Eric Breedlove

Final Project

2007-04-27T07:39:00.001-07:00

My final project is done and was quite contraversal. Most agreed wanting equality, but the means to get there was the debate. Some believe in programs that elevate specific groups, but these same people refuse to see how these programs keep others from succeeding. My goal was to show how people are ingrained with many different identities, but most were stuck on one observation of a small group among a larger group. This is the most valuable thing about this project, I learned that people are not as interested in the merit of what they believe, as they are in holding on to that belief. This project has always been about Identity, however, I was illustrating how identities are forced on us and we should question those. What I learned was that questioning your identity makes people extrememly scared. I think the thought of having to decide what is right and wrong, rather than having it told to them is uncomprehendable to most. If they question their beliefs and discover those beliefs are wrong, then they will no longer fit into a popular comfy group. This could mean losing friends and re-assessing their own values, and this scares the shit out of people, and that is what I learned during classroom discussion of this piece. This complacent attitude is what made genocides and opression possible. If a person can sway enough of a group then the rest will fall into line, as to avoid being different and disliked. Heavy lesson to learn from creating an animation, but there it is. Powerful groups in our society exert economical and social forces on us before we are even born, and if at all, most stumble upon it to late in life, or are tho freightened of the consequences of their discover. Those who "Rock the Boat" by pointing these out, only spotlight the illusions that many have built their life and identiy apon. It is fascinating that people can live their lives in illusion. This is what this piece is trying to convey.

Artist that influence

2007-04-10T07:34:00.000-07:00

hillman curtis
sleater-kinney
Flaming Lips
Jack White
daniel johnston

Blue Man Machine-Final Project Proposal

2007-04-10T07:06:00.001-07:00

Final Rounder Scene

The animation begins with the mechanical bird swooping down and gulping up the blue rounder. There will be two shots of this, the first, from the point of view of the bird, and the second, a landscape shot so that the swoop of the bird and the swallowing are visible. The blue rounder is swallowed and falls into the belly of the bird. The belly of the bird is unexpectedly large, about the size of a small bedroom. Inside the belly is an old blue man standing behind an oddly shaped gun that is pointed at the blue rounder. The old blue guy fires the gun at the blue rounder and to both their surprise, nothing happened to the blue rounder. Since the gun has no effect on the blue rounder, it means that the blue rounder is not like the others. The old blue guy, turns the duty of zapping people with his gun to the new blue rounder.. and gives him instructions on how to reactivate the gun using the old blue guys eyes and head. Dismantling the top of the gun, the old blue guy shoves cables from the ray gun into his own eyes and hangs himself to decapitate his head. The blue rounder places the old guys head into the canopic jar of the ray gun and recharges it. The gun reveals what is inside the person it shoots. The gun has two settings,
1. Pauperize – it strips the subject from all there money
2. De-Colorize- it drains the color out of the subject.
The user can set the dial to either pauperize or De-Colorize, and the bird goes and gulps up the respective person and swallows him/her and the user pulls the trigger on the gun.
When the pauperize zaps a green rounder, the rounder dissolves and monetary objects, (cars, money, houses, electronics, jewelry, and other valuables), smoke out of the corpse.
When the De-Colorize zaps a red rounder, the rounder dissolves and images and sounds of modern day racist subject matter, (BET, black scholarship, NAACP, miss black America, black colleges, and other references to racist images) will dissolve to the ceiling and float around.

