Apropos Appropriation

http://www.easylife.org/ ^

Alexei Shulgin - Artist Presentation

http://www.electroboutique.com/^

One of my favorites of his works^
Take a little time to mess around with that site!

SDOS 2012: Six Deaths of Sociality

FOLLOW EM!

michaelfain315:

Hey everyone, if you’re wanting to follow my project as it grows, here are links to five of the profiles already built. Some of the profiles are kind of bare, but they’ll be run pretty hands on from here on out.

Steve Blakesley: Facebook

Yessenia Gonzalez: Facebook

Amber Greer: facebook.com/amber.sdos2012

Quentin Liston:@DaRealQuentin

Anit Patel: @AnitTheGreat

2 notes

Response: Shoot an Iraqi (137-177)

“We agree that while Domestic Tension draws out the misanthropic and brutal elements of cyberculture and human nature, it also highlights the ways in which the internet has become a forum of community resistance and empowerment.”

It gives me so much hope to hear about movements like the Virtual Human Shield… That there are people out there that realize the consequences of their actions, whether they are in reality or in a virtual one.

Seeing the consequences of things like wikileaks or seeing young people (even a 17 year old) hack government website simply out of spite, or being fearful of ever growing corporations amassing personal information of anyone connected to any sort of social media site makes me fear the consequences of the internet. As cheesy as it may sound, I hope that the “forces for good” have the strength to stand up to the negative side of the internet.

On a completely different tangent… As I was reading about his work prior to Domestic Tension, while he was gaining recognition as an artist, I couldn’t help but feel disgusted by his “art.” I understand that he went through absolutely horrific events that I couldn’t even begin to fathom… and that some of the blame has to do with the American government’s actions… and that in our wonderful country, people are blessed with the first amendment (unlike MANY other countries on this earth)… and that his expression of his feelings and opinions are protected under free speech…

BUT I still think it horribly offensive when the American flag is treated disrespectfully. And, I’m sorry, but when the Koran is treated like Bilal treated the Bible in his “Absinthe Drinker” exhibition, there are immediate death threats to whatever culture did the damage to the holy book as well as extremely violent and destructive acts to whatever is within their reach. I understand that it has happened before and I understand the message Bilal was trying to make with that piece of art, but but the vulgar imagery and disrespect for a country who took him in greatly lowered my respect for a man who I began to admire after reading Shoot an Iraqi: At, Life and Resistance Under the Gun.

Response: Shoot an Iraqi (p50-97)

I just finished the book. Though it’s been a while since I read this part of the book, when skimming back through this section, one overwhelming thought pops out at me: people can be disgusting. It’s incredible to me how uncaring, rude, despicable, brutal, creepy, crude, vulgar, etc… people can be. In this segment of the book, Bilal goes into detail about the responses he’s getting from the various Internet users that have somehow found their way to his website/residency. Perhaps I should just feel sorry for those people; they do not have anything better to do with their time (nor do they have people they are close to around them) than to post disgusting things/shoot at a man halfway around the world.

[[Seeing this image in the book made me think: these people really have nothing better to do than to sit there and create the image of a skull in a chatroom?? Pitiful.]]

The bile they spill out in these chatrooms only further proves the point that they need to be interacting face to face with other human beings… either that, or it is a demonstration of the loss of humanity in an increasingly digital world.

“Most of the young women will shoot once and then want to talk. The guys never want to have a conversation. Maybe because talking humanizes people, both them and me” (p74).

As Bilal noticed, when he specifically asked a user to slow down on the shooting (he had already shoot about 60 times within that hour). I think internet users, especially video game enthusiasts, need to be reminded that there are humans out there that they can interact with. And that sometimes, on the other side of that digital interface is a living, breathing being with thoughts and emotions and substance.

Notes to self…

*changes where the popup window appears when you click on it

1 note

Response to February 6th Reading (Shoot an Iraqi – p1-49)

It blows my mind that people around the world felt so comfortable with shooting at a live person, even for an art project. I think one of the internet’s problems is that it distances people from the content they are viewing or interacting with. Yes, there is that literal distance of the people in England shooting at a man in Chicago, but figuratively, people seem distanced from their conscience. Perhaps the pervasive role of videogames is to blame? Ben Chang, an Art Institute Professor, was “especially excited because, as he expressed it, cybergaming usually has no impact on the real world, and there is nothing at stake for the gamer. This project would pose real ethical choices for the participants because of the real-world consequences – the gamers would be shooting at a live human” (Bilal & Lydersen, 16). This project seems like absolute torture, but I understand the significance of the possible outcome –spreading awareness at the disconnect with which the world is now waging war. Yes, I blame the United States, but there are many other countries that are using the same tactics, or wish that they could be. The passage on page 10, where Bilal talks about seeing an interview with a young soldier on tv, did scare me. The whole idea of trusting orders and information that one gets from their superiors harkens back to the Milgram experiment and what it was representing. Scary.

Interesting facts/cultural notes

“Shia make up about 10 to 15 percent of the world’s at least 1.4 billion Muslims, concentrated mostly in Iran, southern Iraq, Lebanon, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, and parts of India and Pakistan” (Bilal & Lydersen, 26).
”My parents divorced three times and separated many times more. According to the Koran, a man must simply say “I divorce you” three times in order for a divorce to be official. If the man later changes his mind, he must kill a chicken and give it to the poor or make an offering to an imam in atonement. A woman can also divorce her husband, though she gives up property rights in the process. A couple is allowed to easily divorce and remarry twice. But after that, the woman must marry another man before she can marry the first husband again. The idea is to punish the man for taking his wife for granted – to make him value her and his family more. The Iraqi government didn’t adhere to Sharia law*, but many communities, especially in Shia areas in the south, abided by it in personal and family matters” (Bilal & Lydersen, 17).

