War on Christmas

This is the final project of the semester. I have chosen to do the Fox News War on Christmas. This project has not only fox news reporters putting their foot in their mouths in an out of context way, the video uses all kind of special effects and tools of war. Paul Stufkosky Artist's Statement: It is as no surprise that I do not like Fox News. Reporters are people who are supposed to report on situations around the world with out bias and opinion. Fox News doesn't do that, in fact they create their own news by taking little information they find and spinning it out of control. Fox News isn't they only News organization that does this such as MSNBC, CNN, and ABC news. Since tis the season, Fox News creates it's own news. They go so far as to create their own war. Their War on Christmas is a way to tell the viewers that White Christian Americans are under attack and are victims of liberalism and secularism. A war that was created by Bill O'Rielly and other Fox News "reporters", whom, when don't get their way Christian American's like them are victims, or if their religion isn't displayed in every corner of America they are under attack. Fox News will constantly take things out of context just to prove their point. This piece shows clips of Fox News out of context, like Fox News has done so many times in the past, as a way to say this is pointless and terrible way to tell the truth. Just like this "War on Christmas," it is pointless to make yourself a victim when you never were one. I use clips discussing the war on Christmas over and over again with the Christmas Classic The Nutcracker's "Trepak."I wanted to show that these "fears" are silly and in fact petty. That this "War" isn't a war at all, and calling it a war is insulting to the people who actually suffered and died in an actual war. Bill O'Rielly's campaign is a shallow and obtuse, trying to be a hero when he has only depicted him self as a villain. In the end Bill O'Rielly just reminds me of a Lex Luthor, creating an enemy out of fear and ignorance. Fox News says there is a "War on Christmas," but if it's anything like their slogan "Fair and Balanced," then this war is obviously a fairy tale.

Prospectives '12

Prospectives '12 a Combination of science and art. When I watched the presentations it felt more like a performance than any thing else. * My Favorite would have to be the first performer Zach Zubow. The use of high tech machinery with the use of simple cardboard boxes, Zach was able to perform tribal like music that went from calm to war like. It was interesting how his piece didn't break any of the cardboard boxes. He really got my blood pumping with the music he was making, and that is what music is supposed to do, give you some sort of reaction and Zach's gave me a positive one. * My Second favorite piece would have to be the one by David Simons the talking snow ball. This was really brilliant in using some sort of camera that responded to one color only. David took out the the tin foil made puppet that said "Hi" and moved it back and forward while the audience watched what the camera is seeing. What I saw was a black static, you could see movement but very little of it. When the tin foiled puppet appeared it was so bright. This also triggered a noise making response, which is seemed similar to a Geiger counter that reacts with noise to radiation. It seemed to me that the tin foil was able to reflect a fair amount of light to create such a reaction from the camera. This is was truley Science and Art smashed together.

Paul Demarinis

Paul Demarinis is a digital media artist that uses light that I have never seen before. From what I saw he had to have been and engineer or electrician, because the way he manipulated light was very intriguing. One that I saw was under a bridge in what looked like Italy and he set up lights that reacted to sound and placed them all the way down the tunnel. When sound would happen the lights would react to show people this is what sound looks like. He should that since you really can't see sound you can see what effect it makes when it happens. When he clapped down the tunnel, the lights would come back and forth like a wave. This was intriguing because it now seem to me the sound was almost like water at this point. The lights would show ripples of the sound waves. Another piece which was amazing to me was a laser machine that was making glow in the dark prints of a monkey. There must to have been something with the paper to make it glow like that and the attention to detail by the laser was perfect. Another one of my favorites was the laser that played a record, it amazed me to see how that light was able to create any sound at all. Paul's work shows a correlation of light and sound, how they can work together or work against each other.

Machinima Expo 2012

I watched the Machinima expo on the last day of the showing. From what I saw there was a lot of use of the second life avatars. The First Machinima I watched was by Josep Kwong. I didn't see the title because the the stream was having trouble setting up connection. It was using the digital map from the video game star wars rouge squadron and sprites from second life. There was one live actor and I believe that was Josep Kwong himself. It was pretty enjoyable except for the acting, I hold a standard to acting, and I feel the voice actors and Josep Kwong were lacking in their performance. As artist don't you want to show your best for your work? It's just a thought. Crash Cody: Conqures the Moon using second life, the credits went way to fast for me to tell who made this. This was about the misadventures of Crash Cody a space captain in the old 50's style scifi show. It was a comedy and the use of timing with the Second life, using off camera sound effects you can really tell these guys knew how to use the space accordingly and efficiently. The acting was better than the first movie but still lacking, though this was a comedy and I don't think they were going for an oscar nomination. The third and the last I'll talk about was The Melancholy resistance, by Edgar. I missed the rest of his name because the credits were still going to fast. This piece was using second life but in a surreal horror sense. It reminded me of a tim burton movie. Edgar uses a players perspective to tell his story, using imagery of death and war and decaying of people, Edgar narrates with text book knowledge of a cell reacting to a virus. I had to say this piece was an interesting way to look at war and famine with life and death.

Pico Pico!

The Pico project was another chance to use Adobe Flash. I originally made it too big and had to size it down which took hours. Even then the animation is no longer in the right places it was supposed to be. Any ways I wanted to explore certain negative space that people often ignore. So I chose the corner of a bill board, and often when I was a child I would drag my fingers in the negative space to imitate a little mans movements in such space. What should have done was make the final background black so that I could adjust it any way I wanted but it standing alone it makes for a good sight to see. One is for certain I will zoom in for a better view next time.

Diptych Video

The Diptych video that I created was much bigger than I originally conceived. Most of the video got corrupted so I had a new challenge to up hold. So I took the remaining video of me randomly running around, or choreographing incidents in costume. I used the Canon Camera which had so many settings that I played with it to get some thing new. Along with our previous work I added train noises to my one minute sound piece. I also added me beat boxing and changes the levels and tweaked the pitches that they were set. I wanted to show the chaos I can do with just a camera and so little scenes.

Animation Perspectives 012

I decided to use Flash animation for my project. I wanted to make the model more than just a statue. I wanted to see life. I also wanted to use Adobe Flash because I never used it before. I originally thought that the model was holding an orb but it was a cup. So I just went with an orb. I was hoping to use an after effects program with this but it wouldn't combine successfully.