Protest Poster

Protest Poster Artist’s Statement

            Before starting my project, I was already somewhat knowledgeable about my chosen topic of violence and video games.  Last semester in my Writing 150 class, I did my research paper on the effect of violent video games on youth.  I argued that the effect of violent video games were not as drastic as popular reports were making it out to be, and I found a significant amount of research supporting my assertion.  The one thing I’d never looked into though, were media representations either in support of or against video games.  I researched these in preparation for my poster didn’t find that much surprisingly.  I found only one series of ads that showed close-ups of keyboards and game controllers with blood splattered all over them and a catch phrase like “He just got a headshot.” 

            Obviously these were villainizing games, and while I definitely agree that violent video games can have an affect, and that we should be concerned, I felt I’d argue in support once again.  It’s funny to me the degree in which some people will publicly bash media for our current level of violence.  Horrific violence has existed all throughout history.  Cain murdered his brother for starters, and we’ve had innumerable amounts of senseless wars and displays of violence.  In a fit of fear and despair, I think people are looking to blame something and violent media, specifically video games, is a prominent target.

            My protest poster plays on the above idea; that violence has been around for a long time and there’s no reason to blame video games as much as our society currently is.  So, I decided to attempt to bring up a humorous point rather than do something serious.  I contemplated various things, like showing video game characters being really sad with a catch phrase that we were going to blame them for everything, etc.  I settled on a sort of cartoon, drawing off a meme-type of style, except instead of doing impact font, I did speech bubbles and weird cutouts to make a historical painting look funny. 

 I’m not trying to say that violent video games have no effect at all, because they do.  Games have ratings for a reason, and no one under 17 years old should be playing M rated games, as the rating indicates.  However, like Chimamanda Adichie tried to point out, there is a huge danger in only having one story for any situation.  If people just accept the news reports that the most recent sick and twisted psychopath that went on a killing spree also played video games as a confirmation that games are the cause, then they are not seeing all the stories and all the sides of the issue.   

            I’m not huge on social media.  I have a Facebook account, but rarely post anything.  I only have a twitter account for Dean Duncan’s class, and a blog for this class.  And the few times I have posted something on Facebook, I don’t exactly get a huge slew of comments.  Nonetheless, I posted my poster, even asking people to comment, which is entirely unusual for me.  In all honesty I only got one comment that was helpful, or critical in any way.  It said, “Straight forward and funny.  Keep it just like that.”  The others said “Haha” or some smart-A comment like “I will comment here.”

            I think I got my message across as best I could in a poster.  That medium is meant to be short, quick and simple.  There are a hundred different arguments you could make for both sides of this argument, and some are pretty scientifically oriented, and would take awhile to explain.  But in just taking one simple argument and articulating it in an appealing way, I think I did alright. But I guess that's up to you.

Webspinna (List of Links)

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/399325

http://ephixa.com/track/lost-woods-dubstep-remix-2

http://www.portal2sounds.com/

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/smbsynth

http://www.realmofdarkness.net/pc/sb/vg/halo/music

http://www.realmofdarkness.net/pc/sb/vg/arcade/pacman

http://www.realmofdarkness.net/pc/sb/vg/sf64/1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3-B-HAdPa4

http://www.soundboard.com/sb/Donkey_Kong_sounds

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egne2ZCMM_0

http://www.gamethemesongs.com/Galaga.html

Webspinna Artist’s Statement

            As soon as I heard that our Webspinna project would be a collection of sounds, I immediately thought of Star Wars.  I then imagined branching out and mixing other movie themes and well-known sound effects… then Ben demonstrated his example in class.  So even though his only started with Star Wars, I decided to nix that idea.  Nonetheless, as I thought about my original idea, I realized I could do essentially the same thing with video games.

            It wasn’t hard to find websites with video game soundboards and theme songs.  In fact, one of my biggest problems was deciding which video games to cut from my little roster of sound.  I simply couldn’t manage that many links and tabs, so some had to go.  My decisions came down to using elements from video games that most people would recognize (I use the word “most” tentatively).

