/Material studies program at Syracuse University. She's wondering the exact thing--and her work is an outgrowth of it.

At a young woman living in Ba

ltimore, Olivia recalls creating a managing festival with friend Ben Lozada. "I wanted to be able to interact with people I felt segregated from," said Olivia. She says, there was a high degree of segregation in her Baltimore neighborhood. "The more I got into it, the more I felt the power structures that keep us separated from each other."

Today, she's still exploring the same theme of connection and, conversely, separation with work that spans from historical to modern-day whimsical.

Past Present

In Spectres of Liberty, Olivia and two collaborators, Dara Greenwald and Josh MacPhee, resurrect the Liberty Street Church in Troy, New York, an important stop in the Underground Railroad. With just $600 and 2 years of research, they created a 1:1 scale model out of construction grid and packing tape. Though the model itself is simple, Olivia says up to 10 people were needed to put it up. "It's like a sail basically. People had to wrangle it."

The inflatable building was a proxy for the real thing. At night, the inflatable church became an immersive screen projecting text from "An Address to the Slaves of United States of America" by Rev. Henry Highland Garnet, floating hauntingly around the walls. Instead of the sad parking lot that it is now, the community gained a chance to get inside a space and contemplate what happened there more than 100 years ago.

Sweating it out

Olivia also investigates the transformation of labor into product with her upcoming Salt Market project. Olivia creates a one-stop shop of a caravan that produces salt from human sweat and (if you wish to buy) sells "products" with salt. How would you like to buy popcorn with salt from this stand? Any takers? Olivia's concept is jarring, as it should be. How she'll execute it, we'll have to find out this September 2010 when she begins the caravan with a Syracuse stop. Details to follow.

Find out more about the Salt Market project on Olivia Robinson's site.

If you missed the Troy presentation, the collaborators will take the Spectres of Liberty project to yet another Underground Railroad stop, Syracuse this May 17 to June 4. Additional details here. Watch a documentation video here.

Connecting the Dots:

Photos courtesy of: Olivia Robinson and Spectres of Liberty

Degree 5.1b1 Printmaker Karen Lederer

noreply@blogger.com (Carren) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 00:49:00 +0000

Foreclosure series, activity books

Foreclosure. The word itself is grim, implying somber tones of black and gray. But that's not what we get from printmaker Karen Lederer.

Karen is Ann's college friend from Washington University in St. Louis. After finishing her Bachelor's in Fine Arts, she hied of to Italy making use of her minor in Italian.

She settled in Brooklyn after and now assists contemporary artist Tara Donovan. After her day job is done, she finds time to work on her own pieces, the most recent of which is her activity books.

Unlike what we remember, Karen's activity workbooks aren't just for children. She binds thick, candy-colored paper and emblazons them with the word "Foreclosure." Though tackling an emotionally fraught subject, Karen's color palette mutes the stigma of her topic. Her use of images culled from a vintage children's coloring books also help numb the trauma.

On one workbook, she juxtaposes a print of a house on bright blue paper with the body of young lady as if sneaking away. Is this the average American trying to get away from their mortgage? Set in pink paper, a gun's outline on the lower left figures as prominently as the house on the upper right on another workbook, implying a strange sort of glee mixed with desperation.

Inside, she thoughtfully created small games, similar to a child's workbook, in the hopes of helping others through this tough period. "It gives people a chance to reflect on the issue and interact with it," says Karen.

Though dealing with a contemporary issue, Karen's workbooks evoke a certain sense of nostalgia, almost like illustrations of Tom Sawyer do. It seems in her world even the sad take on a certain lightheartedness--perhaps that's exactly what we need to get through this.

Keep up with Karen on her website.

Connecting the Dots:

Degree 4.1b: Ann Hirsch

Degree 4.1b Performance artist Ann Hirsch

noreply@blogger.com (Carren) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:01:00 +0000

Darcy has complicated things for me but in a good way. Instead of giving me just one recommendation, she has given me two: Eric and Ann. So, as you can see from my post titles, we're definitely seeing some branching out. It doesn't end there either, stay tuned as the web starts to get complicated.

Last week, I met Eric and Ann on the same day. From Eric's deeply personal, yet still masked self-portraits, we move to Ann, who is the star of her own show on YouTube and a cast member of VH1 and 51 Minds' Frank the Entertainer...In a basement affair.

Looks can be deceiving with Ann. Soft-spoken and sporting innocently childish bangs, she seems quite content cutting videos in front of a computer screen (perhaps to meet the requirements of her Transmedia Master's Degree at Syracuse University).

Screenshot of Scandalishious.com (beware the website music)

Online however, she is Caroline or Scandalishious, a Youtube "cewebrity," as she terms it. While most videos are lucky enough to generate hundreds of views, hers has gotten views by the thousands. Her alter ego, Caroline, is cheeky, flouncy and risque--all the things that make her an instant character. With awkward dance moves, grainy voice and an admittedly large nose, she entices viewers to keep coming back for more.

