amymac8's Blog

Inside Mind – Project 5: Unconventional Narrative

amymac8 — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:40:46 +0000

For this project, we were assigned to film off campus and create a narrative movie. I decided to film my brother and boyfriend as two friends meeting to go on a run and make a voiceover of their thoughts so that the viewer could get inside their heads and learn more about their characters.

Slumdog Series – Project 4: Found Footage

amymac8 — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:14:07 +0000

For this project, I used footage from the movie Slumdog Millionaire, the first game of the World Series, Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind” music video, and Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” music video to make my own video that contemplates the differences between New York and India.

Response to Art in the Age of Digital Distribution by Reena Jana and Mark Tribe

amymac8 — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:59:02 +0000

In this article, Jana and Tribe discuss the ever changing ways of art and how the internet plays a part. I found it interesting how Jana and Tribe said the internet means different things to different people and that it is so fast that people can use it for whatever they want or need. I was surprised that New Media Art began in the early 20th century, that it was much older than i had thought. New Media Art is based on things such as Pop Art, Video Art, Conceptual Art and others. I think it is sad that Painting has become “dead” because of the prevalence of video, instillation, and computer art in today’s artistic world. Jana and Tribe also discuss globalism and how it was fueled by the internet. I think it is wonderful that everyone around the world has the opportunity to see the same things because of the internet. Art can be put on the internet and get widespread recognition, reaching greater audiences because of the internet. The internet and the computer have become both the artist’s studio and the artist’s gallery. Jana and Tribe make a good point that the internet allows for artists who cannot afford the price of paint and brushes or cameras and film to be able to create art themselves. Jana and Tribe bring up the issue of digital art and using found images to create new art. I found it interesting that they thought that people are now thinking creating art from scratch is not as good as borrowing. Personally, i think either can make great art. Sometimes borrowed images make for a great piece while other times brand new, created work is seen as amazing art. Jana and Tribe bring up Ebay and Amazon and how they have aided artist’s in their conquest of the internet. They also bring up creating identities through the internet. This reminds me of the other article we read about Lonelygirl15 and how Bree was completely made up and was played by an actress. I thought it was interesting how the Whitney Museum of American Art included Net Art in its museum. The internet has taken over art.

A Response to articles by Rose, Garfield, Davis, and Sherman

amymac8 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:37:55 +0000

In “Commercial Break”, Frank Rose discusses the increasing popularity and success of internet advertising as opposed to television advertising. Rose uses an example of Chevy creating advertisement contests online for their SUV the Chevy Tahoe. I was shocked to realize the amount of money put into advertising one of their products. Chevy went as far as buying an entire episode of The Apprentice in order to market their product. I was also surprised that Chevy didn’t defend their product further when multiple attack ads were posted on their website and YouTube. I could not believe that the advertising “game” Chevy created caused sales for the Chevy Tahoe to go up dramatically. I liked Rose’s perspective that in the “YouTube era” there is no longer control on negative feedback about products. With sites like YouTube, Facebook, and blogs people can voice their opinions about products and make those opinions aware and available to the world, something that could seriously affect sales for the products they are bashing.

In Bob Garfield’s Article “You Tube Boob Tube”, he explores why YouTube is worth so much. Garfield addresses the fact that YouTube allows anyone to upload content and therefore Hollywood, mass advertisers, and broadcasters no longer control what the world sees and Garfield believes T.V. will soon be extinct while Internet T.V. will rule. I found it interesting that Garfield documented how YouTube has cut advertising on Television which consequently caused NBC to let 700 people go. Garfield referred to an ad before a video on TouTube as intrusive. I see this as mass media encroaching on the innocence of YouTube and its video-watchers, overtaking their viewing pleasure and not allowing the viewer to enjoy the pure art portrayed in the video. I also was interested in the fact that Garfield brought in copyright issues to his argument. There is a fuzzy-line between what is copyright infringement (uploading a TV show episode) and what may not be (creating a mashup of songs by different artists).

