here is the original piece and the video of The Scream by Edvard Munch

Bill Viola

Bill Viola is internationally recognized as one of today's most successful video artists, he was born on 1951 and he grew up in queens, new york. He has been a very important part of the development of video as an official medium and he has helped expand its scope in areas such as technology, content etc. He has been creating videos for over 35 years, hes done things like videotapes, architectural video installations, sound environment etc. and they are shown in galleries all over the world. His concentration is very dynamic he focuses on universal things such as birth, death, and the unfolding of consciousness, he also creates work that reflect both western and eastern cultures.
The work i selected by him is called sweet light and it starts off with just a taping of flyings on a surface then he zooms out to show that they are on a windowsill in a room. He then pans around the room till a man shows up on a chair drinking something and he seems to be working and is frustrated. The next scene is of a rolled up piece of paper the man just threw and a bug crawls out of it and in the background a figure appears. The scene then changes all of a sudden and we are now circling a dinner table with a candle in the middle and for the rest of the video its just a bunch of moving lights then a man in white walks up. I actually hated this piece at first but now that its over i think its genius, i believe that it represents the 3 universal themes that i mentioned about earlier. The closeup on the flies was birth, then the zooming out and panning of the room is unfolding of consciousness and the white lights and man in white is death. I also believe that the dinner table was the connections we make through life which coincides with the unfolding of consciousness.

Matthew Barney

Matthew Barney was born on March 25, 1967 in san fransisco, california, he is a contemporary artist. Barney works in many mediums such as film, video, installations, sculpture, photography, drawing and performance art although he works in so many medium he has classified himself as a sculptor. Barney's best known work is the film series The Cremaster cycle, it had a very high budget by art film standards. Barney included many celebrities such as Norman Mailer, Ursula Andress, and Richarch Serra and he seems to have been able to live up to the expectations he had been given by the funders.
From the trailer is saw of the entire cycle i can say that i really like every piece of work that hes done in it, i love how creative the trailer is and although i haven't been able to find the actual videos i can honestly say i can't wait to see them if i do find them. The work that i selected to describe by Barney is Cremaster 1, it is a musical that was performed in bronco stadium in boise, idaho. In this there are 2 goodyear blimps above the arena and 4 air hostesses tend to each blimp and in the middle of each cabin is a white clothed table and its decorated by abstract sculptures from Vaseline and surrounded by clusters of grapes (green in one and purple in the other). The url for the cremaster cycle is http://www.cremaster.net/crem1.htm.

Pipilotti Rist

Elisabeth Charlotte Rist, who was nicknamed Pipilotti, was born in 1962 in Grabs, Sankt Gallen, Switzerland. Rist studied at the institute of applied arts in Vienna till 1986 and she later studied video at the schol of desing in basel,m switzerland. She first appeared in venice biennial, where she was awareded a prize. From 1988 to 1994 she was in a band called Les Reines Prochaines.
The piece i selected was Ever is Over All which she created in 1992, in this piece Rist, as a young woman walkes down the street in slow motion smashing the windows in parked cars with a hammer in the shape of a tropical flower. I chose this video because of the message she seems to be conveying, which i believe is that although women can be beautiful like a flower they can also be tough like a hammer. I don't actually like this piece but i believe that it is the best piece that ive looked at by her.

first flipbook

This is the first video of my flipbook ill have to upload the second one in a couple ours cause my camera ran out of battery but it will be up soon.

alex bag

Alex Bag is a female performance artist, she recieved her bfa from cooper union in new york. She has been in plenty of exibitions but she also launched her own exhibition in new york, new york. It was called the "fall 95" at the 303 gallery. Her video features many things from an SVA student talking about her career to two sweet young boys. She has recieved 3 grants in and performed in 4 performances and shes made 9 video performances
It has been really hard to find her works to critique and i haven't even really found any good biographies or descriptions of her works but i did find this site, http://www.elizabethdeegallery.com/artist/bag/bag02.html, and what i see in them seem so weird and unusual that the actually videos seem to have an obligation to be interesting.

Vito Acconci

Vito Acconci was born in 1940 in the Bronx, NY and his family of italian descent. When he was 13 or 14, he started writing poetry and short stories and he would pass them around to his family members to read. He later abandoned poetry because he thought it had too many restrictions so he changed over to performance arts which he thought was more free of boundaries, his performance arts eventually shocked and absorbed its audience. He was against any emotion in his particular art form so he used monotone vocals, he felt emotion was too general a feeling to express in art. Vito Acconci in my opinion is kind of messed up, in his works of art he sometimes massacred his own body he would pull on his breasts in order to copy female breasts or sit in garbage, naked and dress up his penis in doll cloths. He eventually left performance art and involved the public in it like wielding cars together or inviting people to sit outside.
I watched two of his works one was a woman in a box and her legs were tied up and i wasn't really sure what was going on but i think i heard her say "i can't see you and your speaking softly" or something like that. I don't really like his works mostly because i don't understand it but also because i don't like that he doesn't involve emotion in his works, something i believe is a crucial part to any work of art.
The youtube irl for this work is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHlKT8y8RQM