The Boston Marathon Bombing was terrible and I hope they find the ones responsible as soon as possible. On that note, PetaPixel reported that Reddit and 4chan users are working to identify the Boston Bomber/s using any and all available photos. The police, FBI and other law enforcements have pleaded to the public to submit any photos taken from the marathon, before and after the bombings, so they can scour the pictures for any suspicious people. Because of this, they already have found two questionable people who they would like to interview.
This is great that the public can help with the investigation but like the title of this post states, it is a double edge sword. Reddit and 4chan users are collaborating to find any suspect from all pictures submitted online. This is a great idea for sharing ideas and opinions but it is also awful for sharing false evidence. This tactic ends up being a witch hunt and many innocent people will become a victim like the main character of The Scarlett Letter. One poster from the Reddit website wanted to remind people about Richard Jewell, who was wrongfully ousted as a suspect of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing. Richard Jewell's life was ruined because of the false accusations by the media. With the help of the internet and forums like Reddit and 4chan, internet users might as well be part of the media and the same mistakes can happen for an innocent bystander who was photographed with a black backpack. This marriage of technology, art, and media (polygamous marriage?) has shot people into 15 minutes of successful fame like Carly Rae Jepsen (the Call me Maybe singer) or everlasting unwanted notoriety like Epic Boobs Girl (eventually EBG came around and accepted her internet fame).
So if Reddit and 4chan users do help find the suspect/s, they most likely ruined tens, if not hundreds, of lives along the way for falsely accusing innocent bystanders. It's great to be socially active, online or outside, but like many things in life, there are appropriate venues for certain types of activities. Leave the investigation to the pros, help out the law enforcement, don't impede it.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Monday, April 15, 2013
Catnap433
So my performance art project consist of me taking a short nap. If Tilda Swinton can sleep in a glass case and Marina Abramovic can sit and stare at her audience and can call it performance art than my project is in the same vain. My piece is called Catnap433 because I take a short on and off nap for 10 minutes at exactly 4:33pm Pacific Standard time. This performance was taken at the Columbia Center Mall in Kennewick, WA. I hardly ever get enough sleep because I am kept busy with full time employment, full time parent/husband, and full time student so I'm always tired. Once in a while I doze off during the day for a few minutes. Cats are known to take a quick nap, wake up and then go back to sleeping for a block of 5-20 minutes and my behavior in the mall reflects that. I had my wife video record me while I was resting on the chair in front of a busy crowd of shoppers and patrons.
The reason I had my wife record me while I was asleep was to have visual evidence that the world does not stop for me or anyone else. The world continues to live on even when I close my eyes, feeling like I faded away into absence. As you can see, many shoppers, walkers, chatters, and so on kept on doing their business while I had no care in the world. Along with that, I sense that it was the same in other parts of the city, state, nation, and world. My video is juxtaposed with pictures, news clips, and videos of what happened throughout the world during my 10 minute nap. I have visual evidence of exactly where I was and what I was doing when North Korea threatened the safety of foreign embassies, President Obama apologizing for an inappropriate remark, Jay-Z visiting Cuba, and Sergey Brin driving around in a pink Batmobile. The performance displays the insignificance of my actions and others as well. The actions only matter to the people affected. The juxtaposed videos may show my sloth behavior but the other people's actions did not directly affect me either. The audience can interpret all the cues of human behavior through this piece but in essence, I may have taken a cat nap but the world never sleeps.
Catnap433 from Ken DelaCruz on Vimeo.
The reason I had my wife record me while I was asleep was to have visual evidence that the world does not stop for me or anyone else. The world continues to live on even when I close my eyes, feeling like I faded away into absence. As you can see, many shoppers, walkers, chatters, and so on kept on doing their business while I had no care in the world. Along with that, I sense that it was the same in other parts of the city, state, nation, and world. My video is juxtaposed with pictures, news clips, and videos of what happened throughout the world during my 10 minute nap. I have visual evidence of exactly where I was and what I was doing when North Korea threatened the safety of foreign embassies, President Obama apologizing for an inappropriate remark, Jay-Z visiting Cuba, and Sergey Brin driving around in a pink Batmobile. The performance displays the insignificance of my actions and others as well. The actions only matter to the people affected. The juxtaposed videos may show my sloth behavior but the other people's actions did not directly affect me either. The audience can interpret all the cues of human behavior through this piece but in essence, I may have taken a cat nap but the world never sleeps.
