Mitchel Kofer

Mitchel Kofer is one of those guys that just that just does not hold back how ridiculous he is. His life consists of TV, mountain biking, golf, tennis, and taking photos with his friend Bobby. He's what you call a loner. His favorite thing to do is taking photos, although he has no interest in photography and he likes to fill his digital camera with relatively the same shot.

He lives in Ames, Iowa where he studies Sociology at Iowa State University. He moved to Iowa after high school to get away from the standards of Southern California where he was considered an outcast. Leaving his family, he found one trustworthy friend and a spare room with a family he found online.

Mitchel works at the local Best Buy, where he recently has been promoted to assistant supervisor of the appliance department. His achieved top sales for the month in July for selling the most refrigerators. He enjoys his job most for the discounts on DVDs and video games.

If you ever run in to Mitchel Kofer you should definitely try to start conversation with him... you'll understand then.

Find Mitchel Kofer on Facebook!

Culture Jamming

The Simpsons Banksy Intro HD (ESPAÑOL LATINO)

Sniping and Subvertising

"Using the streamline sign language of advertising in a kind of reverse penetration."

The most interesting form of street art is by far "sniping" in my opinion. The illegal wheatpasting and graffiti done with a purpose to catch attention, controversy and propose the underlying truth behind much of our advertising, politics and culture. Marc Dery, in his article, "Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing and Sniping in the Empire of Signs," describes this as a "formidable weapon" often used by activists and social extremists to create an in your face message that really gets the point across.

One of the most famous artist with this style of tactics is of course Banksy. Banksy creates funny, inspirational, and controversial stenciling in tremendous detail and intricacy. Banksy is now working on a multitude of platforms, his debut independent film, "Exit Through the Giftshop," sold out box offices and with his most recent output, an intro scene of The Simpsons, Banksy brings forth Chinese labor conditions and child labor standards.

Plaid Chance System

STEPS

Make sure your Grid is showing (Command/apple key + apostrophe [ ' ] ) and your Guides (Command/apple key + semi-colon [ ; ] )
Make sure your lines snap to grid (View > Snap to Grid)

Need 1 Quarter, dime, nickel, and penny.

1.  Pick 4 colors and draw them out of a hat to assign them for each coin.

2.  Vertical lines: flip the coin and place a mark if it lands heads... do this 20 times.

3.  Horizontal lines: flip the coin and place a mark if it lands tails... do this 20 times.

4.  Group the finished set for the coin. (Command/apple key + G) and set to the side.

~ repeat steps 2 & 3 for each coin (remember to change colors corresponding to coin).

5.  Create the pattern.
          change the grid from 4 to 32 spacing (Illustrator > Preferences > Guides & Grid > Subdivisions=32)
          now to place them on top of each other.
          space them away from each other one square to the right and one square down for each coin to create the plaid. (reference mine)

6. Save file (remember to rename) and then SAVE FOR WEB AND DEVICES (JPEG)

Plaid chance piece by Colton Long.

 

Colton Long's Project

Instructions:
1) buy a disposable camera
2) From 11am to 8pm locate the horizon (or where buildings, trees, etc meet sky) and take a picture every hour on the hour no matter where you are or what you are doing.

3) develop your 10 photos
4) attach you pictures together in order (from 11am to 8pm) by the horizon line so that there is one continuous thread connecting the pictures 

Extended Body

Recent body modification and medical advances have led to permanent contact lenses that can be embedded into the eye. Taking this idea and running with it, the exploration of computer based systems also embedded into the eye. Memory storage is the final frontier for the human body. The memory storage systems of the brain are incomparable to the technology we now have in electronics. Thought and memory storage with loss prevention could store accurate information giving humans ultimate potential for connectivity, media entertainment and knowledge.
Contact lens surgery

John Cage

The Prepared Piano & Chance Systems

John Cage - Prepared Piano

I found Cage to be most interesting in how he would explore life with such question. He would question himself first about how he feels about a given subject or art piece and ask why he feels this way. He questions the social structures we inherit from our culture and reshapes his conceptions of thought, thinking, and liking.
 ______________________________________
"Why do I dislike this?"
                                                                             

His artwork is built a lot through chance systems. In where the artist inputs their ideas and the outcome is predetermined through a random data system. This creates a final product that is void of human interruption for creative aesthetics. He spans his work through many forms of media: film, music, sound, and dance. My favorite of his pieces is the prepared piano, in which he manipulates the sounds the piano strings create through placing objects like screws in specific locations. The video like below is an example of John Cages prepared piano work.

 Prepared Piano - John Cage - Sonata V

Google Earth Tour

Using Google Earth movie maker and Adobe After Effects, I created a spacial mapping of significant places in my life and information of activity at these locations. I chose three locations to explore: San Francisco-CA, June Lake-CA, and El Sabino, Guanajuato-Mexico. These are all locations in which I have either lived or spent a large amount of time in. The first location is San Francisco, I have been living in for four years. The Mission District is where we stop and where I've been living for over three years now and I couldn't imagine living in any other area of the city. The second location is June Lake, California. This was the vacation spot for my family my whole life up until 2008 when my parents bought a coffee shop in town named Trout Town Joe. Since then, I travel up there as much as I can (about 2-4 times a year) to work at the cafe, snowboard, and spend time with my parents. The final destination of the video travels to Mexico in the small town of El Sabino in the state of Guanajuato. One of my good friends from high school has a family house out here where we spent the Summer of 2009. Learning the culture, familiarizing with the Spanish language, and traveling around Mexico became one of the most amazing experiences I could ever have. This video looks at a virtual mapping of space, location, and distance in which we invest our time and lives.

Google Earth Tour

Evert Schut

Evert Schut studies the art of satellite photography. Hes come up with his own terminology for the field. Hes from the Netherlands and hes fascinated by our planet and revealing its secrets

Artist Bio:
I'm a biologist/ environmental expert bij education and trade, but an artist at heart. I've been painting since I was young. Now my work is starting to sell I'm spending more and more time painting. I share a studio with a couple of my painter friends in Culemborg. Our work is shown regularly in one of the local galaries. Until I discovered Google Earth and it's potential for new art forms I painted landscapes with a tendency towards abstraction. You can get an idea of my other paintings at the Yessy site where my paintings are on sale (see links). Eef is short for Evert my first name, and its the name I use to sign my Google Earth paintings.


Nick Leahy

 

Nick Leahy uses satellite photos from Google Earth to paint his pieces.

Here are his artist statements for the artwork above:

PHYSICAL MAPS OF SOUTH EAST QUEENSLAND  (2007 - 2008)
South East Queensland is a region of scenic beauty with numerous mountain ranges along part of the Great Dividing Range and within close proximity to the coastline.  The natural contours of these physical maps create patterns that illustrate the beautiful landscape of the hinterland.
AERIAL LANDSCAPES OF SOUTH EAST QUEENSLAND  (2008)
The Darling Downs of South East Queensland represent the typical farming lifestyle of Queensland.  The patchwork of fields from this district viewed from the air create abstract patterns with solid shapes and vivid lines.  This fusion between maps and traditional landscape painting can also be illustrated through the 3 dimensional tones and shadows of mountains, for example, Mt Barney and Mt Haldon.