Link to blog

Google Drive Link
Huzzah! Done!

3d Shape

original idea before deciding to eliminate the spiral

Final Product

Sharable Ready Mades Response

The evolution of ready made art is a very interesting subject. While the very idea of taking ordinary, sometimes mundane non-art objects and making them art is not extremely new by any means (as that can be traced back to the early 20^th century with Duchamp and like), but the concept of creative borrowing still seems fresh and innovative even in the modern age of technology.

            The article by “self-defined artist, writer and hacker” Rob Myers explores the idea of Shareable ready made artwork made via 3d printers. Personally, I had not yet made the connection between 3d printing and ready made art until reading the article. A whole new universe has been unlocked with 3d printing’s advancements which Myers argues has complicated the already complex idea of copyright and who actually owns art or images.

I think the legality of this subject is very intriguing. I mean, who exactly owns the art if a sharable ready made artist takes an already established piece, digitalizes it and then make that scan available so that anyone can have a 3d print of the original piece? And also, when an image is given such free range with multiple users, who has ownership and sole possessive rights to that image? And CAN anyone have those possessive rights? The author of this article gives us more questions than answers, leaving us with merely the facts and a left over desire for enquiry on the subject of images.

Another intriguing line of thought is at the end of Myers’s article. In his final paragraph, he suggests that shareable ready made pieces are not merely just simple images but rather are quite complex in both history and conceptuality. This line of thought harkens back to the likes of the surrealists such as Rene Magritte who gave us a pipe (which was later made into a smaller 3d printed shareable ready made piece) and prompted us to think by saying it was not, in fact, a pipe. After all, it was merely a depiction of a pipe. Shareable ready made pieces take Magritte’s idea a step further to make the viewer wonder not just what the single depiction of piece is, but what the very image of the piece is if it is not alone in its originality. Is the digital image of Magritte’s pipe any more a pipe than Magritte’s depiction? And what of any 3d prints of said digital image? Are they also not a pipe? And if they are not pipes (or whatever they depict), what then do they depict? What are they?

Shareable ready made art pieces are incredibly complex images. Not only is the legality of the images extremely convoluted, they are also tremendously indeterminate in nature just by themselves. It is a very short article, but what it lacks in length it makes up for leaving us in some very complicated inquisitive waters. If anything else, Rob Myers introduces us to some art pieces which are both fun physically and conceptually.

Website

http://students.uwf.edu/jal72/artroot/index.html

Site Map

There are going to be 23 pages in total, but the route you take will determine what you see and it won't be the same. The "story" will be based on randomly selected pages from an art book that have been fused with adjoining pages to present an surreal trip

3 page website

Still playing around. May update as I progress.

Link to folder.

GIF Response

           Gifs and their artists are a very interesting subject to read and learn about. They are slightly older than I am (they were created in 1987) and artistically are very interesting.

           I think GIFs speak to the ever evolving concept of art and the idea of an image. Although created in the late 1980s, I think GIFs are really of this time; of 2016. Today we live in the fast pace world of social media and the Internet, where people demand fast paced results on anything and everything from weather, news, sports, to entertainment. I think the GIF fits this time period because it is not just a static image; it does not stay still. It moves, which in this time, still remains something which attracts people’s attention.

           Since the 1800s, we have enjoyed the idea of moving images. At that time, we had devices like the phenakistoscopes which revolved images thus creating the illusion of motion. Since then, we have had the introduction of motion pictures complete with sounds that help us explore places we may never see. But the idea of the image is still held in high esteem. Video is great, but it sometimes does not accommodate to the fast paced, low attention spans of social media users. Today’s media has gotten us accustomed to sound bites in small bits of information, thus the fastest method of disbursing information is useful to inform modern viewers. Whether it is apart of a video clip with subtitles or an artistic expression, GIFs fit into today’s fast paced atmosphere.

           Like the phenakistoscopes before them, GIFs can take a static image and show motion. This gives artists more avenues in which to explore the idea of the image. GIFs also take the previous concept of “Found Art” (where previously made objects are reinterpreted as art) and establish it in the modern digital realm.  Digital Found artists can take ordinary premade images, and reinterpret them into a Graphics Interchange Format (or GIF). Like regular art, GIFs can be used to entertain, inform, or make people question aspects of the world around them. These animated images can be political or they could be used to show and entertaining scene from a television program or movie. They can be abstract and merely appreciated for artistic aesthetic purposes.

           For me, the GIF represents a new method in which to express myself artistically. It gives me a new way to show art work in a fun and interesting fashion. Images of pop ups or other paper engineering can be animated so it gives the viewer the ability to see what it is supposed to do. I could also create new pieces from older art work by reformatting them as GIFs.

When shared with others, these GIFs can express feelings and emotions in a social way. The concept of the image can cross boundaries that words cannot; as they say, an image is worth a thousand words. So a motion image is probably worth a lot more and thus this format is fascinating new digital approach to art.