Eric Breedlove

Blue Man Machine

2007-04-10T07:06:00.000-07:00

Final Rounder Scene

The animation begins with the mechanical bird swooping down and gulping up the blue rounder. There will be two shots of this, the first from the point of view of the bird, and the second a landscape shot so that the swoop of the bird and the swallowing are visible. The blue rounder is swallowed and falls into the belly of the bird. The belly of the bird is unexpectedly large, about the size of a small bedroom. Inside the belly is an old blue man standing behind an oddly shaped gun that the old blue guy is pointing at the blue rounder. The old blue guy fires the gun at the blue rounder and to both of their surprise, nothing happened to the blue rounder. Since the gun has no effect on the blue rounder, it means that the blue rounder is not like the others. The old blue guy, turns the duty of zapping people with his gun to the new blue rounder.. and gives him instructions on how to reactivate the gun using the old blue guys eyes and head. Dismantling the top of the gun, the old blue guy shoves cables from the ray gun into his own eyes and hangs himself to decapitate his head. The blue rounder places the old guys head into the canopic jar of the ray gun and recharges it. The gun reveals what is inside the person it shoots. The gun has two settings,
1. Pauperize – it strips the subject from all there money
2. De-Colorize- it drains the color out of the subject.
The user can set the dial to either pauperize or De-Colorize, and the bird goes and gulps up the respective person and swallows him/her and the user pulls the trigger on the gun.
When the pauperize zaps a green rounder, the rounder dissolves and monetary objects, (cars, money, houses, electronics, jewelry, and other valuables), smoke out of the corpse.
When the De-Colorize zaps a red rounder, the rounder dissolves and images and sounds of modern day racist subject matter, (BET, black scholarship, NAACP, miss black America, black colleges, and other references to racist images) will dissolve to the ceiling and float around.

Eric Breedlove

March 27, 2007

2007-03-27T07:08:00.000-07:00

Downloaded some sound bites, having problems with the school computer playing real time clips.

20Mar2007 What I like now, after project

2007-03-20T12:33:00.000-07:00

http://www.onewordmovie.ch/

20Mar2007 What I learned

2007-03-20T07:38:00.000-07:00

The most successful thing about this piece is that I finally figured out how to take my drawings from sketchbook to Flash, without to much lag. In the past, with Flash, this has been a problem for me. I am noticing that I am developing a tendency to clump alot of images together, I use to fight it, but I am thinking it is a evolution of my style, so I am not fighting it or paring down the amount of images in the work anymore. There is alot of meaning behind this, but again I ran short of time, so I had to cut down the narrative. The pieces are symbolic, and though I like them to be vague or elusive, I feel I did not give the viewer enough to piece them together due to running out of time. It is fine to make things with out any point or message, I really the message to be the main theme, and really that is what I am good at, is layering messages and symbolism, not really animation or aesthetic.

20Mar2007 comic animations review

2007-03-20T07:24:00.000-07:00

Comic_cierra- Since I have heard her in the past say that she is a collage-ist, I like that this piece
has that sort of feel to it. This one combines some drawing as well as pictures, so her
her work is evolving from just collage.
Hodge_comic- This is a clean and adequate piece. I wish more was going on in the cells so that the ball would interact more with them.
Ashley 3_20- the combination of vector and raster images is a good idea. there is no middle image to bring them together(something that appeared to be both raster and vector). I like that there is a narrative, or a meaning. I don't know if the paper in the background relates to the seasons.

Questions for Instructor?

2007-03-06T09:58:00.000-08:00

I think I understand how to implement the things we learned last week, for example x-yscale, xy position, alpaha, but I cannot move the objects back to their original postions. I remember you saying it is about the registration point, but I can not figure out.

Question,

2007-03-06T08:40:00.001-08:00

Is this piece doing anything new?

Response to the Response of Simon

2007-03-06T08:33:00.001-08:00

This article responded to the artists aesthitics and motivations behind the piece. It speaks about the interactivity of the piece and the ability to end up on alternate paths, much the same as in my response to Simons piece. The article seemed to imply that this was the first to do that, but in our first class we learned of all the hyper-linking that was done long ago. Simons is a good piece, but not ground breaking.

Simon Norton’s “Testimony: A story Machine"Response

2007-03-06T08:20:00.000-08:00

This site is highly interactive and allows the viewer to travel many paths. These paths guide the observer to alternate stopping points, which makes it somewhat confusing. To enjoy this, the idea of a static narrative has to be swapped for a dynamic one. The spectator must be willing to allow the piece to take him/her where ever they end up. The craftmanship of the piece is excellent. All the drawings are well done and animations move fluidly. It functions fluidly as well, there are no boggs or delays and runs seamlessly on the web. This is probably due to the images all being vector based, however, I prefer to work in a raster world and I wonder if the same level of fluidity could be achieved with pixels.

