maiafletcher

[maiafletcher]

A strong role model is someone who inspires others to step up and use their initiative. Get the ball rolling by being an example of innovation, show people that it’s possible to try something new and succeed. If you lead the way with courage and confidence, others will follow in your footsteps. Before you know it, the status quo will be a thing of the past...

Continue on How to Challenge the Status Quo as a Leader

Banner photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán from Pexels (edited in BeFunky)

[maiafletcher]

College can be stressful, and it is important for students to take time out for themselves. Exercise is a great option for this and can help reduce stress. Incorporating regular exercise into your student lifestyle will make you healthier, these simple home exercises are sure to get you feeling fitter and more relaxed no matter how busy the schedule...

More Simple Exercises For Busy Students

Photo by  Andrea Piacquadio for Pexels

[maiafletcher]

Employees who are often doing repetitive and boring work will feel demoralised and undervalued. So, it’s important to provide opportunities for employees to do engaging and meaningful work. Be supportive and encourage your employees...

More Ways to Earn Employee Loyalty and Reduce Attrition

Photo by: Fauxels in Pexels (edited in BeFunky)

[maiafletcher]

Mariko Mori – Three Decades of Sculptures

FG

The daughter of an art historian mother and an inventor father, Mariko Mori was born in Tokyo, Japan, in the year 1967, to a wealthy family. Before pursuing her career in Art, Mori studied fashion design at Bunka Fashion College during the late 1980s while working as a fashion model. Graduating from the Chelsea College of Art and Design, Mori then participated in the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program. Her artwork continues to develop over her career of over three decades.

Mariko Mori’s early work in the 1990s, such as Play With Me and Subway, features herself as a sci-fi heroine amongst the metropolitan. Wearing icy, metallic colours and hard materials, Mori depicts someone who doesn’t belong. These arts explored different constructed identities. Her later works start to become more interactive and involve the incorporation of religious iconography.

Pure Land, a 1998 photography installation, captures a timeless setting. Mariko Mori’s imaginative reinterpretation is a photographic counterpart of a 3D video installation, set within glass. It depicts a serene female figure, dressed in pink robes and floating above a lotus in a warm landscape. The colours orange, yellow and pink mirror those of a sunset and allows the viewer to experience a moment of tranquillity.

Enlightenment Capsule, like Pure Land, features a lotus. Symbolising purity and rebirth into paradise, this sculptural installation uses a space-age capsule to showcase a lotus blossom made of acrylic, intersecting elements of tradition and the future. Sparkling in the sunlight, the artist’s rainbow flower illuminates, making the viewer feel trapped in two different times.

Mori then began to build backgrounds to give the viewer their own transcendental experience in Dream Temple. This was an iconic moment in the artist’s career as she departed from her conventional use of her own image in her artwork. The installation is immersive and allows the viewer to physically enter a reconstructed Japanese temple, observing a large projector on a domed ceiling.

In 2003, Mori created Oneness, a group of six pastel-coloured alien sculptures made from soft, skin-like material. With large, pointed heads and delicate bodies, they hold each other’s hands in a circle, lighting up at the sensation of a human’s touch. As the name suggests, the sculpture symbolises togetherness. Mori has said ‘the idea of Oneness is that even though your self is in a body, when you look at the bigger scale, I believe every living thing, including the galaxy, the planet and tiny particles, are all connected. We are all together and we all sustain each other. That theme is very important to me’. The installation represents letting outsiders in by finding commonalities.

As the recipient of numerous awards including the Menzioni d’Onore in 1997 and the 8th Annual Award for Promising Artist and Scholar in 2001, Mori’s critical reception has been predominantly positive. She is said to encourage the audience to reflect on our relationship with technology. Over the past three decades, she has been steadfast in combining Eastern mythology with Western culture, reality with fantasy, and human with technology. Mori has also been compared with American artist Cindy Sherman, for using her own face as the crux of different images and roles in her artworks.

Best known for her work in sculpture, Japanese artist Mariko Mori explores surreal or science-fiction-related objects and imagery. A combination of nature, ancient culture and technology has been moulded into her artwork and makes up the core of her 30-plus year career. Today, you can find Mori’s works in renowned museums around the world including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. You can read more about Mariko Mori’s work here.