In Joshua Davis’s article, “The Secret World of Lonely Girl”, he documents the work of Mesh Flinders, the co-creater of the YouTube show Lonelygirl15. It’s interesting that Flinders was able to create a compelling show out of two-minute installments about a normal teenage girl. It makes one question whether this will be the new television. Will Primetime TV soon become extinct? I, as a possible viewer to Flinders show, did not find it reassuring that he was planning on deceiving the public and omitting information in order to keep viewers believing that Bree was real. To me, omitting and lying are basically the same thing and neither should be tolerated. It was also tricky but smart for Flinders to piggyback off of another vlogger’s popularity in order to give Bree viewers. It was interesting that what started out as a way for Flinders to get a job writing for TV or Movies turned into a phenomenon meant to stay on the internet. I couldn’t believe some people felt fine talking to “Bree” after they found out she wasn’t real, but i suppose it was like a “Dear Sally” column in a newspaper where people could talk to an anonymous person about their life and their problems.

In Tom Sherman’s article, “Flying in the Face of Abundance & Redundance”, he discusses the mass amoutn of information available to us and how important it is for artists to bring variety to the table. I found it interesting how Sherman differentiated between different types of artists in his mind. He distinguished between artists who are creating the appearance of art and artists who actually create art. This reminds me of the differing degress of projects that we have viewed in preparation for creating our final project. To some people, some of the work does not seem like art but more like messes of color and sound but others see it as a vision, as something different, as art. It really comes down to what your view of art is, if it is the still life painting type of art or the innovative thought-provoking type of art. Both of course are art and each takes a different type of skill to create and therefore each should be revered as such. I found it interesting how Sherman noted that the receiver of the art has almost as much influence in what the art becomes as the creater because the receiver is the one who is doing the interpreting and therefore making the artwork what it is.

A Response to “The Porcupine and the Car” by Bill Viola

amymac8 — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 02:30:32 +0000

In “The Porcupine and the Car”, I found it interesting how Henri Bergson compared the human senses to a filtering system that filters all the information that is around us. I was also surprised that Bill Viola compared information to garbage and said that information is a waste product and a physical burden. But when you read further, Viola discusses how much information is created in just one week. You can visualize all this information piling up as if in a garbage landfill and you wonder how people sort through it all. I was very surprised to find out that video is closer to sound than to visual images; something i’m sure a lot of people are unaware of. I also found it interesting how Robert Arns described film and video as illusion-producing media because when one thinks of film and video when it is hasn’t been manipulated it is supposed to be capturing the truth of what is going on rather than creating illusions. I was intrigued by Viola’s comment that more people are realizing that what makes a good artist is that they think well. This reminds me of Arts-104 in that without a good, creative idea to start with, your project won’t be nearly as good just by doing technical work. I was also interested in Dr. John Lilly’s observation that “if there is no outside stimulation, the mind seems to make up things to perceive that appear to come from the outside.” This seems crazy but really it is the mind giving the brain something to think about and do and to stimulate it on its own until outside stimulation is available. Rene Magritte said that people who look for symbolic meanings miss the poetry and mystery of object. When people are looking too hard for a hidden meaning they miss the true beauty and amazement that is in the object. Viola blames people’s misunderstanding of video art on the fact that imaginations in children are no longer stimulated in the same way that they used to. Viola ends his article documenting that technology is forever changing and that once you catch up it will change again.

Project 3 – Constructed Realities

amymac8 — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:56:59 +0000

The aim of this project was to construct an image or a series of images that could pass as a “believable” document, meaning the image(s) is/are photographically believable but may not actually be able to occur in reality. For my project I decided to do a series of images of myself with images of my reactions along with it. The first image is of a girl falling and her inner reaction of being annoyed at herself for her clumsiness. The second image has a shocked, laughing, and angry reaction. The third has all the reactions together.

