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[FINAL PROJECT] TEXTILES QUE ME SIGUEN

This work is very meaningful to me, titled "Textiles que me siguen", I mixed the traditional technique of cross-stitching, with a way of showcasing the principles learned about internet art throughout the semester. I created the mockup pf ti website using Premiere Pro and also the screen recordings of musing these tools within the site, along with the physical cross stitched pieces scanned to create the digital gallery for my works. I think inviting the audience to participate in the creation is one of the principles that I appreciate the most about internet art, and in this day and age, it really pushes the envelope for traditional techniques to have this type of platform to be displayed through. I personally will explore further making this site a reality along with an engineer that can help me, but I think the idea and concept is very clear and the result with the correct tools can be successful. I look forward to hearing your feedback and opinions and making this project a reality.

Valeria Morena

Please find the final version of my project below, along with the link for your reference.

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[ARTIST REVIEW] MISHKA HENNER

Mishka Henner is a Belgian-born contemporary artist, known for his innovative approach to digital media and photography. Henner’s work often explores themes of surveillance, the role of technology in shaping contemporary life, and the reimagining of traditional artistic forms through digital manipulation. His practice often involves the use of found images, internet archives, and GPS technologies, recontextualizing these resources to question the nature of representation and authorship in the digital age. Henner's works invite viewers to reconsider the relationship between image-making and the evolving digital landscape, particularly how images can be altered, appropriated, and reinterpreted in an era dominated by online platforms and satellite technology. I chose Mishka Henner for his series Dutch Landscapes because of the way he transforms traditional notions of landscape photography. In this series, Henner uses satellite images to present aerial views of the Netherlands, showcasing the country’s planned and engineered landscape. These images, as unconventional as it gets, highlight the power of technology in shaping and controlling our understanding of the land. Henner’s work challenges the viewer to rethink the relationship between the natural world and human intervention, drawing attention to how technology can reshape our visual language and perception of the environment.

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[ARTIST REVIEW] AMALIA ULMAN

Amalia Ulman is an Argentine artist born in 1989. She grew up in Spain and, throughout her early life, had a strong influence from both her mother and father. Her father was a tattoo artist, and she developed an interest in body modifications. Growing up in an environment that encouraged curiosity, she described herself as an anarchist and a utopian. In her practice, she works with performance, installation, video art, and net art. Her works explore the themes of class imitation and the relationship between consumerism and identity. Through her experimental practice, she involved the use of social media in the creation of her works.

One of these works is titled "Excellences & Perfection," which was produced through the curation and publishing of posts through Instagram. The artist spent months documenting a hoax and fake life of this character—herself—going through the life of a future it-girl, which got thousands of people (followers) invested in her made-up day-to-day life. After this work, she was defined as a social media artist, and her performance widely impacted the perception of the internet today. It also predicted and shone a light on the behavior of the keyboard warriors who visited her page and published both praises and hate. She turned herself into a consumable character and published a curated life. Through different states, she explored the performative side of gender and the stereotyping of women. This work is predictive; it gave us a look into the future and the formula for gaining followers through a very selective representation of reality. She demonstrated that nowadays, a large social media following means power, and this was shown through the impact her work had—something that would not have been possible had she not gathered tens of thousands of followers, which comprised a vital part of the success and accuracy in predicting the future of social media. The use of the rising social media platform Instagram and her several conversations involving its founders after the work was completed, shows the fact that this platform was such an integral element for the creation of this work, through the culture it promotes, even if it was not created with such purposes. 

This work was created in 2014, and looking back at it, knowing what we now know about the countless "influencers" and the curation of online content, she was incredibly ahead of the curve and extremely accurate in the way we now see and use social media profiles. Through a series of fake scenarios, which drove her to even fake a plastic surgery procedure, Ulman shows us the ultimate critique of gendered expectations and their proliferation through mass media. She made several powerful points, but the main one was the deceptiveness of social media profiles and the lack of context and reality. Her work was an omen of current times and an accurate premonition of how twisted social media culture is.

