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My final piece exemplifies my personal struggle with defining myself as an artist. Every piece has been meticulously cut and warped to form an unsurpassable, eyesore of an entity that hovers just above the little hooded traveler. The two beings do not directly interact, but instead view each other as an out-of-reach nuisance. Rather than leaving the landscape and sky open and clear, multiple tones of static and text are used to build on the theme of discomfort through clutter. All the colors and tones have been darkened and had their contrast boosted to be sticky or jarring. The image is not meant to be entirely cohesive, nor is it meant to be visually appealing.

When I first opened Photoshop a few weeks back, I had drawn several different mockups of what I planned to make. However, I found myself with the pieces to five entirely different puzzles laid out in front of me. Nothing felt right. Something was always misplaced. Everything just felt uncomfortable. So I tried again.

Two sleepless nights and a torn up notebook later, I finally understood what was wrong. This whole time I was forcing myself to make something that I assumed other people would want to see by forcing myself to work with a style that was foreign to me. In the end I abandoned that notion and went created the monster that was following me on my journey.

Perhaps this is what has been building up all semester. Either way, this class has made me realize I need to let go and just create to become comfortable with my work. Until I can overcome that, I will be stuck wandering through the static.

Typically, documentaries make my uncomfortable and hyper aware of something I would typically not think twice about. They bother me, to the say the least. However, I did not feel that way with RiP!: A Remix Manifesto. I love the cheeky narration and the overall approach narrator had despite tackling a relatively big problem in the art world. Though I could be biased since I am a Girl Talk fan.

I am a strong believer in the idea that once an idea has been put out there, it has overcome the stage of simply being someone’s idea and has truly taken on form of its own. A being or entity if sorts, if you may. The same way that people can have similar ideas, there will always be artistic creations that echoes past sounds and ideas. Therefore it is simply ridiculous to believe that remixing is stealing, when in fact it may actually be considered less so than having pieces being “inspired” by an artist.

Both of my brothers had been DJs during the prominence of club kids in the 90s, so naturally I am not oblivious to the abundance of tracks they ripped to create their otherworldly trance and house mixes. The way I saw it, they were creating stories of their own using ideas from several different people and meticulously lacing them together. New meanings, or in this case sounds, were formed. Saying that sampling and remixing are “stealing” other people’s music would be like saying that Freud and Jung ripped off ideas from ancient philosopher. It is over all a silly concept.

In my opinion, the rise in technology has made the big entertainment companies more hungry. Hungry enough to chase down individuals for creating art that many people probably enjoy over the original. It is almost ironic how music executives are so deeply hurt over people using work that has not even be created by them and barely dents their paychecks. If anything, they should be thanking these people for exposure of these greying tracks.
Sadly, it seems music is more valued than most other forms of art.

Shameless Fanblog

https://soundcloud.com/pauline-pokoradi-411336208/cardigans

https://soundcloud.com/pauline-pokoradi/quickly-wavey

https://vimeo.com/143810933

Of all the passages, the one on digital imaging stood out the most to me as a photographer. Despite using primarily digital cameras, I have always limited manipulations to my subjects to only changing lighting and colors. However, upon reading about how other photographers would manipulate landscapes or “morph” images of faces together, I realized I had been going about photography all wrong. Compared to the digital images the passage explained, my work was raw and lackluster. I felt like I had wasted my time and produced nothing of value. More often than not, I focused on creating perfect scenes through props and costume.

I could not help but feel cheated while reading about how many artists created interesting pieces mostly by editing photos however they saw fit. For example, the work of Alexander Apostol was not necessarily beautiful to look at, but his work gave off an undeniable feeling of uneasiness that made his images of blank buildings hard to forget. Though, they were not particularly kind on the eyes, each picture felt like it had a reason for existing. It was then that I realized that an image’s beauty was almost directly connected to what feelings or ideas were being conveyed, rather than solely relying on a piece’s aesthetics.
However, finding the meaning in digitally altered images was hard to do. Craig Kalpakjian’s work, in particular, had a deathgrip on my attention. Each image felt hyperrealistic and devoid of human life. Subconsciously, illusions of people would flicker into an image if I stared too long. Without people to give the pictures a pop of life, each hallway and room was left with a haunting aura. One picture I found particularly creepy was that of an empty room reflected of a security camera’s protective dome. Even though I could not place a definitive meaning on Kalpakjian’s collection, the dystopian atmosphere felt like a meaning in its own accord.

The first time someone called me an “artist,” I laughed.

When I was young, I adored art class. However, an unsteady hand’s incompatibility with pastels and paints was apparent. Soon my scribbles started looking less and less like figures until they could only be seen as looping words. No longer did I try to tell stories through obscure blobs or groups of shapes, realizing that stringing words together was more my forte.

I am not an artist; I am a writer.

However, there came a time when I felt that my words were not up to par with the emotions I was attempting to convey. As I began to run out of words, my means of storytelling began to evolve. Mentally visualizing scenes can go only so far, for some feelings could only be understood through ones eyes. Angles and lighting effects began overshadowing the abundance of adjectives that would usually be used to create a scene.

I am not an artist; I am a camera technician.

In time, constantly attempting to convey the human experience became a drag. Perhaps melancholy had sank into my bones. My fingers endlessly twitched despite this slump. No longer did I want to tell the stories that plagued my mind or convey feelings that tore at my nerves. All I wanted to do was make familiar shapes and patterns. All I wanted to see was some semblance of sanity in my pile of trash.

I am not an artist; I am a loon with a pile of wood and metalscaps.

The Medium is the Massage is best described as a candid look at the truth about society’s unconscious dependence on media. The various designs and seemingly arbitrary quotes thrown in between the blocks of exposition. Knowing that this was published in the 60s is unbelievable considering the insight into the downfalls that advancing electronic technology, such as the permanence of information that occurs when privacy becomes scarce. The Medium is the Massage maintains its relevance despite being published several decades ago.

Though every section echoes the same theme, each portion focuses on things that technological advancements have tainted. One section in particular that stood out to me for its accusatory statements about children in the 60s claims that the modern child is “growing up absurd” due to television exposing him or her to “adult” problems. Though what the writer is saying true, his wording has undertones of superiority and disgust, exhibiting a problem considerably more troubling than children being exposed to the real world too early. Even if cynical analyses and social commentators are there to point out faults, they rarely advise how to correct them.
Luckily, The Medium is the Massage makes up for this complaint by being full of interesting points about the media’s obvious effect on anything that can be changed and about how interconnected the media is with the the overall human experience . Overall, it was a pretty decent reading to be assigned.