Homework for Tuesday, 10/15

For Tuesday's class, come prepared with a sketch for your idea for the "fair use" project. You will have one class period to work on it. The finished project will be due a week from today, at the beginning of class.

Please keep your source images as well as our finished image, so we will more clearly be able to evaluate whether you have a possible case for "fair use" of those source images. Remember, in class you will present your image, and make your case that your image is a legally protected image; the class will act as the "prosecution," making the argument that your image is not protected by "fair use,' and is in fact in breach of copyright law.

You need to be prepared with a written statement of roughly a page in length, outlining your legal "fair use" defense. What elements of your work correspond to the protections of fair use, and how can you back that up with an argument focusing on your intentions and the evidence of what's there in your work? For instance, you might think of your work as a "parody," but what is the actual satirical comment you're making with the work, and how is that commentary supported by the images and the way they're used?

The intended venue of the work could have a strong bearing on whether your work is "protected" or not -- so please explain if the artwork is intended to be shown on a T-Shirt, in a gallery, on a billboard, or what have you.

If you want to refresh yourself on some copyright info, there are free digital versions of the Duke Copyright Fair Use comic here:

http://www.law.duke.edu/cspd/comics/digital.php

Fair use can be invoked for the following reasons:

To report on news
To make a parody
To copy for class
To criticize
To quote for scholarly purposes
For research

And these are the "four guidelines" for fair use:

1. The Transformative Factor: The Purpose and Character of Your Use

2. The Nature of the Copyrighted Work

3. The Amount and Substantiality of the Portion Taken

4. The Effect of the Use Upon the Potential Market

More detailed info here:
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-b.html

And here are a couple articles on the recent Richard Prince case – since he won the case, it might be useful to use some of the language in the case to defend your own position:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/arts/design/appeals-court-ruling-favors-richard-prince-in-copyright-case.html?_r=0

http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/news/richard-prince-wins-major-victory-in-landmark-copyright-suit/

Midterm Files

For the midterm, I'm collecting the following projects. Please bring all your projects to date to class. You should give them filenames like this:

"(2-digit project number)-(your last name)-(project title).fileextension"

So if your name is Jane Smith, and the project was the self portrait, you would name the file:

01-smith-selfportrait.jpg

If you have more than one image for the project, append letters (A,B, C):

01-smith-selfportrait-A.jpg
01-smith-selfportrait-B.jpg

All the files should be flattened files.

And here are the project titles I'd like you to use.

1. Digital self-portrait, from three scans:

01-lastname-selfportrait

2. Text/image combo project (at least two versions)

02-lastname-textimage-A
02-lastname-textimage-B

3. The response to the collage artist

03-lastname-collageresponse

4. The "composite" project (something small made large, or something large made small)

04-lastname-composite

5. The "fake news" project

05-lastname-fakenews


In a folder called "Writing," you should have:

1. A short reaction to "To Thine Own Selves Be True."

01-lastname-selves

2. A three-page response paper to a collage artist.

02-lastname-collagepaper

Assignment for Tuesday, 10/7

The next assignment is to create a picture that will have four (or more) images of yourself in one single environment. Put another way, it'll be a picture of some space -- a room, landscape, whatever -- in which there are at least four images of you, realistically inhabiting the space. There should also be some overlapping among at least two of the "yous."

Part of this assignment is technical - thinking of how you are going to best execute your idea, making sure the lighting works in the way you want it to, making sure you've staged the scene in a way that works, utilizing a tripod perhaps in stabilizng your multiple shots. The other part of the assignment is creative -- thinking through what the realtionship between your four (or more) selves might be, and what their relationship to the environment might be. It will be relatively easy to just position yourself in a room in four different poses, and just piece the four photos together. But there should be some sort of drama that is expressed in the picture.

You can dress in different costume for your four or more selves, so that the multiple yous are multiple characters. Or you could take the multiple yous as different expressions of the same central personality. Is one version of you the ego, and the other the id? Is one a voice undermining you, and is another a contrary voice of optimism and hope? What are the different faces of your personality, and what sorts of relationships or conflicts do they have with one another? How could those relationships/conflicts be expressed through action, through expression, through gesture?

This doesn't have to be heavy at all -- you can have a comical take on the problem -- but the bottom line is that there should be some psychological relationship betwen the multiple "characters." It doesn't have to be obvious or over-the-top -- in fact, part of what made Mickey's image interesting was that there was a degree of ambiguity to the relationships, which invited the viewers to try and figure out what was going on. So it doesn't have to be "spelled out" -- but it does have to be there, somewhere.

You'll need to have your photos taken before next class -- which wil be a work period for combining the photos. It might be a good strategy to pair with someone else in class; it'll be a good way of covering people who don't have access to a digital camera, and it will be far easier to compose and shoot yourself properly with someone other than you taking the pictures. We will eventually be making prints of these images, so make sure you take the photos at print resolution.

For Thursday, Oct. 3: Tutorial Presentation

On Thursday (10/3), you should be prepared to give the class a photoshop tutorial, on any topic or effect you'd like to research. Google something you'd like to learn, or click around in the links on the "my blog list" column on the righthand side of this page (there are lots of good tutorials on those blogs). Remember, step yourself through it BEFORE you come to class, to make sure you understand all the steps, and have all the materials you need. You should be able to make your demonstration in about ten minutes.

Post a link or a one-sentence description of the tutorial you'd like to do in the "comments" to this blog post, including an indication of whether you're in the morning or afternoon section, checking to make sure no one else in your section has picked the same tutorial before you.

We'll also be looking at your "fake news" photos on Thursday.