March 6th, 2007 Interactivity

2007-03-06T08:07:00.000-08:00

I think that my concept is good, it could be more interactive, but I did incorporate the things we learned in the last class. Things like x,y movement and xscale,yscale as well as the main spinning flower can be drag and dropped. I had a custom cursor but had issues with it aligning to the objects. Also, I feel like I spend the majority of my creating time on re-figuring out what we learned in the previous class. During this class, I take notes, but we jet through so quickly it is hard to keep up and take good notes at the same time. We brush over things and then I spent alot of time re-figuring.

feb 27, 2007 Combingin Animations

2007-02-27T07:04:00.000-08:00

This Assignment helped me get a better grasp on how to make movie clips buttons. Although we went through it during class, figuring it out on my own was helpful. Next time, I think, I can make the buttons more complex. The buttons in this animation move a little, and my goal for next time is to make them more mobile and move at different rates.

feb 10, 2007 Vector Rastor Symbols

2007-02-20T06:14:00.001-08:00

This assignment was to make 30 animations. Using both raster and vector images helped me navigate through several programs used to make flash animations, as well as, incorporate traditional drawing techniques.

feb 10, 2007 Vector Rastor Symbols

2007-02-20T06:14:00.000-08:00

What is Net Art? Again?

2007-02-06T08:42:00.000-08:00

Net Art:
is any artwork that triggers some kind of response in the viewer, and is accessible from the web. Usually these works are interactive, but not always, and use traditional art fundamentals, but not always.

I feel my piece meets the criteria for Net Art because the drawings were created tradionally, but incorporated the modernity of the internet. Also, I feel that it is emotive or at least makes an attempts to be.

06FEB2007 Homework Assignment

2007-02-06T08:07:00.000-08:00

A: Response Question: My question is, As an artist, is your work any less important or valid if no one sees or appreciates it?
B: Artist Art Response
Alan Bigelow via the Turbulence Artist’s Studio
Alan Bigelow (self-titled)
Alan Bigelow’s piece is a highly interactive collection of different experiments. It functions similarly to a website, but incorporates fine art principles that keep it from becoming overloaded with information. Actually, other than titles, the work uses a small amount of text. This encourages the viewer to explore the collection of smaller video techniques and studies. The main page is clean and easy to negotiate. The experiments are evoking and keep you watching as well as participating. In America Ghost, the viewer depresses a moving square and a kind of audio bio starts about a person while a video loops that is related in some way to the audio scrolling text. The music nicely compliments the type of bio it backgrounds. For example, a bio of a business man plays, and as he describes his selling and pitching process, music loops behind him. The music is cold and angular sounding which reiterates the cut-throat manner of the business man. Saving the Alphabet is a study of combining poetry, video loops, and typography. This piece operates by forcing the viewer to select a letter than revealing a poem about that letter. This treatment allows the viewer to participate in the artwork, he/she picks a letter and a reaction happens, usually a poem. Smaller looping letters float in the background keeping the simplicity of the site from getting boring. This is a common theme among this collection, there is nothing added that is not needed.

C: Response Consideration 2.6.07
1. The broad perception of art has not changed since digital media’s emergence, but when has the broad definition of art ever been accurate anyway. Paint, collage, digital, there is no difference between these mediums because they are all tools an artist uses. Digital is the next movement in art, but most people do not realize it. Like most modern art movements or mediums, it take the people that write about art and buy it to catch up with the artist that actually create the work.

2. The work of early internet art can definitely stand with modern internet art. It is the idea not the medium that makes the art. An artist could make a painting with stick figures and be more moving or evoke emotion more than a painting of a bowl of fruit that looks like a photograph. The change now is bad artwork, (artwork without meaning), can be disguise by 3-d graphics or complicated visual effects that do not add anything meaningful to the piece. This treatment of modern effects is like putting a rotten banana in a new skin. The future internet and digital art has to be that it becomes so overly popular that it is run into the ground, just like most other movements or media in the past. Just as in the past, there will be a handful of artist that become immortalized as the definition of digital art, whether they are or not.

