AKA pulling apart a piece of art, with some web-weaving via inappropriate footnoting.
This entire piece is about a rapidly made Instagram reel (with high hopes of it nearing high art), along with commentary on provenance, symbols, and freely frolicking on one’s found town.1
Preface
I had fun this morning, and I hope you have fun reading this. Then, maybe below I’ll comment on what I see as meta-properties like provenance and ownership. That’s because much of what I did was made on Instagram using their tools, and now Instagram is the only place this video exists.
Reel in question
Personal context
Today’s art2 was fast and folded into my morning walk with my dog, because we both need exercise outside each day. I used the tools I had handy: my iPhone with it’s photo markup tools and the META platform called Instagram and it’s reel-making tools. Below I’m going to tell you about my creative process. Trying to serve as artist, art dilettante, and creative writer all in one post. Whew. The scene was Nature. The process was a bit happenstance, but deeply satisfying. Let me try to unravel a bit for ya3 below.
Creative Steps
So, I was at a local beach looking for a specially-shaped rock for a visual project, when I saw this one.
To me, it looked a bit like the shape of Block Island4. This rock was not the shape sought. But Block Island is kind of a “thing” around here. So, I went with it.
After that photo, I took this photo and marked it up (see also collection of #PhoneMarkupArt on Instagram). This is the not-sought rock with Block Island visible in the distance. I love drawing ‘Captain Obvious5‘ lines6 between things too.
Ooops, I almost forgot my audience
I was kind of trying to communicate to a person I respect as a creative my feelings around an outstanding invoice sent to her biz partner. In essence, that I was not taking the invoice too seriously.
So this was maybe the third photo I took this morning, using IPhone portrait-mode to highlight a lonely-strong & standing mermaid purse7, which is actually some kind of seaweed.
Block Island in the distance again.
I really like this photo all by itself.
Oops, out of order again
Actually, this one was the second image I took on the beach. The first is now the “featured image” for this WordPress8 post and visible on the home page of this avant-blog. I thought it was kind of funny and usually only like to do selfies where I
1) look gorgeous or
2) look arty and/or goofy.
I posed around the idea of ‘clutching my purse,’ a pun on my focus on money and being “proper and prissy”, while chuckling to myself about how my mom carries her purse around my house like Queen Elizabeth did inside the palace. Plus, it looks like a mustache, and I once made a 16mm film called “Concise” about a woman who wore a mustache around her neck. As I said above, I was now considering making a ‘movie’ on IG, so movies were on my mind…
Okay, distraction interlude. I stopped writing this post and got caught up in quoting myself via a PhotoShop graphic. Then I started putting a gradient overlay on this image so you could read the type better.
Then the process of moving the Photoshop radial around looked kind of movie-like in and of itself. So I taught myself video capture on this device so I could share it with you. Hey, Here!
Fun
Proof required?
Ummmm. So to make this reel, I felt I was going to need to “prove” that the rock looked like Block Island, so I copped9 then cropped this image from a CafePress sticker for sale. The cropping was purposeful. Word “lock,” and another reference that I can’t get into right now. It has something to do with teenaged girls driving their parents insane10. Hear more on that aspect in video at bottom too.
Part II – The “meta” qualities
I promised above that I’d start talking about provenance and ownership of art, but am writing hungry right now. Let me just say, I found block chain “art” like NFT’s fascinating in terms of the provenance tracking as perhaps a key part of the value.
I also find collage-as-art-form fascinating in terms of what call-backs are carried in the initial images, if any. I guess I have more questions that answers here.
For instance, if you use an image ripped out of Vanity Fair Magazine, for example, and it becomes a part of a spectacular piece of collage, mosaic, or assemblage, does Vanity Fair partly own it? I’d say Nooooo, not if the new work stands on it’s own as something unique.
But who’s to judge? Sounds like Congress, Copyright Law and “Fair Use.”11
As far as provenance goes, the sequence of owners of a given work is also valuable as well. That is, if you buy a work – that looks like crap- that once belonged to say, Napoleon, it has value for that ownership alone, right?
I’m not asking you, sorry. I’m defining my own set of collage and provenance guidelines so I can feel good about any work I sell. That I’m properly thanking all the amazing creative people who inspire me, or provide the sticky sandpaper that wipes my artist’s heart bare.
- My ‘home town’ was a different island*within Rhode Island (which is not an island). Pretty, pretty lucky, I am. ↩︎
- I was at one time a working visual artist and filmmaker. Here are some old creds. I’m just now picking up this thread again, because marketing work has me a bit down. ↩︎
- YA. I love this because means “you” and also YA like “young adult.” Since I feel like I’m 17 most of the time, this is apropos. ↩︎
- Another Google Earth footnote. So prepare for a slow load if you click this. ↩︎
- Who says overstating isn’t fun? See Wikipedia entry here. Related words are apparently the French lapalissade and Italian truismo. ↩︎
- Another post with a line-drawing of this kind, the post having been inspired by Boyd Varty. ↩︎
- Learn more about mermaid purses here. ↩︎
- I am so appreciative to Matt Mullenweg and WordPress for helping me earn some money as a web designer so I could pay my bills for years. Open Source is really awesome. Thank you Matt. ↩︎
- Copped from CafePress. Thanks BI sticker-maker, I removed over 40% of your design using Phone Markup Tools. I hope you don’t mind I added it in without seeking permission. ↩︎
- David Bowie has felt a bit like a muse for me lately, or at least a space-loving pal. So here is a video so I can fulfill my Silly Pop Culture References Category which I am about to check off.
↩︎ - This is a comprehensive legal article about Fair Use, Compilation Works, Collage and Moral Rights among other things. Thank you to author Virginia Augello who put it together. ↩︎
