A Loose Seal

I think that I have come such a long way from the beginning of this course. I feel like I have a pretty solid handle on the basics of Photoshop, and I really saw my progression from my first attempt at Photoshop (my seal with the yellow bow-tie), to my final project. I even felt more confidant and at ease with my skills when I redid some of my projects earlier this week. While many of the projects were difficult, I truly enjoyed what I learned in this course, and look forward to using my newly acquired skills in the future! 

This past week, we were able to redo some of our assignments for a better grade. One of the assignments that I redid was my Project 1 NASA Infographic about a mission to Saturn Unfortunately, I didn’t save it on my personal computer, so I can’t post it here (!),  so you’re going to just have to trust my following thoughts…

While creating my infographic, (make your own here!) I had to use Photoshop, and while doing so, I came to the revelation that digital art has become the art form of information. In my experience, painters and sculpter and other types of “traditional” artist rarely use their skills to create “non” art, but digital artist often do that. Wether through infographics, websites, magazines, movie posters, and all the other things that digital artist create, digital art often has more than one purpose. I think that is one of the reasons that many people question digital art as a legitimate art form. In my opinion, the multiple uses of digital makes it more legitimate, especially in this time when everything that we own has more than one purpose…digital art seamlessly fits into our digital art. 

Last week at Wednesday Scripps Tea, the CORE Program hosted the annual Core 3 Symposium, which is an event where the Core 3 student present their work from the last semester. I was particularly drawn to the photography Core exhibit. Many of the students used a variety of mediums for their final project, but my personal favorite was by a student named Constanza, who made a statue for her project. The statue was made out of traditionally female gendered items (such as make up, sanitary items, hair products), and manipulated into a female silhouette. She then took a picture of the shadow that was projected on the wall, so it looked like the shadow of a woman. 

Constanza’s project, my visit to the street art exhibit, as well as this past semester in this class, has made me conclude that I think that digital photography is the most significant medium in digital art. Digital photography seems to be the base for most forms of digital art, and it has allowed for digital art to intersect with other art mediums to create new types of digital art. In my opinion, digital photography has made digital art the art form it is today.   

Over Thanksgiving break (so long ago, I know) I went to the Mesa Art Museum with my Grandmother and mom. They had a small exhibit on street art, as well as screening infamous street artist Banksy’s film “Exit Through the Gift Shop”. While watching this film and looking at some of the examples of street art, I came to the revelation that street art has evolved into a form of digital art.

Most street art exist in a very set location, but with the emergence of digital photography and the internet, street art has been exposed to a much broader audience. Artist such as Banksy and Shepard Fairey gained fame through their controversial graffiti, but individuals taking pictures of them and then posting them to the internet have catapulted them to statuses of world wide celebrity. 

This intersection of digital photography and street art definitely brings questions of ownership into the digital art discourse. While street artist are the initial artist, what credit do photographers receive in exposing new audiences to the art? All of the examples of street art in the exhibit I went to were photographs and not installations of the actual street artist work. While both the photographers and street artist received credit for their contributions, I wonder how much credit should actually be given to both in this instance. 

A photograph of Banksy’s work. Photographer not credited. 

So for my artist presentation this semester, I was assigned the internet based artist, Angie Waller. Waller is a New York based artist who works in a variety of media, including books, websites, and videos. She had a very strong web presence, with a twitter, website, and Facebook, which is really cool because it allows her to connect quickly with her fans. She is most well know for her web installations, and according to her website, “Her projects use data mining techniques to establish patterns and create narratives that critique situations of personal identity in the everyday.”

Some of her more famous works include “Data Mining in the Amazon” (2003), which collected information on Amazon customers and connected products they might like based on their political leaning; “MyFrenemies.com”(2007), which is a social networking site that allows people to make connections through their mutual dislike of other people; “Unknowunknows.com” (2011) which uses search engine data to see what uses search for the most, and then organizes them in fun little charts. You should definitely check out some of her work!

 http://angiewaller.com/

http://www.myfrienemies.com/welcome

http://www.unknownunknowns.org

We had our final project due today, and I am really happy with my results. I’m still not really sure what a hypertext non-liner narrative is supposed to be, but I liked my result. I connected Beyonce song lyrics through the use of the same words, and formated it as if she were writing the songs in a journal. There were some slight errors that were pointed out to me during my critique, but as a whole I think that I did a fairly good job. I was initially a bit stress with using HTML code, but by the 5th page I had definitely gotten used to using it. I’m excited to use my new HTML code skills on other projects. 

And now a Beyonce gift for your enjoyment!

I feel that I have learned a lot so far in this class concerning Photoshop. I had a basic grasp of the program, but I actually feel like I am gaining a strong grasp of the program thanks so our lessons. I think that the most useful lesson so far was lesson 5, with editing photos, seeing how the skills taught in that lesson are applicable to everyday photo editing.

That being said, my favorite lesson so far was lesson 6, with the manipulation of the model for the tech magazine. The skills learned in that lesson were crazy cool and so much fun. I really enjoyed manipulating the models head; I felt like a puppeteer. I also like how the skills I learned from this lesson and the following lesson were so easily applied to Assignment 4. I think that my final results for Assignment 4 turned out great and I’m really proud of it.