LIFE ONLY DEMANDS FROM YOU THE STRENGTHS YOU POSSESS

I used to think the quote "life only demands from you the strengths you possess" was true but since starting New Media Art and delving deep into the world of Flash I know it isn't. Life is hard enough without Flash. So having Flash in my life is unnecessary and very painful.

Actionscript in flash sucks, navigation in flash sucks, movie clips in flash suck and so does buttons in flash.

But that doesn't mean I can't use it or won't use it, it just means I hate it with a passion and only use it when it is mandatory.

I believe that Flash gives artists so many more options to display their artwork. I would use it to display my portfolio of photographs and create my own website. I think people are put off by its complexity but also because it is a foreign software.

I love all the possibilities it offers but cringe at the fact it is hard to get your head round and it is the sort of technology you can never completely master- and that leaves me feeling unfulfilled.

Alternatives To Flash

DELIBERATE LIES
ON APRIL 5, 2010, IN DEMO, BY GE1DOOT

I have to admit that I would choose any alternative to flash. Flash is the devil and I am so glad after this class I will never have to use it again. I took a look at the http://www.dhteumeuleu.com/ website to have a look at the alternative to flash. It looks amazing and although I have not used it nothing could be more complicated than flash. So I would give it a go. Deliberate Lies was an incredible piece of artwork; it was evokative and very inspiring creativily. Overall I believe this alternative would be welcomed by all Flash haters. I understand that Flash has a lot of positives but unfortuantly for me they do not outweigh the bad.

RHIZOME

Animated Gif Mashup: Dance Sequence #001 (NSFW audio) from Evan Roth on Vimeo.

This piece of artwork is amazing. For me I thought this piece symbolised that everyone is equal regardless of race, sexual orientation, gender, size or IQ. The common thread we all share is dancing - it is universa. It is very facinating to think about it like this, if everyone could just realise this- we could have world peace. It is just that people are stupid, shallow and judgemental- this clip puts things in perspective. I feel very privileged to have stumbled across this artwork- it is something I will pass on to spread the message of world peace.



Altermodern (2010) - Alexandr Skarlinski

This piece of artwork makes you think, it is all about perspectives. There is something so beautiful about simple concepts. It is escapism meets reality. I find it quite beautiful although I have no idea of what this artwork means to its creator for me it shows nature as the real world. It is dissing capitalism, and modern society. It demonstrates how we are all so wrapped up in our own worlds that it becomes our only world. This piece gives you perspective- it is like that quote "You can't see the forest for the trees", or the quote "can't see the past the end of your nose" - it is a matter of perspective. Making mole hill into mountains. I found it to be very moving and ambiguous.



Micah Schippa- Emotion as particles

This is a very interesting concept. This artist has personified an emotion. Making it into an emoticon and then into particles in the body. It often feels like your emotions are physically floating through your body and at any time can just start to spill out in a physical form, verbal diarrhea, crying or physical violence. This artist thought outside the box, his work is original and very inspiring. I am very impressed with his work. I can relate to this piece as I often feel like my emotions have a mind of their own and that they manifest into a physical form.



Patience Module (2008) - Ben Fino-Radin

I love when I do not know what to think when I see a piece of artwork and it takes me a few minutes to get a handle on what I am seeing. This is what happened with this piece. I understand the patience part with the hourglass, meaning time but the rest was a muddle for me at the beginning. But stepping away from it for a few minutes and then returning to it, I was inundated with ideas and questions about the artwork. My ideas about this piece reflect what I feel when I look at it. I automatically noted the html coding of a comment tag which encloses the smaller hour glass. Although I have no way to know what the intended meaning is I believe it is means you must hide your true feelings on whether or not you are going ot act impatient or patiently. I believe the fingers pointing down symblise staying grounded and keeping centred- not stressed out or impatient. The wooden boxes symbolise symbolise the slow growth of trees but how strong they are when they are patient and have grown. The middle red circle is the colour for stop, I believe this means you must learn to slow down and where possible stop. This piece overall urges people to be patient and learn to slow down in this busy world we live in. It is quite amazing.

THE FINALE

For my least piece of assessment I want to push the boundaries and make people think. I want to do a feminist artwork. Included in it statistics on female poverty, income and health, choosing to be identified by your brains over looks, prominent female figures in society, empowerment and rejecting society. But the main part of the artwork will be a massive lot of photos showing both sides of the coin. Which side of the coin will you choose? Heads or Tails- to conform or reject society.
The artwork will be entitled ‘Liberation or Oppression : Heels, Masks and Bras’. I have always wanted to create something like this, because I feel like most women don’t realise what they are doing. In this regard I mean they wear high heels as a sign of their femininity, class and sexuality but what they do not realise is the high heel was created with the intention to hinder its wearer not liberate.
The same with sexy lingerie, no woman can say it is comfier to wear sexy, skimpy and lacy lingerie over comfortable briefs, like bonds. It really is hard to imagine women saying “I can’t wait to slip on my push up bra, all that squishing and pushing up of my breasts feels fabulous”. So why do we do this to ourselves?
Why are we not, once again burning our bras, cutting up our g-strings and melting down our high heels? The time is now to free ourselves from the oppressive clothing that dictate our meaningless consumer driven lives.
So I decided to make this artwork to prompt thought for the modern woman.
To start I created a header- Liberation or Oppression- I added a photo of an eagle and a man with his hands tied behind his back with text together to make the slogan/title of the artwork.
I then had to decide on a theme, as per usual there was only one option, dark. This work is meant to be dark but I use a lot of light in the photographs. I think it is pretty balanced.
I did a massive photo shoot on Thursday with four girls, Gemima, Amber, Lucy and my sister Melanie. It happened to be one the most fun shoots we have ever done for a digital writing subject. The girls believed it was because they got to play dress up’s as adults. The shoot was a success and out of the 8000 photos we took, it was hard to narrow it down, but finally I chose the photos for this assignment/artwork.
The headings I decided to use for this piece were home, freedom, inequality, quotations and empowerment . I moved the headings from where I would normally put them, in the sub header into the footer. I found it really changed the feel of the website.
The Freedom page is comprised of some text in the torso middle, and images of oppressive fashion in the torso left and right.
This page also then leads you into 6 separate pages: the choices pages 1-6. They are comprised of the photographs from the photo shoot, and text to accompany them- explaining why women should question anything and everything. They must question a man’s ulterior motive. High heel: liberation or oppression? Each individual woman must decide!
The Inequality page is purely about the statistics that inspired this artwork. I researched them while I was writing a feature article for work at the Sunshine Coast Daily newspaper. I then added images of feminist empowering posters.
The quotations page has quotes about what a feminist is, what they are all about but also a few pro-patriarchy quotes that diss feminists.
The empowerment page is a slide show I created in flash. It is just an easier way to view the artwork.

LOVE HATE RELATIONSHIP

At the beginning of this semester I was infatuated by the endless possibilities of Flash. How naive of me to think this love affair would last the whole semester. It turns out what I thought was the glimmer of hope I had been searching for would end up being the pebble in my shoe.
How can you love a pebble in your shoe? For me Flash is the annoying and sometimes infuriating pebble in my shoe. I thought to myself whoopee I have found a medium to display my artworks– I had no idea it was going to suck every but of creativity and passion out of me – causing me to contemplate self-harm. However I did tell myself over and over again it is only technology– kill the electricity and it is gone – so that is what I intend to do at the end of the semester. Who knows if I will ever turn it on again.
I guess my love hate relationship is the same sort of thing I have with the love of my life Mark. But he is definitely worse for my psyche than flash could ever be.

COLLECTORS OR CREATORS

I truly hate the idea of collecting sounds and images to use for more artworks. If I cannot take the photographs and record the sounds that create the artwork then I do not deserve to make the artwork.
I understand it looks like this limits me but on the contrary I believe it inspires me to succeed. I have on occasion used images that weren’t mine (but only under the strict guidelines I set for myself and that is that the image does not exceed my skill as a photographer ¬¬– if I could not take the exact photograph given the right opportunity and location– then I do not use the image.
I therefore cannot talk about the sounds and images I would collect from www.commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/main-page . So I will talk about some of the things I have photographed thus collecting.
I have done news photography at the Sunshine Coast Daily the past six months which has involved photographing a number of horrific accidents, joyous occasions such as the recent home coming of Jessica Watson and a large variety of soft news stories.
I travelled around Europe for three months in 2007 which exposed me to many different things – I photographed a dog giving birth, different cultural experiences, famous and historic landmarks, graveyards, castles and a sea of Europeans. All in which opened my eyes to see the inequalities, cultural differences and magical moments in Europe.
Back in Australia I have travelled most of the east coast and a fair bit of the southern states. I hope to do a lot more travelling around Australia in the next few months and I am currently saving for my world trip which I will do in 2011. Every photograph is a representation of something I have learnt in that moment.

EMBRACE THE BAD

I seem to be the sort of person who is slightly obsessed with darkness, not the night time darkness, but anything and everything to do with taboo subjects such as suicide, witchcraft and depression. It is all foreign to my life which is probably why it intrigues me so much.
It all started in 2006 when I began photographing things that had died. I then went to Europe and I became obsessed with photographing people suffering from extreme poverty and when I started university I began making artworks of a not so positive nature and it is still continuing. I really like pushing the boundaries and making people question everything they have ever known or thought.
Elements like colour, shade and sound make or break a piece of artwork or website and decide what people get from it. Darker colours signify darkness in mood and bright colours signify a lighter mood.
I tend to aim for the darker mood colours, such as black, blood red, grey and off-white in the forms previously discussed. I find it more engaging to see something confronting then something I could see any day, anywhere or anytime.
I think there is so much bad in the world why not embrace it...

