“Photoagentur Potemkin”

This article discusses the act of considerably altering photos to change what the image shows. For example, taking a former daughter-in-law out of a photo, erasing an estranged brother, or making Grandma look better and younger. Of course, the techniques they talk about in the article are a little outdated- manually cutting and reorganizing the photos. But these practices carry on today, changing to adapt to the digital world and the use of Photoshop.

I recently was reading a post on a Celebrity/Fashion blog about airbrushing that this article reminded me of- specifically the photo of the revamped Grandma. The post was about a Ralph Lauren advertisement controversy dealing with their poor use of Photoshop airbrushing.  The ads portrayed models who were so skinny that it looked unhealthy, but were publicly displayed and supposed to be selling Ralph Lauren clothes. Compared to images of the models in real life, it is obvious that the company overdid it with the Photoshop touch-ups and it caused quite a controversy over the use of digital enhancement.

While it seems like these kinds of things are relatively new because of all the attention celebrity airbrushing gets, the article “Photoagentur Potemkin” shows that these techniques have been used for a long time. The article mostly discusses personal reasons and uses for altering photographs- and maybe things should stay that way. The amount of airbrushing used in today’s media is excessive and one could even say it promotes false advertising. The pictures send the message of what you should strive to look like, which is ironic because it takes a lot of digital altering to get there.

Magic Gardens

I was in Philly this weekend and discovered something I’ve never heard of: The Magic Gardens. It’s not quite new media, but it’s really cool nonetheless. As you’re walking down South Street in Philly, you’re all the sudden in front of this amazing building that’s all a mural- the ground, the walls, both inside and outside. A lot of the mural is made up of things you would consider trash- bottles, old bicycle wheels, lightbulbs, random knick-knacks- but all together it turns into this beautiful piece of art. Unfortunately, it was night time when I walked by so it was past visiting hours, but I researched it online after seeing it and I am planning a trip to go back to see all of it.

The creator is Isaiah Zagar, an artist who has made murals all over the city of Philadelphia. The Magic Gardens is his most famous piece and it almost was destroyed in 2002. The spot of the murals was originally a vacant lot owned by a man in Boston. In 2002, the owner needed to sell the lot because of rising property costs and everything Zagar had created was going to be demolished. The society came to the rescue and helped raise money to create a non-profit organization to preserve the Magic Gardens and other artworks around Philly.

I always like stories where people come together for the sake of art, especially on such a large scale (they had to raise around $200,000 to save the Magic Gardens). It’s also a really nice project that brings some beauty into a city street that otherwise is pretty plain.

My Final Project

My final project focuses on two themes- mapping and social networking. It is an interactive map depicting the connections I found between myself and some of my Facebook friends.  Social networking sites make you feel like you know some people better than you actually do, but in reality I’ve only talked to some of my Facebook friends a few times in real life.  Because of this, I was interested in seeing how much I have in common with these so-called “friends”.

I picked 13 of my Facebook friends- ranging from relatives to close friends to acquaintances-  and looked at some facts and interests about them listed on their Facebook pages that matched up to mine.  From there, I created a map using Flash which lets the user pick and choose which connections show at a time.  Surprisingly, I found I had the most in common with some people that I haven’t talked to in years.

This project was quite a process to create.  It was somewhat of a challenge for me because I’m still learning Flash so I had a number of technical problems that I needed help to fix.  But besides those problems, I felt a lot of more comfortable with Flash by the end of the project. I’m happy with the way it came out, although with a lot more time and skills I would want to expand it to include more people and interests.

Here is the link to my project: http://udel.edu/~aisaacs/art307/ROOT/

Another Cool Stop Motion

I was looking at some classmates’ blogs and one of Mike’s posts caught my attention.  The stop motion video he posted was really cool. I thought it was interesting how the artists chose to interact with the environment around them.  They created all of these colorful, moving paintings, but in the end, they get rid of them in a way that you would never have known they were there. I always find it cool in stop motion that I get so caught up in the story, believing that these objects are live, even though I know they’re not actually moving.

Mike’s video reminded me of a similar stop motion I saw recently. This one is actually an ad for Orbit gum and it uses similar techniques, like combining paintings/cut outs with the actual outside world. It’s a really creative ad campaign, incorporating Orbit’s “clean” image (their slogan is “for a good clean feeling, no matter what”) into a stop motion about cleaning a rundown house.  Even with no gum in the ad, it pushes the idea of a clean mouth- as the mouths are the ones cleaning up the house. All in all, I think it’s a clever use of stop motion to send a message.

