The main concept behind the art exhibition entitled “Second Lives; Remixing the Ordinary” is the idea of giving items that have become either useless or obsolete in some way a new chance at “life”, however I believe there is a some what hidden meaning to the term second life as pertains to this case. I believe that becoming part of the art piece the object takes on a second function, completely different to the role it may have held in its previous life and becomes a part within a whole rather than serving a purpose on its own which was the case for most of the items on display, for example as the clothes pins would have previously done. Basically what these pieces of art disclose to me is the idea that without the pieces, however seemingly useless as they may have been on their own, the whole would not exist.

One of the pieces that caught my attention, as I mentioned before was “Santa Fe” by Karyl Sisson which is a bowl like shape made entirely from putting clothes pins together with wire. It was interesting to see something made from smaller objects that one would usually never chose to make something from come together so seamlessly to form another item and also that the ending product had little to no relation to what was used to put it together. Although in some cases , as with “The Sound Wave” by Jean Shin for instance the ending product although a whole new form, played on the smaller items that were placed together and formed something different but in the same time related to the smaller pieces of the puzzle.

Conversely, the other piece that made use of old vinyl records to make something else, entitled “My Back Pages” by Paul Villinski uses them with no relation to what a record is known for, music, even though the butterflies do emerge from a record player, I am not sure of the relation between them and music unless the artist was comparing the ability that music has to waft over air to that of a butterfly. None the less the piece was beautifully done and quite eye catching and as I mentioned before, in this case the second life seems to have little to no similarities to the “job” the records performed, rather they were used to form something new.

Another piece that spoke to me was the piece by Doh-Ho Suh called “Metal jacket” which formed a jacket that reminded me of a samurai’s jacket from metal dog tags of U.S soldiers. It struck me because in my mind I connected the two on the level that in their “first” lives the dog tags were the identification of the soldiers but also in their “second” lives they seemed to do the same, however for a different kind of soldier from another country. So it was almost like they served the same purpose but in a different way.

I believe that although, in our assignment print out, it was said that this exhibition has nothing to do with animation directly, that the concept of the part and its relation to the whole does in fact have a lot to do with this class. The fact is if you do not formulate a good foundation for something chances are it will eventually fall apart at the seams. Therefore, it is my firm opinion that, the little parts that you piece together to form something are just as important, if not more fundamental, than the ending result.