Sadly, since the airing of Frank the Entertainer, her cover is blown and the channel is decommissioned. Here's her rendition of Ain't No Mountain by Tammi Turrel and Marvin Gaye.

More than just sensual fun, Ann's work revolves on femininity and mass media. "How has women's imagery changing in a place where they're able to broadcast their own images?" Ann asks. The answer isn't quite as positive as women would like to think.

Ann has found that even with the power to produce their own images, women keep falling for the same stereotypes given to them. "It becomes a cycle of imitation where women watch, internalize that [stereotypical] behavior and reproduces it," says Ann.

Though it was Ann's over the top character performance that got her cast in Frank the Entertainer. Ann also found that it's a lot harder to pretend 24/7. Instead, she incorporates bits of her real self with a little projected self, a personality she dubs "my reality TV self."

"No one is ever the same on camera as they are off camera," says Ann. Yes, I believe her. Are the guidos and guidettes of Jersey Shore really that eccentric? Perhaps a little, but not as much as we'd all like to think.

Ann confesses, it's increasingly difficult to put herself on camera because of her increasing popularity. She's no longer the anonymous Caroline we first met on YouTube. Though she'll still explore that territory of women's imagery, she's pondering letting the light shine on someone else.

Read more about Ann's reality TV experience on Bust Magazine
See Caroline in action on YouTube and on Scandalishious (beware the website music though, I can't find the "off" button)

Connecting the Dots:

Degree 4.1a Printmaker Eric Johanni

noreply@blogger.com (Carren) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:23:00 +0000

Eric was my TA in Art History. Who knew that while he was attending class, he was also going through the process of his latest artwork? More on that later.

Eric Johanni is Master's of Fine Arts candidate at Syracuse University and his work explores the relationship of fabric and memory. “We all have fabric. It’s such an essential component of life, from the time you’re born until the time you’re put into the ground, you’re wrapped in fabric. Whether you’re poor or wealthy, you still have fabric.”

Beginnings

Eric's exploration of fabric began with his mother. In Fabricated Memories, he takes his deceased mother's clothing and turns it into pillows with the image of his family printed in the front. It was an emotionally charged project, says Eric. Creating Fabricated Memories meant taking his mother's clothing and physically taking them apart. “When you cut the fabric, there’s no return.” The result is a poignant look at a family's past.

Fabricated Memories by Eric Johanni. Pieces of his mother's clothing on the back with family photos on the front.

In his December project, he turns the tables around by assigning a fabric to a memory. For this, Eric digs into his own wardrobe and creates art out of it. Each day of December, Eric wears a combination of clothing out of which a 4-inch swatch of cloth is cut out and the pieces of clothing subsequently repaired.

The December Project. Swatches of cloth tell when this shirt was worn, with what other items of clothing.

“Every day for the month of December has a unique fabric and thread to mark that day.” These square pieces of cloth are then sewn together to form a calendar, not filled with dates and days, but swatches of memory. He then simulates these swatches in white muslin and creates minimalist portraits of each day.

The December Project. Eric simulates the pattern of his clothing on white muslin to make this minimalist portrait to remember the day he wore this combination.

Current explorations

But Eric doesn't stop there. Here's where we get to the project I was talking about. In an outlandish move that only artists can think of, Eric decided to take himself and his wardrobe and turn it into a work of art. Dubbed, The Formula, Eric asks, "Can I make each day unique through my clothing?"

The goal? To wear something different everyday for an entire year. Eric created a formula for his work, assigning a point system to help him dress each day. The lower body represents the month and the upper body represents the day and the date. Each day he takes a photo and journals his experience.

“It altered the way I look at clothing and fabric. It became a luxury to pick your own clothes everyday,” says Eric. Though still three months away from his end date, Eric has come to realize that his project isn't turning out the way he thought it would. “It’s completely contradictory to what the original intent was (to make each day unique) in that my wardrobe, because of the formula has become so homogenized that I actually remember fewer dates, than if I were selecting.”

Now, when Eric walks into a store or looks at his wardrobe, he doesn't see white shirts and blue jeans, he sees his formula--but he also sees the small memories that are associated with the fabric he wears day in and out.

Little stains become remnants of past laundering mistakes or perhaps even first date wine stains. “What I started looking at is not that it’s just one event, but the fact that they live a life in themselves. As they’re worn, they’re like a canvas. They keep acquiring these marks and each mark tells a little bit more about the story.” A story each of us lives everyday.

Retired shirts. Eric prints the formula on his shirt and retires them from service. He shows these pieces of fabric as canvases on which memories are made.

See more of Eric at www.ejohanni.com.

To learn more about his formula, go to ejohanni.blogspot.com

Connecting the Dots:

6-degree story: Real vs. Facebook friends

noreply@blogger.com (Carren) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 22:57:00 +0000

Isn't it strange that your Facebook friends will most likely not be a your real friends? Think about it. Out of the hundreds of Facebook friends you have, how many would you say you share a meaningful relationship with? Chances are, not that many.

