“Access is the most precious of all privileges, and it is therefore strictly guarded, which in turn makes one wonder whether to be a successful plagiarist, one must also be a successful hacker.”
-Critical Art Ensemble
“Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.”
-Pablo Picasso
The world is filled to suffocating. Man has placed his token on every stone. Every word, every image, is leased and mortgaged. We know that a picture is but a space in which a variety of images, none of the original, blend and clash.
-Sherrie Levine
The artistic question is no longer; “what can we make that is new?” but “how can we make do with what we have?.” In other words, how can we produce singularity and meaning from this chaotic mass of objects, names and references that constitutes our daily life?
-Nicolas Bourriaud
You must borrow from any moving image source, such as film, commercial photography, television, video games, talk shows, commercials, songs, trailers, cartoons, old films, music or even art sources, to create a new appropriated work that reveals, exposes or changes meaning (or does all of these things) from the source’s original meaning. Be creative in approach to the material sources and what your alterations or juxtapositions can relay to the viewer. Be sure to be aware of the connotations and links that your sources contain within them, or the primary meaning of your sources, and let this inform your changes, and how your changes will be read. Therefore, we expect back-up research of the sources you are using and what place they take in society. Adjust or manipulate your sources in a creative way towards new meaning or to reveal hidden meaning in savvy, artistic, poetic, magical, enticing way. Think of how the meaning can be pushed or altered stylistically, through effects of slow motion or sped up, through juxtaposition, erasure, addition, and manipulation or even by way of a collection of scenes with a common theme. We will be looking at how the appropriation of the original content of the source finds new meaning and a new way of receiving or looking at it, reveals original agency in an image and questions it, including the creation of myths or ideologies.
Create a meaningful and thoughtful piece that you will be proud of, a work that goes beyond being an ‘assignment’ and into the realm of art, something that approaches things in an accountable and critical view that you are concerned or provoked by. You can even dissect or challenge the idea of appropriation itself. Push boundaries! This is Art!
Technical Requirements
For all projects, all sources must be appropriated, you may have one source or a thousand or anywhere in-between —only appropriated material allowed!
A challenging part of this project is obtaining the original source files at a decent quality, so search out footage, images, or sound first, or let it inspire you before being stuck on an idea that you may not be able to execute. Try archive.org, mediaburn.org, torrents, Google video, encoding YouTube videos or searches that specify” mp4” files for video’s. This preliminary research is essential work. We will understand and allow a ‘watermark’ or branding icon on your footage, as well as low resolution, and there are no grade deductions because of it –although it would be great to avoid it unless it informs your concept. If all else fails, use a video camera and shoot your tv or computer screen, or in-screen recording, for editable footage!
Specific Requirements:
- The project must be completed using Adobe Premiere Pro, and therefore you should use “Module 4: Introductory Premiere” and as an option to expand your practice, you may also use tutorials provided in “Module 5: Advanced Premiere” to help you through the project.
- All projects can be completed on a PC or MAC platform using Adobe Premiere Pro, the programs are cross-platform but the demonstrations online are on a MAC. Keep in mind that you may have to look up certain aspects that don’t transfer platforms, Premiere can be a bit more complicated than Photoshop in this.
- The project must be between 15 seconds to 3 minutes in length, you may think about looping it if you wish for duration to be a present factor. If you wish to go outside of this guideline, please speak to your TA or Christine about why, and we will consider.
- The frame rate and dimension of the work is dependent on your footage, so there are no specific guidelines except to make the quality render the information of the footage decently. You may work in standard (SD) or HD format, but please keep in mind the power and ability of your computer to handle HD video. Rendering could also take quite a while, be aware of the time and equipment constraints, please work within your means.
- You must submit both a working and final movie file for grading, the working Premiere file (PRPROJ) and also please create a compressed (MP4) or (MOV) file in H264 The final MP4 or MOV file cannot be more than 100 MB. The final PRPROJ file needs to fit on your flash drive.
- Failure to provide both files and your name on the drive and file name can result in a failing grade.
Along with your Premiere working file and .MP4 file for your final hand in, please provide the following information on a hard copy paper sheet, 1-2 pages in length, it must contain:
- Your Name
- Title of the Work
- Duration of the work
- Maximum 200 word description of your intentions making the work, and the relationship to ‘appropriation’
- References (title, year and URL if possible) of appropriated sources found in your project
- Summary (200 words) of feedback you received online and in consultation with peers and teachers, how you considered and incorporated feedback into revisions of the work. If you did not chose to listen to the feedback in deciding your revisions, please detail why not.
