Assignment - ReadingsThoughts from reading On the Rights of Molotov Man The reading draws from a conversation between Joy Garnett and Susan Meiselas over the appropriation and context of art. The discussion surrounds a subject known as Molotov Man, who was photographed by Meiselas during her time documenting political activity in Nicaragua. Over two decades later, In Garnett's research for a new project, she came across a partial image of the original photo and saved it for reference, which she did end up painting and became the central piece of her series. Both artists bring important discussion topics to light. Garnett's section discusses the extent of ownership and the limits of intellectual property, while Meiselas' section discusses the value of context and an artists responsibility to research and understand their reference sources. I came away with a few questions and thoughts: Who owns the right? To the photograph, the story, the subject, etc...? I think there are a lot of blurred lines and layers of questions here. As Garnett questions, "Does the author of a documentary photograph [...] have the right to control the content of this document for all time?". As I wrote this part of the blog, I went back and forth and kept reorganizing my thoughts. Truthfully, I think this still doesn't even begin to cover a fraction of this complex issue, but in attempt to break this down into bitesize information, I created the following bubble diagram of immediate thoughts.  To start, I believe Maiselas owns the rights to the photograph. She went out to Nicaragua and followed the local people, learned about their political struggles, and documented what she saw to tell a story. Where I get stuck is - how much of the work does Maiselas "own"? Where do the limits end? Can she, or any artist for that matter, claim rights to any art that resembles their work in any level of likeliness? What "percentage" of resemblance can a new piece share with its original inspiration before it becomes an infringement on intellectual property if not properly cited? If she owns the photograph, does she also own the narrative of her work? Or is that subject to the viewer or anyone who may draw inspiration from her photographs, even if it does not align with the original intent? Garnett created a painting using Maiselas' photograph as reference, and the resemblance is quite substantial. However, she only painted part of the photograph. She also removed the background from the original photo and added her own style through the painting. Furthermore, Garnett mentions that her Riot series is to convey extreme physical state and emotion, rather than the narrative behind her references. Maiselas did not collect any money for Molotov Man, but lets just say hypothetically - Is Garnett's painting different enough from Maiselas' photograph to not pay for the copyright? I don't think I have the answers to any of these questions. Perhaps this is why we have lawyers who specialize in intellectual property. (I want to clarify, I think citation is incredibly crucial. If other works are used as reference or even inspiration, it is invaluable contextual information for a viewer to understand the artist and their work. In fact, if one is able to draw from someone else's work, doesn't that mean they find merit in the referenced work? Shouldn't that alone motivate one to properly credit?) What are the reasons to decontextualize? Is it good? Garnett states "I wanted my choices to be based more on the aesthetic criteria than on my emotional attachment to their narratives". I had a hard time agreeing with Garnett on this. I believe that all art tell a story, so listening to and honoring the narrative is an essential step in appreciating the subject matter and respecting the artist. To strip the context behind an art work and extract only the aesthetic elements seem like such an odd practice to me. When we are creating, it is important to think deeply about our crafted message, the origin, and potential biases. In an age where anything can be misinterpreted and harm others, often marginalized groups, it is on the artist to do their due diligence. But of course, there are blurred lines here, too. What about collaging? When the practice is quite literally to gather a collection of things, strip it down, and create something new. Collages often convey new emotions or messages through particles that may not normally be connected at all, in fact, sometimes, the juxtaposition between the original content and the new message is the subject matter that the artist. In this sense, is decontextualizing bad? Or perhaps this is not decontextualizing, but rather redefining the original work? Is that okay? Assignment - Sound VacationIn this assignment, we were asked to transport the listener to another location through a 1-2 minute sound journey. We wanted to create a journey that is rich in sound and have a story arch that is action packed. Tim came up with the general plot, I wrote a script, and Ping recorded sound samples. We met up on campus to review the plot and samples, and worked together for 5 hours to put all the sounds together. Since Tim had experience with Premier, he did a bulk of the editing work while Ping and I made sound affect suggestions. Some of the sound affects were sourced through freesound.org, especially those that we were not be able to replicate in our day to day lives before the assignment due date (ie, glass shattering, alarm sound, rainstorm sound, etc...)
Above are snippets of the plot. To create the 1:30 sound vacation, we only used about half of the script.
There were a couple learnings through this project, some more obvious than others.
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