Video Art Installation

This is the link for the Video Art Installation.


Also, I couldn't find anywhere an email you sent of Hall and Fifer's Essential Guide to Video Art.
It isn't available as a pdf online either. Sorry! If you resend it, I'll read it.

Avatar: The Last Appropriation

Inspired from the anime fandubs of yesteryear, this class project was, once again, much more time-consuming than intended, yet also worth it due to how much fun I had, and what I've learned about editing and video gathering.

Here

If I Were an Alien

Using ScreenFlow, I appropriated footage from the perspective of a benevolent alien communicating with humans on Earth.

Here it is

Utopian Plagiarism, Hypertextuality, and Electronic Cultural Production

Response to Simon Penny's 1994 article, published in Critical Issues in Electronic Media:

General thoughts on Article:
       Interesting point on how plagiarism may be contributing most to cultural enrichment and distribution of ideas. Penny points out this is the age of the recombinant: bodies, gender, texts, culture (I'd add genes as well!); and I hesitantly agree, though I cannot identify what specifically makes 'this era' one of exceptional recombinance, save for rapid technological advancements. I totally love how Penny makes a point of calling out how plagiarism resists privatization of culture that serves the powerful elite, I think this is incredibly topical, especially in the context of information sharing and the press for open access for academic journals, academic content in general, and entertainment (music, film, etc.)--people feel they 'deserve' this information, but the companies (often very wealthy corporations) who own the content resist this ever-increasing demand. Penny radically calls for open access to the whole cultural data base. I don't see how this is practical or sustainable in any context, but that isn't to say I disagree with Penny on an ideological scale, simply that if there is no reward/privatization of information or art, that it may lose significance and an element of prestige that motivates artists/intellectuals to produce more similar content with rigorous demands in creativity (if no one profits from their creations, there could be a decline in quality production). I don't know this for sure, but it's not an issue to disregard, even if it is pessimistic. I think there's a distinct difference between appropriation and plagiarism, wherein appropriation does not claim to be 100% original in its content, but may be more original in its meaning (intended or not), regardless of the interpretation one gleans from it. It could be that the golden rule may be appropriate to consider in this context: if you made something, would you be upset if someone used exactly/changed somewhat your creative content.
If the artist/content creator is unknown and the content is utilized by another person, it makes a difference if the content creator was well known, because others will likely recognize it (Mona Lisa or Dali versus a digital portrait). 

Notes during discussion in class:
Also, who is to say the content creator is original? What technology are they using? Where did they learn their craft? Who inspired them?
On the subject on inspiration, where does it become plagiarism? 
Whee does apathy and lack of citation/cultural awareness of disdain for plagiarism are unaccounted for?
We're very focused on Western culture in this discussion, not even considering how other cultures (or even hypothetically might) consider appropriation/plagiarism/inspiration. 
We aren't questioning why we are so opposed to plagiarism; why we consider it a despicable, dishonorable act. We're just accepting it as it as a bad thing, likely because of how ingrained the import or 'academic honesty' is in this institution/group or institutions in 1st world academic prestige. 
I agree with Penny in how so much innovation and progress has occurred due to appropriation/plagiarism; think of how tools/hunting developed, for example.



Postmodernism is the opposite of individualistic, glorifying one's holistic environment instead of an isolated microcosm of existence.

Actual Stop Motion Film Reveal

After an absurdly long period of time, the stop motion film none of you have been waiting for is complete! I estimate a whopping 60+ hours was spent on this, much of that was undergoing a strict learning curve. If I were to do this again, I now know so much more about so many little things, it'd probably only take 40 hours. And definitely have a less shaky camera. 

I wrote the original script in junior year of high school, where it was selected to be performed by professional (!) actors on a public stage. My senior year, a good friend and I reworked it to become a one-act which we co-directed. Freshman year of undergrad I started working on a (still very unfinished) graphic novel of the story, starting when the characters attended university. Finally, this year (junior undergrad), I have taken the script and crammed the dialogue into under seven minutes, and added stop-motion animation in key areas. Just over 5,000 photos were taken. 

I'm not sure having such a dialogue-heavy, complicated script was the best thing for a stop-motion short, but I am very excited and proud that I did it. I sincerely hope it makes sense.

I am acutely aware the audio does not flow very well. I couldn't get the actors together, so each line was recorded several times with different emotions, and the best match was used in the final version. Next time...

Last bit: there's a whole mythos behind this story, it's much longer, and, in my opinion, much more interesting. 

HERE YOU GO

In response to Life Feed: Webcams, Art and People by Brian Droightcour:

It's fascinating to read about video from a combined lens of historian and artist critique; as I've participated and formed my own experiences with the topic-- something that before I've always been removed from temporally or geographically. Published in 2011, most of author Brian Droightcour's links to video artist archives lead to broken sites rife with 404s or undownloadable/viewable clips, echoing the fragility of smaller, older projects. It's not necessarily true that once something online, it's there forever. 

Avital Ronnell's conceptualization of video as a superhumanizing prosthesis is an accurate descriptor. As someone who for years (until the college workload hit my sophomore year) watched a few hours of video logs (vlogs; or, as the predecessor term Droightcour hi-lights: lifecasting [I argue this is still a more applicable term, but c'est la vie]) each day, I became enraptured in the lives, causes, and stories people across the country and planet put on youtube. 

I found it unusual that Droighcour didn't mention the vast community so often referred to by those who watch the same vlogger or pool of vloggers. Possibly Droightcour hasn't experienced it, or maybe he dislikes it, or doesn't consider it to be 'art' enough (unlikely), maybe his focus was on the earlier stuff, and he intentionally left out the yawning chasm of available content and its immense complexity. 

Time Travel Dog - In-Class Exercise with Final Cut Pro

I made this for you.