Medium and Techniques

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.

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
woodcarvings 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 pre-
determined editions.

The musician uses sound and instruments (including the human voice), while the dancer uses
the body. 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 theater 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 cited in Lesson 5 of Unit 1 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.

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).

Figure 7.1. Filipino Struggles Through History (1963) by Carlos Francisco (left) and
Bonifacio Monument by Guillermo Tolentino (right)

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.

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).

Figure 7.2
 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.

Figure 7.3

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?

As explained in Lesson 1 of the previous unit, 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.

Figure 7.4. Maria Taniguchi, Untitled (Mirrors)

Figure 7.5. 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.

Figure 7.6. 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.

Figure 7.7. (left) Golabulos Magnetic Drive Shaft,

2014

Acrylic, Metal and Motor, Variable Dimensions;

(right) Golabulos Tissue Controller, 2014

Custom Microcontroller, Ferrofluid and Glass,

Variable Dimensions;
(http://www.1335mabini.com/artist_ianjaucian.
html)
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. Documentation of this work may be viewed at http://vimeo. There
is also a “drawing robot”-https://www.facebook. com/video.php?
v=10152648457390801&set=vb.664080800&type=3&theater; and a robot that constantly follows the
light (https://www.facebook.com/video. php?
v=10152648457390801&set=vb.664080800&type=3&theater) which was an experiment and was not
part of any show. Combining mechanical, computer- based, and traditional media and techniques, these
works pose the question: “What is it to be human?”

Figure 7.8. 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.