RIP: A Remix Manifesto Summary

        RIP: A Remix Manifesto is a documentary that talks about a very popular music artist known as Girl Talk.  Girl Talk consists of one man named Gregg Gillis and he takes parts from different songs (usually popular ones) and creates new music of his own.  He doesn't use any of his own materials at all.  A lot of people consider his work stealing and what is known as Copyright infringement; even though he changes the music so much, you can’t even tell what all of the songs he uses are.  Girl Talk is known as a mash-up artist, and according to the documentary, mash-up artists have stirred up quite a controversy with both the Copyright Company and the other artists they take their material from.

            Copyright problems began once the craze of a new search engine called the Internet was created.  It was easy for people to steal music, movies and images from the internet and use them to create their own mash-up piece.  Before the internet started, Copyright actually encouraged people to be creative.  It wasn’t until websites like Napster began, that musicians and other artists began suing and Copyright had to make their laws more strict.  One thing I didn’t know about Copyright was that they are now going as far as making it so you can’t copy a CD onto your computer.  So with artists like Girl Talk and the earlier artists similar to Girl Talk, known as Negative Land, they won’t be able to take pieces of music anymore, even if they go out and by the CD themselves first.

Project 2 Summary

This project was unlike any project I have ever done.  Usually my project include making a video, taking a photograph or creating a graphic.  I've always had to show my work to the class that I was in, but I have never had to broadcast my work to a bunch of other people; especially friends.  So I was a little hesitant about going through with my idea.

What I wanted to do was kind of like an experiment with Facebook.  I was to post a new picture everyday for 10 days describing what my mood was that day.  Then, I would publish the album and let my Facebook friends comment and let me know what they think.  The purpose of this experiment was to begin putting my own feelings and personality into my work, since it's something that I am not comfortable doing.

There was one thing that I had to change from my original idea that that was to add a word or phrase in the picture.  I chose a word to best describe my mood or emotion and then picked the font that I thought expressed the image the best.  Adding that extra element was really successful overall and I think brought more of an emotion to it.

Overall, the project went extremely well.  Not only did my friends comment what their thoughts were, but I became more confident in being able to show my emotions and feelings in my work; as well as show it to my family and friends.  Before this project, none of my friends ever saw any of my art work.  So this was a good opportunity to get over my fear and finally see what they think of it.

Marni Shindelman

Marni Shindelman works mostly with photography and specializes with contemporary art and social networking.  Most of her work that I have found has been a collaboration piece with Nate Larson and consists of a photograph with what looks like a twitter status as the caption.  They mix random tweets and tragic photographs that come up with a different meaning.  Their work entitled Geolocation  "focuses of the cultural understanding of distance as perceived in modern life and network culture." (http://www.larson-shindelman.com/biographies).

Other information about Marni Shindelman can be found on these websites:

http://www.marnishindelman.com/Pages/Photography.html

http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/2011/jan/05/twitter-art/

A Personal Touch

Title: A Personal Touch
Vehicle of Media: Facebook, photography (with the possible use of Photoshop)
Content/Message:  Expressing the different types of personality and expression.

My goal in my art is be able to express my personality more.  In the past it has been a difficult task to bring personal aspects and feelings into my work.  Even four years of being an art major here, and I am still having a hard time bringing any of my own expression into my work.  My idea is to slowly and subtly incorporating the aspects of personal expression into my work and showing the work on Facebook, to see what the reactions (if any) I might get.  What I really want to do is take a different picture or create a different image to describe my mood or personal expression of every day, and post that to Facebook.  I'm not sure if I would get any reactions to it, but maybe by describing the album as a status, people will comment on their ideas and thoughts about it.  It could be a picture I took that day, a journal entry, or a drawing I did while sitting at work; whatever describes my personal expression that day.
My idea is extremely basic right now and I am still thinking of ways to expand this idea to a more creative level.  I am planning on expressing the different aspects of personality through photographs.  Since it is still nice outside, there are lots of options for me to still use.  I also want to use the form of words into it as well.  I am in a typography class at the moment and really enjoy it, so my idea is to take a word that has the style and meaning of the photograph that goes with it.  By doing this, I am hoping to be more confident in making my art work my own, as well as showing my friends on Facebook what I as an art student can accomplish; which is something I have also never done.  None of my friends have really ever seen my art work unless they have helped me by being in a video. Research for this project will include defining the different aspects of expression and personality that relates to me, as well as finding the perfect words to explain those aspects.
I think it will be difficult to mix these ideas together and to actually find time to post everyday, but if I can accomplish this, I think it will help me become more confident in my work and improve on my work in the future.

Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger

Name: JENNY HOLZER
Date of Birth- Date of Death:  July 29,1950 to present
Born where: Gallipolis, OH
Where Practicing Art: Hoosick, NY
Education: Ohio University, Rhode Island School of Design and Whitney Museum of American Art.
Medium:  Her mediums ranges from projections, LED lights, signs and video; and goes all the way to plaques, t-shirts, benches and even condoms.  The one thing that stays consistant with her medium is she always uses text in her art work.  She has used her own words in the past, but has since turned to others words.
Message/ Meaning:  Her work consists of different sayings like myths or randoms facts.  Some are slogans found on billboards, magazines, etc. Her message is to bring forth something that is often thought about but never said or something that was meant to stay hidden or secret within the media.
"Holzers work presents both explicit content and minimalist aesthetics that make profound statements about the world of advertising and comsumer society today." (http://www.designboom.com/).
"Holzer questions what our eyes can see and what we can't see in media, whether consumers today have any control over inormation that is provided to them" (http://www.designboom.com/).
Audience:  Her audience is directed mostly towards adults, but it is easy to see how people of all ages are attracted to her bright, large and creative use of text and writing.
What's interesting/unusual about her:  She uses a large variety of mediums in which to post her art like LED lights and benches, but she always sticks to using some sort of quote or slogan.  She always uses writing.

To see some of her Truisms go to:  http://mfx.dasburo.com/art/truisms.html
For a look at her projections:  http://jennyholzer.com/list.php

Cited Works:
http://www.designboom.com/contemporary/holzer.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenny_Holzer


BARBARA KRUGER

1.  Medium:  Most of her work consists of black and white photographs overlaid with decorative captions ( a lot of time, in red).

2.  Message/Meaning:  She focuses on agressive text that "questions the viewer about feminism, consumerism, and individual anatomy and desire." (www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenny_Holzer) 
Other topics her work discusses deals with corporate greed, racial and gender stereotypes, religion and sex.
"Her black and white images are culled from the mainstream magazines that sell the very ideas she is disputing." (http://barbarakruger.com/)

3.  Audience:  The Audience is strictly for adults and many of her feminist pieces are for women, but her work has been shown in magazines that both men and women read.  It is to get the attention of every type of person.

Cited Works:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Kruger
http://barbarakruger.com/biography.html
http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/feminist/Barbara-Kruger.html

How to Create a Successful Game.

Q:  What were the important things needed in order to create a successful game? 

A: I was very open minded about this project because I have never created a game before.  I realized that there is a lot more to creating a game then I originally thought.  There are many things in creating a game that you wouldn't normally think would need to be done.  For example, I found it really important to test the game out before sending people out there for the first time.  When we played Oakland Universe 2.0 for the first time, we realized how much things needed to changed to make things easier; especially when it came to the difficulty of the clues and the area of which the clues would be found.

When we compared creating a game to creating a work of art, I said that there is a little bit more work that goes behind the thinking process of creating a game.  That was a major understatement.  There is a ton more work in the thinking part then in the actual playing part.  When you test out the game, you have to think more on how to make it so the person playing doesn't get completely lost or lose interest.  Especially with the amount of time we had to play the game, we had to plan accordingly as to how hard the clues would be.  Walking around campus playing a game for over two hours would be way too much, depending on how the weather was.

Another thing that is important to have when creating a game is a very detailed set of rules.  Anything you can think of that might be asked when creating the game, include it in the rules.  The more vague you are about your game, the harder it will be for the person playing the game to understand.  I know when we were playing Oakland Universe 2.0 for the first time, there were a lot of unanswered questions that weren't explained int the rules the first time.  They were much more clear the second time and we didn't feel like we were sitting around for as long as we did the first time.