Sources:  https://www.dazeddigital.com/art-photography/article/39375/1/amalia-ulman-2014-instagram-hoax-predicted-the-way-we-use-social-mediaLinks to an external site.

https://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/23700/1/amalia-ulman-meme-come-trueLinks to an external site.

https://www.cnn.com/style/article/amalia-ulman-instagram-excellences-perfections/index.htmlLinks to an external site.

https://artsandculture.google.com/story/excellences-perfections-preserving-social-media-with-webrecorder-rhizome/owVRTPJVh-JgJw?hl=enLinks to an external site.

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[ARTIST REVIEW] KEITH HARING'S "UNFINISHED PAINTING"

Seeing Keith Haring's Unfinished Painting always gets to me. The significance and purpose of this piece and to think of all the art he would have been able to create if he had more life to live is heart wrenching. He wrote the year he was diagnosed with AIDS: "Amazing how many things one can produce if you live long enough. I mean, I've barely created ten years of serious work. Imagine 50 years.… I would love to live to be 50 years old.". Even when having a little bit of information of the context of the creation of this piece, it speaks volumes to how inappropriate it is to complete this work with the use of AI. The painting was purposefully left unfinished to represent the fact that his life would be cut short due to AIDS. The fact that the creation of this piece was based in representing the effect of the AIDS pandemic in the gay community and culture, and someone decided to "complete" an already completed piece with a soul-less AI platform, ignoring the late artists intentions, plagiarising his style, and disrespecting the context in which this piece was created along with all of those who suffered and are represented through a work like this. 

Artificial intelligence is trained with existing information and produces a result that "imitates" the learnings. The concept that Haring intended with this artwork was to leave it incomplete purposefully, but this is a complete piece in an of itself, since through the blank spaces within the canvas and the feeling that it still needs to be filled, the deaths of the AIDS pandemic are represented and the way that these lives, including the artist's were cut short. Still being alive, he still knew all the things he would miss and all the work he would still have left to produce and communicate because he will not live long enough to do so. "Completing" this piece with artificial intelligence not only negates the significance of the appearance of the piece being incomplete, but also uses the style of an existing artist that had a trajectory to develop and is loaded with their own essence and AI cheapens that process out. In the sense that ignores the process and produces something empty and devoid of meaning, context, and soul. 

When working with artificial intelligence, which is something inevitable considering the rapid advance and incorporation of these technologies in our daily lives, it has to be taken or considered as a tool, rather than the machine of a final creation. These technologies are trained with existing work from artists that have worked very hard to develop their style and trajectory and mimics it without crediting the sources or providing a monetary compensation for the usage of the images and content that were used to train the program. I think transparency is key to truly transform AI into a tool rather than the originator of empty ideas and the producer of poorly crafted work that is meaningless. By labeling AI work, we are able to differentiate the source of these images and conserve the hard work and craft of the artists actually producing work from their own context and experiences, rather than from machine learning from other's works. 

The implications of creating work such as this, are beyond words. The painting was left  unfinished to symbolize the tragic loss of the artist's life to HIV, the  issue isn’t just that AI struggles to replicate the artist’s style, but the fundamentally disconnected creation of work that does not have any substance. AI will never be able to represent the tragedy of the unlived potential of the artist, will never be able to communicate the suffering and more importantly, will never be able to come up with this concept. This situation and this creation are harmful, unoriginal and negates the role of the artist and their trajectory. The advancement of artificial intelligence is inevitable, but the ethics and the creation of actual cultural impacting work such as this will never come from the sole usage of this technology. Personally, since this was a tweet, I really hope it is just an awful taste satire and that someone was not serious about it when posting it. 

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[ARTIST REVIEW] - REBECCA MOCK & BRANDON TAUSZIK

Rebecca Mock is an illustrator and animator. Her work is found mainly in digital media; through her hipnotizing color palettes she achieves life within the creation of short animations depicted in the GIF format, communicating a snippet of her chosen ambiance and charming narratives with the wise usage of color and texture. The creation of her editorial illustrations hAS ENABLED HER to find a lot of enticing projects with several brands that have pushed her career forward. 