WHEN IT RAINS IT POURS

FLASH PROJECT 1

This piece of artwork is called ‘when it rains it pours’. It was inspired by the friends I have lost to suicide. I chose to utilise the cliché elements associated with suicide because they are prominent , relevant and symbolic in society. I do not want to live in a Shakespearean society – if you want to say something- say it. Don’t describe everything but what you are trying to say. Don’t play charades and point to your ear (sounds like). Life is too short and too busy to keep people guessing. I used words associated with suicide (or attempted suicide) – depression, torture, pain etc for dramatic effect, to show how much confusion this young woman is feeling and in fact any person that contemplates suicide or self-harm. I took the photograph last year while I was going through a dark time- I used my models to show the sort of things I had fleetingly thoughts about. The words bouncing and shuddering on the screen show the unpredictability of mental illness and the uncontrollable fear people feel when they think of the uncertainties of life. The words when it rains it pours that fall down the screen with the red coloured rain symbolise the overwhelming feeling the world is coming to an end or that everything comes at once and you can’t see the forest for the trees. The red rain is meant to symbolise bleeding out- giving up and handing your life over to death. This piece is meant to be dark and make you question your ideas and thoughts on suicide, death and mental health.

YOUR OUTLOOK ON LIFE DETERMINES YOUR FUTURE

FLASH VIDEO PROJECT 2

Making this piece of digital artwork entitled 'Your outlook on life determines your future' is about exactly that, the effects of your mindset and outlook on life.

I took all the videos separately without thinking about what they would be like all together- I sub-consciously link works without knowing it.

I recorded over thirty videos to possibly use for this assignment but it was the few that I used for this piece that stood out and formed this piece of digital artwork.

I put my heart and soul into every piece of artwork, it usually reflects what is going on in my life at that moment in time. It is my 2nd day at my new job and I am excited about all the possibilities and looking forward to what the future holds for me.

I chose to have a lot of interactive elements to this piece of artwork in the form of roll over buttons.

The page consists of many elements.

First was the heading/ title of the artwork 'your outlook on life determines your future', I chose this because it is something I really believe to be true. Pessimistic people don't get far in life, a smile will get you anywhere.

I chose a photograph of Time Square to centre my piece around as so much happens in the city an it is the perfect platform for this video art.

The two quotes I chose to use for this piece were 'Why destroy your present happiness for a distant misery, which may never come at all?' and 'It is easy to cry when you realize that everyone you love will reject you or die,' the reason behind these choices is one is optimistic and the other pessimistic- the binary opposites. I decided to make it into a bit of a game- choosing the negative or positive way to go.

I added an photograph of my sister and made it a button and added the water fountain video to go over a holiday photograph on one of the billboards. I used it to symbolise the tears you cry when you are unhappy but also in reference to the quote. I decided to make it more transparent than the original movie clip to show the other elements of the artwork, I wanted it to symbolise that sadness is easily fixed, and that the world doesn't stop revolving just because you are hiding from it.

I also have a positive movie clip playing continuously on the screen of me laughing, my friend filmed me, and I have to admit it is hard to laugh on cue. It is symbolic of laughter is the best medicine.

I videos of people smiling and frowning, symbolising people's mindsets- I used a few photos I already had and took a couple more to fill in the gaps. I then used photoshop and windows movie maker to put them all together. I really like the old fashion movie setting I found using windows movie maker.

I added in a couple of hidden roll over buttons that I hope make it a bit more interactive.

The clock in the middle of the page symbolises time passing.

I also used a video clip of my friend Philip walking, I used that to symbolise walking through life and the path you choose based on your mindset.

The whole piece is meant to make you rethink how you live your life.

FLASH FILES

I find these sorts of websites extremely boring as I am full of ideas of my own and not in need of any inspiration- I already find enough inspiration in everyday life, watching television and movies, in my dreams and reading books. Although one day they may be useful to me at the moment I am very content with my ideas and the knowledge I have of flash currently that allows me to make simple yet evokative pieces of art. But in saying this, I do understand this is an assessment task so I have adhered to the criteria given to me by my teacher.

I could only find three flash files that were remotely interesting after nearly two hours of searching- it also doesn't help that my internet at home is very, very, very slow.

The first file I downloaded was 'old film effect' it is quite a simple flash file, yet it has a lot of potential. I think the image should be changed as it doesn't quite suit the tone of the piece. It is asthetically pleasing to the untrained eye but as a photographer and I guess an artist, I was slightly disappointed with the over all feel of the piece, I could definintley make this flash file alot more interesting, interactive and evokative by changing the colours, contrast, image, perspective and by adding music to it.

The second file I downloaded was 'rain' it is a simple animation and yet way too complicated for someone as inexperienced in flash as myself, however, I know soon I will be able to mirror it and even better the flash file. It has sound to accompany it which drove me mental as I downloaded the file. That would be the first thing to go. I see potential in the piece, and yet I feel unable to use something someone else has created. I realise there is no original thought but I have enough photographs and ideas to last a lifetime and I see no reason to use other people's ideas. I want to work out a way to make rain, in which I did for my first piece of artwork and I want to continue doing the same thing.

The third file I downloaded was 'water reflex', once again a simple concept and simple animation but after browsing this site for what seemed like an eternity I came to expect it. I feel like they do not live up to the expectations I had for this site. I really hate wasting my time on something I am never going to use.

Please, Please, Please don't make me do this again- it is torture and I don't think I will live through another one of these- don't make me be a statistic- and commit suicide.

http://ffiles.com/