Final Project

For my final project that was concentrating on appropriation, I decided to do something very simple and recognizable. I took 90's cartoon characters and graphically reduced them in illustrator and then applied an Andy Warhol pop-art style to them. I think the Andy Warhol style is very recognizable and as are the cartoon characters I used. By appropriating both the style and the subject, I gave the viewer 2 different levels to connect on. I think my piece is within fair use rights because I'm not claiming to have illustrated the characters as my own, and I am not stating that my pop-art style is something that I came up with. I am giving credit to the original creators. My style of pop art is obviously not identical to that of Warhol's but it is highly suggestive of it.

girl talk

The Girl Talk movie was very interesting. I thuroughly enjoyed watching it and would definitely recommend it to my friends. I learned so much about how copyright and fair-use laws are used/violated. I learned that the Girl Talk DJ is a biologist as a day job and is only a DJ for pleasure purposes. I think the fact that anybody would try to sue him for his music is ridiculous. He's not making money off of his shows and his albums are free to download. The artists that are used in his pieces should be flattered that their songs are being used to create such enjoyment. And not to mention, a lot of the artists he uses are getting great exposure without having to pay for it! Overall the movie made me more conscious as to what is far-use/appropriation and what is STEALING!

BROADCAST recap

This project was extremely interesting to take on. From the beginning the research and development was very informational and exposed many projects I was not aware of. First of all I started by researching Krisztof W. He used very large projections on the side of public spaces to raise social awareness. His tactics were often guerrilla-like and only lasted a short period of time. This tactic added to the intensity of the issues that he was trying to expose.

After seeing all the different broadcast artists and their works, I came up with the idea to use Facebook for my project. Initially I was going to just post a graphic asking questions to provoke discourse among my facebook friends, but after some in-class revising I decided on a different approach. I decided to create an all new facebook for myself. I update it on a daily basis (usually at night) and posted a picture regardless of how I looked at the time of the status update. I would like to continue this approach to “facebooking” for an extended period of time.

I think this project is great example of how facebook can be used to truly portray someone versus how facebook is typically used to portray someone in a certain light. Since facebook is typically used to glamorize one’s life my approach showed a “no bells or whistles” approach to facebook. Again I would like to continue my project for a while and see how a collective of these posts impacts my facebooking experience. I may also delete my normal facebook account and try just using my objective facebook for a week and add all of my regular friends.

505 poster

Mirrors

Facebook is a mirror. Looking at your Facebook as a reflection of yourself can display an idealized version of how you see yourself. I think most people portray a glamorized version of themselves for the world to see. They skew themselves in a way that makes them more desire-able. Human nature, maybe? Or maybe it's a consequence of the obsession with celebrities and commercialized beauty. Whether a person is glamorizing themselves in the form of their physical appearance, or glamorizing the experiences of their life, I think it's safe to say that Facebook is the glittery soap box of the social media world.

For my project I am going to make a Facebook account that documents my life from an objective point of view rather than a subjective one. I will take and post a daily picture of myself. Whether I have makeup on or not.. whether I have the flu or not... whether I'm happy or not. It will document my life in a factual way rather than a glamorized way. My statues will not be brags about my daily life accomplishments or my bitches and rants, but rather factual statements about what I did that day.

I think it will be interesting to compare my "normal" Facebook (where my life is glamorized and filtered to say only what I want to expose) to my "actual" Facebook that displays my mundane daily activities.

Nate Larson

http://www.natelarson.com

GEOLOCATION PROJECT
"Twitter has allowed us to become intimately involved in strangers’ lives as we follow their tweets through daily errands and thoughts; exploring the lives of others 140 characters at a time.
The GEOLOCATION project follows random tweets and by using Geotag information embedded in these tweets, travel to the GPS coordinates and take a photograph of the site of the update. By photographing the site with its accompanying tweet, the project creates a real life situation and location for these usually anonymous posts. The GEOLOCATION project focuses on the cultural understanding of distance as perceived in modern life and grounded in network culture." -http://cac.wildapricot.org/events?eventId=258757&EventViewMode=EventDetails

Photo from Geolocation Project via Twitter

“Mapping the Data Stream” features three recent series of technologically enabled photographs by Larson. The newest series, “History Lessons,” is a photographic exploration of significant historic sites, coupled with references and messages to the site gathered from online social networks.
The second series, “Geolocation,” monitors public Twitter tweets and the associated Geotag information. Upon viewing a particularly compelling, poetic or personal Twitter update, Larson and his colleague Marni Shindelman traveled to the GPS coordinates and made a photograph to mark the location of the update in the real world and paired the image with the originating text.
The third series documents recent site-specific GPS drawings made by Larson and Shindelman and uses invisible technological threads to create virtual drawings and writings in urban landscapes."
-http://wvutoday.wvu.edu/n/2010/09/01/michael-sherwin-nate-larson-photography-exhibitions-open-at-mesaros-galleries

sketch of Dick Cheney from GPS drawings project

This is the first image I posted on my Facebook to provoke responses: