Julia+Arciga+Spring+2018

Name: Julia Arciga Major: Political Science Experience w/ Computers: Adobe Premiere, Photoshop, InDesign; Final Cut Pro Experience w/ Art: I like it Interesting Fact: I like to knit Artistic Interests: Video, Drawing (I've always liked pencil, for whatever reason)



__Homework Week 1__

Bound by Law was an excellent comic depicting the difficult but necessary nature surrounding copyright law. In various broadcast news reports I have had to produce, I have also have had to deal with various copyright issues and have had to incorporate fair use footage into my works. In a news documentary that I made, I had to attempt to depict realistic images of Los Angeles gang life for the viewer to see. While I was fortunate enough to have plenty of original footage that my team and I had shot of neighborhoods like Compton and East Los Angeles, I still had to pull footage from other documentaries that more vividly showed things like gang violence and active gang members on the street. The use of this footage resulted in us having to research copyright laws, and give source credit for the footage. Also, at my time working at cable news organizations, I’ve had to deal with certain parties wanting only 30 or so seconds of their content to be broadcast live on-air, which was an obstacle when I was working with news producers.

Documentary filmmaking is an excellent example of the “copyright minefield,” probably at its worst. Documentaries have the difficulty of featuring and framing real life, often teetering the line between “news,” “art,” and “education.” Due to the scope of the documentary, it is harder to agree for things like full fair use rights when the filmmaker may want to make a profit for their work, or if they play a piece of footage for too long that could be legally considered “re-broadcasting,” etc. If these protections were to be taken away, however, there would be nothing to stop another from stealing footage from your documentary—a piece of art and meaningful work that you worked hard for. Without copyright protection, you would not see a single cent for your hard earned work.

We presently see this issue play out with indie artists who make a product, only for their artwork to be stolen, tweaked just enough, and then sold to the mass market by big fashion retailers on t-shirts, bags, and other merchandise. While the artist can call out the big label for copyright infringement and sue the label for damages, battling with the label’s (likely) big and scary corporate legal team and the nature of fast fashion means that they are likely to lose the court case. Even if they did win and walk away with some damage money from the suit, the fashion label still made a lot of money selling whatever they copied from you—most likely less than what they had paid in damages. In the modern fashion industry, we are seeing a trend of big labels taking a risk on copyright infringement because, for them, the end profit is worth it. Copyright law is undoubtedly important, and we can still see this issue being hotly debated today.

__ Exercise 1 Absence Presence __











__Old New Borrowed Blue__

__FINAL PIC (ACTUAL)__



__PROGRESS PICS (ACTUAL)__



__SOURCE IMAGES (ACTUAL)__



__SCAVENGER HUNT PROJECT__



CINEMAGRAPH __1__



__CINEMAGRAPH HW__



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__CONTEMPORARY ARTIST RESEARCH__



TITLE: El Beso de la Muerte (1992) ARTIST: Rebecca Horn CONCEPTUAL STRATEGY: To manipulate a normal object in its normal setting to convey a message. In this case, a gun in a case is not an abnormal sight... but the two weapons melded together at the end of their barrels is abnormal. Changing one feature of a setting/object that is normal and recognizable is a way to draw attention to one area of the visual image and make a statement. We see the two destructive ends of the gun are melded together, perhaps to say that destruction of one is the destruction of oneself?



TITLE: Untitled (Paper Plates) (2005) ARTIST: Tara Donovan CONCEPTUAL STRATEGY: The manipulation of a normal, everyday, and recognizable object into something completely unrecognizable and much greater/bigger/etc than the objects that created. In this case, Donovan uses paper plates to create an entire structure, featuring 3D spherical shapes that look like they are growing on top of one another–it personally reminds me of a visual representation of cancer, or mold. The meaning could be centralized in the transformation of the normal object into something fantastical, how the everyday could be manipulated and grown



TITLE: Fireflies (1999) ARTIST: Yayoi Kusama CONCEPTUAL STRATEGY: To evoke emotion, a sense of being, or an environment using nothing else but color, blank space, shading, and dots. The bright dots, probably obviously, represent fireflies, with the green dotting/shading in the background represent greenery in nature, and the black blank space representing the nighttime. Where it specifically takes the observer, or what the piece makes the observer feel is highly subjective–but the point is, it takes the observer somewhere else using nothing but dots and color.

__KRAUSS RESPONSE__

In Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism, Krauss argues–from her 1976 point of view–that the emerging realm of video as a medium for art is narcissistic one, which has its own negative connotations to it. She argues that other mediums of art, mainly physical ones like painting and sculpture, allow the artist to be detached from one’s self. In this case, the art would the become an extension of the artist, and a form of expression that is outside the realm of one’s body. With video, however, Krauss argues that the artist becomes the subject his/herself, and the artist is, therefore, unable to express his/herself outside of her body (at least physically). Narrative is also a common feature in video as an art form, which makes it different than the previously listed mediums and promotes the artist to see oneself as the subject even further. In video, the artist him/herself is not only the artist interpreting and conveying a message, but they are also the centerpiece of that message–the “giver” and the “gift,” so to speak. Krauss argues that this self-promotion, self-framing, or “self-encapsulation” in her words, is the very foundation of video as an art.

If her thesis would be written in 2015, she would most likely rework it to include the dissemination of video amongst the masses, and widespread nature (maybe pedestrian-ness) that video has taken. With almost everyone having a smartphone and with websites and apps like YouTube, Snapchat, and Instagram permeating in the lives of ordinary people, I think Krauss would argue that video has lost its art form. Video cameras were not so widely available in the 1970s, and “apps” didn’t even exist–so the technological advances would have to be featured prominently in her modernized thesis. Rather than interpreting things and creating something new, people are simply documenting things–in YouTube videos, and “stories” on the social media apps. There is even entire careers built on being a “personality” (AKA being a person) on YouTube by recording yourself and putting it up on the website. And while documenting things could be seen as an art form (albeit not interpretive), this type of documentation is not to convey a larger message or to create something new and bigger of the existing materials. It is documentation for the sake of documentation, and to show everyone else. This type of video, Krauss would argue, is the zenith of “self-encapsulation” and narcissism. Her argument from the 1970s only gets more clout and gets stronger as time moves along into the future.

VIDEO PROJECT

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FINAL PROJECT

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