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Module 1 - Creative Project

beg-borrow-steal

tl;dr: Beg, borrow or steal to make a work of art from which you think you could make money.

Due Date: Monday, Sept 19, 9pm (see full timeline)

Gallery Pool: http://ideate.xsead.cmu.edu/gallery/pools/beg-borrow-steal

• Brief and goals
• Project Brief
• Learning Objectives
• Considerations and Constraints
• Deliverables
• Timeline and Process
• Recap and context
• Documentation

Brief and Goals

A major theme in this module is ‘appropriation’. Appropriation is the intentional borrowing, copying, and alteration of preexisting images and objects. It’s also fundamental to remix; the major idea in this course. While it’s been popularised by modern artists, it’s also cornerstone of media production in the age of the internet. We’re going to get hands on with it.

Brief: Beg, borrow or steal to make a work of art from which you think you could make money.

Before you begin, give some thought to what is it you want to communicate and why? Keep in mind that almost every appropriation artist has a point to make. Warhol deals with mass consumption and consumerism. Banksy provides social commentary. You should be equally thoughtful about what your subject is. aspect of culture you’d like to highlight? Is there a statement you want to make? Is your message critical, subversive, satiricial, humorous, or something else?

Define this question or message and formulate this an artist’s statement like you would see in a gallery (see: guidelines here and here). This should be about 100 words. By imagine what the work is before you make it, it help you define your intent and message relates to content, form and composition. Then think about what material might help you communicate it. You’ll need to be thoughtful about the materials and sources you use. Where and how can you get the content you need? What will you ‘borrow’? What will you ‘steal’? Is it legal to use them? What is within the bounds of fair use? What are the limits to ‘stealing’ or ‘borrowing’ you’re comfortable with adopting and why?

Simply put, be thoughtful and critically aware of every creative decision at each step.

Aside from that you have full creative license to work in any way you choose. When you’re finished, reexamine your own artwork in the way that you did the research exercise: critically evaluate it as you would any other work of art. Use these prompts and framing questions to help guide your exploration and discussion.

Learning Objectives

In this exercise you’ll explore this notion of art, consumerism and value. As part of this exercise you will be asked to:

1. Explore contemporary art and the reaction/response to consumerism and commercialism found in the PopArt and Street Art movements;

2. Explore appropriation as a strategy for digital media making;

3. Develop your skills in creating provocative/interesting forms; and

4. Develop you skills in evaluating and critically responding to your own artful media;

Considerations and Constraints

Constraints:

• You must work digitally.
• Your composition must include at least one element (content/image/etc.) that does not belong to you.
• Common sense applies. Don’t steal something from a store. Don’t do anything that’s going to get you (or anyone at CMU) a day in court. Similarly, don’t create anything offensive or explicit, etc.

Considerations:

• What rules do you want to break?
• How might you draw on the ideas in PopArt or Street Art?
• What kind of statement can you make by borrowing / manipulating other people’s content?
• Do you care about fair use? Are you worried about copyright? Are you concerned with originality?
• Can you actually sell the work you create? (If you can report back on how much it sold for)

Deliverables

You are asked to deliver four things for this warm up exercise:

1. Composition: The final digital composition created.
2. Statement: An artist’s statement of the intent and ideas that drove the creation of the work (approx 100 words).
3. Critical Review: A critical reflection on outcome and it’s success. This would mirror the approach you took for the looking out exercise.
4. Narrative A description of the manner in which you approached the project, the process you followed and the strategies you used to translate the work

Process and Timeline

• Concept Development: Start by develping a statement on the work. This should include the major themes, ideas, message and meaning behind your intented work. Imagine how this is executed. This will form the basic for your proposal.

• Proposal: Create a proposal for your creative project (200 words + illustrations) and share on the Gallery by Thursday, Sept 8, 9am

• Digital Crit: You’ll receive feedback from your peers on the concept by 9pm that night.

• Development: You’ll have one week to prepare a first cut of your composition. Source/capture/create your materials and create a composition.

• Desk Crit: Bring in an early stage version of the work for discussion during the in-class desk crits. You’ll get feedback from instructors on peers (Thursday, Sept 15, 9am).

• Iterate: After the class you’re expected to integrate feedback and advance the outcome. This should be documented as part of your process.

• Deliver: Deliver your final outcome and documentation (see below) by Monday, Sept 19, 9pm

• Digital Crit: You’ll give feedback to two projects and vote on projects to review in class by 9am Tuesday.

