Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Response to On Media


Media is always changing. What is considered new media today will be old media tomorrow. New media changes our view of old media. As Hovagimyan mentions in On Media, painting moved towards abstraction once photography was discovered. This is because photography brought a new perception to the audience. A photograph brings the actuality of a scene. A painting could never do the same.

This being said, painting still exists. It did not disappear after photography was discovered. It only changed. The same, I believe, has happened to sound. However, I do not think sound could ever be considered old media. The types of ways we hear sound, however, can be. For example, in grade school, everyone knew and use cassette tapes. Today, cassette tapes are nonexistent. CDs were the next manner of listening to sound. In later years, however, MP3 players replaced CDs. No manner what devices of listening are invented, sound still remains the same. Yet, sound might change depending on the mode of listening. For example, since sound excels on an MP3 player, it gives artists incentive to develop more creative sound.


Media is ever changing. New media is always being discovered. This causes old media, once considered new media, to be compared to new media. Sometimes this can cause change, like painting moving towards abstraction. Other times it can initiate advancement, like sound advancement. Nevertheless, media will always be changing. It’s inevitable. The way we criticize media’s change will determine our own perception of media and the advancement of media.

On Media Response

I found this lecture easier to digest than the previous one. The way the author describes and analyzes the media from painting to film is smooth and easy to read. I agree with the author when he says that any art work is a communication process and places art in the category of a language as well. Because we are communicating while doing art, we can express feelings and be clear if they are full of happiness or anger. As the culture evolves, the art does too. Art is always evolving, changing and adding new media and technology for their expression. In my opinion, the use of all resources to express art, including technology, is valid. I agree with the author when he said “The new cultural mythos is a mapping out of human society that is extended into its technology and in a sustained symbiosis with that technos.” (120) See below two pieces I found. the first one is an illustration from Flammetta Ghedini, an artist interested in merging of perception, technology and art. In the illustration she points that men first learn that we do not live in a flat planet but in a round one.... However, it is not a round planet anymore; because we live in several worlds at the same time, referring to all the information surround us at all times. Click here to see Illustration

The second piece is a funny video I found in youtube. I have no idea who the singer is and if it is good or bad, popular or not... What called my attention was "The cast were selected from the actual Sour fan base, from many countries around the world. Each person and scene was filmed purely via webcam", and the way they edited to create the spot:

SOUR / 日々の音色 (Hibi no Neiro) MV from Magico Nakamura on Vimeo.

Hovagimyan Response "On Media"

It is impossible to take any class on media nowadays without discussing the advent of user-generated media in the 21st century. Hovagimyan describes this trend interestingly, coining this new era the "Post Media" era, which followed the "Playback Culture" of previous decades. As Hovagimyan details, this has been the result of the long process of inventing "new" media, and retooling and combining them with other media. Through this process, audio recording combined with silent film to create talking pictures. Similarly, the principles of broadcasting explored by radio combined with film to create TV. Thus, TV and film are multi-media inventions themselves. Given the arrival of the Internet, the principles of film and TV have been put closer into the populous' control than ever before. People can now make their own multimedia projects and share them on YouTube, perhaps the greatest triumph of the Post Media era.

I found it interesting how Hovagimyan's notion of a Post Media era similar articles I've read in other classes about Adorno and Horkheimer's concept of the culture industry. To put their complicated theory simply, Adorno and Horkheimer dismiss popular culture as a byproduct of mass ignorance and corporate corruption. According to them, we do not truly have control over what TV, films, and music we digest, we simply submit to and choose from a pre-determined variety of commodified arts dispersed by the so-called "Culture Industry." While Adorno and Horkheimer linger on the verge of extremism, I do agree with their point to an extent, and welcome in a new era of media in which multimedia is not only chosen, but created by the average citizen.

That probably got a bit off the main focus of Hovagimyan's thoughts on multimedia, yet when I read about a "new era" of media I can never help but bring up A & H. All in all I found Hovagimyan's description of the evolution of multimedia interesting. Alexander Graham Bell's combination of telephony and performance art (whether he meant to combine them, or considered it performance art) displays just how long this evolutionary process of media takes. In a way, what Bell was doing was an early example of film, combining audio, narrative, and visual into a coherent performance. Then again, the same could be said of most live theater.

For my artist inspiration I posted the first several tracks of Pink Floyd's "The Wall." The wall is a masterpiece, not only because of its musical beauty, and intelligence, but also because of its multimedia prperties. "The Wall" is not just an album. It is a cinematic and all-encompassing soundscape that drags listeners into a compelling narrative where they can not only see the characters, but feel them too. Pink Floyd pulled out all the stops on this album, incorporating both sound effects and dialogue into their work. Without a doubt, this album displays the type of hybridization and innovation seen in multimedia throughout the years, as discussed by Hovagimyan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iU2-r_0CtIo

Monday, September 10, 2012

Photography

Personally, a photograph would be even more misleading.

