My Big Idea is conflict and my references include propaganda posters, photographs, and individual artists from the last century to modern day. The art I used is unbiased, it reflects both sides of a war: pain and suffering, peace and bloodshed, happiness and celebration. I find no reason in trying to portray a single meaning besides the power of humanity that is shown as the cover image of the A-bomb exploding. That picture in particular sums up the future of our earthly solitude we find so comfortable if nations act individually. The idea of this comfortable lifestyle from all our accomplishments walks hand in hand with our doom. Behind every technology brings a possible destruction. The positive uses for each development in history may come before or after destruction. In the case of the A-bomb, it came after killing thousands of people in Japan and now, we use it for nuclear energy and as deterrent by both superpowers during the cold war. My project is a warning to stop war and for nations of the world to continue making strives for world peace. It is too easy to destroy something and say sorry in the aftermath of reflection; instead, we need to continuously spread our democratic ideals to those who are oppressed through means of indirect conflict and cooperation of all free world countries. We need to find the positive, constructive uses of technology and guard against its negative applications. We need to continue supporting efforts for individual countries acting in concert of each other’s goals like the basic purpose of the United Nations. If every individual acts for themselves and not for the group, than the entire group is not benefiting as a whole. However an alternative solution is if everyone in the group does what’s best for themselves and for the group. This act for the common good may yield an alternative and second choice of each actor but with this critic, everyone wins. Sadly, this will decrease sovereignty of each country, especially America, but all will benefit and guard against the injustices of technology. This indirect conflict resolution can be achieved through artwork and is clearly stated in my piece with the image in the middle, “ MAKE ART, NOT WAR”. I find this image of a text the cornerstone of my idea because art moves people to think in alternative ways and crushes ignorant ideologies by the state, individuals and religion. Also, art should be open to critique along the same lines of ideologies because the very essence of it is someone’s interpretation of the world around them, which is not always idea right. Furthermore, one has to be careful when art or an ideology is disseminated to the public since people are very vulnerable in believing an image but not understanding the context it is being used in.
In my art piece’s raw form from the computer, it would be easily transferable as a poster in history or visual culture studies. I would not want to stop here and use it as a draft for a larger project incorporating multimedia and multi mediums. I can easily see my work in a gallery if I would use painting, silk screening, multiple textures and layers. My vision of my project is a mixture of Robert Rauschenberg’s JFK silkscreen (http://fluxlisteurope.blogspot.com/2008/05/robert-rauschenberg-died.html ) and mosaic illusion art posters (http://scienceblogs.com/omnibrain/2008/01/coolest_and_most_impressive_ar.php ). I was first introduced to these kinds of art through art classes; one being in high school computer graphic classes in which we used Mozodojo to create a picture comprised of multiple, individual images and the Rauschenberg’s silk screen in Art 200: Concepts and Issues. My art piece can be described as a collage like the image on this webpage, http://www.goodtechtips.com/how-to-make-a-collage-using-photoshop/. This website describes the steps for beginners creating a collage in using Photoshop. One of the techniques I used was spreading the main image, the A-Bomb, on a separate layer and reducing it’s opacity to become transparent, which can be explained in this tutorial: http://www.bairarteditions.com/pages/tutorials/photoshop/laymasks.html.
I hope that my art reflects my main purpose of a collective body of individual images coming together to create a single picture. This piece calls upon the viewer to use art to question the status quo, humanity as a whole and to reflect upon the motives of artist and prevalent ideologies.
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