The amount of power that men hold and women lack in this society totally blows my mind.

[[[ *The Islamic rules based on the Koran that regulate the relationship between a Muslim and God [worship]. the relationships between Muslims and other people [transactions], and, to a large extent, the relationship a Muslim has with himself.]]]

3 months ago

Theme: Cavalcade

Internet’s Effects

Googled “Internet ADD” (and like topics). Thought these articles interesting…

Negative Views:

Positive Views:

http://www.verdick.org/child-development-and-the-internet/child-dev-pos

Apropos Appropriation

It was interesting reading the article about appropriation considering the fact that we keep blogs for this class on Tumblr, the reigning champion of appropriation. People amalgamating images and songs and videos in one space, the majority of which are not pieces that they created themselves.

I have heard the name before, but Richard Prince’s work, which involves appropriating images, doesn’t strike me as extremely inventive. It seems to me that he’s making a glorified collage. Yes, the images are artistically laid out, but so are the collages in the front plastic sleeve of middle school girls’ binders. Call me critical and naive, but this seems to be yet another example of “art” that I don’t fully appreciate nor understand.

(^The image above is a version of my own Richard Prince-ish work. The images are pulled from a personal tumblr of mine that compiles things that inspire me. Only one of the pictures above is my own. All the others are authored by others.)

From Class: Interesting article breaking down Prince’s images…. “de-appropriation”

Soggy Mini-Wheats.: Peer Blog Review: crestofain315

THANKS NICK! :]

nickstubberfield:

Take a peek: http://crestofain315.tumblr.com/

In Katherine’s blog there is an overwhelming sense of authenticity and uninhibited questioning. With a lot of her reading responses she seems to be very skeptical of what technology can do to our behavioral patterns for the worse. She spent a good chunk of her time focusing on Wafaa Bilal’s book where she is both intrigued and disgusted with the artists at different times. To see that stark contrast in response only adds to the realness of her voice in her blog.

Here Web Usage Logs are very interesting to look at to see not only at what sites she visited but how many times she visited Facebook, her email and Youtube. Differentiating what she did on the computer adn what she did on the mobile web was very interesting as well.

As for Katherine’s blogs this is just a small peek into her critical responses to what she is thinking. If you want to check out more of her creative artistic side click on over here:http://katherinecresto.tumblr.com/

http://kyletakesue.tumblr.com/

1 note

Peer Blog Review

While a lot of the posts are rather brief, they contain that sort of bumper sticker sized nugget of wisdom or insight.

“Touching a computer screen does not count because you are touching an object containing the subject matter of which the senses are being used. So in a way a screen is the only thing that separates internet phenomena from reality because that one sense is left out hanging dry.”

(ok, that one’s not too nugget-y, but I liked it.)

“The borders are now so open that how can you define art now? Because anything you prepare or stage a happening, then it already voids its definition.”

“The internet had that outer-spacey feel as described in the article, gifs were considered new and original, and comic sans was appropriate for text.”

(referring to his childhood internet experiences)

On another note, I think it’d be be nice to see some of his inspiration for his website… perhaps a few links to his favorite sites or some images that drive his work?

Response: Shoot an Iraqi (p98-136)

It was inspiring to read the description of the Iraqi refugees building a community out of their Saudi refugee camp. I can’t even imagine the conditions they were living in, but it is easy to believe that putting the effort to create at least a little bit of something out of the next to nothing they were living with would create a sense of community. Just because they were forced from their homes and are not able to have even the semblance of a normal life does not mean that they have to forget their past, their education… or the fact that they are humans, too.

“In the evenings [Bilal’s adobe house} transformed into a literary salon – a venue for poetry reading and intellectual discussion – of philosophy, history, literature, politics – discourses that helped us keep our dignity, intellectual spark and humanity while we were treated like animals by the uneducated guards” (p133)

Response: The Me is the Message 3/5

Christopher Lasch, author of The Culture of Narcissism, believed that evasive self-obsession was the result of a narcissistic culture had two effects: “it drove people further into themselves and it created an inner emptiness by exalting the self and cutting it off from reality” (p49). It’s strange how accurately he predicted the environment & psychology of the internet age almost thirty years ago. The sentence where he describes “modern art’s habit of mixing art and life” into the “theatrics of everyday life” make me immediately think about Jean’s residency on Chloë Flores’s Facebook and how she chose to dramatize her life.*

Also, the idea of Waves reminded me of Samuel P. Huntington’s concept of the democratizing waves. He defined three waves of democratization having taken place in history. The initial wave brought democracy to Western Europe and Northern America in the 19^th century. Unlike Toffler’s description (or perhaps the article just didn’t go into so much depth), Huntington also described the ebb of the wave as well – the rise of dictatorships in the Interwar period (between the first and second world wars). The second wave of democracy began after WWII and the ebb of that wave occurred around 1962 and the mid-1970s. The third and last wave of democracy that Huntington described began in 1974 and its ebb occurred in Latin America. Political scientists, with the rise of the Arab Spring are questioning whether a fourth wave occurred/is occurring at this time. (Perhaps there aren’t any other parallels beside the concept of waves, but I got a little carried away…)