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.

Gif Creations

Below are Gifs I created.

"Fred Astaire Dancing"

 "Fred Astaire and his sister Adele"

"My Dad's Van"

Link to Drive

Project 1

"The Queen meets the King of the Jungle"

 "The lion and the unicorn were fighting for the crown..."

"The Unicorn has been watching too many Carol Channing performances"

 "The Queen, The Lion and the Unicorn say hello"

Photomontages

"They are the egg men / I am the walrus"

"A Conductor (for Irv)"

"Stripes"

8 contrast images

Response to Icons as Fact, Fiction and Metaphor

            According to Philip Gefter in his 2009 essay Icons as Fact, Fiction and Metaphor, there are several cases in which wet or darkroom photography is not always a truthful representation of reality. Although he does not mention digital photography in any of the seven pages, there is an implied comparison being drawn between the two photographic manipulative techniques.

            Gefter made the valid statement that a photograph “comes as close as we get to witnessing an authentic moment with our own eyes while not actually being there,” which is quite true. Raw photographs often can come as close to reality as we can get in the art world. Sometimes a photographer merely shoots what he sees (thereby giving us a glimpse at the world through their eyes) but sometimes for artistic effect the little shutterbug decides to change the content in someway. Gefter provides several examples of photographers who altered the scene they were taking a picture of or recreated a pervious scene. These alterations, he argued, were neither lies nor the truth but rather an in-between in the form of a metaphor or poetic symbolic rendering of reality.

            In digital photography we often alter a snapshot to better illustrate the photograph’s purpose. Whether that means removing a person who is disrupting this purpose or adding someone in or merely adjusting the lighting, digital processes use a lot of the same ideas as darkroom photography but via programs like Adobe Photoshop. Now, the question is whether there is a difference between these digital and wet photographic processes. Arguably, both have the ability to alter the chosen picture’s composition. Gefter states that a picture “published in a newspaper is believed to be fact” whereas he suggests any advertising images are “understood to be fiction” in their alteration of the human figure.

            I personally do not think Gefter’s assumptions are fully accurate. Although he is valid in suggesting that whether a photo “needs” to be “real” or unaltered depends on its location or context, I think there are more factors in play. Every person has their own specific upbringings and assumptions about the world; they have their own unique set of eyes that see the colors of the world slightly differently from others view. Therefore, stating facts in black and white terms of newspapers are fact and ads are lies are not allowing for people who see different shades. There was a lot of outrage when people found out the amount of physical alterations that were made to models via Photoshop, so I think a more valid phrasing is that certain people expect a certain amount of “lies” for different picture presentations.

            I think when it comes down to it, the real changes we see produced by either photographic darkroom or digital processes is the simple idea of reinterpretation of reality. We all know photos are merely images and thus not truly real otherwise they wouldn’t be photographs. Unconsciously or consciously there are always alterations to any photograph as only a certain amount of the world is going to be represented, so the real difference between darkroom photography and digital processes is very minute. The techniques are different, but the concepts are very much the same. It all depends on how much is changed.

Ch 9

Exquisite corpse

How is New Media both inclusive and exclusive of the traditional media? Essay

New Media is a fascinating genre of artworks. It is both inclusive and exclusive toward traditional art forms.

This duality is brought about by several factors. Right off the bat, the not-so-secret origins of this genre is reinterpretations of tradition media or artwork in new and exciting ways. For example, one ancestor to modern “new media” pieces is the Zoetrope, which took the already established art forms of illustration and photography and reinterpreted them. It did not necessarily alter the ideas put forth by these genres, but rather presented them in a different way: it took drawings and photographs and put them into a spinning cylinder, which, when viewed, spawns the deception of motion.

This idea of reinterpretation of what came before lives on in modern New Media art pieces even though, as a very diverse art genre, sometimes this reinterpretation is harder to spot than others. Performance art, for example, takes the basic idea of theatrical production and presents it in a more artistic presentation venue and understanding. In this sense, this reinterpretation becomes more free-form or alterable compared to the sometimes more rigid dramatic presentations that need to be staged in a specific location or fallow a certain order or script.

These reinterpretations are really about taking traditional media and presenting them in modern ways. For example, the idea of Light Art draws upon the notion of using light as an art medium. Now, this notion is far from new as we have seen the medium of light used in stained glass works created centuries before the light bulb was invented, but modern Light Art reinterprets painting with these rays of electromagnetic radiation and makes them be produced by electric currents rather than from bodies of celestial origin. This reinterpretation can also be an exhibition of traditional art forms in modern ways. In the past century we have developed numerous methods in which to communicate and sometimes those methods have been used by traditional artists to transmit their original pieces. Back in the 1980s when the commercialized fax machine was a relatively newer device, we saw this transmission method be used to transmit artwork (it must be noted* that in 1985 Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol and Kaii Higashiyama – all of whom considered more or less traditional artists in varying degrees – contributed to an art piece consisting of drawings by said artists which were then reinterpreted via the facsimile machine into Fax Art).

Now, sometimes these modern ways are not as inclusive toward traditional artworks. Digital art, for example, can be compared to painting or drawing but instead of a physical canvas the art is on a computer. Working on a digital format requires a different knowledge set: instead of knowing about brushes, pencils, paint and the like, one must have a working understanding of whatever drawing program the artist has chosen to use. Likewise, although other disciplines can be traced to more traditional methods, they require different skill sets thus making them not as inclusive toward traditional artists.

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Footnote: The above essay was exactly 500 words long. I must say I did focus on the Types category from the Wikipedia article (with some bits from the PDF). I mention this specific area because I do not want any part of the essay to be viewed as "present[ing] texts from other authors" (as stated in the rules). Most points are drawn merely from the Types categories themselves (with examples coming from the PDF or my own knowledge), but I did note* when I listed a fact found on the Fax Art Wikipedia page which I thought was rather fascinating. Hopefully these adjoining pages are viewed not as separate pieces (since they are merely disciplines of New Media) and thus my use (in a plagiarizing manor) of examples is valid and I will receive credit for my work. 

I don't think those pages would be considered separate, but I wanted to put this note just to be sure. Let me know if there is a disagreement.