Crowdsourcing Final Projects

Swarm Sketch Project

Artist Statement: I contributed to two swarm sketches. It was interesting to see how contributors can use the small lines of others to create an overall image with (some) recognizable areas of the sketch.

Johnny Cash Project   

Click Here to See My Contribution to the Johnny Cash Project

Artist Statement: I choose to contribute to the Johnny Cash project because it is a great crowdsourcing project with a great cause. Within my image I choose to use the stippling technique to create the characteristics of the face. I spent a lot of time using the opacity of the brush to create bright highlights to bring out facial features. For the background my inspiration was Van Gogh's famous Starry Night painting.

Post Secret

Artist Statement: I have always wanted to contribute to Post Secret so I decided to use this as another crowd sourcing project to participate in. To incorporate the ideals of the class, I decided to make a digital collage for the background of the post card. The letters where found on images on-line and cut and pasted to the background, in true digital ransom note fashion.

Crowdsourcing Web Page Home Page Design

Artist Statement: Seeing as how my favorite project in class was the Triptych, this is what I decided would be my crowdsourcing idea. The idea behind this project is a combination between all the crowdsourcing projects I have seen. First, each day the project would have a word written in bold. The next step is to take the first image,color or word/s that comes to your mind when you see the bold word and add it to the days digital collage or Triptych. Similar to the technical layout of the Johnny Cash Project, the users would have a simplified version of Photoshop to edit their piece and place it on the working collage space. I choose to make a simple elegant Home page, using negative space and a simple layout so it would give the purpose of the project while not initially bombarding the user with too much info.  

Digital Currents: Chapter 5 Discussion Question

1. Because artist that create interactivity within their work have to explore many different sides of their work as they are developing it, i.e not only creating the work as an artist but as exploring their work as a viewer, do you believe they form a deeper connection with their work than visual artists like painters, poets, composers and so on?

"Interactivity deeply entwines the function of viewer and artist. In the process, the artist's role changes.    This convergence transforms what had been two very different identities of the artists and viewer." (167)

2. Do you believe that the an artist that creates an interactive piece has a deeper level of connection with the viewer, than that of traditional artist?

"In interactively participating, the viewer derives power somewhat parallel with that of the artist: to choose one's own path and discover one's own insights through the interactive work." (167) 

YouTube Remix

Artist Statement- I found this project to be interesting as well as challenging. I am not use to working with code so the challenge increased as the project progressed. I really find this lady's news story remixed into a song with videos ranging from animation, re-creation, to previously developed videos, very creative. I did have a hard time syncing all videos and sound together. I spent a good amount a research searching the net for codes that would mute some of the videos that had similar if not the exact song, but I had no luck in finding a code that actually worked. So, I decided to rearrange the videos so that the other videos sounds would come in at a lower sound and create a background repeat. The volumes of each video must be lower than the larger middle video for the piece to have successful sound piece.

Overall, I choose this initial video as my piece subject because the videos are hilarious. These videos are a sure way to crack a smile.

Video Piece: Click Here 

Digital Currents: Chapter 4 Discussion Question

1.Rosalind Krauss, art critic, termed early video works as “narcissistic” performance. How does works by Berly Korot, like First Four Monitors of Dachan, fit into the idea of “narcissistic performace” in realtion to video art?

 “Krauss describes this narcissism as a kind of psychological strategy for examining the conditions and traditions of the relationships between the process of image-making and the viewer’s perception of it.”(99)

2.Robert Pinaus- Witten said that “video art was ‘deficient precisely because it was linked to and perpetuated the outmoded clichés of Modernist Pictorialism.”’ (106)

What does he mean by “perpetuated the outmoded clichés of Modernist Pictorialism?” What are the clichés? Is he using the term modernist pictorialism to refer to a minimalist approach to a modern media?

Digital Currents: Chapter 3 Discussion Question

1." At the same time, television projected the world of the 1960s directly into the public's consciousness, transmitting dramatic, disturbing images of the Vietnam War Mixed with scaled up images of consumer objects which attempted to hook the viewer into believing that both kinds of images were of equal importance." (64)

Is the author saying that the attempts of subliminal advertising on TV in the 1960s, served as a vessel for "postmodern consciousness?"

2. "'In Conceptual Art", wrote Sol LeWitt, "the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work... all planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes the machine that makes the art.'" (73)

The Medium is the Massage Discussion Questions

1. Marshall McLuhan says, "This feeling is an aspect of the new mass culture we are moving into-- a world of total involvement with everybody else and in which nobody can really imagine what private guilt can be anymore" (61). 

Does this quote have a direct correlation with the massive social networking that occurs every day on Facebook, Twitter or Myspace? These people tend to publish their every action, feeling and thought. Does this combine everyone and erase the boundaries associated with the term "private?"

2. "We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future. Suburbia lives imaginatively in Bonanza-land." (McLuhan 75)

What does McLuhan mean by "we look at the present through a rear-view mirror?" Does he mean, technology of the future is fast approaching today? Then, how does that connect with marching "backwards into the future?"              

 

Assignment 2: Animation

Artist Statement: This assignment was my first attempt to animate in Photoshop. I found it very time consuming but fun. It consists of 28 frames at .2 sec each. Since I have multiple areas of animation I worked in each frame separately to achieve multiple movements. In time I am sure I will perfect the timing progressions.