The Five Obstructions Review

After seeing the film, The Five Obstructions, I was left feeling a little disgusted. I felt that this film, created by Lars von Trier was born out of spite instead of artistic integrity. I think that this film would have been a creative and interesting piece if he had made it directly in response to the short film, The Perfect Human, like he said he had intended. This didn’t seem to be the case though. By the end of the movie, it seemed like von Trier was just playing games. He made his friend and notable director, Leth, the main actor and producer in the movie. By doing so, von Trier allowed himself to manipulate Leth into creating clips and scenes that he was completely uncomfortable with, such as filming in “the most miserable place on earth”, and creating a cartoon.
Leth went along with von Trier’s schemes because he actually believed in the integrity of the movie, and wanted it to turn out well. The viewer learns a lot about Leth through this process. We are allowed to see his outstanding creative thinking, and incredible ambition as he undertakes endeavors that would make many people squirm. Von Trier tries to put Leth out of his comfort zone during the entire movie so that the viewers can see another supposed side of him; but in doing this, we actually see von Trier’s “other side”. As he is trying to transform Leth, he is transforming himself, as the viewer sees not only who Leth is, but also who von Trier is.

The Human Condition: An Artwork From a Written Text

We also made a second piece of artwork which could be created in any type of media. I used acrylic paint to paint the background and a cut up red t-shirt.

The Human Condition: An Artwork From a Written Text

For this project, we recieved a written description of an artwork. We then had to translate it into an image using different typed of types of words and letting. I chose to make a stamp out of a rubber eraser. The stamped word is "Time". I also cut out letters from printed font on Adobe Illustrator and glued them over the stamped background.

Body Extension Update

My Body Extension fell apart during the critique. So these are the readjusted, final products.

Body Extension

The purpose of this project was to experiment with recycled materials in order to create an extension of the human body. I chose to create an extension of the hand for writing and drawing. I decided to create two tools. One tool allows you to write or draw a direct image with a pen. The attachment has a marker on the other end which creates an abstracted version of what you just wrote or drew. The second tool attempts to have the image drawn directly by your hand reproduced accurately. It was actually really cool to see how written words were turned into images, and how closely I could duplicate words or an image.