Artist Statement - Final Project

My final project, entitled "Whiteboard Bear" was inspired by the stop motion animations I have always enjoyed watching on youtube. In all of the classes I have taken in college, I have always found that cartoons and animation are my favorite and I always have the most fun making these types of projects. When I began this project I ran into many struggles. At first I tried to do the drawing and the filming on my own but soon discovered this was nearly impossible. My little point and shoot camera kept turning off and losing the spot I had zoomed in on on the white board. Once my friend started helping me take the pictures I began to have a lot of fun with it. Originally, I wanted the movie to revolve around improvisational doodles, so once I was finished I had about 400 photos with fishtanks, flowers, snowmen, and other random designs. When I put the pictures on my computer I realized these themes had nothing to do with each other and I liked the drawings with the bear best. This bear has popped up in a lot of my work and I would like to think of him as my signature character, so i felt that this was most appropriate. The editing was enjoyable and frustrating at times, and took much longer than I expected, as editing always does. I had to teach myself how to use imovie, because I chose to do the editing at home rather than at school. It took me about two hours to figure out how to turn the "ken burns" effect off (when the photos automatically zoom in and out once they are presented on the screen) and this almost made me give up on the entire project. But, alas, I figured it out and I am pretty happy with the final project. Although it is short I now know how much time and effort goes into even the most simple hand drawn animations and my appreciation for this medium has grown. I really liked this project and hope to do something like this again soon.

final project

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoWbnPR2GFQ

The Yes Men and A Hacker Manifesto

The Yes Men video kept my attention from start to finish, which is hard to do as my attention span does not usually last long with any type of film. The two men were both clever and entertaining and their practices blew my mind. For those who have not seen the film, the Yes Men "hack" their way into ridiculous situations to prove how easy it is to fool big corporations or large organizations. In the first example, the Yes Men explained how they came into a position where they owned the domain name gatt.org(? i think..) which is extrememly similar to the actual World Trade Organization website. Long story short these men were able to actually attend a conference in Europe and speak for the WTO when they have absolutely no legitamate affiliation with the WTO. Their presentation was completely absurd and they were able to fool everyone in the room. They even said in the documentary that they were very surprised and dissapointed that the people were brainwashed enough to buy their act and not have any questions or comments when it was over. I think that the Yes Men's goal is to prove to the world how numb society is and how people do not check up on things as much as they should. It was especially surprising to me that these two individuals got away with this once, but then again as WTO members at a different convention where they proceded to  announce that the WTO was shutting down for reconstruction. Wouldn't one think that someone would recognize them or put up a high security look out for them to make sure they did not show up again impersonating actual WTO officials? The media used to complete these missions include their faux website, along wtih power point presentations. Their false identities are backed up by fake name cards, probably created by a graphic designer. All of these supplements are made possible by technology. The yesmen support the idea of the artist as genious because these men are so advanced as artists/performers/hackers they didnt even need to necessarily know a whole lot about the WTO to make this possible. They were able to hack their way in, and much like digital artists/artists/computer geeks/hackers today, knowledge of technology can take people a very long way and give them power similar to a conventional genious. To relate this to the hactivism article, I would say that the Yes Men were hackers and not producers because they took something that existed, changed it, and made it their own, while fooling everyone along the way. The vector population would probably be the internet as a whole, and those who are supposed to patrol and monitor these organizations, and hte Yes Men were able to hack their way through any obstacles the vectors may have set in the way.