Image Credits:  Monica Kaneko via Flickr - Licensed: (CC BY-SA 2.0)

[maiafletcher]

Finding inner peace as a writer in this fast-paced world can be difficult. Whether it be work, bills, or the kids, there’s always something on your mind.  As a writer, there are certain measures you should take to find internal peace. Read on to find out more about five simple ways to do so...

More Simple Ways to Find Inner Peace as a Writer

Photo by: Bekir Donmez on Unsplash (edited in BeFunky)

[maiafletcher]

It’s not always easy to get in touch with nature, especially when you have a busy schedule. That’s why these tips will help bring nature to you. Being around nature will make you feel better and will help you reduce stress and improve concentration. What are you waiting for? It’s time to bring nature indoors...

More Creative Ways to Bring Nature Indoors

Photo by Edan Cohen on Unsplash

[maiafletcher]

Travelling to a place you’ve only ever seen on television or on the big screen can be seriously exciting. The world is full of wonderful places to visit, and travelling is especially enjoyable when it involves visiting a site you’ve always found fascinating. Whether you indulge your inner child by visiting an area made famous for its appearance on TV or in movies, why not try the following ideas...

More Popular Destinations For Movie and TV Buffs

Photo by Amanda Kerr on Unsplash (edited in BeFunky)

[maiafletcher]

4 Lessons To Learn From Tony Oursler’s Art

Tony Oursler is an American multimedia and installation artist.

But Oursler is no ordinary artist.

He’s not a conventional sculptor or painter. In fact, his art consists of using videotape, installations, projections and even collaborations with other artists.

Oursler’s artistic career began as a painter. His great-aunt taught him to paint before he enrolled in the California Institute of the Arts.  Believing he wanted to learn how to paint ‘the right way’, he quickly discovered that there is no right way when making art.

He began experimenting at CalArts by designing sets, painting them, then videotaping with a 10-year old fixed Portapak camera. Pioneering the way for performance pieces and installations using video art, Oursler began to specialise in hallucinatory dramatics and extreme formal experimentation by utilising animation, montage and live-action pieces.

Oursler designs his artwork to intentionally immerse his viewers in a surreal environment drenched in deep cultural meaning to unconsciously force them to question their reality.

From The Outside Looking In

Ousler’s 2017 show, Unidentified, left visitors feeling as though they were eavesdropping or intruding.

His display consisted of objects, sound, projections, painted pictures, and flat-screen monitors. He had objects functioning as screens, video images on the LED monitors freezing, and occasionally - all the viewer would notice, was silence.

Disembodied voices spoke through the work, requiring focus and concentration to decipher the ramblings. Visitors often felt that characters in one work were communicating with characters in another. Or were they?

The more visitors attempted to understand and involve themselves in the artwork, the more distant and alienated they felt.

Oursler’s intent was for his viewers to question what they were seeing, hearing and feeling.

Questioning Our Humanity

Oursler’s fully immersive experiences use technologies that are reminiscent of Victorian light shows and camera obscura, through to today’s technological age using ever-evolving multimedia. This can take the form of figurative puppets, celestial talking machines and cacophonous environments.

In his 2018 show, Tear of The Cloud, at Riverside Park in New York City, he dramatically metamorphosed the 69th Street Transfer Bridge Gantry, the Hudson River and the surrounding environment through superimposed digital projections while enveloping viewers in an eerie soundscape.

His exhibition encouraged the viewer to question modern technologies such as social media bots, artificial intelligence, facial recognition while alluding to our technological past - where it all started.

While Oursler is careful not to push his own AI opinions, he wanted viewers to recognise the changes to human identity with the evolution of technology.

Holding On to The Past

Oursler collaborated with David Bowie in 2013 for his 66th birthday on “Where Are We Now?”. Through Bowie’s vision, Oursler created a music video about Bowie’s time living in Berlin in the late 70s. The set was designed using pieces Oursler had used in 1997, for Bowie’s 50th birthday celebrations at Madison Square Garden.

