Sensory

     A week before Spring break, one of the art lectures that I have recently discovered relates to another artist that has her work involving social practice. Angie Ang, A time based media and New Media artist, has involved her work around the topic of social engaged art. Her artwork shows how engaging it is towards the audience of identity, as well as emphasizing her principles towards social justice, and other political spectrums within her art. I have asked her how long do projects like these take within her work, and her response was about six months. Within the time frame, she had to collaborate with other people of identity in order to make her artwork successful; these methods involve interviewing the participants as well as researching on the subject matter that relates to social justice. Within the timeframe, she made these methods possible in order to make her work successful; she backed up her work after gathering all the necessary sources she needed to implement the ideas to her artwork. 

       One collection of artworks that she has successfully made within these methods, is a collection of installations called This Land is My Land. These installations involves framed paintings, and within these paintings were American Flags that were used as canvases within her works. The material she has used involves electrical ink, and the electrical ink was black and was conductive in order to adapt to some of the interactive elements to her work. In order to adapt the electrical ink to her work, she had to surround the marked drawing with several stitches, and these several stitches were able to connect and conduct electricity while connecting to another source such as headphones. How the artwork becomes interactive at this point involves the audience touching the mark while plugging the headphones to the artwork; the voices within the artwork would represent a specific person talking while listening.

    The purpose of making these installations was to have the audience experience the user's point of view in their lives, and what it was like to be in their shoes. Some of the recorded voices within each of these acts would involve people of race, sex, gender, or any forms of identity. The media Angie Ang would select would include artists she would celebrate with as well. Another purpose of installing these artworks was to emphasize people's identity and their struggles within their lives; these influences from events such as protests and riots fuel their background as well as their history. The American Flag within the framed artworks would represent the people who are representing the country, whereas the symbols that were implanted within the flags would represent what kind of person the speaker is as well as their backstory. 

    Within Angie's work, she hopes to incorporate her work within her classes in order to foster more collaborators and listeners that can understand her purpose. The possibilities in incorporating these teachings within her classroom would be likely, and would be a great way to teach other students in colleges how art can have in depth meaning behind their works. Other than the works representing social justice, the installation could also show some aspects of electronic arts; the action of touching the art would be a sensory type of action the viewers can interact with as they would hear their voices within the headphones after touching the artwork. Artworks such as This Land is My Land would be great groundwork to start in introducing social justice artwork to other students.