First, limits of angle, time and space create bias in photographs. Since photos record a specific moment in front of camera, the panorama of the whole issue might be misconstrued.

Second, people are subjective and have proclivity to link photographs to the backgrounds. When they see a picture of a frat brother wasted labeled "Alpha Omega", an impression of the whole fraternity might be denigrated.

Third, A painting is a "painting". Everyone might realize when they see those paintings. On the contrary, a photograph is usually taken granted to be true and convincing.



This photo was taken during "抗美援朝" (Helping-Korean-against-American War) or Korean War in English.

This is misleading because: 1. Because of the military imbalance between China (in 1950s) and U.S., Chinese soldiers suffered much severer casualty than United States. The war was extremely traumatizing. However, looking at this picture alone, one might think all Chinese soldiers are so full of bravery with eyes saying "we are going to win the war". 2. The weapons portrayed in this picture is misleading. Since the Communists just drove the Nationalists to Taiwan, they hardly had the power to produce so many advanced weapons as those in the picture for everyone.

However, this picture was very effective in encouraging people to join the army and fight the war at that time.

Keenan's Response to "On ***** Media"


In discussing the concept of “Post Media”, Hovagimyan brings forward an example of how the introduction of one medium affected the approach to another. After the arrival of photography, the role of painting shifted to represent a more abstracted version of reality. The transformation that Hovagimyan finds more interesting, however (as do I), is the attempt to circumvent photography’s inherent tether to reality. The photographic form is designed to capture reality faithfully, but the effectiveness of the medium can often come from the artist’s ability to corrupt that design. In this way, photography that skirts reality takes advantage not of creativity through freedom, but of creativity through form. The juxtaposition of the photographic form’s boundaries and the artist’s ability to push those boundaries can create an artistic tension. By extension, video that utilizes live footage can play not only with its visual link to reality, but also with the viewer’s sense of time.

Alfred Stieglitz, Equivalent (1844) 

David Rokeby: Transforming Mirrors

Transforming Mirrors essay

David Rokeby: Cheap Imitation

Cheap Imitation (2002)

David Rokeby: San Marco Flow

San Marco Flow (2005)

On Media Response

I found this essay pretty interesting.  One thing I would like to discuss more is Hovagimyan's assertion that because photography is able to capture the reality of war, people no longer feel a need to turn to representation of war, such as paintings.  It was just not as impressive because it was not as close to "reality."  I'm not sure if what I'm about to say is entirely related, but it's really interesting, so I'm going to say it anyway.  Last year, in my film class, we discussed 9/11 and how media dealt with it.  Two things were brought up in the conversation that feel relevant.  First, we talked about how many critics suggest that the postponement of certain movies, such as The Terminator, which depict the destruction of NYC, had less to do with respecting the victims of 9/11 (as the producers claimed), and more to do with that fact that they were afraid that audiences would be less impressed with the Hollywood version of NYC falling apart, simply because the whole world had just seen it truly happen. They didn't think the film could stand up to the real thing, just as Hovagimyan claims that paintings of war do not compare to the photographs.  Secondly, we talked about the how desensitized viewers became to the repetitive images on the news of the planes hitting the towers.  We saw it over and over and over again.  Even documentaries began to bore people.  How then, can the events of 9/11 ever be depicted in a new way; a way that can recapture the true its true horror?

Mexican filmmaker, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, came up with a way to allow viewers to experience 9/11 differently than they ever have before.  He used sound...just sound.  His use of sound is extremely successful and I thought it might help some of us with our projects.  The film is only 10 minutes long, but I should warn you, it is hard to watch.  And I'm sorry that this happens to be on 9/11.  I think he succeeded in creating a different kind of reality concerning 9/11 by making his film more than a simple representation of what happened that day.


"On ***** Media"

I love Hovagimyan's comparison between paintings and photographs. It made me realize that a photograph, while obviously a piece of art, is also a piece of history. It's a piece of information. A painting can be whatever you want it to be, but when you take a picture, you're creating a still image of something, a moment in time of some sort of event, that has actually happened. In a way, you are establishing history by locking a moment into place and informing the world that you believe that moment is important.


This is a painting that depicts the Civil War as a brave, heroic time. The giant confederate flag waving through the air epitomizes this theme of glorifying war.

