Your Favorite Artists

[Peter Deadpan]

Self-explanatory. Please explain why, and provide examples.

 

[Peter Deadpan]

Olafur Eliasson
I recently discovered him on the Abstract series on Netflix. I've never in my life been more inspired by an artist. I feel as if he gives my thoughts form. I really look up to him, which is refreshing and, as I mentioned, inspiring.
I look forward to exploring the world, life, and beyond more thoroughly, with more creative expression.

 

[á´…eparted]

I have many, and nearly all of them are musicians, but one of my most recent finds who is on my short list of favorite artists (I typically only find one of these folks every few years) is Holly Herndon, who is also the individual pictured in my current avatar. I discovered her around 8 months ago and am still as amazed as I was when I first listened. She is an experimental electronic artist born and raised in the heart of the bible belt in the US, and is currently based out or Berlin, Germany. She got her PhD in computer music composition from Stanford a few years ago.

As a musician she is hyper-conceptual. Nearly every sound in her music has been put there for a reason, and produced and mastered with a specific intent in mind. Something as simple as a click. She asks herself "what can represent this idea? How can I illustrate these ideals through sound?", and I find this not only results in her music having a truly original sound, but adds an incredible richness of depth and meaning to her work. She very much believes in the regard that we are responsible for creating our own meaning, and there are incredible ethics and power that retain within that that we must understand and approach mindfully if we are to impart progress on our world. While her first album (Movement) is somewhat sonically inaccessible in my opinion, her second album (Platform) welcomes a more dynamic sound and a powerful moral and political message surrounding the high power large corporate platforms (like Facebook) and government agencies (like the NSA) hold over the world, and the unethical ways they are and are seeking to operate in if they are to continue working in a non-human centered way and without checks are in their currently defacto-unregulated ways.

Her latest album though (PROTO) is perhaps the most powerful and beautiful in my opinion. Over the past several years her and her partner Matt Dryhurst (a philosopher and artist by profession) in collaboration with others have been working on creating an AI "baby" they have named spawn. This AI is being programmed to learn to speak, sing, and sing in natural response to external human input. Spawn is still under active development and is an intergral part of the album and she can be heard singing in every song, although you can't always tell when she is singing. It addresses the notion that AI and neural networks hold perhaps some of the most extremely potent technological power we have seen in generations, and while the potential it has to better our world and quality of life, if we do not address the ethics involved in this technology and develop it with a human prospective then it could cause immense human suffering. The AI is created by us, and for us, and should also be like us in the best ways that it can. There are other topics the album addresses too including climate change, and the budding and powerful work of the microbiome which in recent years we have discovered is far more complex and impactful than we ever considered.

That, and the work is just sonically and visually stunning and beautiful. She has been an immense source of inspiration and someone I look up to and aspire to follow as I work on developing my own music/program/patching skills that I started over a year ago. Don't take my word for it though, give a watch/listen (ideally with quality headphones).

Some more of her work:

 

[á´…eparted]

Olafur Eliasson
I recently discovered him on the Abstract series on Netflix. I've never in my life been more inspired by an artist. I feel as if he gives my thoughts form. I really look up to him, which is refreshing and, as I mentioned, inspiring.
I look forward to exploring the world, life, and beyond more thoroughly, with more creative expression.

This is really truly wonderful, and the exact sort of contemporary art that I value and cherish. The notion that we can't yet see everything is a powerful message to convey. We know so much about how the world and the universe and work works, but also startlingly little. It seems as if when we answer one question, two new ones appear to replace it. It's immensely terrifying and exciting at the same time. It is my belief that these discoveries should always be available to the world at large. In darkness is how these discoveries get used against our species.

 

[Peter Deadpan]

This is really truly wonderful, and the exact sort of contemporary art that I value and cherish. The notion that we can't yet see everything is a powerful message to convey. We know so much about how the world and the universe and work works, but also startlingly little. It seems as if when we answer one question, two new ones appear to replace it. It's immensely terrifying and exciting at the same time. It is my belief that these discoveries should always be available to the world at large. In darkness is how these discoveries get used against our species.

I have major issue with how man uses itself as a measure of everything. Man assumes that his knowledge is The Ultimate Knowledge, which is the peak of narcissism and foolishness. I mean... we already know what our limits are in terms of senses such as sight and sound... why the fuck would we assume that our perception elsewhere is the highest mark of ability and science?

But what do I know?

 

[á´…eparted]

I have major issue with how man uses itself as a measure of everything. Man assumes that his knowledge is The Ultimate Knowledge, which is the peak of narcissism and foolishness. I mean... we already know what our limits are in terms of senses such as sight and sound... why the fuck would we assume that our perception elsewhere is the highest mark of ability and science?

But what do I know?

