Lesson 2: Traditional Techniques Applied to

Contemporary Arts Creation

In this lesson, we will learn that artists’ choice of material and the manner by which they use
these materials are at the heart of making art, and that these involve process and
transformation. For example, artists transform clay into pottery, as well as stone into a statue,
or bamboo into a nipa hut, and sound into music. Attention to mediums and techniques
involves all our senses (sensing), which enable us to understand or make sense of a work of art;
mediums and techniques are not neutral or incidental but are part of the meaning of the work.
They also determine, to a very large extent, the ways in which we experience and respond to
the artwork. In contemporary art, medium has become increasingly independent of
conventions; artists explore and invent new mediums and techniques, thereby expanding the
range of artistic resources.

Focus Group Discussion

In groups of 4-6 members, discuss the possibility of creating a new art festival for your
community. Consider the following quesitons:

● What will it be about?

● What medium, techniques, and practices will it use?
● Which places would you like to activate as a site of exhibitions and other related
activities? What are your considerations in making your selection? It can be in schools,
the market grounds, a historic house, or public part among others.

Draw a map of your festival ideas and exhibition-activity sites and present it in front of the
class.

What is medium?
Medium is defined as the material, or the substance out of which a work is made. Through
these materials, the artists express and communicate feelings and ideas.

The medium also defines the nature of the art form as follows:
The sculptor uses metal, wood, stone, clay, and glass. Sculptures fall within the category of
“three-dimensional” arts because they occupy space and have volume. Pottery is a form of
sculpture. Other examples are nudes or figures such as Guillermo Tolentino’s Oblation, ritual
objects such as bulul wood carvings in the Cordillera, or the santos or carvings of saints in
Christian churches.

The architect uses wood, bamboo, bricks, stone, concrete and various building materials.
Buildings are also called “three-dimensional” arts because like sculpture, they occupy space and
have volume. However, architecture has the added element of time, since we move into the
structures.

The painter uses pigments (e.g., watercolor, oil, tempera, textile paint, acrylic, ink, etc.) on a
usually flat ground (wood, canvas, paper, stone wall such as in cave paintings).

The printmaker uses ink printed or transferred on a surface (wood, metal plates, or silk screen)
that is in keeping with a duplicating or reproducing process. Prints and paintings are further
classified as “two-dimensional” arts, because they include the surface or ground on which
coloring substances are applied. However, while paintings are unique and one-of-a kind, prints
can be reproduced in several predetermined editions.

The musician uses sound and instruments (including the human voice). A T’boli chanter sings
creation stories in a way that is different from a classical singer or pop music singer influenced
by the Western music scale.

The dancer uses the body and its movements. Dance is often accompanied by music, but there
are dances that do not rely on musical accompaniment to be realized. Dance can tell stories,
but at other times, they convey abstract ideas that do not rely on a narrative.

The theatre artist integrates all the arts and uses the stage, production design, performance
elements, and script to enable the visual, musical, dance and other aspects to come together as
a whole work.

The photographer and filmmaker use the camera to record the outside world. The filmmaker
uses the cinematographic camera to record and put together production design, sound
engineering, performance, and screenplay. In digital photography and film, the images can be
assimilated into the computer, thus eliminating the need for celluloid or negatives, processing
chemicals, or print.

The writer of a novel, poetry, nonfiction and fiction uses words.

The designer, the performance artist, and the installation artist combine use of the range of
materials above.

On the basis of medium, the arts can be classified as practical, environmental, pictorial,
auditory, narrative, dramatic, and musical. The musical arts include music, poetry (those that
have perceptible rhythm and can be sung or danced to), and dance that is accompanied by
music. The practical arts have immediate use for everyday and business life such as design,
architecture, and furniture. environmental arts occupy space and change in its meaning and
function depending on their categories including architecture, sculpture, and site-specific works
such as installations and public art. Pictorial works include painting, drawing, graphics, and
stage and production design (lighting, dress, props, and set). Works that are staged and
performed are considered Dramatic and they include drama, performance art, or music and
dance. If they are based on stories, the art forms are classified as narrative and they include
drama, novel, fiction, nonfiction, music, and dance.

As we have learned in Unit 1, all these art forms can be integrated and result in Combined arts,
such as design, mixed media, photography, film, video, performance art, theater productions,
and installations.

For example, a ritual involves the use of a sculpture such as a bulul, a dance, music, and
production design that involves the wearing of textile, jewelry, and a circular design where
lighting can be as simple as a torch or sulo. In such settings, we do not sit separately from the
stage, like what happens in regular auditoriums or theaters. When sitting or standing in a circle
with lead chanters, dancers, and musicians, everyone is encouraged to dance and participate.
In our own ways, we become part of the community and the creative process, as active “artists”
ourselves, rather than just audiences or spectators. The arts in such settings are integrated and
cannot be separated into distinct forms; art is collectively consumed and created.

