Lecture 2: Wafaa Bilal

October 27 2011 Wafaa Bilal presented a lecture of his work at UNR. His art work was the performance type, where as the artist performs to an audience. His work "Shoot an Iraqi" was one of his most famous works. He placed himself in a gallery space and made a program to have a computer control a paint ball gun in turn the computer would be connected to the internet allowing any visitor to his web site get direct access to his computer paint ball shooter. He then place himself behind a protective glass or use a shield to protect himself as he presented himself as the target. The audience who would log on to the site would be given the chance to fire paint balls at Mr. Bilal or not. He chose this method because of the current situation in the Iraq war. His motivation was pushed forward because of an interview that was given to a female airplane bomber captain. The main question that got Wafaa's attention was did she feel a bit of remorse for bombing an Iraqi stronghold. Her answer was that she had faith in her commanding officer's order and did not question it. This form of detachment of humanity, and the death of his father and brother along with the bombing of his hometown is what inspired to create "Shoot an Iraqi." This work showed how cruel human beings have become thanks to their detachment with their current government system. So many people tried to fire at Wafaa that his server crashed, but he was given help to fix the server and block people who were flooding the site. All of Texas had to be block because of the over flowing response to this website. When players found they can move the paint ball gun this showed another form of cruelty. Players fired on his reading lamp, wether or not this was intentionally done to make this man suffer, it shows that the players get even so board of shooting a person, that they would destroy his possessions in the process. It seemed like this was the American Mentality and we were completly lost of our humanity. A Marine shows up to see Wafaa, he proceeded to give him a knew lamp because he saw the destruction of the old one on line. A Marine who was trained for war, knew how to show compassion. Later on other people would show Wafaa kindness by logging on to the site and get people to join in clicking an arrow button and spam the page so that others wouldn't be given the chance to fire on Wafaa. This work was more like an experiment on America's humanity, to see if it had any compassion left. For a third party observer this was a huge wake up call on the troubles that are effecting america. It isn't the laziness of american political activity, but the complete ignorance of that political activity that can cause such tragically inhumane acts. This work also shows the complete opposite of what was just said, American people who do pay attention and those who do stand up and do something. It's a shame that more american's choose to stay ignorant than those who would do the right thing for all humanity not just for their own well being. Wafaa Bilal shows more works similar to this where he takes an online vote for who to be Water boarded, Wafaa or a Dog. Wafaa lost and was water boarded. His intent was never to actually water board the doge but that didn't seem to matter for the people at PETA. HE wanted to be water boarded to feel what it was like. His description was that it wasn't simulated drowning it was drowning. Never the less this piece was used to illustrate the people's view on the Iraqi people, and show proof the ignorant hatred for a fellow human being based on where he is from and what has been told about the Iraqi people.

Lecture 1: The View Without

Lecture 1: October 6, 2011 Lecture of “The View with Out” by Morgan McAuslan, and Jack Daws. Morgan McAuslan was the first to speak at the lecture Thursday night. His art works was using useless thrown away materials and make them useful in his art work. He’d gather materials from garbage can and collect them in his house hold. Morgan’s friends and family were concerned because this was turning into a bizarre collecting obsession. His art work however was more organized and well planned out. One of his pieces was an old wind mill from his home town reconstructed with paper. The detail was a lack of a better word was perfect and without touching the piece there would be no distinction between the two. Every Piece of the windmill was remade in to paper from the fan to the tiniest of screws. His other piece, “Burn Board”, was something out of a brilliant childlike mind. It had a reminiscent form one of the machine’s Pee Wee Herman had that would simply make him breakfast. It looked like it was made to do something productive but in a complicated matter, however in the end the piece resembled Wind Chimes without wind. Using his obsession with junk he created a windless wind chime. Jack Daws was next for the lecture; his demeanor spoke to the audience that he like to push the boundaries of what was appropriate art work and not really show that he cared. While it showed that he “crossed the line” on social issues his efforts weren’t meant to show a form of malice, but to see if it can be done. Such piece was a bleached form of the American Flag. This piece was derived of all color and shown to its basic shape without symbolic colors. This piece was considered a defacing of the American flag, but he did this again with the English flag. These pieces have shown the beauty of the form of these flags, and to show an understanding to the audience what a flag is without its color is. Another Piece was his Penny made of 18 karat Gold; Mr. Daws wanted to make something so unnoticed and make it valuable. He took this penny and put it in to the public’s circulation and waited to see if anyone noticed. When he got it back from a person in the east coast, he wanted to put it in his art show and just leave it on the floor tails’ side up with no artist commentary. What he wanted to see if people would pick it up or notice something that’s just unnoticeable. His work was showed more of human experimentation and it was a very interesting concept.