This is a website that depicts true photographs taken from the Civil War- as you can see, there are stark differences between these photographs and that painting. These photographs depict the true nature of war, and we know that they are true because a photograph represents reality, while a painting depicts something we create from our own imagination.

Of course, photographs can be edited. These days, anyone can learn how to use a photoshop in a matter of hours. But these pictures depict a time when photoshop didn't exist- this is the time when photographs could truly be taken as they are. I think that's why film became so wildly popular in such a short amount of time- as Hovagimyan mentions, film incorporates multiple kinds of media. It combines the apparent reality of a photograph with the wild, imaginative creativity of a painting through editing techniques. 


"On Media" Response: "Truthiness"


This short essay had some very interesting ideas on media. One that struck me the most when I read it was Hovagimyan’s assertion that “meaning for any art work is a communication process, a shared tribal agreement on the meaning of any icon, symbol, etc.” (117). At first I thought this kind of absurd – everybody agrees on what they’re seeing, all the time? Any art work is just universally seen as the same thing? Because whether you’re discussing a photo, a painting, a film, a dance etc. usually there are at least a couple different interpretations and messages received by the audience.

But then I thought it about some more, and realized that the core of what he is saying is mostly correct. There are some things, some huge “icons” and “symbols” that are usually accepted to mean the same thing. For instance, an image of a skull is never thought to represent ideas of love. If you consider the arts the author mentions, namely photography and film, in terms of being a part of a “tribal agreement,” I think that most people agree that these art forms are supposed to contain the most truth.

I feel that people believe they are promised some kind of truth in these “realistic” art forms –photography and film. When these artists began to mess around with that expectation audiences got a little upset and a little disturbed – possibly by the notion that one could never really be sure whether what they were seeing was true or not. In 1858 Henry Peach Robinson created a photograph that was alarming at the time because it wasn’t real. His Fading Away depicts a young girl dying of tuberculosis. It was posed, and that’s enough unreality, but Robinson also took several different pictures and combined them into this one (a “photomontage”). 

File:Fading Away.jpg

People were getting invested in this young girl’s plight, only to realize that it was just another story they were being told. So what can artists do with the idea of “truth” in these hypothetically realistic mediums? I think any artist who decided to do something detached from reality, or surreal would get a bigger reaction from their audience if they did it in one of these mediums. We see a Dali painting and know that this scene never occurred, because it’s painted and any painting, whether based off of reality or not ultimately comes just from the mind of the painter. But a photo or a film is capturing real time and real objects. We instinctively trust these images and when they are manipulated at all the response is stronger and the feeling of unease or curiosity increases. Photographers and filmmakers use this concept to their advantage a lot, I think, and decide to give us reality, surrealism or something posing as one or the other that we have to define for ourselves. (And that’s pretty exciting!)

On Media Response (Junne Park)

Towards the middle of the reading, the author mentions "cross media" and "hybrid media", where two different mediums come together to form one art piece. The cross of politics and art was first introduced as art was used in propaganda and politics through the radio and the television. These forms of art were and still are used widely to move a great number of people. I agree with the author who described the use of art in politics as a "hybrid political theater" because it uses all the tools that artists use to move people emotionally for political reason and gain.
One "art" piece that comes to mind is a speech that Adolf Hitler gave as he addressed the citizens of Germany. Even though this is a movie, if you hide the video and just listen to the audio, you cannot help but being drawn in and up-in-arms with whatever he is saying. It does not matter that I do not understand a word of what he is saying; he moves me by the use of sounds like music has the power to move its listeners. I am in no way supporting Hilter and what he has done; however, in an artist perspective, he was very effective in his art.

On **** Media Response


            In his essay “On **** Media,” G.H. Hovagimyan discusses how photography dealt a blow to the heroic façade of war.  “The devil is in the details,” he says, “One could no longer stand in front of a heroic painting of soldiers and generals and fanaticize about the glory of battle.”  But does a photograph really restrict the artist from manipulating the truth any less than a painting?  The article made me think of one of the most famous photographs from WW2; the soldiers erecting the American flag after the battle of Iwo Jima.  This photograph served to be one of the most effective pieces of pro-war propaganda, and few could deny that the inherent heroism contained within this photo.  This photo, however, was subject to a great deal of controversy years later because one of the men in the photo was purposefully misidentified because the original “sixth man” had perished at the battle of Iwo Jima shortly after the picture was taken.  This photograph was based upon a lie just as much as the paintings predating photography, and for many “the symbolic language” of this photograph is just as powerful as Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze’s painting of Washington crossing the Delaware.  So even without lights and filters, photography is able to create a distortion of the truth just as easily as painting or other forms of traditional art.