Final Project: Artist Statement

Since our group’s project was the Visual Analysis option, and the historical event we decided to use was over 150 years ago and during a war, there is little to no photographs from that time. Paintings take time and are used in war to depict it in a way that benefits the organization behind the making of the painting. As such, for the final project there is little ‘found’ footage included and no real way to have ‘original’ footage without flying across the country.

When creating the archive for this class, I ran into some trouble with photobucket a few times. A number of files seemed to have trouble being uploaded, but I eventually managed to get them all up. A few of the images I had taken on the Loyola tour were ‘lost’ as I obtained them, and I’m not sure where they are. Regardless, I had managed to put together a good power point presentation with it, and even converted it into a movie file later. Ran into some problems with the ‘Ken Burns’ effect not turning off when clearly disabled, but I can live with it. I’ve noticed a lot of trouble when trying to create sub-folders to organize the jumbled list of files, since it asks for further specification of authorized individuals. So I just kept it as a list since I barely managed to get the authorization right the first time in class.

As for what I learned during the making of the final project, it is that there are numerous ways in which one can interpret an image. Though not all interpretations of the image will be correct, they are in fact ‘valid realities’ derived from the experiences and senses (usually sight) of the viewer. While the creator of the image knows the ‘truth’ (the intended connotations) behind the image, they must be aware of the existence of the ripple of ‘valid realities’ their image will create. Additionally, the viewer must be aware that their ‘valid reality’ may not be the ‘truth’ behind the image, but merely an ‘illusion’. The viewer must not thrust their ‘reality’ out as the ‘truth’ of the creator.

An example would be like when Star Wars: Attack of the Clones was released. I remember hearing things about the 'fact' that because the clones appeared to be ‘latino’, that Lucas was commenting on the migrant worker issue. We can’t know if this was George Lucas’ intention, but the viewers derived a ‘valid reality’ based on what they saw. This would have been fine if they hadn’t proclaimed that to have been the original intention of George Lucas. They assumed that their interpretation was the ‘truth’. I hope that makes it easier to understand...