Portfolio for school

Portfolio Presentation

View more OpenOffice presentations from tclord.

This is the portfolio I submitted for approval into the BVA.

Wafaa Bilal

Iraqi born artist Wafaa Bilal has exhibited his art world wide, and traveled and lectured extensively to inform audiences of the situation of the Iraqi people, and the importance of peaceful conflict resolution. Bilal's 2007 dynamic installation Domestic Tension placed him on the receiving end of a paintball gun that was accessible online to a worldwide audience, 24 hours a day. Newsweek called the project “breathtaking” and the Chicago Tribune called the month-long piece "one of the sharpest works of political art to be seen in a long time," and named Bilal its 2007 Artist of the Year. Bilal has exhibited worldwide including in Baghdad, the Netherlands, Thailand and Croatia; as well as at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the Milwaukee Art Museum and various other US galleries. His residencies have included Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, California; Catwalk in New York; and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In fall 2008 City Lights published “Shoot an Iraqi: Life, Art and Resistance Under the Gun,” about Bilal’s life and the Domestic Tension project.

http://wafaabilal.com

The Yes Men

The Yes Men are a group of culture jamming activists who practice what they call "identity correction" by pretending to be powerful people and spokespersons for prominent organizations. They create and maintain fake websites similar to ones they want to spoof, and then they accept invitations received on their websites to appear at conferences and TV shows. The Yes Mens most famous work was rebuilding the World Trade Organisation website and linking it on http://www.gatt.org/ (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade). The fake site began to receive real emails from confused visitors, including invitations to address various elite groups on behalf of the WTO, to which they responded as if they were the actual WTO.

Poladroid demo vid.

This is a demo video showing you how easy it is to use the free software of Poladroid. It is one of the easiest programmes as it involves just simply drag and drop. Once you drag your chosen image onto the camera it then processes the image. At any time during the colour transformation you can request a preview which is handy as sometimes an unfinished image can look just as if not more effective.

Free Software

Free software is simply software that doesn't cost you anything. This can be software legally downloaded from the Internet. Some examples of free software is Blogger which I am using now to blog to the world and gives me a free online presence. Another example is Gimp which is image editing software which can be used as effectively as Adobe Photoshop. Blender is also free software that is used for 3D animation and Audacity is handy if you want to quickly edit any audio file. In April I discovered Poladroid which is free software that converts any image by cropping and adjusting colour levels to replicate a Polaroid image. It is quite a novelty but still fun, here are a few images of mine that I used Poladroid on.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 New Zealand License.

5 digital items I can't live without

Mobile phone

Mp3 Player

Printer/Scanner combo

Digital Camera

Computer

Summer Holiday

Just a short video of images I took over the summer holidays with my fisheye2 camera. It was made with windows movie maker and the music is One by Shapeshifter.

New online presence!

I've created my new blog and the address is www.thomatschool.wordpress.com. This is where I'll update what I'm up to in other subjects. I've just posted a few life drawings and a collage. Hopefully this will be updated regularly weekly.

Why make an online presence?

Why make an online presence? One way I would like to eventually make an online presence is by creating a website with my portfolio on it. At the moment I am planning to make another blog which will act as a workbook for the entire period of my degree. I will update this at least weekly with updates and finished work from throughout my classes. This will be beneficial for me as it will show where I'm at and if I change directions at any stage during the course. It will also be useful for anyone else that wants to check out my progress and what I'm currently up to. I guess in a way you would call it a student portfolio.
I believe a blog is the best option for me at the present as it is almost like a diary and while I'm getting a taste in every subject it'll be good to see the progress on one feed. As I produce more work and head toward more defined directions I will then start looking at possibly making a website.
Another way I could create an online presence is by advertising my proposed website or blog on other appropriate sites. This will help in getting my name out there and what I'm all about.

Image from scanner

This is an image I scanned earlier this year in Dig Lit. It was part of my photography assignment which was to produce a series of images with the theme " A sense of place". I took this image down at Pounawea in the Catlins where half my family originate from. I used a prism filter to split up the composition a little and make the horizon line more interesting.

This is a legal image I downloaded off Flickr. It falls under the Non-commercial attribution. This licence allows me to remix, tweak and build upon this work non-commercially. I must acknowledge the artist and I've done this by saving the authors Flickr name and title of the image as the file name. I have also copied the URL address in the properties of the file under comments.

Case Study 3: Keir Smith

Oh So Criminal is a piece of work created in response to the Australian governments "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. Do I believe this work is illegal? Yes of course I do especially the use of audio within it, with every sample very recognizable I don't think the original artists would really appreciate this that much. Should it be legal? Yes, if Smith takes the time and patience to get permission from every single artist, musician and company that has been used in this work.

Case study 2: 12 Monkeys and Lebbeus Woods

This is an easy one. There is no doubt in my mind that the chair used in the movie 12 Monkeys is based on the 1987 pencil sketch by Lebbeus Woods. The fact that Terry Gilliam the director of the movie had reviewed a copy of the book which contained the drawing reinforces my opinion.
He would have saved alot of money if he had discussed the chair further with his production designer and made some more obvious differences.

George Harrison and The Chiffons

In the case of George Harrison and The Chiffons I believe there are some obvious similarities between the songs e.g the structure, tempo and the melody. The Lyrics are quite different and in my opinion makes "My Sweet Lord" a completely different song. On a website about this case it states that the court acknowledges the fact that Harrison may have unconsciously copied the tune. So in my opinion I believe that Harrison should have won as he had no idea that he was breaching any copyright.

Blog and News Reader

Well today in week 7 of Digital Literacy we learned how to set up a blog and also a news reader. The news reader i've set up was through Bloglines.com. I've added a few blogs to my news reader today which include Rachels DiscussPhotography blog and photoforum-nz.org. I added these two as I'm interested in photography and also keen to see what Rachel has been following and discussing lately. I added a few news blogs from the BBC website and Rolling Stone Magazine along with the blog from endemicworld.com which is a NZ design site that also has links to photography and other art blogs.