On November 17th, 2013, my photography class and I took a trip to the Decordova Sculpture Park and Museum. We saw many amazing and inspiring artworks for various artists. However, there was one project that really caught my eye. "Scudder and Towers Down" created by Jonathan Calm, a local artist from New England, was a multimedia artwork that stood out the most to me. His multimedia piece consisted of picket signs, photographs, and videos. The purpose of his artwork was to tell the story of a housing project that was created for the urban poor in New Jersey. This housing project was meant to put an end to slums and create a central housing unit for the urban poor. However, with the attempt to end slums, it only created another problem. Putting only the urban poor in this housing unit only isolated them even more and created more violence and result in police brutality.
This artwork gives me a sense of anger, but also community and unity. It sends a message to all of society that we should all come together to help our community. This multimedia artwork consisted of a structure, photographs, and videos. The structures represent rectangle signs on wooden boards held on wooden planks, with different photographs of the building and anything that involved the construction of the building. The photographs spell out COMMUNITY which suggests that architects shouldn't have isolated only the urban poor in a separate building. The other photos consist of the architects and other important people involved with the building itself. Behind each picture, is the same picture but in a different saturation. This represents the variety of people in a community. There are three videos stacked on each other, each larger than the next, symbolizing a building. The three TVs are videos of the building under demolition than reverse. This shows the destruction and failure of the attempt to isolate a group of people.
There are multiple views of the many photo graphs. The photo graphs that spell COMMUNITY are shot from aerial views from a helicopter. The other photographs of the people are shot straight on from a regular point of view. Because there are no different point of views, it is clear what the focal point of each picture is. There is no sense of depth created in the bottom pictures, however there are large depths of field in the COMMUNITY pictures. There arent many leading lines in the photo graphs. Once again, the photographs are all simple and straight forward but the message is very complex. I feel that Jonathan Calm was able to create a complex, but simple multimedia.
Personally, I find this artwork very inspiring. The message Jonathan Calm is trying to send us is very clear. We can not isolate a social class into one building and expect them to be happy.
This artwork gives me a sense of anger, but also community and unity. It sends a message to all of society that we should all come together to help our community. This multimedia artwork consisted of a structure, photographs, and videos. The structures represent rectangle signs on wooden boards held on wooden planks, with different photographs of the building and anything that involved the construction of the building. The photographs spell out COMMUNITY which suggests that architects shouldn't have isolated only the urban poor in a separate building. The other photos consist of the architects and other important people involved with the building itself. Behind each picture, is the same picture but in a different saturation. This represents the variety of people in a community. There are three videos stacked on each other, each larger than the next, symbolizing a building. The three TVs are videos of the building under demolition than reverse. This shows the destruction and failure of the attempt to isolate a group of people.
There are multiple views of the many photo graphs. The photo graphs that spell COMMUNITY are shot from aerial views from a helicopter. The other photographs of the people are shot straight on from a regular point of view. Because there are no different point of views, it is clear what the focal point of each picture is. There is no sense of depth created in the bottom pictures, however there are large depths of field in the COMMUNITY pictures. There arent many leading lines in the photo graphs. Once again, the photographs are all simple and straight forward but the message is very complex. I feel that Jonathan Calm was able to create a complex, but simple multimedia.
Personally, I find this artwork very inspiring. The message Jonathan Calm is trying to send us is very clear. We can not isolate a social class into one building and expect them to be happy.