Artwork Rubric:
| Criteria | Ratings | ||||||||||
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Technical
10% |
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Formal Arrangement, Craftsmanship, Delivery, Execution, Presentation Quality
25% |
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Conceptual Framework, Risk-Taking, Originality, Creativity, Investment in Contemporary Issues, Social or Political Relevance, etc
25% |
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Project Goals Overall Success and Meeting of Project Goals
25% |
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Reflection & Revisions
15% |
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Saved Comments:
| Formal | |
| Headings | Art gives space for a viewer to position themselves in relation to the proposals in the work, but unfortunately the written components in the work told the audience how to understand what they were seeing rather than letting the audience have their own genuine experience with the ideas. |
| Sound/Soundtrack |
The soundtrack used through the piece was not useful to the challenge of appropriation, you must be just as critical of the song/soundtrack you are appropriating as you are of the visuals you are appropriating. The use of another artists’ expression as a narrative atop the piece does less to tell me about your take on the issues because you are using another’s creative/intellectual articulation to describe the issue. Using another’s work (speach, joke, etc) for your ‘meaning’ is not using appropriation critically by dissecting the representation, instead you are using another artist’s words to insert the same meaning in your own work. We want to know how you are articulating this concept, not how others are! |
| ‘Art’ |
(Xan, feel free to edit this one) Showing & Telling, rather than letting something emerge. In art we have an opportunity to ‘show’ the viewer, rather than ‘tell’ them. In telling, we dictate what is transmitted and received, while in showing we allow our intended meaning to emerge alongside the meanings a viewer brings to their experience of the work. By pulling back a little bit, and showing, rather than telling, you can open your work up to others to find their own entry points. While art is considered and accountable towards what it is depicting and how that operates in the world, it also opens a thoughtful and immersive visual space for its audience, rather than dictating what the audience should believe or how they should feel or think about something. Something about abstraction? |
| Details |
While you had a particular focus in most editing and compiling decisions, the editing decisions of your clips did not show concise conviction, and instead was too rather than breaking it down for the purposes of the assignment. In this instance the purpose of the new artwork is more important than your enthusiasm about the original narrative or joke in the original footage. Your initial idea is good, but wasn’t pursued with enough critical, creative visual problem solving, and so decisions and rendering choices were confusing and somewhat extraneous. |
| Conceptual | |
| Binary |
I appreciated that you considered showing us that there are two sides to this issue, however the issue is more complex than just two binary versions. While you can argue that one version of this issue might take on a more truthful or ethical stance, it is good to be critical about how all representations work. For future work, I encourage you to question the idea that some of the footage depicted here is more ‘real’ or the ‘truth’ when even it suffers from holding its own ideologies that don’t always represent the complexity of a situation. |
| Criticality |
You have a good hold of the aesthetic dimension, I encourage you to delve into more complex unveilings of critical analysis and conceptual underpinnings as a part of your art making. Appropriation is not just about what the content represents, but how ideologies are mediated through society. |
| Didactic |
I encourage you to push your work further than just illustrating an already established idea. Instead, take the time to imagine and render positions of understanding of what this actually means, how it can be seen through details and nuances, expository critical dissections that go beyond explanation of a certain concept and into the realm of ‘art’. Art makes its viewer ask more deep questions rather than giving answers or conclusions, unfortunately this work acted more like propaganda than art. The initial idea started a good conversation, but then the rendering leaned towards being too didactic. |
| Goals of Appropriation | |
| Research |
Research and deliberate connections to the original meaning and agency of the footage chosen was not well-researched, and choice of this specific footage was incidental rather than purposeful. More research, critical dissection, and intense scrutiny of how this footage informs ideologies is required for your work to also go into more complex discussions. The work was more of a fan-art homage to the footage rather than bringing out critical dissection research methods of appropriation tactics in art making. The piece should have delved deeper into research of — as well as more experimentation and creative criticality in order to visually activate your line of inquiry. |
| Criticality | In appropriation we aren’t just deconstructing how specific content is being depicted, but instead how representational systems and ideologies work as a whole. |
| Irony | It was difficult to assess your agency as using the repetition towards being ironic, or if you genuinely believe in the ideologies or beliefs this footage carries, but appropriation asks you to dissect these kinds of ideologies. |