Sunday, October 21, 2012

Collage: Digital vs. Traditional


I feel that I create to extremely different ends when collaging digitally verses traditionally. Digitally I’m very heavy on the visual esthetic of the image, normally playing with error and other corruption based manipulation techniques. (I have a little series I keep called degradation) while traditional media I tend to work to some specific end, where there is some story or reason to what is created. Simply put, digitally I’m working towards a more dada and modernism look and feel (its shapes relationships and colors), verses traditional is more story driven, where what it means is more important than what it looks like.

Despite this there are some similarities in how I work. Both digital and traditional means of collaging are products of the process. While I may have an idea of what I want to do, the end result is highly dependent on what unexpected discoveries are made when working towards that desire. (I am a huge fan of glitches in things, they reveal so much about how things work)

Specifically to the appropriation assignment that this entry is a derivative of, I found it rather difficult getting started. I’m used to having a plethora of media sources on hand or easily accessible. With the advent of the internet we have limitless supply of sources, so if we ever ended up wanting a new one or more it was only a click away. However for this assignment the limitation of the singular source video, particularly one that’s as old as my grandparents, was quite limiting. (Copyright law makes it imposable to get stuff that is newer legally I’m assuming) Thankfully I did get some ideas after a bit of time that were all derivations of other collaging techniques I’ve seen across the internet. However, untimely what has resulted in the finale form of the project is far from anything I had originally conceived.

3 comments:

  1. It's interesting that you feel working physically is driven by reason. I happen to feel that opposite! When I work digitally, I find that I must have a reason or story behind my work to keep me organized. It is much more of an organic process when I work digitally. I think it is interesting that you enjoy the glitches, error, and corruption the digital realm creates. It drives me crazy! I can fine tune when working physically, but I come across many issues digitally that I can't fix or fine tune.

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  2. I like the idea of dada art being used in the appropriation video assignment. I think i mentioned that in my blog too. When it came to appropriating this video i think most of class used a dada concept. Throwing stuff together and working off of our mistakes. I do feel that yours used this idea much more than others. When it came to the paper collage it was almost the same but I think the difference is it had a much more structured idea behind it when we first got started.

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  3. Andrew, I was very impressed with your project. It had a very different feel from the original work. I enjoyed the dark, slow motion of the clips. The manipulation and strobe-like effects were interesting. I felt that the start of your video was most successful. Many things came to mind, such as memories, war, and history.

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