Vito Acconci Slides-Meredith Reed

Vito Acconci

Abramovic Slides - Franki Abraham

Reading Response 1

While I agree that the groundwork has already been laid our for most .GIF makers, I do not agree with Sally Mackay’s arguments that .GIFs are not truly art.  Although she argues in her article “The Affect of the Animated GIFS” that the intention of GIF making is not to make Art, and the experience of GIF making and viewing is not conducive to the art experience. Mackay’s claims that “GIFs are designed to be vies at home, in private, by people who are sitting at their computers,” in my mind does not present a hindrance to art, but it expands the availability of art. Instead of going to galleries and museums, audiences can experience a piece of graphical art from their own homes. This availability of this art exposure increases the necessity for convergence media and the appropriation of different forms of media to attract Internet user’s attention. However, with the increase in availability of Gif making software, there is also an increase of artists into the market. This poses an intellectual question of who could be considered an artist? Someone who appropriates and manipulates existing art for a cultural statement or someone who makes animated Gifs from scratch for joy?

The classification of artist solely lies with the purpose and intentions of the creator. Mackay contends “the animated GIF is appealing to many internet artists because it signifies an anti-corporate agenda as well as a kind of “truth to materials” commitment to technologies that are elegantly designed for democratic online use,” (MacKay). If there is a increase in activism against the exploitation and the exclusivity of art, then the entire culture of Gif making becomes a performance art piece itself.

Reading Response 3-Reed

Considering most men and women only pass down their genetic makeup to the next generation of breeder, it is an interesting concept that memes are capable of just as much achievement as the evolution of our genetic code. However, over the course of the semester, this topic has been a hot button issue in many of my classes, particularly in regards to feminism. Many women would rather pass down a meme or a body of work that can keep the person, artist, or writer alive. Where the genetic permeation of people is taken advantage of and is a product of thousands of, now, nameless people who have contributed to your genetic composition, people like Charles Darwin, Leonardo DaVinci, and Jane Austen will live through their contributions to society through the arts and sciences.

This is a daunting concept for me to fully understand because it presents an existential crisis and raises the question of our own self-importance. Do we truly matter in the long run if we are only passing down our biology? Does this open up opportunities for men and women to make their own memes? However, Dawkins concerns for the over production of memes is a real concern, if the meme market is flooded, could they be considered real memes?

Exercise 4-Reed

Hey Hey,

So I forgot to post things to the blog earlier in the semester so here are the things I forgot.

Here is the link to my clock

Final Project - Lauren Owensby - Rosetta Stone Explorer Edition

Here is the link to my html page with my project and documentation:

http://studentweb.depauw.edu/2016/laurenowensby_2016_WEB/final/live.html

Final Project Deliverables- Meredith Reed

 Artist Statement:

As new comer to the world of HTML and Coding, creating new webpages was a daunting experience at the beginning of this semester. Because I wanted to perfect my html skills, I created a labyrinth of websites taking inspiration from Ben Benjamin’s superbad and  JODI’s html imaging. This labyrinth mimics the psychological stream of consciousness when audiences use media outlets, like the Internet.  However, instead of providing a random website to go to with each click as an Internet user is acquainted, the user is only given certain selections. The farther the user clicks the more aggressive and controversial the topics, with a few seemingly blank pages.  This piece explored the glorified social issues present on the Internet that audiences unintentionally come across everyday. Using gifs and HTML, users have to search for a path to travel by and the interconnected maze that is The Labyrinth. 

 

Added bonus, there are 9 link sources for the 9 circles of Hell because hell is thought to be a labyrinth on its own. Take a look at the html source codes to find hidden treasures.

FYI: I got frustrated recording this because there's two or three links I couldn't find within the pages during the recordings... BUT I KNOW THEY'RE THERE! 

 

Final Project Deliverables - Frank Hu

Artistic Statement

            Perception is a byproduct of repeated prior experience. On a global scale the human community shares common perceptions of reality given daily consistencies such as water always flowing down and the day always being warmer than night. These consistencies rely upon memory. Both perception and memory are limited in that they do not consider alternate possibilities. This piece seeks to challenge normative paradigms and introduce new possibilities by altering perceptions of stored memories.

            The piece utilizes material appropriated from 11 films on the American Film Institute top 100 list. Different film segments are altered with symbolic imagery that is related but distinctively not part of the original sequence. Segments are placed in reverse chronological order respective to the film release date to further push against the consistency of memory. It is the purpose of these pieces to open new possibilities when looking at material that will be old to many.    