Aaron Koblin

Aaron Koblin is listed on our project sheet for one of his works, “The Sheep Market”. I thought that project was a cool idea so I decided to look into other things Koblin has done. The two that I thought were most interesting were “Ten Thousand Cents” and “1,000 Drawings”, which are two similar projects.

Like “The Sheep Market”, Koblin utilizes the program Mechanical Turk to have the public create images. Unlike “The Sheep Market”, these projects combine all of the drawings to create one overall picture. In “Ten Thousand Cents”, Koblin broke an image of a one-hundred dollar bill down in to 10,000 small pieces and then asked people from all over the world to recreate one of the small pieces, paying each person $.01 to do so. The resulting images ranged from very detailed recreations to smiley faces to written messages. But when put all together, they create an image that is easily recognized as a $100 bill. I’ve seen projects like that before where an artist will compile a huge amount of photographs and arrange them to look like Abraham Lincoln or some other famous face, but I think Koblin makes it much more interesting by involving real people and presenting the project in real-time.

Koblin allows viewers to be interactive with the project and click on individual pieces of the bill, so they can view the process in motion. He uses these same methods on a smaller scale project, “1,000 Drawings”, which results in an image of George W. Bush. My favorite part about these projects is that each “artist” didn’t know the overall intention of the project. All they saw was the miniscule piece of the picture that they were supposed to recreate, which I think leads to not only a much more interesting overall product, but a cool look into how different people handle assigned tasks and creativity.

Andy Warhol

 

While reading another blog, I stumbled across this video from 1986 showing Andy Warhol’s first experience using a computer, an Amiga. He uses it to alter an image of Debbie Harry while being interviewed by reporter, Glenn Suokko. The video is short, but the interview (which you can read here) is very interesting. Although he had been offered chances to use computers before, Warhol hadn’t taken the opportunity to do so until this interview. During the interview, Warhol expresses his enjoyment of the computer paint program and wonders of what could come.

It was funny to read because all of the things that Warhol and Suokko mused about that could happen in the future are common, everyday occurrences in modern times. For example, they talk about museums and exhibits using video screens to present art as opposed to prints hanging on the wall.  This method is used all the time today, some exhibits purely using digital technology to display artwork. Also, Warhol talked about the possibility of a ball point pen or touch screen for the computer to make it easier to design. Of course, we have those technologies now and much more- but it is weird to think about how this interview took place only a little over 20 years ago and we have developed digital art technologies so much in that short time.

Unfortunately, Andy Warhol died only about a year after this interview took place, but I would have loved to see how he reacted to and what he could create with our modern day technologies. His work, which was done by hand, has had such an impact of digital art (for example, in Mac’s Photo Booth there is an option to take a picture in Warhol’s famous style of art). It would be interesting to see how he felt about a program like Photoshop, which does everything Warhol did by hand and more with the click of a mouse.

Appropriation and Copyright

I recently saw a news story with an update on the Shepard Fairey vs. AP case over his now-famous Obama campaign images. Fairey used photos of Obama from the Associated Press and created a set of altered images featuring words like “HOPE” and “PROGRESS”.  These images were widely used by many during the 2008 Presidential Campaign, appearing in the media and on merchandise like shirts, stickers, and pins. The AP sued Fairey for copyright infringement because he never got prior permission to use the photo and they are seeking money and credit for the image. Fairey is claiming “Fair Use” in his defense, which allows for limited use of copyrighted material without having permission from the owners. I’ve been trying to decide which side I’m on, and I’m leaning toward Fairey.

I understand that the AP feels as if they are owed some money due to the success of Fairey’s use of their image, but it makes me wonder if they would still be so upset if Fairey’s project hadn’t been so popular. I don’t think his purpose was to be such a commercial success, but in the excitement of the election season his set of images ended up being the face of the Obama campaign. If they’re going to base copyright laws on profit than I can think of plenty of instances where people make some profit off of appropriating others’ work.

For example, plenty of sororities and fraternities on campus create shirts featuring well-known characters or designs to sell for various events. This is an appropriation of images without permission, though obviously on a much smaller scale than Fairey’s work. Also, artists everywhere use others’ images to create new works for their gallery showings.

