This brief was very interesting to me, because until i was given this project I always thought stealing was bad, but now I can see that there is so much more to altering a image to create a different image with different meanings. When I started research on this project I thought about where have I seen the most image recreation and altering of pictures to have new meanings. The internet is full of many wild sites which allow you to alter images to create a joke or message, most commonly known as a ‘meme’. The internet have millions of these sites which allow the user to create or view these images with a click of a button, websites such as:
– https://imgflip.com/memegenerator
– http://imgur.com/
– http://www.memes.com/
So once I found these sorts of images, I decided to have a go and to create my own parody images, in order to create laughter from such images that would usually be taken seriously. This was just at an armature level, the time and effort can be seen in the pictures, since they were designed to have a quick laugh and then nothing more, there are no deeper meanings to these images other then there face values.
When these were showed in class there was laughter, but that is the moment I knew that these images I created were of a very low quality in regards to this project. I then continued to think in order to revitalise my idea, so i went around the web searching for a method of recreating a image or object to a higher quality, this brought me to these images, both of which set on recreating famous art pieces in order to make pop culture references on today’s society.
After this research on appropriation I had a much better view of this topic as a whole, since I viewed appropriation from both a professional and armatures standpoint. To gain an even better understanding i decided to look at some work that was at such a professional standard that I was imminently drawn to it and it gave me a wider view of this subject. The work shown is of Salvador Dalí, more specifically this piece titled ‘Lobster Telephone’
I see this piece as being comedic but also can be seen as a artistic view of using two objects out of place to make one new image with new meanings. This notion of being able to make something incredible out of already defined images defiantly influenced my final images, since when I decided to create my own images they consisted of taking a image and placing it in a environment which would create new meaning to the overall image.
Final Images
My final images did turn out successful, i mean they were not as great as i would like, but honestly i am no Photoshop wizard, so i had to keep my ideas simple, so i thought, what could be more simple then recreating images that people already had a strong connection to, therefore changing them in any fashion would have a big impact on the viewer. My images were displaying that when we look at a famous image we automatically associate it with a famous event in history, so one simple change to this picture can totally contextualise it.
In conclusion to this project I have learnt so much about this practice of art, and how it can come in many different forms, how you can use somebody’s image in order to create a different image which overall makes something totally different , which can be appreciated on a different level. From knowing nothing about this subject to then having a wide range of knowledge, i would say i have developed my knowledge of the photographic world and industry.