One good thing is we have so many tools at our disposal that allow us to see and understand far beyond what our senses alone can detect. We see this in our every day life too. We only visually see a very small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, and over a hundred years ago we discovered for the first time that the light we see is not all the light there is. There is infrared, ultraviolet, radio, gamma, and many other forms of light that our bodies will never be able to detect directly. So, when we started to see signs that what we see is not all there is we developed tools that allowed us to see (even if we can't even see via some sort of processing).

We are on a continual hunt to discover more beyond what our senses and tools can see. We look to other creatures that can perceive data that we cannot, and we look to things that we currenltly cannot detect. One of the greatest tools we are almost ready to use that work towards this end is the James Webb space telescope. It will be the successor to Hubble, and it takes advantage of detecting light that we did not even know existed until a few hundred years ago (infrared). This will allow us to peek back in time further than we have before, and will almost certainly illuminate more into the time just after the big bang, as well as answer question on what dark matter and energy is (and isn't)- stuff that has been our ability to sense up until very recently.

Our failure will come not from assuming we know everything, but to stop searching all together.

 

[Peter Deadpan]

Chef Alex Atala

It's unfortunate that this video is of such poor quality because it's difficult to see that he presented the ants dusted in something that appeared to be gold, which is a lovely juxtaposition of his interpretation of how many cultures view eating insects.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Giorgio De Chirico

His paintings evoke eternity for me.

 

[Peter Deadpan]

Giorgio De Chirico

His paintings evoke eternity for me.

I like your reasoning.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I like your reasoning.

I wouldn't necessarily he's "the favorite", just one that I like, who I went with because I thought it was "somewhat" of a less obvious choice. I mean, Van Gogh and Monet have definitely done things I liked, but a lot of people would probably say the same thing. I realize he's not all that obscure, but I'm not sure how likely it would be that he would make it in a thread like this. I know some people find him unsettling and don't care for him, which I get somewhat, because there is a strong sense of isolation.

 

[Peter Deadpan]

I wouldn't necessarily he's "the favorite", just one that I like, who I went with because I thought it was "somewhat" of a less obvious choice. I mean, Van Gogh and Monet have definitely done things I liked, but a lot of people would probably say the same thing. I realize he's not all that obscure, but I'm not sure how likely it would be that he would make it in a thread like this. I know some people find him unsettling and don't care for him, which I get somewhat, because there is a strong sense of isolation.

I was being serious, in case it came across as sarcastic.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I was being serious, in case it came across as sarcastic.

Thanks! I wasn't entirely sure.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Hiroshige - Wikipedia

Incidentally he influenced late 19th century European artists like Van Gogh.

 

[The Cat]

Richard Upton Pickman

 

[Schrödinger's Name]

One artist is probably obvious; Chiara Bautista (practically all my previous avatars were her art). What I love about her art is that she first of all has a consistent style and characters that have a storyline. There are sometimes 'hidden' references to other older pieces of hers in her new pieces. She has a more 'sketchy' style of drawing (which I like). Though she also has more detailed/digital drawings.

The wolf and the girl with the bunny mask are one of the 'main' characters (it seems).

How *cough* relatable those 'conversations' are...

Other characters such as the dead birds and the girl(s) with antlers.

This one used to be the background picture on my old phone.

Dead crow guy and mermaids/sirens.

Snapshot of the siren and bunny girl storyline/interactions.

And the funky tiny bears. They are sassy/playful characters.

And of course, my all time favorite; the octopus girl. And I feel extremely stupid about this one. Despite using it as an avatar before- I didn't notice that the teabag was a reference to the wolf (teabag has a star and 'ears').

It's... right there...

Wolf posters in her cup- those, I luckily did notice. :')

The smoke bear- also referred to as 'ghosts of the past' (if I am correct).

Almost there (but not really)... Two examples of her digital art:

Her art can sometimes be is sad but despite that it always has some sort of comforting warmth to me. Anyway, I'll stop spamming her art and the 'introduction' nobody asked for. There are many characters and meanings left to explore (she's on Facebook).

I also wanted to discuss another artist but I'll leave that one for another day. The plan for tonight was to watch another episode of a my show. But I sort of happened to spend like... too much time on this post.

 

[Peter Deadpan]

Dead crow guy and mermaids/sirens.

I especially like the emotional tone of these.

 

[Peter Deadpan]

I'm not actually normally into art that feels delicate or soft, but Miles Johnston has such a gift when it comes to depicting such tender and wounded emotions that it's hard for me to look away. I really get a sense of who he is and where he goes when things get too painful to bear. He has a rather 9-ish feeling to me overall and there are themes of dissociation and an unclear or voided sense of self in many of his pieces, although I did not focus on that here because these are some of my personal favorites of his because they resonate a bit more with me. I could see him being potentially triple withdrawn... lots of 9 and 4 feelings all over the place.

Here is a description for the above piece:

 

[highlander]

Not sure if I have a favorite but I like a lot of Klimt's work

 

[Maou]

Zdzisław Beksiński

I like his paintings, as they remind me of some of my dreams.

 

[Abcdenfp]

Micheal Parkes