The Art of DeTouch

The Art of DeTouch is a really neat website that shows the steps taken to enhance photos of models and public figures. It has pictures of models, singers, and even public figures. It shows the original image and the steps taken to enhance that image in photoshop or other programs. The site shows how every imperfection is fixed and changed so that the picture comes out perfect. Not only do they retouch skin imperfections but they also change proportions. They actually go in and electronically fix proportions of the body, making models skinnier and boobs bigger.

I really appreciated this site because it showed what these public figures and models really look like. Not everyone looks as perfect as they appear in magazines. This site showed the steps taken to achieve these unrealistic perfect looks. Most women do have stretch marks, cellulite, and imperfect skin, but we never get to see that in public images. Not all men have perfect abs and a perfect skin tone. A lot o them in fact, have only digital abs. I really liked this website and I think that if more people looked at it then a lot of self esteem issues would be resolved.

Maryiln Minter Billboards

During March three enormous billboards took over the streets in Chelsea. The New York artist, Marilyn Minter, had taken high fashion shots for magazines. She then transformed these glamorous images into messy, more human images. The original images were of perfectly manicured feet in gorgeous name brand shoes. She took those pictures and splattered them with mud and grime. She did three of these, Shit-Kicker, Splish Splash and Runs, and Mud Bath.

I felt that this project was effective and where she placed it was smart also. New York is notorious for its high fashion and runway shoes. She took the name brand shoe out of that high fashion world and placed it in the real world that is not all glitz and glamor. I understood her message even without reading the description and think she did a successful job in photoshop. It really looks like she took the picture that way. It also brings attention to why people are so hung up on these name brand objects in the real world when they don't look the same as in the glamor/fashion world. A pair of Prada shoes in mud doesn't look much better than a pair of PayLess shoes in mud.

subervitisement

Procrastination 3

I edited a play station ad to say procrastination instead and i placed in the common area of a dorm. I put one on the huge t.v. and one on the event board by the t.v.

Bratz Vs Barbie

Bratz Vs Barbie is a photography series by Jill Greenberg. Jill is a very well known photographer who tackles subjects that most people ignore. This particular image is just one from the series. She took a children's idol and a very well known image and turned it into something completely different and more realistic. She took Barbie out of the fake environment in which she was created and placed her in reality. In stead of simply changing Barbie's appearance, she gave her a black eye. She is bringing to light issues such as abuse and violence. Problems we often face in the real world.

I came across the image on accident and after doing some research on the photographer and the series, I found it quite intriguing. Her series also went along with my final project about self image and gave me another perspective on it. Children grow up on Barbie with her perfect features and her perfect world and its hard for them to draw the line between that fantasy world of Barbie and the real world. Greenberg aslo touches on other children's dolls such as Bratz Dollz. Although they are not as perfect as Barbie, they still have a particular image that just is not reality. 

I Wish I Was Born in a Hollywood Movie

I Wish I Was Born in a Hollywood Movie is a site created by Maja Bajevic. Maja's work often deals with the boundary between what is public or advertised and what is private. This particular site is her first piece that uses the web as her medium. She addresses the Hollywood "dream machine" and how the scenes we are exposed to in Hollywood affect us. She explores how the glamorized representation of reality is portrayed in movies and compares it to actual reality. The site displays photos Maja took in Mexico City, Paris, Venice, and other places. Then it shows images found in tourist brochures, movies, and etc.

At first I was confused when I viewed the project because you cannot really distinguish which images she took and which images are from other sources. They are not really organized in any particular order and they are not still images. If you click on an image another series of images pops up. The random order at which this was arranged confused me. After thinking about it and exploring the project further, I started to understand her reasoning behind this more. Her objective was not to show the public images and compare them to the real images. Instead, she was showing how the line between the two is so blurred that it is sometimes hard to distinguish which is which.

banksy.co.uk

Banksy is a website full of quirky artwork. The site shows artwork that portrays a comical or sarcastic point of view to some of the problems in our society. It consists of three parts: outside works, inside works, and a shop page. Both the outside and inside pieces mock certain aspects of todays society such as corporations, classes, government, the police force, and many others. Each image is threw the eyes of the artist and refers to different subject matters.

