Artist Topic #5

®TMark is a corporation in which artists “mimic the language and graphics of corporate sites.” This highly controversial group’s use of images from corporate websites elicits thoughts of absurdism, Dadaism and “DuChampian readimades”.

On top of this use of premade sites, they also create sites that are highly commercialized and sensationalized. The artists are attempting to protest this form of commercialism by taking it to the extreme; To show the audience that the truth is not far from being this crazy.

“There should be limits to freedom” is a quote from George W. Bush in response to their creation of www.GWBush.com. I am not sure how to feel about this, because it could very well be taken out of context, or the then-president could have been talking about other freedoms too (we are not free to shoot anyone we want, so there is a limit on the things we shoot), but I would not doubt that he said it either. I think that ®TMark was successful in their goal in getting this kind of response from Bush. In a little way ®TMark is kind of like a kid who (after being fed up with the corporate culture we live in) teases his siblings just to get a reaction.

Journey Project Critique Response

I got favorable reviews for what I thought was a kind of slap together job on my behalf. I did not come up with the idea until late into the project and feel like that held me back a little. I was unable to go as far as I would have liked with either project, and the setup (with the HUD-like display). While presenting I began to see areas that I missed and got mad at myself for forgetting to cut out some pixels or smooth out a selection.

I think that it may be too much work to go back and change a lot in the realistic journey, but that I may increase the complexity of my fantastic journey, traveling through a rat maze. This was a hard journey to do because it set up a 3 dimensional space in which the audience had to click through, but in order to make it fully 3 dimensional, and allow the user to go and to face in all directions, it would have taken a lot of the fun out of the project, especially for me.

I am glad that I have beat the learning curve for photoshop for the most part, as it allowed me to focus on learning more about dreamweaver and creating a more efficient space on the internet.

Artist Topic #4

When I think of the old video games, like space invaders and pong, when remade or reproduced in this day and age, I think of pop art. Natalie Bookchin created a web based piece that is based on a short story by Jorge Luis Borges that resembles a video game. I’m not sure how I feel about uniting of the high art of the story, and the low culture is kind of heavy handed. This is especially the case in the translation between Borge’s story and Pong. She has the player bounce the girl between the “brothers.”
I would like to play Metapet, I hope it is like neopets. I play neopets every day and invest in the neopets stockmarket, my favorite games are Destruct-o-Match III and advervideo (it is the most blatantly corrupt part of the website).

Artist topic #3

Anne-Marie Schleiner, Joan Leandre, and Brody Condon are concerned with the current state of affairs in the media of video games, specifically Counter-Strike. They see issues in the game, which pits terrorists versus counter-terrorist, as being an oversimplification of issues.

At first I thought they were an anti-violence group, but after considering their goal, I realize that FPS’s strive to be as realistic as possible, striving to make the player experience every scene they see and every sound they hear as close to life as possible, but the situations that these players are placed are not realistic. They attempt to create a space in the digital world where there are non-violent protests, and “directs a group of players to gather in a heart-shaped formation while repeatedly sending out the chat message "Love and Peace" and stoically refusing to move or return fire.” I like this idea but would get kind of annoyed if I was in this server. I’ve played Counter-Strike before, but couldn’t play for too long before realizing the kind of people that play like to troll, I’m glad that these artists took the initiative to try to bring a message to this game.

Artist Topic number 2

Alexei Shulgin

Alexei Shulgin caught my eye as an artist because the article opened by discussing Neil Stephenson, a cyberpunk author who wrote one of my favorite books, Snow Crash. Cyberpunk was originally a genre of literature that incorporated themes of futuristic technology, and usually a dystopian social order. The protagonists are usually rogues or marginalized people usually with a knack for computers or hacking, so it is no wonder that some new artists, like Shulgin, may identify themselves cyberpunks.

Shulgin covers popular songs using MIDI for the instrumentalization, and text-to-speech software for the lyrics, all performed on an old computer using an intel 386dx processor. These songs from the album: Best of 386dx and can be found on www.easylife.org/386dx/.

His work flooded with issues involving copyright law and intellectual ownership, as he is most likely covering these songs without permission. While this may be considered theft, he the work is not about the actual song. Shulgin's covers are process pieces, and make the audience think about the work that went into translating the music to 8 bit "computer music."

Other artists I enjoy that address similar issues are the DJs Girl Talk, and Tanner4105.

386dx- I shot the sheriff
Girl Talk
Tanner 4105