Final Project - The Ripoff Song

Before watching this video, please plug in a pair of headphones and put them into both ears.  The song you will hear coming through your left ear is the original song.  The song coming through your right ear sounds similar or identical to the original.  Some of these songs have caused the artists of the original songs to take legal actions against the artists of the "ripoff" songs.  Some were meant as a tribute or homage to the original artist and some were just blatant theft for the sake of making money.  I have excluded covers and parodies from this video, because they fall under the fair use law.

Journal #8 - Final Friday Extra Credit

Fairmount Final Friday

            On Friday, May 24^th, my Art & the Community Engagement class, under the supervision of Darryl Carrington, hosted a Final Friday event in the meeting house in Fairmount Park, in conjunction with the sexual assault awareness event, Take Back the Night.  The purpose of the A&CE class is to foster a relationship between Wichita State and the Fairmount neighborhood through art.  The Fairmount Final Friday event was the plan we came up with that we could achieve by the end of the semester.  The event went off better than I expected.  Each person in the class displayed at least one artwork.  We actually had a decent turnout thanks to the Take Back the Night event having such great publicity.  We didn't even get our announcement out until the day before the event.  The meeting house is a small building, but it was just big enough for what we needed.  We had student artwork set up on tables in the building and a cellist performing on the small stage.  The cellist is also a WSU student who has her junior recital next week.  Some of the artwork being presented was for sale and some was not.  I believe I was the only person who sold any work.  I had small 4x5” versions of my large and more expensive photos of Fairmount buildings “then and now” for sale for $3 each or 2 for $5 and I made $30.  The first hour or so was pretty slow, but after Darryl made the announcement that we were having a Final Friday event in the meeting house, people started trickling in.  We had the biggest rush right before the Take Back the Night group made their walk from the park to the campus and back in honor of Latisha Davis.  The group walked through the meeting house on their way there and back.  The only problem I had with the event was that some of our classmates left after only about an hour.  They just picked up their work and left, even though it was specified that the event lasted from 6-9PM.  This left a few tables empty in the middle of the room.  One student decided to move his work to take up one table all by himself, but we still had the center tables completely empty.  This just made us look bad and it is unfair to the rest of us who stayed the whole time and helped set up and tear down.  Unfortunately, Darryl is such a nice guy that these people (and the people who have only come to one or two classes) will probably get the same grade as the rest of us.  I would say overall the event was a success, but there were some things we could have done to make it more successful.

Journal #7 - Interactivity

My idea for the interactivity project is to have a picture of a girl dressed up as an angel.  I will shoot the image from above and have her hair blowing so it looks like she is falling.  I will print the image on a transparency and mount it in front of a modeling light with a large soft box with the tripod extended as high as the ceiling in the darkroom will allow.  I will hang white fabric and feathers from the soft box to the ceiling to represent clouds.  To add an interactive element, I will give the class handheld fans so they are able to make the "clouds" billow.

Journal #6 - Group Communication

Our group has had two in-person meetings outside of class with just me and Etta (Clarisa was unavailable).

We have planned most of our project during in-person meetings and in class, but we have also used text messaging to keep on the same page.

During our first in-person meeting, Etta and I discussed sidewalk art using popular culture quotes like "Eat at Joe's" and "Kilroy was here" or funny signs like Push for Bat Signal."We also discussed doing some sort of flier art.  While we were discussing these ideas, we were also texting Clarisa for her input.

We ultimately decided on putting tiny sculptures around campus with instructions to take a selfie with the figure and send the picture to us.  We planned to put fliers around campus so people would know what to look for.

We decided that Etta would design the flier, Clarissa and I would make the figures, I would print the posters and tags and put the figures in random places for people to find them.

Our plans had to change because of the snow.  We originally wanted to put the figures outside around campus to break the monotony of college life by allowing students to partake in our little game.  Since we couldn't put our figures out in the snow, we altered our plan by deciding to put the figures up around the inside of McKnight because art students are likely to participate in the activity and because the figures are protected from the elements.

We also had to reorganize our delegation of duties because some people in the group didn't feel like they were contributing enough, and some felt like they couldn't get anything done until someone else finished their part.

