Danqing

about the reading:

This article’s main aim is to introduce how to write a art criticism, by means of classify different kinds of art criticism, reviewing the kinds of criticism’s history and giving examples.

about the art 21:
Tim Hawkinson
Reasonable random

Random does not mean unreasonable. In Tim Hawkinson’s work, this point is proved and strengthened.

‘emotor’

Facial expression is one of our communication tool, which responses to reacting or representing. We can detect one’s inner emotion through different facial expressions, for example: smiling refers happiness and appreciation, tear connects with sadness and isolation.

However, when I face to Tim’s work---Emotor, hardly can I define what kind of feeling or emotion the face is expressing. Many tiny fragments of one portray photo were connected by a sophistic machine which was controlled by a series random signal. The signal can change the face of the face and generate countless kinds of expression. In this work, the portray’s eyes, lip, nose and ears keep moving and transformation. Then many hybrid expressions cast a complex and conflict feeling in viewers’ minds. Such as, sometimes there is combination of laughing and tearing, sometimes the two eyeballs are looking at different directions.

Although, those artificial expression is random and difficult to understand. It is not to say they are unreasonable. In fact, human’s inner feeling is more complex than our imagination. Some feelings are easy to be represented, some are not. To some extent, when our inner struggle is too complex to express, we have no other choice but keep silent. However, in Tim’s work, this kind of feeling gets a opportunity to be released.

‘Drips’.

This art installation is composed by distorted water pipes and a machine which output random signal to control the water flowing in the pipes. In the ends of pipes, the drips fall down generating sound, which sounded like a jazz music. Judging from the volume of the sound, we can feel the distance of the sound recourse. It is a 3D music. So, here, the random signal did not create a random noise, instead a music with rhythm and melody attracted audiens.