Taylor+G+Spring+2018




 * Taylor Garland | Marketing Major, Art History/Fine Arts Minor | Spring 2018 **

I am Taylor, and I like riding my bike. I can also rip an apple in half with my bare hands.
 * About Me: **

I'm not naturally tech savvy but many people close to me are well-equipped to guide me through my computer-related endeavours. I'm self taught in Photoshop, Lightroom, and Premiere, and used those skills for my work with TEDxFoggyBottom. I'm also trying to learn Python on my own, as I think it'd be a neat lil thing if I knew some programming basics. I took an Illustrator class in high school but I never paid attention, which I regret.
 * Computer Experience: **

I'm a fan of a lot of contemporary art coming from East and Southeast Asia. I just saw a Netflix doc on one of my favorite artists Cai GuoQiang that made me cry. I lived in Milan for a few months so that refined my taste in art and design, I suppose, but classical European art is overrated. I'm also very into fashion photography and set design. Some of my favorite visual works are from those fields.
 * Art Interests: **

I went to an engineering high school and was on a Fine Arts tract, so I did a lot of painting and drawing in that time. Recently I've fallen out of the habit of doing art but I want to get back to painting to build a portfolio for myself. I also took some neat pictures when I was living in China, so here are some.
 * Art Experience: **



The contents in Bound by Law are accurate and important for all people, artists and those who consume art, to understand all work in its many forms. I'm quite familiar with the difficulties of maneuvering around copyrighted content - I worked on the creative team for TEDxFoggyBottom for two years, and a large part of my job was to create content for marketing, for the sake of creating related content, and for various announcements. Often, we would have a specific song or visual theme in mind when filming and compiling clips, but obviously had to be careful when selecting audio. This lead to (no exaggeration) hours sifting through crappy public domain songs and sounds. So, as a content creator, I relate to the struggles the comic's heroine went through, with the past experience of our videos being taken down from Youtube for not conforming to their copyright policies.
 * Bound by Law | Week 1 Homework **

It was easy to get frustrated by these legal obstacles when all we wanted to do was produce the most effective, cohesive, and impactful content we could, but I also understand exactly why these rules are firm in their stance. Too often in the online art community, work posted by artists into forums is stolen, and falsely re-posted as someone else's work. I remember a particular instance where an artist documented her progress on a commission piece, and someone tweeted the picture without source credits, and ended up getting a large amount of recognition and praise for it - all under the nose of the original artist who, until the tweet was so popular that it wrapped back around to her, had no idea. This stolen work could have been sold, and the profit never given to the person who actually made it. Similar issues unfold in music communities, in literary forums, the list goes on. Though posting "raw" work online certainly veers into a gray area that this comic doesn't really touch on (instead, it's focused on published films mostly), they occupy circles that deal heavily with the concept of trademarks and copyrights, and are clear examples of the second edge of the double-sided sword. If we do away with copyrighting, we allow for the theft of personal and professional work.

That being said, with the expensive clearances (in perpetuity or otherwise) involved in copyrighting, there seems to be some strong-arming against small filmmakers and artists who aren't backed by corporations or production companies willing to pay the heavy fees. I can't help but think that copyrighting acts really as means by which those rich in the in art and entertainment world stay rich and relevant, as capital and status can bypass whatever fines are required to include someone else's work, and instead punish and complicate the jobs of smaller individuals and organizations.


 * Pr <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">esence Absence | Week 1 Exercise **

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">1. Replace something with a portion of another image, leaving the original shape of the removed object

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">I went to the metro to get some inspiration pictures and saw the Wet Floor sign, and figured this would be an interesting twist.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">2. Remove something leaving a white or flat color space

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">I removed all the labels of the wine bottles at Whole Foods because I'm not 21 yet and that annoys me.



<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">3. Remove objects and put them in a blank area next to the original

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">I figure it would be interesting to remove the fire safety plan and alarm from the picture, just because it's something we don't really notice or acknowledge but has the potential to be extremely important (to the point of ebing life-saving) if there. We also kind of disregard fire safety as a culture, disable our smoke alarms and all that, so I thought this might make the point of understanding that fire safety systems are implemented for a reason.

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<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">4. Remove objects and leave little trace

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"You went to Paris and didn't see the Eiffel Tower???" - I left a lot of the outline showing to emulate Robak and to also give a more noticeable indication of what this piece is supposed to be about without explicit written context.