• In Class Presentation: A small number of projects (4-6) will be selected for detailed discussion in class. Presenters will give a 1-2 minute introduction to their work.

Recap and Context

“Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.“ - Andy Warhol

Contemporary art has continually challenged the notions of what we consider to be art, and more importantly how we find value in meaning in works of art. The Dada movement and in particular Duchamp’s readymades - works of art made from manufactured objects - “disrupted centuries of thinking about the artist’s role as a skilled creator of original handmade objects. Instead, Duchamp argued, ‘An ordinary object [could be] elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist.’” The most controversial of which (Fountain, see right) was a porcelain urinal signed ‘R. Mutt’ (a pun on the German word Armut, or poverty). While the Dadaist readymades challenged the accepted notions of what constitutes art and the role of the artist in creating a “work of art”, this was by no means the last time these ideas surfaced in the world of art.

PopArt and in particular Andy Warhol resurfaced many of these challenges to accepted art making in a range of ways. Warhol expanded on the Dadaist’s methods of appropriation - intentional borrowing, copying, and alteration of preexisting images and objects. Operating in times of mass consumerism and the advent of copyrighted materials, this was more complex and controversial. Directly appropriating images of celebrities and brands (e.g. Campbell’s soup) his art co-opted, integrated and responded to the society around him: mass production, mass media and consumer culture.

As a result, Warhol became a household name, almost a brand in his own right. His response to consumerism made him an icon of consumerism. He also began to produce art on an almost industrial scale. His “Factory” housed a production staff which assisted him in preparing new artworks and commissioned portraits of the rich and famous. Drawing on his own origins as a commercial designer and illustrator for advertisements, Warhol may not have felt the long held tension between fine art and commerce, but directly or indirectly his work confronts it - in its production, in its content, in its themes and in its legacy.

“The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little.” ― Banksy

Banksy takes a much stronger view. He views street art as a subversive counterculture that should directly confront consumerism. He sees it as a medium for insightful commentary on contemporary society by recasting everyday images into critical statements on the world around them. His work his highly political and satirical, exploring themes centered on war, capitalism, hypocrisy, greed and governance. In particular, and as you’ve seen in “Exit Through the Gift Shop”, he is keenly aware and fiercely critical of the tensions between countercultural art and commercial art. Ironically, his works are now highly sought after, extremely valuable and the catalyst for the acquisition and interest in street art by collectors.

“When you go to an Art gallery you are simply a tourist looking at the trophy cabinet of a few millionaires…” ― Banksy

These ideas of what makes good art, what makes art valuable and the clashes between the practice of applied art and the consumerism and commerce that surround them is really provocative.

Approaches, Inspiration and Methods

There are countless ways you could approach borrowing and appropriating content for this project. Below is a summary of some major strategies you might think about.

Recommended Reading: Appropriation in Contemporary Art

Found Footage

An example from Carrie Mae Weems taken. Credit Art21

What are the issues involved in borrowing, adapting, or recycling imagery produced by other people? Weems sometimes uses appropriated imagery in her work, and the process raises important questions about authorship and originality. In her Art in the Twenty-First Century segment, Weems describes how she used images of African Americans from the Harvard University Archives to create a new photographic series.

The segment explore her use of borrowed images to recontextualize historical, legal, and moral issues of ownership and the role of the artist. Also note her use of found/borrowed historic photographs to create a critique or comment on a current social issue.

Reinterpret/Reimagine

A simple but effective way to approach this is to find a source, keep the content but reinterpret or reimagine it with a new style or approach. The subject remains the same but the style typically changes. It’s a tried and tested method. For example there are dozens of versions of the Mona Lisa. As one of the most reconizable artworks in the world, many many artists have reproduced, created derivatives or conceived new interpretations of the infamous woman. Notably, Marcel Duchamp’s ‘LHOOQ’ improved Mona Lisa with a mustache. The book ‘The Mona Lisa Reimagined’ captures hundreds of these examples.

Sampling

In the audio domain, sampling is a common way to appropriate and remix content. McLeod & DiCola define it as follows: “sampling is a form of the fine arts practice of collage, but one that is done with audio tools rather than scissors and glue.” It’s got a long history but is synonmous with DJing, hip-hop and electronic music today.

Nate Harrison’s ‘Can I Get An Amen?’ is a great example of sampling in an art’s context. It’s “an audio installation that unfolds a critical perspective of perhaps the most sampled drum beat in the history of recorded music, the Amen Break. It begins with the pop track Amen Brother by 60’s soul band The Winstons, and traces the transformation of their drum solo from its original context as part of a ‘B’ side vinyl single into its use as a key aural ingredient in contemporary cultural expression. The work attempts to bring into scrutiny the techno-utopian notion that ‘information wants to be free’- it questions its effectiveness as a democratizing agent. This as well as other issues are foregrounded through a history of the Amen Break and its peculiar relationship to current copyright law.”