While it was Bowie’s idea, he felt his theme of looking back, abandoning things, and moving forward was perfect for a collaboration with Oursler and his style of art.

Question Your Reality

Oursler uses different languages and a kind of “frankensteinism” that distorts and isolates parts of the human body to breakdown our views on aesthetic culture.

Using his own introspection and psychological research, he focuses on the darker side of civil issues, such as addictions, sex, violence, pollution, consumerism, our relationship with the media, mental illness, and pop culture. He creates grotesque, freakish-looking and anthropomorphic images that mix irony and emotional tension to leave viewers stunned and astonished.

Tony Oursler enjoys a collaborative relationship with his viewers. His attraction to the opposing worlds of science and spiritualism have led him to explore all kinds of occult and mystical phenomena in his artwork. His multi-faceted approach to art compels his audience to question their own beliefs through their interpretation of his works.

[maiafletcher]

The way we treat our environment has huge consequences for the future of our planet. It affects everything from human health to the well-being of our wildlife. We can all do our part in protecting the Earth we live on. If we all make an effort to become more environmentally conscious, we can make the world a better place...

More Reasons Why We Should Take Care of The Environment

Photo by Ampersand Creative Co. on Unsplash

[maiafletcher]

When it comes to adventure travel, spain has it all. The natural beauty of this country in western europe provides the perfect backdrop for a range of exciting outdoor activities.No matter where you go in spain, you’re bound to find an activity that you love, from the most adrenaline-pumping adventures to more relaxing experiences...

More Great Outdoor Adventures in Spain

Photo by Reiseuhu on Unsplash (edited in BeFunky)

[maiafletcher]

Arthritis is a condition characterized by joint pain. You may have heard of arthritis affecting your friends and family, but dogs — especially overweight dogs — are more prone to arthritis, too.  According to studies, obesity is a leading cause of arthritis in dogs...

More on Fat Dogs: More Dogs Suffer Arthritis Due to Weight Gain

Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash (edited in BeFunky)

[maiafletcher]

Every parent is familiar with the horror of finding their kids somewhere they shouldn’t be, or with something in their hand they shouldn’t have. One of the easiest ways to avoid situations like these is to kid-proof your house as best as you can. Here are some tips on how to make your home safer for your kids, organised by room...

Continue on How to Make Your Home Safer for Kids

Banner photo by Allen Taylor on Unsplash (edited in BeFunky)

[maiafletcher]

Decorating a new home can be a challenging task, particularly if you have a large space or are on a budget.  However, it is thoroughly rewarding when you’re able to enjoy the fruits of your labor. You don’t have be creative to beautifully decorate your space.  A few simple tricks here and there is more than enough to create a space that is unique to your personality...

More Home Decorating Tips with Furniture

Photo by Hutomo Abrianto on Unsplash

[maiafletcher]

Each choice for coastal home cladding has its advantages and disadvantages. When choosing the right cladding for your coastal home, you not only need to think about weather resistance to water, heat and wind. It is also important to consider erosion from the salt in seawater...

More on Why Your Coastal Home Needs the Right Cladding

Photo by Jasper Boer on Unsplash (edited in BeFunky)

[maiafletcher]

If you’re getting married, you’re probably living together or planning on it. Make sure you’re on the same page about where you’re going to settle, and how you’re going to pay for it.If there is a big disparity between your earnings, consider contributing to housing costs on a proportional basis...

More on Top Money Questions to ask your Partner

Photo by Ehud Neuhaus on Unsplash (edited on BeFunky)

[maiafletcher]

Each successive generation is faced with unique conditions that influence how they interact with the world. The world of sports is no exception. Millennials might seem difficult to understand at times, but ultimately, they are people like anybody else. In spite of their challenges, Millennials show just as much athletic potential as previous generations...

More in Coaching Millennial Athletes

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash (edited on BeFunky)

[maiafletcher]

There are so many unique ways that you can get the name of your brand around the town. It can be hard to choose advertising campaigns that are right for your business and brand. You want advertising that is as effective as it is unique. Check out these 5 unique ways to get your brand noticed...

More Ways to Get Your Brand Noticed

Photo by Tim Bennett on Unsplash (edited on BeFunky)