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THEY SAID IT • ■ “Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see.” > PAUL KLEE SWISS PAINTER Visual artists incorporate new technologies into the creative process By MARIA CHARLES THE GAMECOCK Self-taught artist Fred Smith once said, “It’s gotta be in you to do it.” Retired from lumberjacking at the age of 65, Smith began to make life-size sculptural figures of cowboys, miners, Indians and soldiers. Using cement and glass among other materials, Smith created more than 100 figures. His creations expressed his patriotism and his reflections on culture. The Wisconsin Concrete Park houses his works. k Proving that art is about expression, Smith constructed his pieces to show that art isn’t necessarily conventional, and that it is the artist’s need to represent his or her ideas and feelings that drives creation. It is not, and perhaps never has been, a clearly defined medium. The field of art is constantly changing, surprising and reinventing itself. Today, digital technology allows artists to manipulate photographs and add post-production effects in films. The computer has emerged as its own artistic medium as well, USC assistant art professor Don Barth said. Computer-driven installation art, net art and software art have implemented themselves in this field. Barth, who teaches Web development, fixed media development and interface design, uses computer media to create his own works of art. As a graduate student he trademarked the term “artborg” in his thesis. “The computer is at this point the complete symbiotic relationship of artist and the machine,” he explained. He uses his computer to create virtual interactive landscapes that use quick time technology to capture panoramic images. Audio and video are embedded in these works as the viewer navigates through the panorama. “The machine I make my art on is the machine I have to display my art on. You need technology to engage in the art,” Barth said. Programs like Macromedia Director, Adobe After Effects, Dreamweaver and Panoweaver complete his media tool kit. Barth uses the software “to stitch the panoramas together” and to edit the video included in the work. But while Barth relies on his computer to build and display his art, “People thought that photography would replace painting and that television would be the end of film and radio and that never happened.” ' « DON BARTH use ASSISTANT ART PROFESSOR .— * ,*T * ' fljp# he thinks that to assume that new technology will completely replace other forms of an is a naive viewpoint. “To me, computer media now is really utilizing all art mediums that came before it and to me that is • historically what an mediums do. People thought that photography would replace painting and that television would be the end of film and radio and that never happened,” Barth said. In his classes students are using technology and the principles of design to create an. The majority, Barth said, will utilize the media in business and industry settings, while the others will use it for personal anistic expression. “The classes are ver||Pfagmatic and applicable to curcentjjnedia use,” Barth said. Computer and other form* of art media are still developing, though Second-year media arts student Austin 1 aicicfi iw a tuutcmuuuu m imit. ^ He thinks “the quality ot digital imaging is slowly reaching that of photo chemical.” Using digital technology has made it much easier and far less expensive to create films, according to Paterek. “Artists have always taken new technology, techniques and phenomena and integrated it into their artistic expression, whether it was the advent of the printing press, oil painting or inexpensive portable video equipment,” Barth said. He believes the future of art lies not in the media and tools used to create art, but rather in the artist and what he or she has to say, and that the journey of discovery is one of art’s most redeeming qualities. “It is important just to be moved by art and have art in your life,” he said. Comments on this story? E-mail gamecockfeatures@gwm.sc.edu * 'mggm IWIIliWlHli PHOTO SPECIAL TO THE GAMECOCK Fred Smith’s sculpture of the Statue of Liberty stands in the Wisconsin Concrete Garden with his other pieces of art. Jason Alexander plays a sports nut By FRAZIER MOORE THE ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW YORK — On “Listen Up,” Jason Alexander plays a sitcom version of real-life TV sports talk host and newspaper columnist Tony Kornheiser. His character, Tony Kleinman, is a #>u. sports fanatic. 7 Before taking the role, was he familiar with Kornheiser? “No, not at all,” the actor admitted. “I really follow sports very minimally.” Maybe that’s why they call it acting. . Of course, Alexander gor famous acting the part of hothead single guy George Costanza on “Seinfeld.” But on “Listen Up” (airing Monday at 8:30 p.m. EST on CBS), he’s a family man with a knowing wife (Wendy Makkena) and two precocious teenage kids (Daniella Mortet and Will Rothhaar). Malcolm-Jamal Warner plays sidekick on his talk show, “Shut Up and Listen.” Remove the laugh track, and Tony • Kleinman seems all too similar to Tony Kornheiser, a Washington Post and ESPN fixture whom Alexander dutifully researched before filming began. W™1 “I read his columns, watched his show. A funny man! I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I enjoyed the hell out of him.” “Listen Up” is Alexander’s second try at a sitcom comeback. Three years after the groundbreaking “Seinfeld” ended, he landed on ABC in 2001 playing a self-help guru on the eponymous “Bob Patterson.” It quickly flopped. “I was always interested in trying again, because 1 do like doing a sitcom,” said Alexander. Doing his new sitcoms he is borrowing from his past as George. But it’s an early phase of the evolution process, “in the same way that I was doing a blatant Woody Allen impression when I started playing George — until I really understood that he was (' Seinfeld’ co-creator) Larry David’s alter ego, and the character could take on his own life. Tony Kleinman is in the nascent stage of becoming someone who isn’t George " Astute “Listen Up” viewers can already detect a softening of Tony’s behavior from his cartoonish excess in the pilot episode. “I look forward to growth in this character, of finding something uniquely different from where I started,” Alexander said. “If you have the luxury of time, something really fresh and interesting can develop.” He notes that Kleinman is closer than Costanza to who he really is. “I was never George,” says Alexander. “I never had friendships like his. I never dated; I met (wife) Daena when I was 19.” He has two sons. “Now I can go to work and offer suggestions to a writer: ‘A teenage boy wouldn’t do that.’ This is a world that I understand a little better, and that’s kind of neat.” Not that anyone would confuse the actor with any of the sitcom characters he’s playedt “The truth is: The real me is pretty shy, sober and serious about stuff,” Alexander says. “I don’t have the sort of ego that makes me prone to those kind of outbursts. To do that, you have to feel, at least in the moment, INCREDIBLY right” — he is revving into moderate George-mode — “and to look at the world and go, ‘YOU are wrong, and not only are you WRONG, you’re INSANE, and the madness ha&to END. And I’m here to END it!’ “I usually see the gray of Jason Alexander takes real-life sports columnist Tony Kornheiser to the small screen in ‘Listen Up.’ everything,” he sighed, “so it’s-hard for me in real life to make that kind of bold stand. But it’s fun to play those guys!” An uncertain starter, “Seinfeld” hit its stride with “The Contest” (which in November- 1992 unveiled a new meaning for “master of his domain”), said Alexander. “But, not to be coy about it, we never truly either felt or expressed among each other any acknowledgment of the full impact the show was having.” Alexander doesn’t count on starring in another series that will rise to “Seinfeld’s” stratospheric heights. That’s fine. At 45, he saf4 he embodies a more mature approach to success. “True happiness occupies a very even, middle keel,” he declared. “That’s my experience of this show: even, constant joy and rewards. It will never bum as bright as the one that came before it, and there was a time when I would have said, ‘Oh, that’s disappointing to me.’ Now I go, ‘That’s real to me, and just fine.’ “But it will be arguably less fine to people who haven’t made that journey with me,” he hastens to add, and its lukewarm ratings thus far (“Listen Up” is ranked 31st in viewers) may bear him out. “For the people who hold on to ‘Seinfeld’ and George, they may want to live those highs that ‘Seinfeld’ gjive them every week — and the subtle joys of this show will probably elude them. WUSC flashes back to the ’80s By JULIA SELLERS THE GAMECOCK If you’ve been, missing those synth pop beats because you wore out your single of “Tainted Love,” pop your collar and perfect your Flock of Seagulls hairstyle because you are in luck. WUSC is taking campus back 20 years to the decade during which most of us were born — the 1980s for its fall fund-raiser this weekend. “We’ve had a successful Beatles marathon before, so we were going to do a Rolling Stones weekend,” said Marti Hause, WUSC public affairs director. Hause said the Rolling Stones weekend votes tied with having an ’80s weekend, so the staff chose to do ‘80s weekend instead. ’80s weekend unofficially started Thursday night at the Art Bar with ‘80s karaoke, Hause said, but the official kickoff beings today on Greene Street. WUSC DJ’s will be in front of the Russell House from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. with free pizza, cranking out the tunes. Tonight WUSC will take the party to New Brookland Tavern, where the bands Bullet Train to Vegas; Beat Junction Project; Madison Fair; Verona; and The Heist and the Accomplice are scheduled to take the stage. Following the bands’ performances will be an ’80s Dance Party hosted by Sean Rayford. “I’m most excited to see Bullet Train to Vegas,” Hause said. “I’ve never seen them before, but they are supposed to be good (live).” * Throughout the weekend, the station will break their usual no-top 40s format, taking requests for all ’80s hits, from Michael Jackson to The Cure. DJs will also do specialty shows to highlight their favorite genres from the decade, ranging from college rock to indie post punk industrial to movie music. Hour-long shows spotlighting different bands such as Queen and The Smiths will also be played. Hause said even though the station will play hits of the ’80s, regular listeners can expect to hear the same under-the-radar music the station usually features, only this time is will be from a different decade. WUSC will top off the weekend Saturday with its first ever vinyl. There will be about 3,000 pieces of vinyl and more than 200 CDs available. For $10, patrons will receive a tote bag in which to cram as much music as will fit. The tote bag can hold about 20 pieces of vinyl, which means people can walk away with their favorite finds for 50 cents each. Hause said the vinyl collection includes Top 40, jazz, hip-hop and njore, while many of the CDs contain tunes the station can no longer play because they have hit the Top 40 charts. Hause promised that music in the vinyl fair is not all obscure. Bands such as The Smashing Pumpkins and Barenaked Ladies have been thrown into the mix. The vinyl fair will be held on the third floor of the Russell House in room 322 from 1 to 6 p.m. For more information, visit http://wusc.sc.edu. Proceeds from the fund-raiser will be used for future projects and for updating station equipment to provide the best radio has to offer for its listeners. So, if you are dying to experience the ’80s again — or missed them the first time around — tune into WUSC this weekend. _S_JL Comments on this stoiy? 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