 Even after deciding to cut several of my games’ theme songs and sound effects though, it was still incredibly hard to put them into a coherent remix of sorts.  My goal was to make a bridge between old classical games, and some popular new ones, in an effort to demonstrate how gaming culture has evolved in lots of ways, but its core fandom attitude remains the same.  I figured that by bringing together popular and well-known sound elements from games of all generations, it would show that gamers today still geek out over the same types of things that gamers of old did, and its all brought together through my own love of the medium. 

It’s hard to pinpoint a specific outside inspiration I may have had for my mix, not because there aren’t any, but because there are so many. Pop culture is absolutely filled to the brim with references to other instances of pop culture, and my mix is essentially a collection of references.

  Within my mix itself are inspirations, for instance, the Ocarina of Time; “The Lost Woods” dub step remix.  The artist took a simple and beloved Nintendo 64 soundtrack and mixed it with the popular dub step music genre; not only is it funny, but to many, it’s also legitimately cool.  It’s definitely its own thing, and the artist isn’t said to be a hack for making the N64 track loud and high pitched. 

In our reading this week, Bourriad said, “It is up to us to judge artworks in terms of the relations they produce in the specific contexts they inhabit.  Because art is an activity that produces relationships to the world in one form or another makes its relationships to space and time material.”

The artist of the dub step remix is simply using a medium they are proficient in to reference an outside source that they have a connection with.  They didn’t invent either dub step or “The Lost Woods” soundtrack, but what they did with it is art.  My mix probably isn’t as original as that, and again, is mostly a mix of references to things I enjoy, but meaning can be found within and is therefore art.

Our gathering as a class on Friday was pretty enjoyable, despite my performance of my mix not going as smoothly as I would’ve hoped.  The funny thing is, no one noticed when I messed up except myself, but it would’ve sounded a lot cooler if I hadn’t.  Regardless, the experience was pretty interesting and I haven’t ever done anything like it.  I really wished I could’ve seen people performing their mixes though.  That was half of what was so interesting about it to me.

Medium Specificity

 Medium Specificity Artist’s Statement

            Within the artistic medium of photography, I have often found photographers exalting the everyday.  I’ve often seen pictures that try to portray the beauty of ordinary objects or situations simply by offering unique angles or some dramatic lighting.  I personally really enjoy this element of photography and the idea of turning the mundane into a visually interesting form. 

            In an attempt to celebrate this aspect of photography, I attempted to take pictures of various foods in a circular container all from the same angle, all with the same lighting. I didn’t shape the food or anything; I just placed each individual item in the same spot and took the photo.  My hopes were to have someone who came in with no knowledge first look at it and wonder what it is.  Once they realized that it was just a container of food that they probably use frequently, I would hope it would sort of surprise them or make them chuckle to see such an ordinary and common thing from a strange angle. 

            I also wanted to show to the best of my ability, the beauty that can be found in extremely minute things.  For instance, the various textures of the foods I photographed, and the way the light bounced off of it to create interesting shadows and such.  I photographed quite a few different foods, but then picked the ones I thought looked more interesting.

            Whether or not these actually are interesting is up to the viewer.  I can honestly say it was interesting to me because I actually was sort of doing this before I even decided to do it as my project for this assignment.  I don’t mean that I was taking pictures of foods.  That’s not a hobby of mine or anything, but I was having a delightful snack of Oreos and milk.  Like any sane person would, I let the Oreo float in the milk for a minute and contemplated life, because that’s what you do when eating Oreos and milk.  I started to watch how the milk dissolved the Oreo, and how it seeped through the intricate designs on the surface of the cookie.  I honestly found it pretty mesmerizing and wanted to take a picture of it… a few minutes later I started doing it with other foods to see if they might look interesting, and they did, at least to me.

            With the resources we have today, you can Google Image search pretty much any ordinary object and find a large reserve of crappy pictures of that object, but sprinkled throughout there will be an interesting one here and there.  What comes to mind as an example of this to me though, is actually the documentaries Planet Earth and Life. While these are not collections of still photography, and definitely go beyond the everyday, they have everyday things in them like certain plants, or even bugs that we have all seen.  And yet, you could take several freeze frames from these documentaries of simple objects and they would look beautiful.

            As part of our reading this week, we looked at a picture in the book of a model’s picture before and after, and the notes the artist took on how to make her beautiful from the before to the after.  If my project here was commenting on anything, it would be that you don’t actually necessarily need to alter things to make them interesting or pretty.