Oxford professor of evolutionary anthropology Robin Dunbar's expanded research on the human cortex (the part that helps you manage friendships) proves that even online friendships have its limits. His research found that the brain "can only handle a maximum capacity of roughly 150 ongoing, fully interactive friendships."

So, now what to do with our thousands of "friends?" I say still keep in touch. You never know when your online and offline paths will cross.

6-degree story: Human web on the web

noreply@blogger.com (Carren) — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 20:44:00 +0000

If anyone can be found within 6 degrees of separation, then a June 2007 paper by Eric Horvitz of Microsoft Research and Jure Leskovec of Carnegie Mellon University proves the same dynamic goes for the web.

Using 30 billion conversations with 240 million people participating in Microsoft Instant Messenger last June 2006, they found the average distance from one user to another was 6.6.

So, who have you wanted to get to, but never thought you could? Perhaps it's not such a large leap after all.

via Associated Content

Degree 3.1 Conceptual Artist Darcy Van Buskirk

noreply@blogger.com (Carren) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 19:36:00 +0000

Like the air we breathe, language is another thing so prevalent that it's easy to forget. In fact, everyone probably does, except perhaps for an artist like Darcy, recommended by Robert.

Darcy is a second year sculpture student at Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts. Her work stems from her fascinations with language--how it becomes a way of exchanging ideas and how it affects the way we organize our lives.

The sign

Last spring break, she traveled to Berlin's Skuplturenpark, a land formerly divided by the Berlin Wall. There, she put up four 5-foot tall letters: M, I, N and E. By adding wheels to the M and E, she allowed viewers to manipulate the installation to form another word, MEIN, a German word meaning "my."

"It was my first time out of the country and I really wasn’t sure as an American what I had authority to speak on," said Darcy of her politically charged site. Instead, she concentrated on the language difference. "Language is a way for people to not only communicate with one another. It’s an indication of how you think about the world."

MINE/MEIN, Germany 2009

MDF, wood, casters

5 feet tall, 15 feet wide

Photo courtesy of artist

The system

Language also subtly affects the way we think, just ask Stanford University scientist Lera Boroditsky.

"In thinking about language and organizational system in the very abstract sense, I thought about how we organize our physical surroundings is also an expression of our personal identity—who you are," said Darcy.

For two straight weeks in April 2009, she set about cataloging each and every one of her possessions, categorizing them by location. Using small color-coded stickers, she meticulously went through all of her belongings, labeling them and recording them in her notebook. Until now, months after she has stopped cataloging, colorful stickers line the books on her shelf and even the steering wheel of her car.

Cataloging Project, April 2009

Photo by: Carren Jao

So, while we gossip, text, Facebook, Twitter our friends, Darcy's work reminds us that language gives form to an idea, and that an idea can sometimes be the art.

Find more of Darcy at: http://darcyvanbuskirk.com/

Connecting the Dots:

Next up! Finally, a connection. I'll be interviewing Darcy's recommendation, who also happened to be my TA in Art History.

Degree 2.1: Sculptor Robert Wysocki

noreply@blogger.com (Carren) — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 16:15:00 +0000

When I met Robert, he had just finished playing with fire and ice. He showed me a video too--but more on that in about 3 months. Cliffhanger! Stay tuned!

Robert is a professor at Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts, but he is by no means purely an academic. His projects an incessant curiosity fascinated with the human and natural landscape. "I grew up on a farm and I could really identify with landscape," said Robert.

Human landscape

Robert makes a list of all the first times he's had in his life. In his First Time Project (FTP), he inventories the many firsts that led him to where he is now.

The project began during a low in Robert's life. "I was unemployed and living on a beach in LA. I asked myself, 'How did I get here?'" To answer this question, he listed all the firsts that he could remember from as far back as kindergarten. Though no longer in the same situation, he continues the tradition by updating the list once or twice a year.

The first time going to a hockey game.

The first time being propositioned by a friend of family's wife.

The first time not wanting to admit artist status.

Pivotal firsts are all laid out for any careful reader. He gives the words "read like an open book" new meaning.

P.S. I'm also told The Unraveled Web will be part of that list. First time in a social experiment, I see.

Nature

Robert is also landscape artist, but he's never picked up a brush. Using sand taken directly from the dunes and industrial floor fans, he makes way for Mother Nature's style.

Inspired by a shimmering Mojave desert, he bought sacks of sand and installed fans to shape it, but the experiment failed. "The Home Depot sand didn't know how to be a sand dune," explained Robert. The coarse, manufactured sand could not compare with the fine texture of naturally worn grains. So, Robert hauled sand from Las Vegas and let nature do the sculpting.

Over 12,000 pounds of sand and 42 fans were put in a room at Huntington Beach Art Center last year to create a mesmerizing and ever-changing landscape. Robert has done similar installations in Flight 19, Florida and Fringe Exhibitions, Los Angeles.

Connecting the Dots: