getty

If you didn't know, Gettyimages is a great place for stock photos. You can type in something like "woman saving cat stuck in tree" and the turnout is pretty spot-on, no matter how specific you are. Also, the way the site's designed--mostly as a browser for companies and corporations to easily find and buy an image--is some insight to our own project about ideas of authorship, copyright, etc.

good luck on projects

http://www.gettyimages.com/Home.aspx

Let's try to never be on this site

http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/

Seeing other people's mistakes reminds me of things to check for myself in my work. Plus, it's fun to have these pointed out, since it reminds us that all of these images have, in fact, been photoshopped extensively, and what to look out for in a professional piece.

Photomontage

I found this slightly hokey website about cut and paste when I was trying to find a particular piece by John Heartfield. It has some basic history and some good photomontage examples to look at, if you're interested

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/davepalmer/cutandpaste/hillen_big2.html#

Appropriation and Authorship

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherrie_Levine

Sherrie Levine is a pretty cool artist who dealt with notions of authorship.

Check it out.

Crash

William Gibson, in his interview, was critical of the post-human state our society has come to today. However, he didn’t advocate fighting against it or returning to more simple, idyllic times. His tone was one of sad acceptance of post-humanity as the result of a distinctly “human” impulse—to create new, faster technology to supposedly better our lifestyles. One element of the film that I think reinforces his tone of critical acceptance is the setting. Gibson, the interviewer, and the filmmaker are all in a car that remains in motion, passing everyday moderately decrepit semi-urban landscapes. Such a choice of layout only seems natural in light of J. G. Ballard’s apparent influence on Gibson. While I was watching the film, Ballard’s novel Crash came to mind (I can’t remember whether Gibson mentions the novel explicitly or not). Crash chronicles the exploits of two men’s pursuit of sexual fantasies through engaging in and reproducing car crash scenarios. Throughout the novel it is clear that commonplace sexual practices cease to interest the characters. The only way they can achieve full gratification is through the mediation of their own sexualities through the car. In a way, the car becomes their own post-human prosthesis, an extension of their sexual beings. They spend much of the novel merely driving around, playing voyeur to the world inside this man-created machine that has taken over their sexual identities. I can see how this would greatly influence Gibson’s idea that digital technologies mediate our interactions with the world. Engaging with the world either from behind the wheel of a car or behind a computer screen both have results of alienation from humanity albeit perceived connection. Ultimately the artistic choice to hold the interview in a moving vehicle, conveys the impossibility of escaping a mediated interaction.

Post Human

I thought our discussion about post-humanism as a a process rather than a binary state was very interesting. Is there a point though, when post-humanism will terminate? Is there a point at which humans will be so driven by technology that they are no longer human?