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”). 

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.