On the other hand, the UP Chapel is made out of works made by individual National Artists
practicing in the various arts. The architecture is by Leandro Locsin; the crucifix is by Napoleon
Abueva; the floor mosaic by Arturo Luz, and the Stations of the Cross are by Vicente
Manansala who was assisted by Ang Kiukok. In 1968, the chapel was the site of a performance
created by another National Artist, Jose Maceda. His piece combined indigenous voices, and
instruments, and a prayer sung in Tagalog.

What is technique?
Technique is the manner in which artists use and manipulate materials to achieve the desired
formal effect, and communicate the desired concept, or meaning, according to his or her
personal style (modern, Neoclassic, etc). The distinctive character or nature of the medium
determines the technique. For example stone is chiseled, wood is carved, clay is modeled and
shaped, metal is cast, and thread is woven.

Technique involves tools and technology, ranging from the most traditional (for example
carving, silkscreen, analog photography, and filmmaking) to the most contemporary (digital
photography, digital filmmaking, music production, industrial design, and robotics).

For example, the mural Filipino Struggles Through History (1963) by National Artist Carlos
Francisco depicts Andres Bonifacio leading the Revolution. It takes advantage of line and color
to communicate dynamism and intense passion, in the expressionist modern style. The
Bonifacio Monument by another National Artist, Guillermo Tolentino, on the other hand,
makes use of carving to come up with work that has mass and volume, enabling him to depict
the scene realistically capturing a moment of stillness when Bonifacio stands reflectively on a
scene of death, but with grace and dignity befitting a leader in the Neoclassic style.
How is art experienced and consumed?
Art is considered an “artifact,” when it is directly experienced and perceived. It can be spatial
and static or unmoving (e.g., a painting or building, or a novel) or time-based and in motion
(e.g., a live theater production, mobile sculpture).

When we experience a work indirectly or through a medium like film or video, we describe it as
a “recorded” or documented artwork. Examples include a documentation of a performance, a
photograph of a painting, a DVD or CD of a film or musical piece, or a novel read from an
electronic tablet, such as an IPad or Android and through an application such as Kindle

We call a work a time-based artifact or performance if we receive or perceive it live or directly

in real time. Examples are live plays, live performance art, and installation. A time-based artifact
is recorded, and we watch it in real time but not at the site of production. Examples are a
documented play, film, exhibit, or an ad generally watched through an electronic medium
(computer, TV monitor, big movie screen).
 Fig. 1.5

For example, we access and experience the work of the artist Pablo Biglang- Awa from an
Internet site. Drawing ideas and inspiration from the work of the late Conceptual artist Roberto
Chabet, the artist gives us instructions on how to make a boat installation by clicking the link
http://vimeo.com/32026842, and how to create an installation project from simulated gestures
of sitting, lying down, walking, sitting through the link http://vimeo.com/32026893. As each
video progresses, animated images are unreeled, allowing us to perceive glimpses or ideas of
the finished work as we view these on our monitors. The work was shown at the Lopez
Museum in 2012.

Fig. 1.6
In another element of an exhibition called Dime a Dozen, 2007 at the Lopez Museum, monitors
were provided so that visitors could interact with Rizal through an account. They could add
Rizal as friend, leave a message or upload a picture or video. The idea was to make Rizal more
accessible and less intimidating with the use of electronic technology.

Interactivity is also stressed in one of Gerry Tan’s installation of a time record system, where
visitors are requested to punch“in” and“out”—like what employees do with the bundy clock—
to record the length of time they spent viewing the exhibition.
How have contemporary artists expanded the range of medium and techniques they utilize?

Contemporary artists are producing artworks that are more process-based, site-specific,
interactive, and collaborative.

For example, Mark Salvatus’ Secret Garden 2 (2010) is created purposefully for a small room at
the Vargas Museum. It is an example of a site-specific work, which refers to works in which
location or space is crucial to the artist’s intended meaning and experience of the work by the
audience. It is interactive; one has to peek, but not fully enter the space, to get but a glimpse of
what appears to be a “secret garden,” as the title implies. In other words, the work is
meaningless without the collaboration of an actively participating audience.

To understand the work, one has to have more information about its collaborative process. The
artist worked with inmates of a jail in his home province of Quezon in Southern Luzon.
Together, they fashioned the so-called garden from plastic spoons, forks and other implements
–a clandestine process that took place in defiance of prison rules. In this sense, the secret
process remains a secret, even for the audience who cannot fully see the garden –a frustrating
experience for some, but one that could also be enlightening, especially if one realizes how the
prisoners and the artist created something new, creative and to a certain extent, empowering.

