Zihan+Zhu

=__**Week 1 Homework**__=

Before reading this comic, “Tales from the Public Domain Bound by Law? Trapped in a Struggle She Didn’t Understand”, I thought it was going to talk about the proper and legal approach for uploading/downloading/distributing any authorized work, no matter in what kind of art form. Based on my experience, since I come from China, we used to have a vague concept about artists’ copyright and people were not aware of the importance of protecting them. The official government were not able to strictly fulfill the related laws, and hardly put them into practice, neither.

Due to the rapid development and the limited restrictions of the Internet in recent decades, a lot of people often managed to share / obtain free resource of books, music and videos on the Internet. Over time, we gradually took this kind of action for granted and didn’t realize that we are supposed to pay for the creators’ efforts, because there are so many artists depend on their work to make a living.

However, until recent years, things have changed much better. A few related associations have attempted to establish and implement certain regulations through various platforms or mainstream media in order to ensure the artists ‘s copyrights are not being hurt and people are no longer able to enjoy them for free now. In fact, this also an effective way to encourage indie singers or filmmakers to present more original artwork to the public without worrying any illegal commercial distribution.

On one hand, as audience, we should pay attention on how we obtain these resources in a proper way, on the other hand, getting the clearance of using any previous existing intellectual property in a new work of art can’t be ignored as well, which is also the main focus this comic, tales from the public domain bound by law. To be honest, it never really occurs to me that asking and paying for the permission to use other people’s images or video fragments, even a trademark, would be a serious problem and have raised a series public concerns of all time. Some compositions try to reform them into a new artistic style, while other documentary films just simply capture them in a certain scene or incidentally use them for the background music.

It is true that clear every copyright of a production that appears in one documentary film will be prohibitive and time-consuming. This is the time when we need to discuss the boundary between “fair use” and “unfair use”, and this is a hard question that have always puzzled people. According to the dictionary, fair use currently defined as the right to make unauthorized copies for the purpose of certain protection. It mainly includes academic use for education, writing reports or critical reviews. There are some limitations, however, that the part that being used is relatively short compare to the total length of work, and its appearance does not violate the legitimate right of the owner. But how long exactly does the material last will be regarded as “fair use” is still up for debate.

=__Exercise 1: Presence/____Absence__=











=__**Prep for AR and Video Project**__=



In the Smithsonian American Art Museum, I saw the rotating exhibition of //Watch This! New Directions in the Art of the Moving Image//. One thing that appeal me the most is the video //Face in the Crowd// by Alex Prager. It grabs the audience’s attention by using the screen of three walls to project the video, which helps the crowd scene to magnify its sense of intensity. The video starts with some short interviews of different people with different background, telling their life stories or past experience. Then we can see the leading actress, Elizabeth Banks, standing behind a closing window, staring the crowd in front of her quickly come and go without any interaction, and I suppose she’s probably trying to seek for the one and only position here because she looks confused and lost. On the contrary, the subsequent scenes depict her standing among the crowd, and everyone seems trying to squeeze for a room from one another to walk through. All of the sudden, the music stops, switching the view from as a whole to the woman’s perspective, and I think the author makes a good use of background music here by constantly changing the rhythm to reflect the ups and downs of the tone.

=__Old, New, Borrowed, Blue__=













=__Video Project - Reading__=

When Rosalind Krauss wrote the article, //Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism//, the technique of video filming just began to emerge and become widespread in the public as a new form of art. According to how Krauss describes video art: //“Unlike the other visual arts, video is capable of recording and transmitting at the same time – producing instant feedback.”//, as a new type of media to convey information accompanied with the visual effects, the appearance of video technique provides artists with a brand new possibility to express their ideas, pushing the boundary of limitation in art performance once again. In this article, Krauss first illustrates his point of view revolving the common use and its psychological sense of mirror reflection by presenting some examples such as //Air Time// (1973) by Vito Acconci, //Boomerang// (1974) by Richard Serra, //Now// (1973) by Lynda Benglis and //Revolving Upside Down// (1968) by Bruce Nauman, which one tends to relate the case of mirroring in the video with the act of narcissism if we imagine this in Krauss’s time of era.

However, if she were writing this article in 2017, I suppose her ideas would definitely going to change comparing to the one in the article in terms of current trend and circumstance. Nowadays, as a matured technology, the rapid advancement of Internet allows a variety forms of media (i.e. muti-media) to spread much faster than before, which means they become much more accessible for the majority of the public as well. Especially when it speaks about the reason why video has gradually become a dominant form of mass communication today, many people may be aware of the sensual effect created by the combination of video and audio can largely expand the potential possibilities for the creators to apply what’s happening in their mind.

Therefore, the content of video art is no longer limited to the one’s symmetric mirror reflection with his/her narration or playing a few simple footages one at a time. With the help of video editing and after effects, more and more people begin to enjoy what’s called “narcissism”, if we use Krauss’s word, by uploading their original or recorded video blogs to some major social media such as YouTube, Vimeo and Snapchat to document their inner experience about life. I think probably because of this common phenomenon, the authenticity and rationality of real life make people hardly ever relate them with the practice of narcissism. Plus, with so many portable devices that we have today, people are able to access Internet easily almost anytime at anywhere. Thus, to some extent, it’s possible to imagine a popular video on YouTube can reach more than thousands of hits a day. A good video art can get inspiration from one to another, and vice versa. Then the more sources get viewed, they are more likely to inspire a better creation. Although people still care about the psychological level of sense it contains, the meaning of narcissism has been reassigned to a completely different one.

=__Cinemagraph Short Project__=

=__AR Project Response__= Seldom could anyone deny the importance of the development of smart phones. As a matter of fact, there has been a widespread concern about this topic. Some people claim advanced technology makes our life better, whereas others contradict this opinion. In my point of view, with smart phone-based augmented reality hitting the mainstream, this technology can worsen the human experience.

As the development of modern technology, Smart phones have become quite popular all over the world with its outstanding functions. People can use phones to surf the Internet, update their personal micro blog, and upload their latest pictures at any place, anytime. It seems that smart phones have already become an indispensable part in people’s daily lives. However, some people are indulging in smart phones, which already have side-effect on their normal life. One thing is worth noticing is that some technological devices actually make us to communicate less with others. This weak connection will gradually lead people to an isolated situation and a longer distance between individuals. For instance, as the functions of smart phones increase, people tend to stick with their phones all the time instead of chatting with others face to face. It’s very common to see that a family is having dinner together but nobody talks because everyone is busy texting with others by smart phones. Although smart phones enable us to get to know the whole world through a single window, we waste a lot of time talking with people who hundreds mile away and ignore the beloved families just beside us. As a results, technologies like smart phones is making our physical connection grow weaker.

On the downside, despite being smart enough, smart phones as instruments for social interaction are apparently not able to help users become any smarter or healthier. Quite on the contrary, like cocaine or opium, they get people addicted to them, which is absolutely an unhealthy effect. Very soon, adult users may fail to make a clear distinction between professional life and personal life. It is largely because online apps, such as Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp or WeChat, take up a significant amount of users' time, not to mention frequent email checking and sometimes video games. What is more shocking is that even children are attracted to the usage of smart phones. It is feared that over-fixation may prove to be dangerous for the young people because it can affect their brain and lose focus on the studies. Generally speaking, smart phones these days keep getting smarter, but heavy users are becoming just the opposite.