Xavier+T+Spring+2016

Xavier Teran From: Quito- Ecuador Double Major: Communications - Fine Arts

__**Homework 1: Comic book Response**__

While reading the comic Tales From a Public domain, I learned in detail about certain subjects such as copyrights, trademarks, fair use of content and information as well as appropriation. In general the article gives an explanation of why copyrights exist and provides a short history. However the main point throughout the article is the question if copyrights actually promote creativity among artists or actually limits their work. One of the phrases in the article that caught my attention was when the guy explaining everything said the following about copyrights and the rights of both its users and creators, “copyright law must strike a careful balance. Allowing artists to protect their works. But also ensuring the availability of raw materials for future creation.” In this case I completely agree with the authors point. I believe that artists should be compensated for their work and have the right to protect it so that they can continue to gain a profit from their hard work, however I also agree that artists most of the time get their inspiration from other artists work or popular culture. I believe that copyright law should take that into greater consideration given that according to the article it seems that the law makes it much easier for people to demand money for the use of their ideas than to allow people to freely get inspired by what they see around them.

I feel the main difficulty with this idea of copyright law is the fact that in the modern world social media platforms bomb individuals with images from popular culture all day long. People are getting so used to looking at this images and videos freely that it is weird when you think about the fact that you could end up fighting a law suit for using something you saw on Instagram, or a photo of a popular TV show. I know that the article talks specifically about documentaries, however now social media is in everything, there are even documentaries on that. My point is that documentaries have the goal of criticizing, commenting or portraying an event or issue, and if the popular culture and history gets appropriated by individuals and people have to pay in order to make a documentary about Martin Luther King, little by little people are going to loose interest in having to pay for something that is known by all and might end up tweaking history so that they don’t have to pay for those rights. Don’t get me wrong I am in favor of copyright law however I believe it to be a little excessive; at least from what I understood from the article, for example I feel it is outrageous to have to pay $10,000 because you shot a scene and by coincidence the Simpsons was playing in the TV in the background. That is a little too much, and I think hinders artists creativity.

While the article discuses this issues it also shows us what is a good way of fair use and what is a bad way of fair use among other things. For example it is complete fair to use something of that might be copyrighted by claiming fair use in order to report news or make a parody about it, but to use a copyrighted scene for pure entertainment would be an example of bad fair use. Appropriation is when you take something from the popular culture for some kind of artwork. However in order for it to be good appropriation you have to change it completely, copy pasting it would be a completely bad way to do so. You also have to take into consideration if you need to ask permission to use it or appropriate it, and you might even have to pay for it.

__**Writing Exercise**__



//Without Handout://

The image is set at the coast. It has an ocean view behind the main subject, however it is not a beach scene it is like a coastline in the UK or somewhere like that, it is not the tropical beach image. You can see some cliffs on top of the ocean in the distance. Then there are this big green pastures behind the little girl that is the main subject of the work. The background is not completely focused it is a little blurry. As the distance in the image is reduced things start to get more into focus. You start to see little violet flowers on the side of what looks like a grassed pathway. Then there are the end of two fences and the purple flowers increase in quantity around the end of the fences. The fences are not together there is a breaking point between both of them. One part of the fence comes from the right and the other one from the left, which leaves this space in the middle that, provides this sense of it being an entrance.

Right in the middle of the image in between the fences there is a little blonde girl that is looking directly at the viewer. She has very blonde hair with a white ribbon on her head. Her eyes are blue and she is wearing a white/grey shirt with some blue pants with suspenders. The pants do not go all the way to the floor but a little over her ankles. She is leaning on a chair that has a fish bowl in it. The fishbowl is empty the fish has jumped over at the height of the girls face and is going through a circle of fire. The fish is a gold fish bright and orange.

//With the Handout//

The image is set in what looks like an English coast. With these beautiful prairies behind which you can admire a cliff meeting the sea, the waves splashing against the rocks in a grey day. As you move towards the foreground things become clearer and the color hue becomes brighter. The greens are more visible and electric and small purple flowers start to appear in the scene especially at sides of what looks like a grassed pathway. You can see the edge of a fence in the two extremes of the image and in between them in the empty space there is a pale little girl, with blonde hair and blue eyes. She is leaning against a wooden chair with some kind of cushion of different colors in it. In the wooden chair there is a glass fishbowl. The fish has flown up from the bowl making small droplets of water splash around the bowl. With its bright orange color has jumped through a ring of fire, providing this mystic yet calm atmosphere to the work. While this trick seems impressive the girl is looking directly at the audience non expressive.

