Retouching Self-Portrait

Artist Statement

My idea for this project was role play.  I was at home and flipping through the channels and came across this ‘reality television show,’ Jerseylicious.  It’s about these extreme Jersey girls that all work in a hair salon and fight about who has the bigger hair and who is more of a guidette than the other. Then later that night was of course Jersey Shore and everyone knows what that show entails.  So I was sitting and thinking about what I should do for this project and it came to me, I love dressing up and experimenting with my hair and makeup so I decided to jersey-fye myself and turn into a guidette with the help of Photoshop. Here are my examples.

Compositing Big Ideas Project

 

Artist Statement: This experience was an interesting one.  I had a little bit of a challenge with Photoshop but I tried my best and I got a lot out of it.  I really enjoyed reading “Lines of Sight in the ‘Network Society’: Stimulation, Art Education, and a Digital Visual Culture” By Robert Sweeny and picking out one big idea and conducting research on it.  First I looked at social connections.  I asked myself what is a social connection? How do people communicate? What is the difference between interacting socially and interacting over the computer or cell phone?  What kind of relationships can one build communicating in person verses communication over technology?  What kind of boundaries come about?  With these questions in mind, I went to the internet.  I researched about communication and came up with three difference clusters of photos; human interaction, social connections, talking over the phone and taking over the computer.  In the end I composited a picture that encompassed all of the above components that I explored and made a picture that shows the world and all of the ways humans interact and communicate with each other.

Magazine Cover Project

Marilyn Monroe: The Gaze

Emme and Kirova Reading

        This article is about collage as an art form that captures the relationship between modern and postmodern and a proposed role for digitally manipulated photography in educational research.  This paper explores the lens-medium of photography as a unique and centrally important way of engaging the world.  I agree with the quote, “produces what it forbids, (seeming to make) possible the very thing that it makes impossible” (page 146).  This is talking about manipulation to a photograph and what is truly real and what was photoshoped.  I also really like the fact that interacting with the photo and the contact and point of view experienced by the viewer actually becomes part of the pictures meaning.  One thing I didn’t really understand fully was when the authors were talking about old, semiotic categories and social semiotic (page 147).  I don’t really understand the meaning of the word or the concept explained in the article.  Overall this article was very interesting and informative.  Also I too am guilty of using technology to better a photograph. I've posted some images that have been manipulated in photoshop that i thought were interesting too.

Two Cloud Clusters

Sweeny Big Ideas

Major Concept: Visual Culture and Everyday Life in the "Network Society"
Themes: Identity, Social Connections, Interacting/Interaction, Communication, Empowerment
Synonyms: Individualism, Individuality, Personal Identity, Social Activity, Communication, Communicating, Potency, Authorization, Authority, Yes, No
Visuals: