Final Book Project

We've been having thunderstorms lately...

And they have been totally awesome and amazing. Although experiencing something like a "supercell thunderstorm" would be completely epic and almost scary. Something like this makes me second-guessing nature. It is beyond bizarre that digital media can make me deny reality.

Give Me Beauty or Give Me Death

As horribly sad, destructive, and devastating this picture is and as bombs are, this picture is very aesthetically pleasing to me, which I find very strange. How is it that something you know is so horrid and that both represents and causes mass destruction can be pleasing to the eye at the same time. The colors, the forms, everything about this image is oddly attractive, and if someone didn't know what a bomb exploding looked like, they would probably think of it as just a beautiful image of something unknown to them. This world perplexes me daily.

Table of Contents

I found this cool font called "Mesquite" while making this in InDesign then just went with the theme.

Movie Poster

Best believe it.

Alternate Universes/Destinations

"Le Baisier" 1982

"The Result of War: The Cornucopian Dog" 1984

"Las Meninas" 1987

"Cupid and Centaur" 1992

http://www.correnticalde.com/joelpeterwitkin/

One day, not right now, but one day, I want to create some strange, surreal artwork that gives the sense of an alternate dimension/universe/destination, something not of this world. This photograph above is by Joel-Peter Witkin, a photographer that created very creepy, surreal still-life photographs that often included dwarfs, hermaphrodites, transsexuals, and other people and things not associated with normal life.

Not only does he create an alternate dimension with his work, it all has a particularly dark, ominous mood. No doubt he was probably a pretty fucked up dude, but rather people find it distasteful or not, I draws people in and make them think about things. That is the objective of most art: to stimulate the brain, to think about things, to create ideas of your own. It is an endless cycle of consciousness, and that is why art is so important day-to-day.

Blue Mom Group

In honor of Mother's Day coming up on Monday, I decided to alter a photo of my mom to make her a member of the Blue Man Group. Her and I share the belief that the Blue Man Group is one of the most retarded entertainment groups (not going to call it music) and that anyone who seriously enjoys listening to them has something wrong with them. Although it's not as blueman-esque as I would like, you get the idea.

Paradise Illusions

I find this to be a very interesting image. I shot this photo on a roadtrip down to southern California. This is somewhere in northern California (also known as the good part) along I-5. The photo is very ironic because as "perfect" and "picturesque" this place seem, California has slowly been becoming a rotting pile of trash for the past half a century. Also considering I was riding in the back of my parents' gas-guzzling Lexus SUV while I took this photograph adds to the irony of it. There is endless pollution and ignorance that plagues this state.  California has become the epitome of an Illusion of Paradise.

This image has many parallels with an album that was recently released by a band I am a big fan of called Pulling Teeth. The album is called Paradise Illusions/Paranoid Delusions, and the concept of the album follows the same lines as what I had mentioned above. Things in the Western World, America specifically, are created to make an illusion of Paradise (shopping malls, theme parks, gated communities, etc.) to entertain, satisfy and distract us from the serious problems that we refuse to or are unable to confront. Here is the album art for the record (which is double-sided) that represents these themes very well:

BURNING FIGHT: Trial

Trial (Burning Fight, Phase 1) from hate5six productions on Vimeo.

This is my favorite band Trial from Seattle doing a reunion show in Chicago this weekend which I happened to be at. Despite a couple fuckups, mostly on the drummer's part, it was fucking amazing. Look closely to see me in the video! This was one of the most awesome experience of my life thus far.

Looking at this from a digital media standpoint, I think about seeing a video as well filmed as this could potentially dull down some of the excitement of actually getting to see them live, or it could just get one more excited to maybe one day get to experience something like this, depending on how one looks at and digests the digital world. It is amazing how vivid and clear videos of things such as a concert can become, capturing all the lighting and color that existed there. I remember watching a Led Zeppelin DVD once and at times the only colors that could be made out were red, blue and white from the lighting and the film technology from that time. 

Although this video is indeed very inspiring and exciting, one cannot take in the full essence of being at this show simply from watching it. There was so much energy and emotion that filled the venue, it is almost indescribable. I will admit that I shed a tear once or twice from the immense passion and meaning that is in Trial's music, and finally getting to see them after listening to them for more than 4 years, the most important 4 years of my life. This band has inspired and influenced me and how I live my life on so many different levels, and seeing them along with the majority of my other favorite bands was a life-changing experience.

Photocollage(s)

This is my first attempt at photocollaging. In this collage, I was hoping to show how the corporate media portrays the bad things that happen within our country. They will tone down the seriousness of events in which human rights are being violated, Americans are not being viewed as heroes, or of events that the media is unsure of how the people will react to them. The juxtaposition of flowers with U.S. Marines in action, an endless blockade of riot cops, and repeated images of one of the torture victims at the Abu Ghraib prison attempt to make the images more tame due to a flower's symbolic connotation. The torture victims almost blend into the floral background as if they are unimportant and should forget about them, but the solders and cops are still as clear as day, and despite what surrounds them, you still have to ask yourself: why do they always look so intimidating?


This is the same collage after I went back and messed around with it a little bit. I didn't even touch color alteration or addition of any type in the first collage, so I wanted to work with it a bit. This is much unlike any of my other work, in the sense that it has an almost popart (pop ART not poptart) essence to it. This collage even further inforces my point of how the corporate media wishes to portray incidents as mentioned above. Juxtaposition and repetition are important aspects in this collage, and i tried to push them as much as possible.

Happy Fuckin' Earth Day (Yesterday, technically)

Fuck your "green" propaganda. How fucking pathetic is it that environmentalism is just another marketing strategy now? Finally people try to step up and do what's right for the earth, and corporate america turns it right on its  ass just to make people buy more things. 

Prime example right here:

The Toyota Prius is the new SUV. The energy and resources it takes to make these things make up for the gas it saves.

If you really care about the environment and want to be "green," go Vegan, ride your bike, and don't support large corporations.

Expanding Message in exchange for Deteriorating Value?

I think the internet functions as a double-edged sword for the art world. On one end, it has potential to spread the message, feelings, and/or emotions of the art among thousands and perhaps millions more people. Although on the other end, it can dull down the quality, value, and significance of the art. 

For instance, if an album is ripped to the computer and put onto a website where anyone can download the music, it can literally lower the sound quality. Also, one can download an album off the internet and it could be missing tracks, the songs are not titled, or they may not even know the album it is from, and this is not how the music was intended to be shared with the word. Yet if one looks past those aspects, the music is still shared and enjoyed  among a much larger range of listeners in which it can inspire, motivate, relate to, and possibly even change them.

The same goes with photography. On the internet, the viewer can see the photograph in many different sizes, tints, qualities, and other aspects of the photo that it was not supposed to be viewed in, which can take away some of the feelings, thoughts, and/or emotions meant to be portrayed in the photograph. It can be shown in so many places so many times it can dull down the effectiveness and power it has from viewing it in its "pure" form.

This is the first of probably many observations about how the internet effects our society.

Alphabet Poop

Y

U

V

O

I

D

A

Picturing the Other: Remixed

Here is the photo of my new friend now that I have attempted to use photoshop to the best of my capabilities. He said to me "only take one picture, okay?" I took two. But I wish I would've been able to take more. As interesting of an experience as it is to take a photo of a stranger who is unlike yourself, it can certainly be an awkward one as well. I guess there is an art to it, no shit right?

Picturing the Other

This is my first quick attempt at "picturing the other." I saw this guy on the way back from getting batteries from Dollar Tree and he was digging through a free box for poor/homeless people. He was living out of his car, an early to mid-90's minivan, and seemed a bit out of it. I still want to take more time to take a better photograph of another stranger.

Scratch round 2

This is a second scratch assignment I did, and I think I may be getting the hang of it. In this image, the woman/girl is remembering an semi-abstracted mental image of placing her hand on top of another person's hand, and feels nostalgic from it. I tried to experiment with colors and layers as much as I could in this piece.

Converging

This is a digital photograph of Converge playing in Boston, MA. Converge is without a doubt one of my favorite bands. This photograph captures the intensity, passion, and chaos in the live performance of perhaps one of the biggest bands today in the underground aggressive music subculture (metal, punk, and hardcore included); not to mention that they are playing in their hometown. Aesthetically, digital photography can bring so much to the table, such as in this image, where the figures are captured crisptly, but movements of reflected light form swirling lines and shapes in the image, turning the image into something more than just a picture of a concert.

Scratched

This is the first illustrative image type-thing I made with Photoshop just in the duration of one Digital Media Foundations lab. I will most likely add to it at some point.

Not actually Humans, but simply Continuous Forms

This blog. Is for my Digital Media Foundations class, initially. This photograph captures several humans created with continuous forms of black and grey and white. And with those humans come angry, inspiring ideas. This is Trial at their London reunion show in 2005, and my favorite photograph of a hardcore show. You can just feel the passion and everyone coming together.

My First Ghost

Boo-ya. This is my first blogging experience. Now I can be even MORE self-absorbed!