One of the most important thing to me that really helped when creating the game was getting the other people in the classes opinions.  They helped to add some things that you might not have thought of and gave opinions on what was successful and what wasn't.  After playing the game for the first time, people gave their feedback and that helped so much more in playing it the second time.

How is creating a game similar to art?

Q:  Identify how this project is similar and dissimilar to making an artwork in terms of process.

A:  Art can be seen as many different things.  Whether it be a painting, a photograph, a performance and even games can be considered art.  Though there are many differences between creating an art piece and creating a game, the process between the two have quite a bit of similarities.

When we were thinking of ideas for our game, whether they were for our collaboration game or the one we thought of on our own, we wrote down ideas and pieced them together until we came up with a good enough game to present to the class.  For a lot of artists, including myself, this is almost exactly the process that we follow when thinking of a art piece.  Though there are some artists who just create an art piece based off what they are thinking at that exact moment, or have already been given specific requirements.  That is one major difference between creating the game that we did and creating a piece of art.

For me, however, the process was quite similar.  I like to look online and research ideas if I am having trouble thinking of things I might like to incorporate into my art.  I am not used to having this much time to think of ideas for projects, so in this class, it is nice to have more time to create something that could have many more possibilities.  I feel that if we would have had less time to think of a game, my game would not have been able to evolve into its potential.

The one major difference between the process between this project and creating any other art work is actually following through with what it is.  With creating this game, most of the work was thinking and piecing together the ideas on how to play the game.  When creating art work, most of the time, actually creating the art piece is the most time consuming.  So the process varies with both when it involves brainstorming and creating.  Creating this game is more about the thinking process and then we will just go out and see how successful it turns out.  Where as a painting or a photograph, it takes more time to develop the photograph or paint on a canvas.

Game Idea

I researched the group known as Blast Theory and there was a game that I found particularly interesting.  It was called "Uncle Roy All Around You."  The object of the game is to try and find Uncle Roy.  My idea was that we could do a similar thing with our phones.

Name of the Game: Phone Finders

Objective:  To try and find a specific classmate/professor.

Rules:
- Allowed to have a map of OU's campus and a cell phone.
- The person hiding will stay in one place and send either a picture or message briefly describing  
  where they are.
- Can ask 2 questions to the hider to give them clues.
      - Clues will include either a picture message or just a regular text, identifying their surroundings.
      - Clue Example: A picture text of a statue or a local sign of the are the hider is in.
- The more time that passes, the more descriptive the clues get.

Why we should play it:
  It's kind of like playing Where's Waldo and it helps you look more at the details of the surroundings on campus becoming more familiar of the things around campus.  It would also get us moving around outside and it's not such a difficult game that it would take hours to complete the game.

Blast Theory

Blast Theory is a group of artists that create a new definition for the term inactive performance art.  It mixes both the artists and the audiences across the internet and gets them involved in a live game.  "The groups work explores interactivity and the social and political aspects of technology." (www.blasttheory.co)  There are three main artists that combine to form this group called Blast Theory.  Members include Matt Adams, Ju Row Farr, and Nick Tandavanitj.

There are a lot of really cool interactive games that not only involve the internet audience, but live audiences as well.  Their most recent game was called "Ulrike and Eamon Complaint", performed in 2009.  It's where you call a number and are instructed to do certain things like wearing sunglasses, for example.  Then you are given an identity and basically live the lives of these people for the day.  Other games created were "Can You See Me Now?" (2001), "Uncle Roy All Around You" (2003), and "Day of the Figurines" (2006).  "Can You See Me Now?" is where you are being chased both in the real world and in the virtual world, no matter where you are and can choose between the two.  "Uncle Roy is All Around You" is when the players are looking for Uncle Roy and they can also choose between looking in the real world or in the virtual world.  "Day of the Figurines" is where members adopt a physical figurine and live the life of that person in a fictional town for a day.