Work

          ChallengedPossibility

Documentation

          

         Video
                Project
 
                        

Final Project Deliverables - Khoi Tran

Hi guys,

So the semester has finished, much quicker than I thought.  It was a great pleasure to meet and work with every single one of you.  I hope our paths will cross again, at some points.

Here is the link to my final project, you can also find below the five screenshots and the video. 

 I know that in the video I mentioned to include the artist statement within the project but it perhaps would be better to have another version for a more close-knit audience whom I own much gratitude from.

Artists Statement

     In this project, I wanted to make a gift for anyone who has shared with me the precious time at DePauw.  More often than not, you don't appreciate something until you have come close to losing it.  Being together at such a weird place like Greencastle is not only a special privilege but also a "duyên" - Vietnamese word for a chance that only happens because of karma.  In buddhism, people believe that to meet and share times together means our lives must have crossed from the past.  And that's the name of the project - Chance.

     As tempted as I am to say about the chance of meeting someone, the vast majority of people often goes unnoticed and unconscious by your life, just like thousands of thoughts crossing our minds everyday. It shouldn't be like that.  When you let thoughts go by unnoticed, you yield to them and yielding to thoughts fuels them.  When you let a person goes unconsciously, you missed a great chance of exploring who you truly are.  The art of an happy mind is to live slowly to observe things and detach yourself from any manipulation of evil thoughts.  Because: 

    So rare a chance for the picture to stop, so precious a moment to spend with someone, so fortunate this life to live.  You must spend it well.

Final Project Deliverables - Truc Le

Faceboutique

1. Software Components

2. Artist Statement

3. Video Documentation

4. Screen Grabs:

Final Project Deliverables- Lauren Arnold

Here is a link to my final edits of my Final project deliverables.



I chose to get rid of the excess videos that did not portray my main points best; I had to be intentional in the ones I chose to keep.

I over laid all of the Facebook interaction pictures over the sound while I was speaking to my Facebook "friends" in real life.

I also edited my html page to make it look more professional and organized.

Thank you for a great semester guys :)

[all of these can be found on this link but I wanted to make sure they were up on the blog too]

-Video:

-Artist statement:

For my final New Media Art project, I wanted to embody social networking interactions in real life. I performed forty of these in person. Through this process, I was able to make a larger critique of society's dependency of online interactions. These private intimate moments that are posted on the public platform were brought into a true public sphere and awareness. Although on Facebook it is considered normal to post revealing information about yourself, when confronted in real life- I discovered these individuals felt creeped out or too exposed. We shy away from this personal exposure in direct experiences. Facebook changes our perceptions about privacy, especially when we are behind the keyboard. 

-Screen shots:

Final Project Package - Panpan Deng

Artist's statement:

This series of game is call the "Killing Games". Unlike the traditional notion about the word "killing", none of these games is violent or bloody. However, they do share a common characteristic which is the recording of how long player has spent on these games. One can say that while players are playing those boring but slightly rewording games, people are actually killing times. One can also say that with the interaction with players, these relatively simple-coding games are killing those large scale and well-developed epic games. Since one single person has the ability to produce a playable game, what is the reason of spending million of dollars and years to produce another playable game. In all, one can have his or her own opinions towards the meaning of these kind of "Killing Games" and all comments are welcomed.

As for each small game, the first one is directed by the current hours and minutes. After clicking it, one can see an increasingly enlarge ellipse inside a bigger ellipse and the player need to type any key on the keyboard to keep the inner ellipse from exploring. This game symbols the beginning of the life, embryo. Everyone, everything is started with an little embryo. As we growing old and becoming more mature, we are told to hold our eager, our opinions, ourselves inside. The world can be shield but it can also be a cage.

The date game is composed of a narrow key controlled rectangle and a mouse controlled ellipse. The second stage will be a small ellipse appearing as the player collect the rectangle and the ellipse. In order to win, the player has to collect all three shapes. The inspiration of this game came from an old chinese belief : "When there is no cube and no ellipse, there won't be the world." In ancient times, people believed that the earth is a huge rectangle and the sky is an endless ellipse. In this game, the movement of the ellipse represented the rise and the down of the sun (a day). 

The last game is a simple finding game. Not like traditional American children games, in this Year game, the player has to find the Chinese character: "柬(jian)" from a crowd of another very similar Chinese character: "束(shu)".  We are all agreed to a conformity in the public and the divergent is unlikely to be accepted. So when we can not find ourselves in the public, maybe it is time to pause for a moment and think what if I am different, what if I am the special, and what if I be myself (back to the first Time Game).



ScreenShots:

Demonstration Video (click the link to download the video with better resolution):

The Package of the Killing Games' code.