Refine Edge and Color Hair
 * Practice Exercises**

Puppet Wrap and Transform

Adjustment Layers and Color



=**Project 1: Surealist Composite**=

**Process**


















GIF Project


=Augmented Reality Article Response=

After reading the article from AR[t] Magazine, I started thinking about different ways the technology behind augmented reality could be used. Coming from Ecuador, a highly touristic country this was my first idea. We could use augmented reality technology such as the Aurasma app in order to add digital explanations and information about our landmarks this way facilitating things for tourists. We would attach information to the image of a church for example and when the tourist point his cellphone to the building he would be able to see this information. I thought of this because in my hometown Quito, it is difficult to do tourism by yourself it is almost a necessity to hire a tour guide. However this could be quite expensive and maybe the technology behind Augmented reality could help. The second idea that came to mind is to use the technology behind augmented reality apps as instruction manuals. For example as a company, lets say IKEA. You send furniture to your costumers and in an attempt to make your company a more environmental friendly you decide not to print manuals, but rather to make it an exiting experience. That way the costumer would point its technology to the boxing of the furniture piece and instructions on how to assemble it would come up. Until now most of my ideas have been completely practical. For my final idea on how we could use augmented reality I decided to take more of an artistic/fantastic approach. We could use augmented reality as a decorating tool. For example in houses. People could hang frames with some sort of identification, and with the technology people could see different works of art on blank frames on their homes. Or also they could completely change their house into a fantastical land. For example attaching the image of tree to their coffee table would give their living room a different touch. What if this was to be applied to every piece of furniture in a house. All of a sudden you could be living in a forest, a castle or whatever you want by attaching images and information to the different pieces around your daily scenery.

=Counter Monuments Article Response=

The article emphasizes how the term counter monument is interchangeable and how it is used. I also attempts to present a universal meaning for a counter monument. In order to do so the article first explains what a monument is. A monument is a way of immortalizing, glorifying and in a way remembering a person or an event of major importance. With this definition it would follow that a counter monument would in some way of immortalize, glorify and/or remind people of a rather absurd non important person or event. This is the idea I had in mind when I thought of the term counter monument. However reading the article I found out that is not the only way a counter monument could work. A counter monument could also attempt to remind people of a very important person of event but without a great immortalizing statue, but rather with a smaller or even absent one. As we talked in class the Vietnam Veterans memorial is a cut in the ground, it goes beyond land level, and represents a wound in the ground. Also the monument is a black wall with names, however there is no real explanation to it and how it should be experienced. This is left to the viewer to decide. The article talked about different components of a monument that could be altered in order to make it a counter monument, this are meaning, visitor experience, site, form and subject. Every one of this elements could be changed from the traditional way one thinks they should be present in a monument in order to make a counter monument. With what I learned from the reading the ideas for a counter monument started to flow. Before reading I had just thought about changing the subject in order to make a counter monument and to glorify some absurd thing. However taking into account there are a variety of aspects aside from subject that can be changed I realized that a counter monument does not necessarily has to be absurd. I can talk or commemorate or remind people about a rather specific and important event, person and situation but in a rather different way than what we think about a traditional monument.

=Counter Monument Project=



This is the monument I designed for the final project. This would be the classes mall location. The concept of the monument it to glorify the way humans are destroying are planet through absurd amounts of trash and gas emissions. The main structure is a glass dome. As you can see there is a hole on the top of it. This would represent the famous hole in the ozone layer of our atmosphere, and how our increased amount of gasses are having a negative effect on it. This is a pretty big structure, it is around 150 feet from the lowest to the highest point.



This would be your view when you arrive at the monument location. You have to walk through the path towards the big igloo like dome. From afar it seems that the monument is just a huge dome with a big empty space in the top.

However as you approach the structure you see that there is a decent in the ground level and you start to notice some steps going down. You approach them and you begin to see a hole were the actual counter monument is.

dd You go down the stairs and in to the slope, you just need to go down the slope to get to the monument site.



Once in the bottom you would encounter this. A sphere structure. The bottom half is made out of stone while the upper part is made up of braided wood. There is an empty space in between this two layer, where the equator should be. This structure symbolizes the Earth.It a hollow structure and it is in the middle of a pond of water.

The viewer is supposed to walk up to it and throw trash into the inside of the structure. In a way glorifying how we are destroying our planet with no continues and with no chance in attitude. The reason why the structure is in the middle of a pond is to emphasize that we are sinking ourselves, our destruction will be our own doing. Every day at night a little trash truck will come down and take the trash away starting the process all over again the next day. The Earth would be clean, ready for a fresh start and humans will throw trash into it again. It is rather absurd but the repetition of the action and the immensity of the whole structure might bring people to their senses and to realize how absurd it is that every time we have a new chance to start over and take care of our planet, we just throw it away.