Catnap433 from Ken DelaCruz on Vimeo.
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
International Internet Memes
I love memes. They are hee-larry--yous. My favorite ones lately is
Condescending Willy Wonka,
Scumbag Steve
and Disappointed Asian Dad.
I find memes as a mixture of art and technology. There is an art to create a memorable meme. It pertains to photo, video, and audio editing. It uses the internet as a medium. Memes are and if not, should, fall into the genre of net art.
What I thought was an American culture is actually something that crosses the oceans and country boundaries. Most of these foreign memes are as creative, memorable, and funny as American memes. Here's a link to Mental Floss's collection of current internet memes. I really find the Pantyhose Canines funny.
Lately some of these overseas memes has crossed over to us. The Harlem Shake, where people start out mellow for the first 15 seconds, go nuts in the last 15 seconds, started in Norway and this cute one that started in Korea, called Kiyomi Gwiyomi, stars lots of cute asian girls doing a hand choreographed dance.
Condescending Willy Wonka,
Scumbag Steve
and Disappointed Asian Dad.
I find memes as a mixture of art and technology. There is an art to create a memorable meme. It pertains to photo, video, and audio editing. It uses the internet as a medium. Memes are and if not, should, fall into the genre of net art.
What I thought was an American culture is actually something that crosses the oceans and country boundaries. Most of these foreign memes are as creative, memorable, and funny as American memes. Here's a link to Mental Floss's collection of current internet memes. I really find the Pantyhose Canines funny.
Lately some of these overseas memes has crossed over to us. The Harlem Shake, where people start out mellow for the first 15 seconds, go nuts in the last 15 seconds, started in Norway and this cute one that started in Korea, called Kiyomi Gwiyomi, stars lots of cute asian girls doing a hand choreographed dance.
Thicke Blurred Line
A few days ago, Youtube banned a video from crooner Robin Thicke (who by the way is the son of Alan Thicke, the father figure in the 80's/90's family sitcom Growing Pains). Gizmodo reported the decision by Youtube in this article. In the video, it has the crooner himself and two well know hip hop artists, T.I. and Pharell, singing and dancing with 3 topless and panty clad women. Youtube had the video on their website for less than a week until it decided it was considered porn. In the article, it states the policies and procedures of how Youtube deems a video not suitable for the site. It cites other videos that were banned under their rules. I have no opinion on Youtube's decision but I do feel the internet is a Wild West scenario where anything goes and this includes Youtube but the website has a responsibility to deem what is appropriate for its audiences. These artists know what they are doing. I feel they always hide behind the definition of art so they can stay trendy and controversial which ends up in publicity and increase sales. They play innocent and cite freedom of speech and artistic integrity but they are put in a position where they can decide what is morally right. SpiderMan's Uncle Ben said with great power comes great responsibility. The artists and all involve have that power but are they being responsible?
It is funny to me how easily accessible adult material is nowadays, especially pornographic material. Growing up, you either had to sneak or steal a magazine or video from an older brother or friend or watch blurred out porn. Now, it's just a quick search on the internet. I'm not a prude and I am glad the censorship is progressing to being more open but at the same time there is a time and a place for these things, not just nudity but violence, foul language, sex, etc.
What I find ironic is the title of Robin Thicke's song blurred line because when things are censored, blurring lines is what is used to censor things. Don't get me wrong, I'm usually on the side of art but artist needs to stopped being douchebags about their materials. Robing Thicke needs to be honest and state, he just wanted some naked ladies dancing around cause it would look cool and controversial. I dig the video and the song. Heres a link to the video. Here are a few more examples of music videos with nudity but I feel they have more artistic integrity: Asap Rocky and Killer Mike.
*All three songs are catchy and are on my playlists.
It is funny to me how easily accessible adult material is nowadays, especially pornographic material. Growing up, you either had to sneak or steal a magazine or video from an older brother or friend or watch blurred out porn. Now, it's just a quick search on the internet. I'm not a prude and I am glad the censorship is progressing to being more open but at the same time there is a time and a place for these things, not just nudity but violence, foul language, sex, etc.
What I find ironic is the title of Robin Thicke's song blurred line because when things are censored, blurring lines is what is used to censor things. Don't get me wrong, I'm usually on the side of art but artist needs to stopped being douchebags about their materials. Robing Thicke needs to be honest and state, he just wanted some naked ladies dancing around cause it would look cool and controversial. I dig the video and the song. Heres a link to the video. Here are a few more examples of music videos with nudity but I feel they have more artistic integrity: Asap Rocky and Killer Mike.
*All three songs are catchy and are on my playlists.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Reference to Alice Loc
Alice Loc in our DTC class did a project a few weeks ago discussing the stereotypes of Americans for each state by Americans. It was a great insight of the inner prejudice in every American. This website, displaying projects by Yanko Tsvetkov, takes the same idea by Alice and does a global spin to it. Yanko designed maps of other countries with American views of each country in mind. This is the whole world according to Americans:
This project is pretty truthful in my opinion. I've been to many countries all over the world thanks to my travels with the US Navy but in every new country I visit, the only thing I knew about the country were things I heard about through bias opinions or stereotypes. For example, I've been to Perth, Australia and all I knew about Aussies were they have a lot of koalas and kangaroos. I even purposely went out to eat a kangaroo steak but I enjoyed my time in Perth, one of the best places I have ever visited because they have a colonial looking city like Boston or Philadelphia but with a great beach like California.
My visits to Tokyo, Japan were bias because of all the ninja movies and anime I've watched. Now, I wish I could live there. It is my goal to find a overseas job in Japan because I've visited it so often that I am enamored with its culture and history and food (other than sushi and teriyaki). I've also heard many bad things about Thailand and it's sex industry. Yes, they do have a sex industry but it is not what defines them. If that's what defines Thailand, then Americans are nothing but scary gun owners (which isn't true). Thailand is known as "The Land of Smiles" and it is very true. Thai people are wonderful and modest and Thailand has great places to visit and sightsee. For me, it was breathtaking to visit Thailand.
All in all, Yanko hit on target about the stereotypes of all the countries including American views of themselves. The only way to overcome these stereotypes is to actually go out and get to know the people around the world in your neighborhood or school or better yet, go out and travel. If not, you'll just perpetuate the views of Americans by the rest of the world.
This project is pretty truthful in my opinion. I've been to many countries all over the world thanks to my travels with the US Navy but in every new country I visit, the only thing I knew about the country were things I heard about through bias opinions or stereotypes. For example, I've been to Perth, Australia and all I knew about Aussies were they have a lot of koalas and kangaroos. I even purposely went out to eat a kangaroo steak but I enjoyed my time in Perth, one of the best places I have ever visited because they have a colonial looking city like Boston or Philadelphia but with a great beach like California.
My visits to Tokyo, Japan were bias because of all the ninja movies and anime I've watched. Now, I wish I could live there. It is my goal to find a overseas job in Japan because I've visited it so often that I am enamored with its culture and history and food (other than sushi and teriyaki). I've also heard many bad things about Thailand and it's sex industry. Yes, they do have a sex industry but it is not what defines them. If that's what defines Thailand, then Americans are nothing but scary gun owners (which isn't true). Thailand is known as "The Land of Smiles" and it is very true. Thai people are wonderful and modest and Thailand has great places to visit and sightsee. For me, it was breathtaking to visit Thailand.
All in all, Yanko hit on target about the stereotypes of all the countries including American views of themselves. The only way to overcome these stereotypes is to actually go out and get to know the people around the world in your neighborhood or school or better yet, go out and travel. If not, you'll just perpetuate the views of Americans by the rest of the world.
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