3. I define Net Art just as I do all other art, if it created to evoke emotion, or express and opinion, or have some sense of depth and meaning it is art. The medium doesn’t matter to me. Internet Based Art sounds gives a sense of the medium being a legitimate field, but Net Art sounds mass produced and cheap. I think that IBA is should definitely be considered art, or at least has the potential to be. Actually, if there is a big crowd of people screaming that it isn’t art, this should be a sign that it is a form legitimate art. As long as it meets my emotive definition of art, I consider it so.

4. The greatest advantage to digital and Net Art is anyone can reach it from home, and it has the ability to be interactive. Interactivity is a great way to stimulate the viewer, making them part of the work. Giving the viewer a chance to change the outcome is another way to excite them into participating. It is not necessary to gather or have a place to view art, I think allowing people to view the pieces from at their own discretion puts the emphasis on the artwork rather than the museum. The worst part having your work in a gallery is the opening, it seems most people prefer the act of gathering, rather than exploring the artwork itself. The advantage of digital work that organazations such as schools, buisinesses, and other companies, is that it can be cheaply and displayed while taking up little space. MCA for example, could reserve a small bit of wall space to stream digital art, the only cost would be a projector and a computer. But this lack of foresight lets the digital work go unnoticed, though you could make the argument that even an art school does not validate digital work as artwork. In most of the MCA shows,(as well as other schools) the digital content is minimal.

5. Time will eventually force the minds of people that digital art is valid. Probably after a movie is made about it and a digital art master can be named by the public and art scene, then it will be recognized as art. Digital artist should keep working and keeping digital work steeped in art fundamentals so our work can endure the time it takes to be acknowledged.

Net Art

2007-02-06T08:04:00.000-08:00

C: Jan. 30th: Pioneering Concept Integration

2007-01-30T06:44:00.000-08:00

Total Art Integration
Integration is the greatest total advantage of multimedia. Instead of relying on a host of other artist who specialize in a specific field, an artist now has the ability to combine sound, motion, light, and interactivity into a piece by his/her self. Now the finished work can more closely represent the artists vision without passing through multiple hands and remain unfiltered. Multimedia gives an artist complete control over the senses of the viewer. In the past, if a Total Artwork experience was to be given, the artist had to assemble a musician, a visual artist, and perhaps a performance artist to deliver a total sensory experience to the viewer. This method created a new and different artwork than what was originally intended. Now, a sole person can produce work that mirrors his or her own design with much more accuracy. Before multimedia, the original idea had no choice but to be filtered through others, and at every sensory stop altered. This kind of collaboration can be a great experience if that is what was intended, but if the artist wanted to stay true to an original design of appealing to all of a viewers senses, this was the only option. This is why multimedia is so important; it can be manipulated by a single artist or by a group of artists. This gives many more options to the artist he/she can be in as much or as little control as desired. Now a sole person can produce a work that mirrors his or her own design with much more accuracy.
Not only does the advent of multimedia allow the artists original vision to remain intact, it also allows the integration of all the senses simultaneously while giving the viewer the option to participate. In the early 1900’s, Futurist Cinema began the integration of multiple disciplines such as painting, photography, and moving imagery. Cinema would allow traditional static paintings the ability to move and become more dynamic. Futurist Cinema artists believed that cinema was the advancement of art, and so multimedia and its degree of interactivity could be considered the advancement of Futurist Cinema. Not only are the senses activated with moving imagery and sound, but the viewer can now participate in the experience by selecting certain points of the artwork to trigger or stall. Happenings, in the 60’s, was the parent of viewer participation, a performance and/or visual artist could include the audience into the work at the artist discretion. This spontaneity is similar to a interactive work now, in which the designer can give the viewer choices to make that would affect the rest of the artistic experience.

