One Zombie Short of an Epidemic

This is an image of my friend Rawiri Ropata Begg Harper. To get the blood on his face I cut and pasted an area of his face where I imagined blood trickling down from some sort of wound. Then I used the threshold adjustment on photoshop to to make him look like he came out of a comic book. The cut 'n pasted part of his face was placed over the area that I cut out and the colours were converted to a bloody-red colour. The cut out part is still photo-like, skin texture and tones still remain, to make it look real. From the cut-out there were sharp edges that I had to remove. I just used the smudge tool to remove the edges. The text was scribbled onto scrap paper and scanned with a greyscale to fit in with Rawiri's black 'n white face. Several other scribbles were scanned and added to increase the savageness of the image. I used the eyedropper tool to get one of the red tones from Ra's bloody face and colored some of the scribbles to make the use of red more cohesive. The '1' was coloured to make the title more readable. It's comicbook/sin city-like, which is the style I dig!

The Loop

Originally our group: Alida, both Helens and I were going cruise in my beasty machine (anthony's car) and film some sort of landscape, like a view of the sea (as seen on the storyboard below). Due to s***ty weather we decided to film the process of tea getting poured into a cup. Each person had a shot at it, we all had a few shots from different starting points to give us a good selection to muck around and experiment with. This time the group work was the easier part and the independent stuff ended up being more difficult. Usually it's the other way round for me. Thus, the end result was successful.

T-poT

Wierd, psychedelic but interesting. Watch as I pour tea into a cup that ends up empty. Is it a dream or is it real? Maybe I'm just on drugs... Enjoy!

Storyboard

Montage

Storyboard

This is my exhibition poster. It is for an exhibtion of collages titled 'Cut & Paste,' containing an old collage representing the modification process of my first guitar.

Oh So Criminal

Oh so criminal was created as a response to the Australian Government's (in particular the Attorney-General's office) "Fair Use and Other Copyright Exceptions: An examination of fair use, fair dealing and other exceptions in the Digital Age" Issues Paper, provided in May 2005. Instead of writing a wordy submission to the Government I decided to make an example of something that is currently illegal, but should be covered by 'fair use'. This is done by explicitly abusing copyright of easily referenced popular culture audio and video icons.

I'm very impressed with the creativity in this dudes protest. Usually I ignore "terms and conditions", Polices, etc, etc... I'd rather just get on with the show and do what I set out to on the net. Downloading for example: I never read the agreement or terms and conditions, I just tick the box and start downloading. I'm pretty sure a large percentage of internet uses do the same. So this "Fair use" thing is kinda new to me, after reading about it, it pretty much means that you can use copywrite material without permission and the courts decide if the downloaded or uploaded product is illegal or not.

What Keir Smith has done is used this policy against them by using copyright material and abused the hell out of the Australian Government but he's done it in a safe way; by being covered by "Fair use." So I reckon that what Keir Smith is doing is meant to be illegal but has turned it around and made it not illegal by addressing the "Fair use" concept.

12 Monkeys - Universal Studios and Lebbeus Woods

In 1987, artist Lebbeus Woods took a graphite pencil and created his vision of a chair. The chair is shown inside a large chamber with a high ceiling, mounted on a wall in front of a suspended sphere, and with a visibly jointed grid forming the floor and wall. Hence the self-descriptive title "Neomechanical Tower (Upper) Chamber".

Universal Studios released the artful film 12 Monkeys in December of 1995. Bruce Willis plays the distraught time traveler, Joe. In the beginning of the movie, Joe is brought into the interrogation room and told to sit in a chair which is attached to a vertical rail on the wall. As Joe sits in the chair, it slides up the rail, suspending Joe helplessly several yards above the floor. A sphere supported by a metal armature is suspended directly in front of Joe, probing for weaknesses as the inquisitors interrogate him. Joe is unlucky enough to return to the chair three more times throughout the movie.

The chairs are pretty much exactly the same, the copy is a dead give away. I think that they should have modified the chair or used a little more of their own creative abililties to change it if the chair was so important to the storyline of the film.

Comparing "My Sweet Lord," with "He's So Fine"

Ratings (out of 5):

Melody:4 Harmony/Chordal Structure:4 Rhythm: Tempo:2 Lyrics:2 Instruments:4

How else are the songs similar? The vocal melodys structure is very similar, for example the "I really wanna see you," (My Sweet Lord) and "I don't know how I'm gonna do it,"(He's So Fine) are sung the same. They both have similar vocal harmonies and are placed in the same parts, for example the opening verse in "My Sweet Lord," Harrison sings "my sweet lord..." and the backing singers repeat the lyrics in harmony. Opening verse "He's so fine..." yet again followed by the backing vocalists hamony "do-lang, do-lang-dolang..." the song titles are included in the beginning of both tracks as well. Strumming patterns and chord progressions are simmilar too. Length wise they're both quite short.

How are the songs different? "My Sweet Lord" is slightly slower, although it does speed up in the chorus. "My Sweet lord" has a very distinctive lead break in it and the other song doesn't. Obviously the lyrics are difrerent, I guess it would've been a dead give away if "My Sweet Lord" had the same words in it, not that the similarities were intentional anyway.

Scanned Collages

My Friend of Misery

In project drawing we are working with sounds. My selected sequence is an excerpt from the song 'My Friend of Misery'. It is a dark/melodic bassline with guitar volume swells played over the top. It is a very eerie sound, slightly ambient. I dig the sound anyway haha ha

What I Think About Computers

I reckon computers are super cool, you can do almost anything with them, almost... In saying that, they can be extremely distracting at times, especailly when you're trying to get something important done.

The Blue Oyster Gallery

Sadly, this was kinda the first time I visited the Blue Oyster gallery. Thrillingly I discovered a lot of cool art work. The cardboard boxes were interesting, hard to interperate though. It was quite a shock to experience the screaming women on the tv boxes, it looked like they were part of some some of massive attack. I thought it was kind of random to come across it but on the other hand, it was well done because it effectively freaked me out and I think it was the artists intetions. I also like it because that is the sort of effect I'd like to give my audience haha. Alissia Holzer's paintings would probably have to be my highlight of the afternoon. She had a combination of nature and industrusty in her paintings. I dug the idea of opposites within the same environment.