Homage

Another approach you can take is to create an ‘homage’. This is where your work “incorporates elements of style or content characteristic of another work, artist, or genre, as a means of paying affectionate tribute.” Unlike reinterpreting, it doesn’t faithfully recreate all of the elements, but it builds on them to make something new, but with referecnes and respect for the original and it’s quality.

Homages are found everywhere. Especially in movies. American photographer Freddy Fabris paid homage to the renanaissance with automechanics. Banksy does it often, like in the Tesco Value Tomato Soup. This interactive animation built in openFrameworks also pays tribute to Van Gogh’s Starry night. In the context of audio and sound, cover versions are perfect examples!

Rephotographing/Reproduction

Richard Prince “re-photographed advertisements such as the one for Marlboro cigarettes or photo-journalism shots. His work took anonymous and ubiquitous cigarette billboard advertising campaigns, elevated the status and focused the gaze on the images.” (see)

This practice can is strongly related to appropriation via sampling and audio capture. An example: ‘bootleg’ recordings of music performances. Similarly, since it’s rise in the 60’s photocopying became a tool of choice for Pop Artists and street artists to appropriate, reproduce and scale recognizable images.

Détournement/Culture Jamming

[Détournement] is the artistic practice of sampling and remixing messages from the mass media and subverting or “détourning” their predetermined meanings so that new, antithetical messages can emerge and divert the package of commercial propaganda that was originally intended for the targeted audience. - ref

As an act of semiotic sabotage, détournement requires the user to have fluency in the signs and symbols of contemporary culture. The better you know a culture, the easier it is to shift, repurpose, or disrupt it. To be successful, the media artifact chosen for détournement must be recognizable to its intended audience. Further, the saboteur must be familiar with the subtleties of the artifact’s original meaning in order to effectively create a new, critical meaning. - From http://beautifultrouble.org/tactic/detournementculture-jamming/

Read more here, here, here and here(http://www.niutoday.info/2011/11/10/art-historian-to-talk-%E2%80%98detournement%E2%80%99-movement/). Lots of examples here and here

Collage and Cutups

The ‘cutup’ is a technique which originates from the Dadaists. It’s often done by taking a piece of text (a poem, a speech, a book), cutting it up into pieces and rearranging it into a new poem. Tom Phillips’ ‘A Humament’ is a perfect example. It started in 1966 with the “a task: to find a second-hand book for threepence and alter every page by painting, collage and cut-up techniques to create an entirely new version.” More recently, the Pulitzer Remix recruited 85 poets “to create found poetry from the 85 (now 86) Pulitzer Prize-winning works of fiction. They posted one poem per day on this site, creating more than 2,500 poems during the month of April.”

Collage more familiar. It’s “an assemblage of disparate parts (objects, images, etc.) that together form a new work. Often the power of the work lies in the juxtaposition of the various elements of the collage. *”. While most often associated with visual mediums, it’s also found in sound where audio samples are manipulated and rearranged, often to tell a story. Examples can be found at the Free Music Archive

Documentation:

Include a write up of the following:

• Statement - Include the statement you created for the work. What is the intention? what are the big ideas behind your project? what are the goals? why did you make it? what are your motivations?

• Context - Include references and discussion of artists, artworks, movements or aesthetic frameworks/techniques/approaches that inspired your outcome, process or approach. What has informed your outcome? How does your outcome relate to other artists and their work? What ideas, styles, or themes did you draw on any why?

• Process - Describe how you translated your concept into the outcome. How did you approach the exercise? What were the design choices? What challenges were encountered and how did you resolve them? What ideas did you generate and how did you refine or reject them? What approaches did you reject?

• Product - Describe the outcome. What did you create, how, etc.? How did you compose your image? What styles, methods or techniques did you use? What tools and technologies were involved?

• Critique - Critically evaluate the success of your own work. What does your inner critic say about this work? Did you match intent and outcome effectively? (note: use the framing questions to guide your response!)

• Personal Reflection - Briefly outline what you took away from this project. What did you learn? What would you do differently?

Each of these sections should be no more than 200 words max. and well illustrated (images, videos, etc.)

For the Project Info’s goal description: it must be tweetable - summarise your outcome in no more than 140 characters