D: Jan. 30th:Technology Usage List

2007-01-30T05:55:00.000-08:00

MY TECHNOLOGY USAGE
6:00AM- ALARM CLOCK
6:05AM- SHOWER-USE PIPES AND WATER PRESSURE
6:30AM- COOK
7:00AM- DRIVE CAR
7:00AM- RADIO
7:30AM- CLOCK INTO WORK USING MAGNETIC CARD,
WHILE AT WORK:
-USE COMPUTER FOR MATERIAL ISSUANCE
-CLOCK OUT FOR LUNCH
-WEIGH ITEMS DIGITALLY
-USE REMOTE CRANE
-CLOCK OUT
3:30PM- DRIVE HOME
4:00PM- DEACTIVATE ALARM
4:30PM- WATCH TELEVISION
5:30PM- USE STOVE
6:30PM- USE COMPUTER
7:30PM- WATCH TELEVISION
10:00PM- SLEEP

D: Jan. 30th: Contemplation of a Technology

2007-01-30T05:41:00.000-08:00

With or Without Technology
Technology isn’t just computers and circuitry. Any time humans advance a process it is a technological advancement. The wheel, tools, and machinery are all forms of technology. It is in our nature to stremaline processes that make our jobs easier and more efficient. The real question is, does technology actually make our lives easier or more effecient? Most people have cars, but to afford them we work 50 hours a week, so we can pay for gasoline, insurance, and maintenance. Before the invention of the automobile, people walked everywhere, but probably spent more time at home than most Americans do today. The computer was expected to change our lives drastically, but we had all of the same things before the computer as we do now. Now, however, almost everything we have contains some form of computer technology. Technology makes our lives physically easier, yet we have less time to spend in leisure. Instead of making our quality of life better, we spend more time tying to obtain more advanced versions of objects we already possess.
We are saturated with technology in all aspects of our lives and it is near impossible to exist in this world without it. As technology advances, humans become enabled and lose the ability to survive without it. We create it to do things for us, and then we forget how to do those things for ourselves. Not only do we lose the knowledge of performing these things ourselves, but the quality of the things produced by advancing technology becomes poorer and poorer. Here is an example, people use to make their own furniture. They cut down the trees and performed all of the preparations of the timber like stripping and planking. Then these same people had the skill to make the furniture for their homes, as well as the actual construction of the homes themselves. The items they constructed lasted 50 years or more, and could be repaired with minimal effort. Today, If I need a bookcase I go to Wal-Mart and purchase a case that is made from particle board with contact paper sheeting covering the surface. These cases are poorly crafted and wobbly, and only lasts a year or two. After only a short time the surface is scratched and peeling and this item is ready for the dumpster. When this item falls apart it cannot be repaired because particle board crumbles and chips. Everything I can afford to purchase is of this quality such as, cars, clothes, and tools. The things we own and create using advancing technology are disposable.
My art is affected by technology. Computer graphics does not exist without it, but the more I learn, the more it advances. Therefore, I spend more and more time learning programs and practicing exercises than learning how to think like and artist. Though I love creating art with the computer, technology makes me feel less like and artist because its craft is always changing, and in turn I have to spend more of my time keeping up. When do we have enough programs and applications to make our art?

A: Jan. 30th: New Writing Created from Original List

2007-01-28T21:54:00.001-08:00

waiting
soul
change
by myself
everyone
shallow
life

stifled
body
humans
brown
imagination,

kill
people
original
hold
TREES
poor
green
plants
soul,

freedom
values
forgotton
few
people
life
empty
controlled
imagination
confused
earth
exciting
inflicted
values
words
imagination
creek (stream)
rules,

not real
power
gone
majority
movement
power
poor
SOUL
important,

see through
imagination
dies
traps
childhood
dying,

motion
person
always,

thought
gift
earth
souls,

thought
dreams
stifled
holdon
control
dreams
ies
pain
used

movement

in place
life

original list of words in order w/new words in bold

2007-01-28T15:54:00.000-08:00

waiting
movement
life
exciting
change
by myself
always
power
imagination
soul
empty
people
shallow
souls
stifled
see through
everyone
power
stifled
traps
soul
body
life
motion
earth
dying
kill
humans
creek
childhood
forgotton
dreams
imagination
imagination
thought
original
few
soul
fight
control
poor
confused
thought
life
important
person
confused
movement
gift
in place
dies
dreams
imagination
hold on
trees
change
life
pain
hold
poor
majority
confused
inflicted
values
words
controlled
people
change
freedom
not real
values
rules
earth
plants
green
brown
gone
always
poor
exciting
values
always
stifled