A lot of the pieces on this site played with how corporations and government are viewed. One image was of a government meeting, but in place of government officials, the artist placed monkeys. The one that I found most interesting was a black and white image. It consisted of a huge Mickey Mouse and a huge Ronald McDonald holding both hands of a naked, crying little girl. Mickey and Ronald are smiling and cheerful while this poor child is clearly suffering. This image stuck out to me because both of these figures are meant to make children happy. Maybe here in the U.S. a mouse and a clown can lift our children's spirits, but they don't do much to help the children who have nothing in underdeveloped countries., some of which work for their corporations.

Publicity Images

In a book called Ways of Seeing, John Berger discusses publicity images and the way people view them today. He discusses how we see these images every single day and only briefly take them in. We get so accustomed to these messages that we usually do not even notice them. When we do, it is because a specific image or piece of information sparks an interest. He compares publicity images with paintings and he points out the similarities between them. He also discusses how these public messages always refer to the future and yet nothing is really achieved.

I found this expert from Ways of Seeing quite eye opening. These images that we see everyday have become so routine that we rarely stop and listen to the messages. We let publicity influence us with out even noticing. Publicity images propose new things to us everyday. Sometimes, we are so consumed by the artificial message that we actually allow ourselves to be persuaded into doing what they want us to do. These images us sexuality, envy, and even art work to grab our attention and persuade us.

Wrestling with the Blob Beast

An artist from Brooklyn, New york named Ezra Johnson created Wrestling with the Blob Beast. He created sixteen different screen savers. Each one is available for viewers to install off of his website. Each screen saver represents Wrestling with the Blob Beast in a different way. Johnson started out as a painter who did fixed images, but he discovered how to use animation as a new means of viewing paint. One of the screen savers is a painted ocean that is moving calmly until being disturbed by a painted boat.

After watching some of his screen savers, I noticed how each piece is painted in the same way. He has a messy way of putting his images together, but the animation makes it work. Its as if he is taking the viewer through the process he goes through when he paints. His paintings are very expressionistic and although there is technique used, they seem child like. My favorite one was the more literal one. It was to hands actually wrestling with a blob of paint that turned into a beast. For me, this piece makes sense of the title of the site. I enjoyed watching these animations and each one evoked a different emotion and feeling.

Rosalind

Rosalind started in 2004 as a small networked project. A small community of interest came together and created a new vocabulary for communicating what they are and what they do. The project was hidden to ensure that the vocabulary could grow in a private space without interference or exploitation. The site has grown into world of made up words and definitions. You can even register and contribute your own terms and definitions.

This site was put together very well and its purpose is clear. Rosalind is the name of the site and they refer to it as a she. On the home page they tell you to offer terms and help Rosalind to mature. I really appreciated the story line included with the project as well as the project itself. The site allows you to view the list of definitions that people have contributed. A lot of the words people came up with were very interesting. The definitions people match with their terms almost make them seem like real words.

Days I've Been Alive

A website called Days I've Been Alive was one of the weirdest art project sites I have visited. The site was created by Ron Lent. The site is simple. It consists of rows of white dots on top of a gray background. Each dot represents a day that Lent has been alive. It also provides you with the total number of dots. When i visited the site today that number was 15465.

At first I thought that idea was interesting, but the execution was extremely boring. The website is not visually intriguing and there is no information provided besides the dots, the date, and the name of the site. Then, i began to think about why Lent was counting his days. Is he just appreciating each day? Does he have an illness or something that is limiting how long he has left? I think that he decided not to include any extra information so that the viewers of his site could decide for themselves why someone would want to count the days and maybe even appreciate their own days. 

ars astronautica

ars astronautica is a website that was launched in December 2008 by Arthur Woods. The site is focused on space art. It includes exhibitions, space art projects, image and video galleries, a website gallery and a blog. Woods uses the site to document his own activities as well as developments in the field of space art. He says, 

"Our current civilization has reached the carrying capacity of the planet and will soon need to turn to extraterrestrial resources to meet the human needs on Earth. Space artists will have a major role to play as this development unfolds."

This website was different than anything I have ever seen. I had never even heard of space art until I stumbled across this. The projects were really unique as well. One of the project was called O.U.R.S. This project created a ring satellite to orbit in order to create a "circle in the sky." It was meant to celebrate the advent of the new millennium. This among many other interesting space art projects are described on this site.

DIWO

Do It With Others (DIWO) is a project that lets artists make art on the web. It started in 2007 as Do-It-Yourself early net art that used the internet as a medium for producing work. Now DIWO is a collaborative online social space that enables communication and appreciation for contemporary work. People can sign up and contribute digital images, audio, and text to an HTTP gallery through an email list. 

