Twitter

I made a Twitter profile a few months ago out of fear of no longer being “with it.” I figured that its pervasiveness into pop culture had denoted its pertinence. Every politician, musician, artist, etc. that I was interested in had an account and seemed to be reaping its benefits. Since then, I’ve periodically logged into my own account to try and get something out of it… to no avail! I continually found myself asking myself different variations of, “who cares?” or “what is the point of this?” or “what does this mean?” or “how do I do this?”

Thankfully this “Twitter assignment” has given me the opportunity to spend significantly more time with it than I had before, exploring its facets. In doing so, I‘ve begun to turn the corner with my understanding of its purposes. Before my more thorough investigation, I figured that Facebook could provide everything that I needed out of social-media websites. This leads me to my (obvious) Twitter realization… unlike Facebook; Twitter provides a streamlined forum for people to connect with complete strangers who share the same interests. It’s a great tool to find out the very latest news, facts, etc. on whatever you’re interested in.

Appropriation Work II

Its That Time

2012

A composite vector-graphic image which was composed entirely from appropriated imagery from the short film, The Nature of Sound (1948). I found the footage from the short to be very reminiscent of Cold War educational and propaganda films that I’ve seen. I think it is that sense of paranoia and dread that I get from those films that informed this piece.

Compare, Contrast

Although they were both appropriation assignments, working on the collage and the “remix” were completely different processes, for me.

The most obvious difference was the materiality of the two. I don’t think that I’ve cut up magazines and pasted them together since grade school (I don’t really miss it, either). On the other hand, working with video is a familiar process.

The largest difference between them was that the collage assignment had a more defined objective (to create a piece that represented our strengths and weaknesses) while the remix assignment did not. Having a defined objective like that makes the creative process much easier, but at the same time I feel like the results are much more contrived.

Not having an objective for the remix, forced me to search for what the material meant to me. Ultimately, I found the footage to be very reminiscent of Cold War educational and propaganda films that I’ve seen. I think it is that sense of paranoia and dread that I get from those films that informed my piece, It’s That Time.

I’ve never vectorized images from video footage before, and I really enjoyed the process. I think that it allowed me to take the raw material from the video really far away from its source. Initially, I felt that it was necessary vectorize the images from the video because the resolution of the footage was so bad. Later, I decided to exaggerate the affect because I think that it increased the anonymity of the images, which reinforced the piece conceptually.

Appropriation Work

It Came From Planet B! Videos

2012

Duration: 4:16 and 3:21

I appropriated video and sound from collection of youtube videos to create 2 video intermissions for the theatrical production, It Came From Planet B! The videos continued the narrative of the production during costume and set changes. The majority of the footage was appropriated from an array space/alien movies and television shows.

Below are some stills from the videos:

 

Corinne Vionnet

Born in Switzerland in 1969.

Corinne's most popular work to date is a photo series called Photo Opportunities. The images are Photoshoped composites of tourist photos of famous landmarks (Leaning Tower of Piza, Eiffel Tower, etc.) which she appropriates from the internet. Often using hundreds of photos, she stacks them onto each other and then alters the opacity to create an impressionistic image of the landmark.

Here are some examples from the series:

Dlectricity (friday)

It’s really exciting to see an art festival can take over the main drag of downtown. It's this type of event that really elevates Detroit's "hipster" status. Detroit is more and more becoming a cultural hub of musicians, art and artists. Being an artist, who lives and works in the Detroit area, I’ve relatively recently begun to feel like is the right place to be. Events like Dlectricity reinforce this.

The installations that took over entire buildings were my favorite. In the work Visual Music by Kye Potter and Julia Dzwonkoski, video and images were being projected onto the entire face of a building. Also, the piece Work by Mark Moffett with Time Productions projected video from inside of a building onto the windows, which created a mesmerizing effect.

Aside from the art itself, what really stood out to me was MOCAD being open for a no-cover party. To see the community together, enjoying modern art, was awesome. The work that was inside called Vision in a Cornfield was very bizarre and fun to examine.

Unfortunately the rain and cold stood in the way of exploring more of the pieces (no umbrella). Overall, I think that Dlectricity would benefit greatly from being scheduled about month earlier. Exploring these pieces on a summer night would’ve been prime.

Game VS Art

I’ve never really considered a game to be an art form. Sure, the production of games and art is similar in that they are both a creative processes, but I’ve never thought that the intentions behind them were similar (art: to express, game: to win). I think that the idea of a game being art it is a relatively recent idea, which emerged out of conceptual art movements of the 20^th century.

I think that in order for games to be considered art, the act of playing or the end result of playing must fulfill some conceptual goal, in the same way that finishing an artwork cements an idea or a goal. The methods/guidelines for this goal are obviously quite ambiguous and are part of the creative process.

Another similarity between an art-game and more traditional artwork is in the variables that exist within their respective processes. The results of both are dependent on variables such as: circumstance, personality and skill.

But despite common variables, the main difference between the two is still chance. Chance is what consumes games and is what makes them what they are, while the ideal in traditional artworks is more often than not, to remove chance.