Final Essay Project for Digital Media

Paul Stufkosky Art 245 Digital Media Professor Joseph DeLappe Video Games and Expressive Art, they don’t seem like the ideal bed fellows, given the chance they make something beautiful. When seeing these two artists my thoughts were simple, in that, I wasn’t expecting much when it came to video game art. Now I can comfortably say that the Video Game Art world is a vast open sandbox filled with possibilities. In the world of Video Game Art, artists Justin B. Evans and Paul Steen stand out in the gaming art world. Justin Evans is a graduated from Corcoran College of Art + Design in 2006 with a Bachelors of Fine Art and has been noted by his senior thesis, “Indifferent the Duck and the Sprite Sculptures.” Paul Steen an artist with various degrees the most recent was his degree in journalism from Gothenburg University. One of Paul’s works “Art Assault” was noted by Hrag Vartanian the editor of Hyperallergic, “Best Game Ever.”(http://www.paulsteen.se/aa.html). Both artists are known for trying to bring the real world and the video game world together in a more humorous and memorial fashion. How the two differ is how their work comes out and what subjects they choose to work on. The First Subject is Justin B. Evans’ “Senior Thesis.” This piece is a sculpture made for the Corcoran College of Art + Design thesis project. A self-proclaimed child of the 1980s, Justin was a video game enthusiast. Pixels were everywhere in his child hood and is what still influences his art work today. The sculptures comprised of Justin’s own original sprites “Indifferent the Duck,” to appropriated sprites “Super Mario” and “Mega Man.” Justin meets his audience half-way with familiarization. To bring people in to his art work, Justin uses the well-known video game characters to help his audience familiarize with their surroundings, and then little by little Justin adds more game characters from lesser known games and finally his own characters, with an audience Justin had to bring the pixels to life.

Justin wanted to bring the sprite world to the real world as they were, almost as if the design leapt right out of the television set in to the real world. Normally people would believe the design would take a real life representational form, but this artist felt that his work should show a sense of off world look. The look he wanted was an impossible one, to make pixels outside the video screen. Since the Pixel was a small square on the television screen he needed something to represent that pixel, some that was tangible, and was able to be held in the palm of his hand. Justin also had to take in the fact that the pixel was a two dimensional figure, he needed to make it three dimensional but still keep the piece flat. Taking the fact a pixel is a square; Justin chose the 3D version of that square, a cube, keeping it a three dimensional figure but still flat. The Sculpture is made from wooden cubes ranging in size of ¾’’on all three axis’s to 1’’x1’’x1”. These cubes are then fitted together accordingly by glue then painted with acrylic paint. This procedure seemed the at most difficult because Justin had to know which cube were to be put together and what shade to be colored and these cubes had to be put in a specific place in order to outline a shape of an appendage. This is where scaling the Model from pixel to sculpture became most important. Each shade of color of the cube represented a large portion of the sculpture, in the end there is a lot of geometric math is involved. These sculptures are a prime example of a mosaic sculpture mixture. The entire sculpture is painted to show the backside of the characters, to show an evolution of 2D to 3D. It is as if the sculptures were a missing link from relief art to sculpture art evolution. The continual evolution of the digital world wasn’t just by physical means, Paul Steen shows how that the three dimensional world effects the digital. Paul Steen, a man from Switzerland and modern artist, uses the actions of the physical world and puts them in the computer world. His work shows a point of human existence and dumbs it down to an entertaining digital media outlet. “Art Assault” is a first person shooting game where the objective is to fight over current art gallery level by killing the opposing team. Each avatar is labeled from a list of 150 current famous artists from “artfacts.net”. This piece is interactive and downloadable and gives the player a chance to kill his most favorite artist. The levels are current art galleries that the game has been shown in, showing a number of art works already in the gallery in the game. As Justin B. Evans wanted to bring the digital people to the organic people, Paul Steen does the opposite bringing the outside world in to the virtual world. To do that, Paul gets the basic land geometry of the gallery and scales down in to the virtual world. Certain galleries such as the P.S. 1 Art Gallery in New York, was digitally remade and reconstructed art piece that this game was currently shown. All the changes and altercations make it a virtual reality. Paul continues to do this with other galleries all over the world: Art Basel Miami Beach, Miami Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin Locust, Miami Saatchi, and London. These galleries are now the newest level editions to the game.