A Response to Graphic Details: Discussing Contemporary Comics

amymac8 — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 01:04:35 +0000

On October 25th, four graphic novelists – Gabrielle Bell, Kim Deitch, Hope Larson, and Anders Nilsen – came to Richmond to speak on Contemporary Comics. The moderator, Chris Pitzer, asked many interesting questions and the novelists answered them to the best of their ability, describing their experiences and thoughts. I found it interesting that each artist had a different way of going about their work. Deitch works by drawing and writing at the same time and draws detailed scenes of the last place he was to clear his mind in order to further his process. Nilsen goes straight to his stories, making note that his stories come from his pictures. This reminded me of how in Arts 104, our stories for the characters in our work come from the pictures we create. The tie made me realize how important little details in the pictures can change the story entirely. Larson and Bell both work more from scripts. I also found Pitzer’s question, “Do you put yourself in your work?” very intriguing because of the work that we do in class. Nilsen said that you put more of yourself in your work than you think, and i can see that in the work everyone presents in class. The question regarding whether the artists start their work with a defined idea also made me think about Arts 104. Both Deitch and Larson said they don’t start from a specific idea but sometimes from a picture or something else. This is similar to how my inspiration for my work in class comes. Sometimes it comes from a poster on my wall or a class I am taking. You can see that your idea from the beginning gets changed and manipulated as you keep working towards your deadline. Finally, i found the question about where the artists’ influence comes from very interesting. Nilsen said that he can’t pinpoint his influence because he feels it is filtered from thousands of names and things and when it comes out he doesn’t know where it came from. The panel was very interesting and enlightened the audience to how artists work as graphic novelists, the industry itself, and a little about the artists.

Response to “The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism” by Jonathan Lethem

amymac8 — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:58:54 +0000

I find it interesting that Lethem questions whether Nabokov took his ideas subconsciously or consciously from Lichberg. I also find it interesting how Lethem compares the “quoted” material and its worth before and after. Lethem mentions Bob Dylan’s lyrics as a combination of originality and appropriations. I believe that it is very difficult to get inspiration and appropriations out of your head in order to generate some originality in your work but it must be done to avoid plagiarism. I was surprised to read that Roger Meyers Jr. admitted that animation is based on plagiarism and that without it there would be no ideas. I liked how Lethem used examples from modern day such as the Simpsons and South Park and classic examples such as Shakespeare and Ovid. The comparison to a photographer taking a picture, stealing from the person the picture is of, also interested me and got me thinking of where the phrase “take a picture” came from, because it is stealing an image. I was shocked to read that Disney had the power to prevent Holly Crawford from using other artists work, such as Andy Warhol, just because the Mickey Mouse image is in his work. The article was very interesting and looked at Plagiarism from a different aspect.

Project 2 – Self Portrait

amymac8 — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:56:54 +0000

The aim of this project was to transform yourself into three different identities. I chose to transform myself into two celebrities. The first is Andy Warhol and the second is Audrey Hepburn. I took my inspiration for the Andy Warhol image from a poster of him in my dorm. My inspiration for the Audrey Hepburn image came from the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s. For the third image i decided to tranform myself into a different race, Native American.

Response to Richard Woodward’s Articles “Altered States” and “Reality Bytes”

amymac8 — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:38:59 +0000

I thought it was interesting how in “Altered States” Woodward talked about Photography and its materials could almost have an expiration date that is controlled by the company’s who manufacture the tools necessary for the art. Woodward puts into perspective the power that technological companies like Apple now have over the Photographic world. Woodward stresses the importance of immortalizing photographs on paper, as in photo books, because of the ever expanding amount of images available on the Web. By doing this, beautiful photographs will not get lost in the cyber-space world. I find it interesting that museums are now making exhibits not out of photographs but out of photobooks and their history. I couldn’t believe Woodward made digital imaging out to be an ancient technique and that he said most people who grew up during this digital imaging era now seem to prefer these types of images rather than photos that are not edited.

In Woodward’s “Reality Bytes”, he describes a photograph by Beate Gutschow that is “familiar yet nondescript” and is very appealing. The photo seems to be common link between the entire world, which it is because it is a photo compiled of 30 different landscapes. This type of digital imaging, merging multiple photos into one, is a fascinating way for artists to make a point or show a vision through many of their different works. I think it is interesting how Israeli photographer Barry Frydlender always leaves “hints so the viewer can see can see it’s been worked on”. This is reassuring because then the viewer does not feel like they are being tricked. I disagree with Paul Shambroom’s statement that digital imaging doesn’t make the image less truthful. I believe if there is editing being done to the image, a part of the truth of the image is being taken away.