First Assignment and Project Ideas

Here's our first mini assignment that we did last week. We were supposed to find a Current Events-type image and manipulate it in Photoshop so that it made a different impression than the original photo.

I found this image in MSNBC's Week in Pictures. It was taken for AP by Charles Rex Arbogast (what an excellent name). It's captioned, "I've seen that face before... Pedestrians stop to watch a live broadcase in downtown Chicago of impeached Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich delivering his closing argument at his impeachment trial in Springfield, Ill., on Thursday, Jan. 29. The state Senate voted unanimously to remove him from office."
Incidentally, Rod Blagojevich is a pretty excellent name too.

Knowing nothing whatsoever about this whole hullabaloo, I was simply charmed by moment captured in the photo. These four people are stopped dead in their tracks to see what unfolds on that huge screen. Speaking of which, huge screens never fail to baffle me. Aren't we already bombarded by billboards and TV screens as it is? Of course, I understand that this one is making the news available to everyone, but I can't help thinking about the commercials that are probably up next.
Anyway, my other motivation was that this looked like a relatively easy Photoshop job - just replace what's on the screen. I wanted it to be something very opposite of what was there already - a totally different reason for people to be standing around in 24-degree weather. I thought about a scene from a movie or a cartoon, but I decided on this:


Now it's on to Real Project ideas. Our first Digital Printmaking piece has only a few guidelines. It's got to involve manipulation (of the viewer, by the artist, or a comment on manipulation in general), some kind of digital process, and a 3 color screen print (serigraph if you want to get fancy). But basically we just have to make art. I am not sure how I'm going to execute this whole thing. Elaine Bradford makes me want to incorporate crochet into my project, but I don't want to rip her off by making striped sweaters for inanimate objects. I'd like to manipulate a traditional art or craft and use it in an unexpected way. And though I'll never produce anything as magical as Jill Greenberg, I want to be able to change the viewer's impression of my subject in a similar way - making people aware of detail they may not have seen before or changing natural colors and textures.

Art blog

Who'd have thought that school would turn me into a blogger? I apologize to anyone hoping for travel updates - I will be back to write about the rest of my trip. But for now, I'm going to be writing about art! This must mean that I am a real artist now that I'm writing about it on the internet. Either that or my teacher made me do it.

This will be my record of work done for my Digital Printmaking class and hopefully it will be kind of exciting! Today's task is to write about manipulation and its use in art. Here goes:

Asked to define manipulation, my first thought is that it means changing something (or someone) to suit one's own purpose. This can range from the benign - like molding clay - to the sinister - as in mind-control (eek!). Manipulation is also the usage of an implement or tool, especially with one's hands (as evidenced by the "man" root). An artist can tie this all together by using a paintbrush to create an image that changes the appearance of an object or changes the way a viewer thinks of something. In a sense, all art is manipulation because it picks and chooses what to include or exclude in a composition. There is no way to replicate real life, so even the most "objective" photography is still changing what's actually there. Manipulation of photographs has taken place since the invention of the medium, whether it's unintentional (differences in development techniques) or not (Photoshopping digital pictures). Photography itself is the manipulation of light to create pictures. Another obvious example of manipulation is advertising. Graphic ads aim to draw the viewer's attention and manipulate them into thinking that they've just GOT to have the product pictured.

Here are the first two artists I thought of who are manipulators.
1. Elaine Bradford

Bradford combines two very different arts: taxidermy and crochet. She manipulates the original intents of both processes, as well as viewers' expectations. Her latest exhibition is called "The Museum of Unnatural History" and shows off fantastical, sweatered species in natural history museum sets. Her earlier work is mostly comprised of sweater-wearing logs... which gets repetitive after a while, but is a pretty cool idea anyway. Sorta like tree cozies.

2.Jill Greenberg

Using a combination of amazing lighting, digital manipulation, and probably magical powers, Jill Greenberg makes some amazing portraits. She manipulates her viewers' perception of her subjects - often celebrities or advertising models - by bringing out detail that no one can ever see in real life. Usually she makes people look "better" or more interesting, but she's also done some pretty controversial work too. People were upset about lack of ethics in creating a series of children crying, captioned with anti-Bush sentiments (she offered them candy, then took it away), and most recently she caused a stir with her portraits of John McCain for Atlantic Magazine. She intentionally lit him and eschewed her traditional Photoshop methods to make him look evil. She also posted out-takes from the shoot, including a picture with McCain's mouth replaced by a blood-rimmed shark mouth and captioned "I am a bloodthirsty war monger." Personally, I am more inspired by her work with animals and the way that she makes us think of them as having personalities.