His idea to piece shows a personal feel toward the art world. It shows that Paul sees the art world to be a competitive world. Art is used to express one self, but when one wishes to show that expression people are force to confront fellow artists as a competition for attention. Every artist doesn’t get to show their work in a well-known gallery while other people’s work does, so it becomes a battle for a place on the wall, much like a video game when it tallies a score and compares it to other scores seeking for the best player. Paul inadvertently portrays or purposely portrays a surface of the best artist; his work wasn’t just representational it’s now political. This is on speculation and not what holds true to what the artist Paul Steen believes, but when making a satire of real life situations is to draw attention a real life situations that are deeper than we perceive. The other side can be considered to be just a satire in itself. This piece can mean that you can jump on a computer and have fun. This lighter side makes it easier for the audience see the gallery in the digital world and its works presented to the player while he or she tries to stay alive. It’s similar to video game advertising; where advertisers would product place their logos on virtual items or walls. Paul does the exact same thing only with artists being represented by their art work. This idea is a tough to maintain because advertising companies can go by a simple logo or catch phrase or both. The art represents not just who it’s from but what expression who it’s trying to portray. Since there is only one original piece and isn’t mass produced the artwork is less known and so is the artist. When working on these projects the artists always use what they know and where their passion is from. Having their mind set they both set out to find new ways to manipulate and reform what is in front of them to make to original pieces of work. When it comes to their work Paul and Justin try to bring the two separate worlds together. In doing so they create an evolutionary step of the Gaming Art world, both works bring in their audience but still keeping a form of realism detachment. The realism detachment of their work shows that the artists want to bring in the audience with surprise, wonder, and astonishment. The Humor in some of these pieces can be viewed as light hearted much like the “Indifferent the Duck and the Sprite Sculptures” to where it can bring a charming and up lifting, whereas Paul’s “Art Assault” and “New Life” is placed in more a darker tone and surreal sense. In Short Paul Steen is a more of a realistic artist bringing in realism to a fantasy world, whereas Justin B. Evans takes the fantasy world and brings it into reality. The two artists struggle bringing life to the video games, they wanted to bridge that gap of virtual and physical, and in so doing both artists took completely opposite paths to achieve the same goal. Source Page: “Game Art: Paul Steen’s “Art Assault” (2010)” Gamescenes.com GameScenes, Mathias Jansson. Web. 9/22/2010. “Game Art: Justin B. Evans' "Indifferent Duck and the Sprite Sculptures" (2006)” Gamescenes.com GameScenes, Matteo Bittanti. 11/23/2011. “Paul Steen Art Assault.” Paulsteen.se/aa. Paul Steen. 12/1/2011. “Senior Thesis” justinbevans.com/portfolio/senior-thesis. Justin B Evans. 12/1/2011

SUPER ME!

Super Me is devoted to making you the Super Hero. You get to choose one Power so make it good, no god powers though,(like knowing and can do any thing). Choose that power and show me how you would use it to stop evil. This project gets people to choose one idea and expand on what that idea can do. You have to be creative on how you can use it, and what can it do for you. Show me how you would save the day! Super Heroes ASSEMBLE! For the

2nd Part of the Project I chose to do the Johnny Cash Music Video. http://www.thejohnnycashproject.com/#/my-contributions When I made this I wanted to use the negative black space to fill out Johnny and color in every thing else. I felt the contrast looked really cool.

Alterations can be fun!

I'm not a fan of Fox News, it is a very biased source of media. I was thinking of making some thing that proved how incompotent they can be, but instead I chose to just poke fun at them. The reason is that I didin't want to make people mad or shove the truth into people's faces, what I wanted to do was have fun with the project and get people to laugh. People are so wrapped up in finding the truth after the lies I wanted to just lie so people can relax and laugh. We have too much stress on our selves and these are the people who are making that stress, so I chose the theme that is supposed to relieve that stress. Here is the Original.