This case is sure to be a long-fought court battle, but maybe it’ll bring about some change in copyright laws. I think when it comes to a case like Fairey’s, the ruling should be based on the intent of the artist, not on the profits he may end up making from it. Either way, I’ll be sure to follow this case until it’s outcome.

Web 2.0 Websites and Design

This summer, I had an internship at an advertising/ marketing company where one of the many things I learned was the concept of Web 2.0. I had never heard of it before my boss asked me to research the trend and find good examples to inspire ideas for our clients’ websites. Based on information from websites like Web Design From Scratch, I learned about the key elements of the current trend in websites, Web 2.0. The main distinction of a Web 2.0 website is user-sharing and interactivity. With all the social networking sites there are, many websites now have side bars or subpages that deal with communicating with its users (via Facebook Groups, blogs, Twitter updates, etc).

What I was more interested in was the design aspect of Web 2.0. Major elements include a central layout, simple interface, easy to use navigation bar, bold colors to accentuate important items, bold logos, and bigger text. All of these features make for a very attractive and cool website, at least while we’re in the Web 2.0 era. When researching good examples of Web 2.0 sites on bestwebgallery.com, I found a lot of websites I really liked for different reasons. Here are a few of them: Mission Bicycle Company (I like how the simplicity of the colors and typeface make the site easy to understand and keep your attention on the bright colors of the products, the bikes), Brooklyn Fare (I love the color scheme and clean look of the  site- minimal text and bold pictures), and TypeJockeys (I like how easy it is to navigate this site- they only show you what you need to see with no extras to distract users from the main purpose of the site).

When I first looked at these sites, I thought I would never be able to create anything close to them. Now that I’ve gotten better at Photoshop and learned how to use DreamWeaver and Flash a little more, I feel like one day I might be able to make a site as good as these. These sites also showed me that the term “digital art” can be applied to the method of displaying information as opposed to being used to strictly describe the pieces themselves.

Stop Motion

After getting a brief introduction to stop motion pieces in class on Tuesday, I visited more of the sites from the research list once I got home. In particular, I liked the stop motion work from Eat Pes. His stop motion shorts were really entertaining and often were humorous commentary on common situations- for example in his “Roof Sex” short, he shows what “really” happened to the chairs that look like the cat tore them up.

I also looked at his “Making of” section for his shorts. While he didn’t go into detail about the actual process of filming the stop motion, he talked about how much thought goes into planning and choosing objects for one of his stop motion films. For his “KaBoom!” short, every object shown was carefully and deliberately chosen to convey an idea or action (for example: cotton swabs were used as miniscule puffs of smoke from the “missles”). This video showed how stop motion is a very tedious and thoughtful project. When we had the animation speaker a few weeks ago, he mentioned it took him months to a year to create his stop motion films. I can’t imagine how long it took Pes to create KaBoom because it was so detailed and had so many single steps to create the whole picture.

The other thing I found interesting about the Eat Pes site was his section of commercials. I watched a few of them and was surprised that I’ve never noticed stop motion used on television or commercials before. For example, the CoinStar and Bacardi commercials look pretty familiar. But until I learned a little about stop motion, I never recognized the commercials as employing this art form. It makes me look at this film practice differently because I usually associated it with older, out-of-date animations, but now I see how stop motion can be current and refined to be a high-tech method of film.

“You Are Here” Reading

The reading “You Are Here” by Katharine Harmon was really interesting.  I liked the different readings because they showed how maps don’t only take the form what people normally expect- roads or geographical maps. I especially enjoyed Bridget Booher’s piece, “Body Map of My Life”. Her “map” was in the form of listed text of various medical or emotional events in her life. I thought the article was entertaining and put a humorous spin on the traditional idea of a map- showing that a map is just something (text or graphics) that conveys or lays out an idea in an organized way.

This reading also reminded me of a group project that I was involved in 2008 Fall semester for ART200. We created our own “Yellow Arrow Project“, which is a website that has numerous collections of photos people send in about a certain topic that are linked to an interactive map. My group created a collection of yellow arrow photos called “Newark By Numbers“, where we took photos of numbers around the town of Newark that had some meaning to us. We then presented them through a website in two ways- a slideshow and a map. We used GoogleMaps to make a link on a map of Newark to each photo so the viewer could track where all these numbers were located. In this case, we were not using a map for directions, but we were using it to depict our art project.