AltheaThauberger

After viewing Althea's presentation, I was slightly surprised by what the class disscussion had to say. It seemed a lot of people were slightly discontent with the answers she gave and her overall presentation. As a former art sutdent I have trained my self to be really objective and to take everything in. Perhaps I was being a little too objective with her presentation. As discussed in out groups, I agreed that she dodged a lot of the questions and would not answer them thuroughly. The main aspect that bothered me was how she would not fully explain her motivation and intent with her work. It seemed to me that she was challenging us all to come up with our own intentions for the works. On one hand, I think this is great that she allows her viewers to interpret the piece and come up with ideas of her intent. But on the other hand I feel that any artist or film maker could put out work without any idea of what it is trying to communicate and say here "interpret". A work that I realy thought was awesome was her last one shown entitled, "Northern". I thought the camera work was really amazing and the whole look of the piece was beautiful. Her choice of location was really unique and once the audience knows that it was quite far from any real town, a bit of isolation comes through. It almost seems as if the people are stranded with no hope untill the helicopter arrives.

In the article "Althea thauberger: Experimentialism is Dead. Long Live the Internet" author Emily Vey Duke states, "She uses characters as a vehicle of emtional identification." I found this quote to be really true to Althea's work. In pieces such as "Songstress" and "A Memory Lasts Forever" the characters use songs as a way of communicatiing their emotions. Especially in "Songstress" Althea chose particular songs and put themin a certain order so that she could direct how the audience would feel throughout the piece.