For my next piece I have to say was very rushed, I had an idea of using bus advertisements but the placing of the advertisements and their angel were concaved and too much light shined on them for me to take a decent picture, so I simply got a picture of a directional sign and added "AND CAKE." The joke contrives from the video game Portal, and for those who have played the game or know what I speak of we all know that the 'Cake is a Lie." It was simple but a fun idea.

FOXXX NUDES!

FoXXX Nudes! Hey guys and girl are you ready for a wild time!? Well check out this new hot news sensation! "Bil OH'Riely" is back with his new video "Patiot Pinhead and the Teabag Party!" With special guest Karl Rover. Watch how your rising Profit soar with Foxy Friends' Steve Douchy, and SO MUCH MORE! We'll be waiting for you... Bus Motives - One the bus are advertisements, they will be altered slighty to show how people don't really pay attention to what it says, as long as it is visually acceptable.

Paul's Crazy Fun Time

http://www.unr.edu/art/site/areas_of_emphasis/digital_media/projects/Paul%20Crazy%20Fun%20Time.html Paul's Carzy Fun Time was at first an attempt to make a musical sequence. The porblem was I had no idea how to compose one. So I had my friend Chris McClindon, my pet bird Kati, and my self making noise for the camera. From there I thought to myself what Pro. Rozenburg says. "What If." So what if I try adding random clips to my beats and see if that would create some sort of mealody that the user could think of that I couldn't. I'm hoping for a possitive feed back.

Chapter 3 New Age and Old age Digital media

1) What if I wanted to draw a picture, and with that picture scan it to my computer, alter it, and use it only for digital media only. Would that constitute itself to be New Age Digital Media or still old age digital media? 2)Are we as a society making it too easy for us to produce art, or are we at a breaking point where we as people are getting too lazy to preform baeutiful works of art because we have computers to do it for us? Or are we on a verge of a new evolution of media where certain things can be preformed by push of a button where others would take years to master because of new possibilties in Digital art?

Assignment 5 Reenactment

I chose to do the first 45 secs of "Music Of Your Own"

The player will show in this paragraph

Here is my Reenactment. What I felt from Vikki Bennett was her sarcasm, she showed me that something serious but it really wasn't, as if the creators of the original film were out of touch with the real world, and so it can't be taken seriously. So I took it one step further than Vikki Bennett's version's intent. I wanted to bring back that old feel as did original video presented. I also wanted to make it more happy, so what made me happy at the time was sockpuppets. The original was concidered a "lo-fi look" It wasn't really on purpose so I did it on purpose by edititing the video. I did that by adding effects such as grey scaling but changing the color to a light purple and then adding the bumby screen and spotty look. To give it that old feeling.

Chapter 2 Video Art Questions.

Chapter 2 Video Art Questions: 1) Paik was the first to use video in his art work, his first being the Pope, did he go through public scrutiny from the church and it's followers? Was it ignored as another artist trying to make it big? Was this form of Art considered blasphemic with in the church? 2) When video came about, did the idea of abstractive play consume the ideals of the artist to a point where we as a veiwer questions the artist sanity?

Assignment 2

I wanted make the crazy picture moving like crazy, unexpected, and nutty. Like a Pinball Machine. I am flashy and noisy just like a pinball machine, but one mistake and its game over, or one mistake then jackpot! So when it comes to pinball machines you just play and forget the consequences. That's what the internet is, big and flashy but then dissapointing at the same time. So just accept the big mess of information and make the best of it.

Walter Benjamin Question

1.  Benjamin speaks of the advancement of art technology, changes our perception of art.
Is this one of the reasons why so many people don't recognize digital art as art?
Is it due to having hands on work with the substrate,  rather than having a program and a mouse?

2."We define the aura of the latter as the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be." Walter Benjamin The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936).
Does he speak of how the artist puts his/her soul in to the artwork so that it cannot be copied or make it unique?

Kaos in Internet

I call this Kaos in Internet

There is so much information on the internet aswell communities that have their own meanings.

My piece just shows a small portion of the internet community and how it has grown to it's own.

I also notice apon working on this peice how the negative space  played such a large part to this art work. The negative space would make it's own shape no longer being negative space.