After visiting the DIWO website, I understood the concept of the project more. A lot of art websites only accept certain pieces or charge you to display your art. This project lets you show your work through the email chain and the gallery. It lets more people display their pieces in the actual gallery than most sites. I also liked how its open for communication and collaboration. This project started in 2007 and will probably continue to successfully run for a while.

Without a Trace

Without a Trace was started by Jody Zellen. She started a site back in July of 2007 where she stripped comic strips of the text leaving only empty thought bubbles. She combined these wordless images with tracings she did of the New York Times. She did this everyday for a year. Each day a comic image,her tracing, and three random words from the original comic strip were posted on her site. 

Without a Trace stresses the "remains", what is still left when everything else disappears. I think that Zellen was trying to leave enough evidence of her tracings to provide memory of what was there before. The combination of the word bubbles, the tracing, and the three words are used together to evoke a memory or feeling. I think that her idea is clever and it took her a lot of time to make Without a Trace.

Absence

Absence

For this series I focused on homeless people and how unimportant they are to most of us. We see them everywhere in D.C. and we usually just ignore them as if they aren't even there. We treat them as if they are nothing, like they are invisible. I actually went to D.C. and photographed people interacting with homeless people (who were not happy to get their picture taken). Well, there was really no interaction at all. Everyone just walked right passed them, most without even looking at them. Some people even looked scared of them. Although I am guilty of this myself, I wanted to do a piece for these "invisible people". I wanted to draw the viewers' attention to them instead of away from them. I made only what we see visible, their clothes, their signs, and their cups for donations. We never notice the actual person behind these things.

Skin Products

Perfume

Hair Products

For this series, I chose to change how we see advertisements. I took three ads out of a magazine. Each ad is for a different product by a different brand, but they each test their products on animals. I found that by changing the actual product to pictures of these poor animals I change the entire mood and meaning of the image. Instead of these ads welcoming you and making you want to buy their product, they now make you think about how that product was made. 

Interview with Charles Cohen

In the interview, Charles discusses his Buff Series. This series consisted of pornographic images with the figures cut out. Instead of people in the pictures, there were white-filled silhouettes. Cohen describes how the initial reaction to his piece is expectation. Due to the setting and position of the pieces we expect nudity. We then start to question what is happening and this sets up the "abstract effect". The immediate experience is no longer transparent and we begin to ask questions. During the interview, Cohen also describes how the work revolves around the presence of absence and how the idea surfaced.

I found this interview helpful to better understand the Buff Series and Cohen's perspective on the pieces. This series was actually derived from two photographic series. Some of the characteristics of the pieces  were not planned such as the love/lust differences in the series. I discovered that the main purpose in Cohen's work is to provoke thought and the buff series definitely achieved that.

Sensitive Rose

Sensitive Rose by Martha Gabriel is a unique website that brings people together in a strange, but artistic way. The "rose" is formed by mobile tags or codes. Each person has their own tag based on his or her desire in life. The codes must be deciphered before they are communicated to others, much like in real life. Your desires are usually not clearly stated when you first meet someone, they must be figured out like these codes.

When I went to the website it asked me for my name and my desire in life. There is a drop down menu of common desires to choose from. After I choose one, I am given a mobile tag that is then sent to Sensitive Rose. Each desire has its own mobile tag and a collage of dots of the same color. The different color dots accumulate to form the rose. I found the project intriguing because you can see how many people share the same desire in life. Although the actual website was quite simple, its function is complex. You need a mobile tag reader just to decipher your code. 

The Freesound Project

The Freesound Project is a website that focuses completely on sounds or noises. The site does not contain music or spoken recordings. Instead, it consists completely of samples of noises. The Freesound Project goes beyond the limitations of just music and brings raw sound into the spotlight. On the actual website there are endless sound files uploaded from users that you can click on and listen to directly from the page. Not only can you listen to these sound files, but you can comment and download them as well. You can also interact with other Freesound users through Shoutbox. 

The originality of this project intrigued me immediately. I have never really heard too much about "sound artists," but this website brings them to your attention and completely focuses on them and their pieces or sounds. I listened to a few of the sound files and most of them were basic everyday sounds that one would not even notice. To hear absolutely nothing but a bike riding past with no picture to associate the sound with was a brand new experience for me. The sounds were raw and didn't need anything to complete them or take away from them.