<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">5. One of your choice

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">I like the removal to a blank area concept the most, just because selecting is a fun task and I like the juxtaposition of empty and filled spaces. I chose this picture of David I took when I was in Florence. I think art as history makes for an interesting spectacle, and we in the Western world all pretty much know this sculpture. I was there at 8am to make sure I got to see it before my bus left and even that early there were huge crowds of people, and some were just there for the one piece. I think, then, it would be funny to remove the spectacle and have all the hussle and bussle be directed to blank space. Another thought: if we remove David from his pedestal (and therefore his history) he's just a guy with his dick out.




 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Scavenger Hunt Collage **




 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Old, New, Borrowed, Blue | Progress **

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Original Photo of Berlin Dada Artist Raoul Hausmann, entitled //Raoul Hausmann as Dancer//:

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<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Colorization:

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<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Here is the image I chose to combine to make the background:



<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Here is a picture of my own - Milan from the top of the Duomo:



Here they are combined:



<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Then I did some saturation and brightness correction to fit the mood of my picture:



<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Then I added the tightrope:



<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Then I added in Raoul!



<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Then I put in this flamenco dancer who I thought was mood appropriate for him:



<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">I was worried this wasn't "surreal" enough so I added in some foliage and magic realism drama with ivy:



<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">More drama:



<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Final touches:




 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Cinematography In-Class Exercise: **



<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**Cinemagraph | Final**




 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Concept Strategy | Artist Pitch: **

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">1. Renee Cox, 1996, Yo Mama's Last Supper <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Concept: Subvert race relations by depicting white men in iconic images as non-white and/or non-male



<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">2. Gillian Wearing, 2004, Self Portrait at Three Years Old <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Concept: Discussion on exterior and interior (beauty v. personality, youth v. maturity)



<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">3. Andreas Gursky, 1999, 99 cent <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Concept: Infinite repetition




 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Homework Response | The Aesthetics of Narcissism **

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Rosalind Krauss in the article //<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The Aesthetics of Narcissim //<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> discusses a rift between video and opposing visual arts. This rift is psychological, and is distinguished by the inherent narcissism when using video as a medium in artwork. Krauss inaugurates her argument with the concept that self-regard, necessary for video-making, "configure[s] a narcissism so endemic to the works of video that [it becomes] //the// condition of the entire genre." (Krauss, 50)

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Discussing first the physical attributes that comprise visual arts (painting, film - notably held to a different regard than video - sculpture, etc), Krauss argues that these forms have much to do with the object-state of the artwork. Pigment, matter, and light are all considered and are subject to manipulation as these visual arts are created. Video, however, though it is reliant on physical mechanisms, is argued to be seated in a more psychological system. Video, reliant on the simultaneous reception and projection of an image, as well as the human psyche as a conduit, centers the human body - the main subject of early video work - between two machines, monitor and mirror. It is his positioning between monitor and mirror where Krauss's argument becomes clear, using works by Nancy Holt, Lynda Bengali and Vito Acconci. In each work that she assesses, there is a common thread of the necessity of creation and reception of the subject of the video. Not only does each participant of the respective video projects have to be videotaped, their awareness and reception of their actions is what incites the self-regard that Krauss credits as the basis for video narcissism. Specifically with //Boomerang// or //Centers,// it is in the mirror-reflection, the body that is aware and reliant of its double, that narcissism in inherent. It as after a longer discussion of //dedoublement// that Krauss begins to offer counterpoints to her own arguments, and discuss more the depth of video as a medium. When multiple subjects are introduced, especially when the additional subjects are not participants or people interacting with an element of mirror-reflection (as in the case of Holt it was an audio mirror-reflection) as in Campus's //men// and //dor,// the cycle of live feedback is more complex, and nested in what was a triangular relationship as opposed to the narcissistic singular in the previously mentioned video projects.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">While I think this discussion on the inherent narcissism was interesting, Krauss's understanding of a video platform seem slightly primitive - perfectly understandable given the date of this article. It also leaves with much unexplained - why does she regard film and video separately? Does she make the distinction in the subject or premise of films? What are her thoughts on videos that do not center humans? She mentions that the majority of video work that she's seen has been with human subjects. Does inherent narcissism in her mirror-reflection dichotomy remain when the subject is not human, or is not interacting with the "mirror"?


 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Alternate Reality Project | Final **