My work is an attempt to portray symbolic factors that represent myself. Attempting to live in the moment my first few pieces center on holiday themes such as Halloween. I follow up my pieces with elements that surround me such as my love and fascination for video games and the sounds that surround me daily. The distortion of reality in most of my works add an element of creativity that represent how I view the world, which is in a more fictional way. I further able to explore my own creative style by adding a but of humor as seen in my website project. This eases the dark Halloween tone of my previous works by using a haiku I’ve encountered throughout my favorite blogging site Tumblr.

Through this I am able to accomplish a variety of works that directly relate to my life either directly or indirectly. Also the tone of my work depends on both my mood and the theme of the season.

For my final project I will use a mix of animation, self portrait and audio editing to create small scene.

Using both I plan to create a fun small animation with sound that includes myself.

The remix manifesto definitely emphasizes critical issues in society today. It made me think a lot about some if not most of the songs on my iPod. remix’s, mashups amateur rap, these are genres that most copyright industries would love to eliminate. As mentioned in the film, I agree that the artist manage to create original products that if anything give a homage to other artist. However, in such a money driven society it would only make sense that greedy companies would try to eliminate these artist with lawsuits. The manifesto brings up interesting points, especially in the rule about how culture builds on the past. It made me realize how most creative pieces, even in a more ancient time, is usually inspired by other things. Roman art was inspired by Greek art, music is inspired by other music, and even buildings like court houses are inspired by Romans. This obviously helps in progressing society but of course corporations like to prevent this progression for monetary reasons, which follows up to the next portion of the manifesto. One of the significant portions and lessons on the manifesto is the final part that mentions that the past needs to be limited on their control to create a free society. I could not agree more with this portion especially since simply sampling a song cost nearly a million dollars. This helps keep the wealthy artist in business and the smaller artist with potentially an equal amount of talent limited. The industry is build in a way that only those who are in it can make money but those outside or close to starting have to worry less about their talent but more about their financial situation to afford samples and the legal repercussions. This leads to so many artists not producing work. In a way it carries a risk that not many want to take. This leads to rules haven’t to be broken and with a system so corrupt especially in entertainment it is needed to progress and produce new things without limits. If things don’t change soon I don’t see he future being anything to different then that of 2014. Same music, same movies, no progression at all.

http://www.ubu.com/sound/tellus_11.html
The sound I used was a radio show story about a group of locals that want to get rid of a few new people that moved in by “Jay Allison”. Their reason for all this is because they are different and therefore scary. This piece is interesting because it gives a story without having to show anything, using audio. Here we find a group of racist individuals who want to remove/ eliminate the recent movers who happen to be black. Through out the story we hear a small parade-esque song introducing a new portion of the story. It uses two forms of instrument. One is some form of musical horn as its predominant sound with what seems to be a drum in the background as its secondary sound. As mentioned this small song is used to introduce a new element or portion of the overall story, sort of like a way to introduce a new chapter. It makes music interesting because it goes beyond making you feel a certain emotion, but instead it can be used as a transitional tool. Here we also hear voices of a narrator which can be seen as the predominate sound within the story and the people talking out what the narrator is mentioning which would be the secondary sound. The people in the background emphasizes the story by quoting what the narrator says or even at times finishing the sentence for the narrator.

Link to Haiku

http://bfpa.dreamhosters.com/nma2050/Sebastian

Although this article brings light to the dynamic of those who own something and those who modify, I still seem to fall in the middle of the overall message I feel the author is trying to portray. Information is available from a variety of different sources from books to the Internet, but to what extend can we take this and use it as a bases to create our own product. Many may argue that nothing is original per-se and that all creation is nothing more than a modification of something else, just as music sometimes has samples of other songs. But I believe to claim something like this is to say that originality has never existed and we as a society have merely “robbed” and modified other things to create our own. Plagiarism would be a bigger problem if this was the case. However, on the other hand as long as the product deviates far enough to be unrelated or is used as a reference with obvious homage, then I believe it would be more acceptable to use others work. Financial component of the matter falls in what I see as a darker category. Knowing that one is using your work without compensating you the creator or owner is morally wrong. But if modified to something that would be radically different enough to constitute as different then there should not be any issues. Personally, information placed on the Internet for anybody to see should already be viewed as something within public domain. Additionally as long as there is obvious change to the product there should be no issues taken between the owner and the hacker.

http://youtu.be/3Hu9arERX1c

[T]he animated form is best represented by the creation of films which concentrate purely on using and developing the unique vocabulary available only in animation which, therefore distinguishes it from any other style…

This portion of the excerpt focuses on how flexible animation is when it comes to self-expression. In a way Animation goes beyond simple illustration because it allows for more. Movement, meaning, symbolism, even the most abstract leaves a deeper impact with much more to explore than simple stills. This portion came to mind not because it reminded me of what an old class I had taken where we had to decode the most minor aspects of movies in search for relevance. For example, why this portion was added why the room was such color? What mood was the director trying to display? Animation has the flexibility to do just as live-action film, if not more. Being able to play with reality and color one does have the most freedom within animation.

It can also just be an example of advancement within the new medium. Works such as those of Len Lye show an interesting display of abstract art within a period where animation was much more difficult to achieve. He wanted to match the movement of his brain and body onto the short as a display of his current state shortly before his death. This form of abstract art is the kind that could not be genuinely replicated on to live-action film and are one of the many examples of how flexible the medium is for self-expression.

Animation is seen everywhere, from the cartoons we watch when were kids to even the animated works we watch today. It’s something that truly opens the world up for endless possibilities. Especially since you have total control when animating, you chose what you want to show and how.

My work is an attempt to portray obvious and symbolic factors that represent myself. I decided to make a digital piece using Adobe Photoshop. I edited a photo of myself in order to portray a message. I copied the photo in to a second layer in order to help create a blurring background effect to keep the focus on myself. To create this background effect I used the selection tool to select myself and inversed the selection in order to erase the outside Additionally, I created another duplicate layer in order to distort my face and erase it into pieces in order to give it a splatter-like effect, as if pieces of myself where floating in the air. Lastly I played with the color to make the small pieces colorful while everything else is colorless.

I decided to keep this piece a bit abstract mostly to convey two messages, imperfection and the many aspects of ones self. I kept my face as neutral as possible to not influence any emotion in particular. Part of the Photo is colorless to show how my outside exterior may not accurately demonstrate whom I really am, thus showing my personal form of imperfection. However, the other half is seen as more colorful and dynamic with pieces popping out to demonstrate the many more exciting pieces that represent me. I created a splatter-like effect to show that although I am boring and dull and colorless in the exterior or at first glance I am filled with more exciting features that make up me.