After this rearrangement, the delegation of duties was as follows:
Etta - create powerpoint
Clarisa - create six characters, render drawings of characters, composite into poster, Photoshop characters into the places we had intended them to go on campus before it snowed.
Me - create three characters, photograph characters, photograph places they were intended to go on campus before it snowed, photograph places that we will actually place the figures inside McKnight, print posters (place on bulletin boards on each floor of McKnight), tie laminated tags around each figure with instructions that explain the "game," place three figures on each floor of McKnight.

After the figures are put out, we plan to get selfie photographs from people who find the figures and compile them into a collage.  The worst case scenario is that no one finds the figures and we don't get any selfies to make a collage or the figures get thrown away accidentally.

Journal #5 - About My Video Project

My video project is about the importance of coffee in the morning ritual.  My biggest struggle while filming was keeping my sister from laughing.  I wanted to be able to control the camera angles and such, so I chose to be behind the camera, rather than in front of it.

I chose to keep the image slightly out of focus in the shots before she drinks the coffee to show that she is not yet awake, and to make her appear hazy.  I backed it with a track of driving, intense classical music.

I also used interesting angles to set the scene and to keep from having one long shot at the same angle because that gets stale and loses the viewers' interest.

After she drinks the coffee, I bring the shot into focus and back it with classical morning music to show that the coffee has woken her up.

My biggest struggle while editing was that Movie Maker has changed its timeline and made trimming music to start and stop at certain times more difficult than it used to be.

Journal #4 - Oldboy

I chose to watch Oldboy because Isaac and Aaron gave it such great reviews.  I definitely had to devote my full attention to this movie, because if I looked away, I'd miss the subtitles and get lost.  I don't understand Korean in the slightest.  I also wish I had been warned about how graphic the sex scene was, because I was watching this movie in the RSC with tons of other people around.  It was really awkward.  Aside from that, this movie was awesome, and I'm glad I watched it.

This movie had a "1970s action movie" feel to it.  I was actually shocked to read that it was released in 2003.  The film quality is a little yellowish and hazy.  It gets even more so when depicting a flashback.  There was a tendency to have the camera directly facing Oh Dae-Su without him speaking to us through the fourth wall.

Examples:

The camera angle continually shifts from an omniscient point of view...

to an outsider's point of view...

to Oh Dae-Su's point of view...

and sometimes, even impossible angles for a human to view. (from the other side of a computer screen, viewing a tunnel as if the it is a continuous tube through which the viewer can see).

In the flashbacks, the color appears desaturated and gives the scene the quality of an old yellowing photograph.

One moment when I really got the feeling of a 1970s action movie was when Oh Dae-Su and Woo-jin Lee's faces are shown in a split-screen.

This was one of the best action/mystery/romance movies I have ever seen.  If you haven't seen it yet, look it up on Netflix.  It's worth the time.

Journal #3 - Popular Culture in Wichita

I really struggled finding subjects that are considered "popular culture" in Wichita.  I have no social life so I have no idea what is popular culture in Wichita.  The only things I could come up with were Shocker Men's Basketball and Oldtown.

Shocker Basketball

Oldtown

Journal Entry #2 - 5 Digital Artists

Natalie Shau

Kimberley Bianca

Javier Ideami

Archan Nair

Ben Heine

Journal Entry #1 - 5 Collages

This collage is part of a series by Mike Alcantara where he uses comic books to create a collage of comic book subjects.  I chose this collage because I think his technique is quite clever, and because I like Spiderman.

Source: http://comicsalliance.com/mike-alcantara-turns-his-comics-into-collages-art/

This collage by Lola Dupre interested me because the image of the woman appears shattered.  This image works well with an article about Xanax.

Source: http://unboundmedia.com/inspirational-art-collages-by-lola-dupre

Joe Webb did a series of these love collages where he removes one or both of the lovers from the image and replaces them with some form of empty space.  I found this interesting because he used vintage style pictures for his collage, and the removal of one or both people from the collage makes the viewer think about all the possible meanings for this.
Source: http://www.photoshopwebsite.com/insfinspiration/beautiful-love-collages-art-work-by-joe-webb/



I chose this collage because I like the vintage, steampunk feel.  This collage is by Anna Dabrowska and is made of discarded computer parts.

Source: http://ecofriend.org/eco-art/page/3/

This collage caught my eye because it is an interesting shape.  When I looked closer, I realized it was all a bunch of guns.  This is one of many collages like it by Oddly Head.

Source: http://www.designer-daily.com/wonderful-collages-by-artist-oddly-head-49630