The interactivity of games is also a core element in the early work of Ikoy Ricio, who printed a
set of trump cards that had images of Philippine car wrecks, complete with body count, and
other information related to accidents instead of the car statistics that normal trump cards
have printed on them. The cards were installed on a table with matching chairs on which
visitors were invited to settle in to “play” the morbid game that also essentially made fun of the
commercial worship of speed and material excess.

Fig. 1.7 Maria Taniguchi, Untitled (Mirrors)

 Fig. 1.8. Maria Taniguchi, Echo Studies, detail, 2011

In Untitled (Mirrors) by Maria Taniguchi – an artist born in Dumaguete and now living and
practicing in Manila, she uses the traditional medium of acrylic on canvas and the traditional
modern style of abstraction, one of the hallmarks of 20th century Modern Art. However, she
gives these elements a contemporary twist that turns painting into a meditation on form.
Instead of being an object or artifact that is exclusively “pictorial,” the painting process itself
also becomes an important aspect of both creation and reception. The viewer imagines the
artist painting grid by grid meditatively, with careful and diligent brushwork. The painting and
viewing process stresses the concept and the performance of painting as meditation. The work
can then be best described as a Conceptual Performance that is site-specific, sculptural, and
environmental. This work is part of an installation—Echo Studies (2011) at the Vargas Museum.
Another painting from this installation interacts with the space. It is deceptively simple; all we
see up close are grids of brick that are almost invisible from afar. The panel is propped against
the wall of the West Wing of Vargas Museum, creating a positive ground to the negative space
of the door that leads to another area. It is at the same time, a painting, and a sculptural object
that interacts with the environment of the museum.

Fig. 1.9. Felix Bacolor, Waiting

Felix Bacolor’s Waiting (2012) transformed an independent space in the Museum

of Contemporary Art and Design to a simulacrum (a “fake” real, a simulation that
is not actually “real” but simulated or copied) of a terminal waiting room,
complete with metallic, immovable chairs, and digital clocks that torturously
register the passing of time. Site-specific and interactive, the installation combines
the environmental, the dramatic and the narrative, with viewers weaving their
own stories into the space of travel, caught in-between mobility and immobility.

Medium and technique in contemporary art have become more and more
integrated, such that the works have crossed boundaries between art and science,
and between mediums and techniques. The works are also using contemporary
mediums and techniques based on digital and electronic technology, as well as
reformulated traditional methods.

Fig. 1.10. (left) Golabulos Magnetic Drive Shaft, 2014

Acrylic, Metal and Motor, Variable Dimensions;

(right) Golabulos Tissue Controller, 2014

For example, the work of Ian Carlo Jaucian draws his inspiration from science, and explores its
relationship with the visual arts through artworks that range from paintings, sculptures,
interactive and kinetic installations. In a series of works that make use of the principles of
robotics, he has a “liquid robot” that that is triggered by music. Combining mechanical,
computer- based, and traditional media and techniques, these works pose the question: “What
is it to be human?”
 Figure 1.11 Anonymous Animals, screengrab of blog

The exhibition Anonymous Animals, 2013 held in Mariyah Gallery in Dumaguete City consisted
of a Conceptual Performance piece by Dumaguete- based artists who posed as excavators of
strange animals they formed out of terracotta sourced from outlying areas.The artists, Cristina
Taniguchi, Michael Teves, Danilo Sollesta, Mark Valenzuela, and Benjie Ranada, provided the
animals they “excavated” (which they actually made) with matching scientific data including the
animals’ scientific and common names, taxonomy, morphology, history, etc. The artists
exhibited the terracotta animals as specimens, with documentation from an“embedded
journalist”, the photographer Hersley Ven Casero. The curator – Flaudette May Datuin –
invented stories about the artists, and wrote the fiction in the form of a diary or notes from the
field. Aside from being works in an actual exhibition, the project is also a Performance and
Conceptual piece –which is inspired by the work of Joan Fontcuberta and Pere Formiguera and
their book Fauna (1999, Arte y Proyektos Editoriales, SL, Seville, Spain). However, while Fauna,
the inspiration is in book form, Anonymous Animals is also exhibited virtually at
http://anonymousanimals.wordpress.com/.

The piece crosses boundaries between art (terracotta sculpture) and science (natural and social
sciences), literature, drama, and photojournalism. It is another simulacrum –a “fake” real –that
creates a world that looks real (hyperreal) and has its own virtual and“actual” reality, but
actually has no counterpart in real life.

It also crosses boundaries between mediums and defies classification, being simultaneously
narrative, dramatic, pictorial, and environmental. The exhibition of anonymous terracotta
animals is experienced as an exhibit of artifacts, is recorded, documented, and performed. The
virtual life, the fiction that masquerades as real, and authoritative (borrowing from the
language of science) are all crucial to the meaning of the work which revolves around the
challenge to reality and knowledge systems, such as archaeology and biology.