Grind Time

In John Baldessari’s “I am making art” it seems that he is making fun and condemning artists of his time period for creating artwork that is garbage. Baldessari does not consider their designs and models as art. That is why he compares their work to different poses he makes. As his poses lack perception and creativity, as do the artists of his generations artwork have the same useless meaning. I believe he is trying to encourage future artists as well. By showing them that there is no passion in his movements, the artists should create something with passion and emotion. I feel that in our present time young artists do not put much effort into their work. All I see is something that a freshmen in his or her art class can create on social media like Facebook posted just to get digital likes. It is of today’s artists do not aspire to be in museums or gala’s. They just do it to be popular around their friends in real life and on social media. John Baldessari’s  point looks like it has been made decades later. On the other hand, in Richard Serra’s “Hand catching lead” I notice several emotions and possible background stories from his video. The lead that is falling into the persons hand is melting. It is so slippery and moist that he can barely catch it. I think this is a metaphor for the life of human beings. The hand that is dirty and tired is life. The lead falling are the challenges or obstacles we humans must face. At times we catch and solve the problems that are thrown into our lives. The rest of the times in our lives, we let the issues slip away and cause severe pain and aguish to our bodies and self esteem. Although life is tough, the last scene shows the person catching the lead in his hand. Serra’s trying to say that with all life’s struggles people must fight and persevere in order to rise to the occasion.

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In the beginning of the semester in my New Media Arts class I did not think or feel like a real artist. I didn’t know how to critique or give the proper constructive criticism to other artist’s work. As I mentioned before the only culture of art I had was going to museums in the city. Now that the semester is coming to a close, I am more sure of myself in continuing in new media. I have been taught to use software such as: Audacity, Adobe Photoshop and Final Cut Pro 7 (outside of class but I used it for a project that involves the class). All these cool applications helped me create different new media that I am proud of. For my final project I made a video. I put voice sounds, music, color and different effects in it. It took me over 17 and a half hours total to create my video. I can honestly say, when I see a piece of art, video or an advertisement using computer graphics I really do appreciate the effort and final product because now I know it takes a while to make a decent new media art. I am glad I took this course and am to take more challenging new media arts classes that I can learn much cooler and useful software. I am an artist at my own level and hope to always do better in any art work I get my hands on. Thank you to the professor and my classmates for proving to me anybody can become an artist if he or she puts their time into it. 

The 5 principles of New Media Arts are: Numerical Representation, Modularity, Automation, Variability and Transcoding.

Numerical Representation– New media arts projects are made up of digital coding. They are values of represented numbers. Mathematical equations called algorithms are formulas used to solves problems or create media. Both the visual and verbal forms of new media is programmable. We can use digital codes to design interesting media arts.

Modularity-Modularity is constructed using computer science. Pixels, images, text, sounds, frames, code are the attributes that are fused together to create new media.  New media can be altered with these separate components to layout better forms of the project.

Automation– Automation is the fundamental base for artificial intelligence and virtual reality. In this chapter Manovich talks about low and high level automation. He describes low level automation as the type where the person using the computer  modifies or creates from scratch a media item using pre-loaded pages/templates or algorithms . The computer that’s controlled by the user can create an image or other intended projects.

Variability– Lev describes this as  “something that is not fixed once and for all, but something that can exist in different, potentially infinite versions.” You can take an item and shape it in a way from the original version that it varies by using other values to change the outcome of the original. An arrangement of numerical representation and modularity.

Transcoding–  It is the process where an object is altered from one form into another. Taking media like a piece of artwork and changing it into data from a computer. When it is transcoded, or transformed, it takes on a different shape digitally while remaining the same visually to the user. Manovich says there are two different types of visuals. The culture layer and the computer layer. The culture layer is what remains recognizable to people and the computer layer is digital coding that the computer uses to translate into objects we are mundane with.

Those are the 5 principles of New Media Arts.

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I myself may be guilty of downloading illegal music. Does that make me a criminal? During my early teenage years LimeWire was the Napster of my generation. Every kid at school downloaded music content and listened to their playlists without the feeling of committing a crime. I knew that a few large corporations like Viacom and Disney owned 90% of media in America. What I didn’t know was that they owned 10% of everything else. I was surprised that you had to pay royalties in order to sing happy birthday. I am a finance major and I understand that businesses need to make money. But this is what people in finance call “corporate greed.” It was interesting to see how a biomedical engineer was a nighttime music mixer and appealed to the youth. It is bad that these companies controlled what we listened too and how we listened to them, but what is worse is that the government is on their side. Corporate lobbyists bribe these elected officials and in return they acquire more control over the media. That limits musicians and artists to create something original. That could slowly kill any imagination for aspiring artists because they will have the mindset that if they create this new art they will either be sued or shut down. The director Gaylor brought up a good point when he says the music artists that created the songs aren’t suing the people; it is their record companies. I think it’s so stupid when they were suing struggling lower middle class parents over 24 downloaded songs for hundreds of thousands of dollars. What is even more absurd is that civil and or federal judges are not only taking their time to listen to this but they are also finding the defendants guilty for piracy. And when the day care had to remove the Disney characters that are just straight up totalitarianism. It doesn’t matter if you own it, the owners of the day care painted the murals for the kids not to profit from Mickey Mouse. I personally believe that as good as this movie is, you can have a million more produced that will spark more controversy, but these big companies have more money and power to win. That is unfortunately the way it is. However, I am very interested how this director was able to create this movie. It pretty much exposed many flaws in our media system in this country. Maybe people like him can give us hope for the future. But like Gaylor said in his 3rd point, “Our future is becoming less free.” There is an illusion of free choice that is blanketed by celebrities and award shows that make citizens believe we put them up there under the spotlight. When it really was the puppet masters behind the curtains. It is a little different now though. In 2015 we have access to all the music we want either through streaming Pandora, spotify to share music through sound cloud or Google play music. So we have access to music but there are still patents on the intellectual property. Are these big companies finally realizing that being less greedy will get them more fans? Or are they somehow working on something that can indefinitely control us forever?

The passage that stands out to me most was authored by German artist Jochem Hendricks. Specifically his work titled “Eye”. This artwork stood out to me the most because the woman in the photo looked almost exactly like the actor Heath Ledger dressed as the Joker from the movie the Dark Knight. I fell in love when I have watched the Joker. The way that Ledger portrayed how a human being could create chaos and bring out the true colors of people was brilliant. I feel this artwork captures the aggressive expansion of mystery and evil. The way the woman is glancing at you as she covers most of her face with the newspaper makes it look like she is up to no good. She is also in a white room with just tea newspapers and cigarettes shows how she does not need much to satisfy herself. It is almost as if she welcomes you into her madness like a Harley Quinn. Either she is plotting to kill you or plotting to kill with you. It says that the author used a kind of digital technology equipment to direct representation of the artists gaze. Which I think he nailed perfectly. This was one of the most interesting pieces from the total passages.

One of my favorite artists is Roy Lichtenstein. He is the guy who developed the pop art. They look like comic book strips but with real life emotion. One of his most famous works is titled “Drowning Girl”. In the thought bubble the woman cries out “I don’t care! I’d rather sink than call brad for help!” I thought that was funny because it generalizes a typical beautiful diva that always gets what she wants except this time when a guy turned her down. Lichtenstein really helps all forms of new arts to progress into popular and recognized artwork. His art continues to live forever.