Brandon Tauszik is a visual artist and self defined "image maker". Through the use of audiovisual media, he is able to create as a photographer and filmmaker. His current ongoing projects explore various aspects of America’s social periphery and social situation. Recently, he is working with cinemagraphs—an innovative blend of still images and film that remains largely unexplored, exported and depicted in the GIF format. 

Both of these artist as they use the same media format of GIF have wide differences. Tauszik uses videos of real characters depicting real social situations in the american scene and Mock explores themes of ambiance and peaceful settings through illustration and animation. Mock's color palettes are varied and eclectic, as Tauszik in his GIF series 'Barbershop' uses black and white to depict the individuals in his images.

I picked this particular piece from Rebecca Mock, because I love the way she captures the movement and ambiance. The use of her color palette and the animation applied to the setting transports you into the scene as if you were part of it. The use of highlights and shadows and the texture that accompanies it communicates a moody setting in which she depicts the subject matter of this work, "The aftershock", which  depicts the interior of a family house after an earthquake. About this work I appreciate the fact that these are the last peaceful moments before everything falls apart, or maybe it never does. 

The piece i chose from Tauszik is titled 'Tapered Thorne', this artwork reflects the transformative power of barbering as a legitimate and empowering career path for individuals with past convictions. Just as construction provides opportunities for redemption and rebuilding, barbering stands out as a trade that welcomes those seeking a fresh start. It illustrates how this profession offers a meaningful way to support one's family and create a stable future, showcasing the dignity and potential that comes with turning to a legal and honorable hustle.

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YOU DECIDE

For this piece, I chose an image that resembles rock-paper-scissors being played. I used a datamoshing website to help me create the effect, and the concept behind this piece is based on the idea that even if you cannot control the outcome, you have the choice to select either rock, paper, or scissors. I believe this thought is applicable to many things in life, including life itself. I think that this piece could have been taken further by adding a text component, but I am unsure where it would fit within it.

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QUIEN ERES?

For this piece, I aimed to show aspects of identity. I incorporated the words "quien eres," which means "who are you," along with a photo of myself. By transforming and applying various filters, I was able to create a glitch effect that relates to questions of identity and the general theme of deconstructing one’s identity. I used Photoshop, one of the glitch generators provided in the assignment, and CapCut to create this piece. If I could take it a step further, I would have liked to include more pictures of myself to further reflect on the identity theme for this particular piece.

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BELLEZA

For the second piece, I used appropriated images of models and aligned them so that all meet at the eyes. Covering their eyes is the word "belleza," which means "beauty" in English. This was intended to show that the concept of beauty is extremely ambiguous. Through the transformation of the faces, this concept of beauty is morphed. I chose photos of models because they are objectively beautiful, and their job is to be beautiful, hoping to illustrate that they are all extremely different from one another but still considered beautiful. I used Photoshop and applied filters in CapCut. If I could take this piece further, I might consider writing the word "beauty" in several languages to reflect on the universality of this concept.

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"El Tiempo Vuela"

This GIF is illustration based, I created a simple line illustration with a quote that translates into "time flies" while the hands of the clock move non stop. I think it is a nice format to export this illustration into, as it is looped, alluding to the fact that time does not stop and indeed, it flies by. I used Procreate to create this piece. 

"Culebrita"

This GIF was created from a video that was taken overhead at the beach. Besides the fact that I love this beach, I love the textural component of the sand and the movement of the water, I think it's extremely eyecatching and satisfactory. I used a website to create this GIF from video and cropped out a square portion of it.

"Briella DJ"

This GIF was created from a video I took at a party. I created it in photoshop and applied a couple of adjustment layers to modify the color, give texture, and render the figures more graphically. I would have liked to work on the texture more, to make it more refined, but I think that it was effective to transform this video into a Y2K style digital visual. 

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My heart is an archive of all the things I've loved.

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Some of my latest digital illustration work and current inspiration.

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