Lecture 5/Class Exercise 3

Mid-term break is over! Lecture 5 was about digital collages and photomontages, which were very very interesting concepts because each artwork really tests the viewer's eye for detail. Jing spoke about how these digital collages and photomontages challenge the viewer's visual perceptions because, often, people take things they see for granted. Digital collages and photomontages therefore alters these perceptions by co-existing things within an artwork that do not seem to be connected in "real life". This idea of altering people's perception seems to be what I was aiming for in my previous assignment (Assignment 1), just that I chose to achieve this through jarring colours.

The main difference between digital collages and photomontages is that digital collages leave the edges rough and show distinct boundaries between objects that do not seem to relate to one another. On the other hand, photomontages seek to smoothen out the edges, blending the images into a seemingly coherent piece of work. Besides challenging people's perceptions, digital collages and photomontages also seek to address certain issues, be it within society or not.

Jing then showed us many examples of photomontages and digital collages, speaking about Dadaism and Surrealism in the process. Assignment 3 was also handed out, which involved creating either a digital collage or photomontage with the theme "Urban Fantasy". Checking out the meaning of "Urban Fantasy" online gave me a better understanding of what can be done. Basically it involves a work that is located in an urban setting and has aspects of fantasy in it. These works usually addresses psychological aspects of people, like some deep set insecurity of some sort, for example. This ideas made me relate to Inception, where buildings in people's subconscious were altered according to their emotions and such. I could delve deeper into such a concept for Assignment 3.

But before that, Jing also gave us class exercise 3 to do, where we had to look for a photomontage or digital collage online and comment on it. After looking for some time, I found this:

The artist of this piece was not specifically mentioned, but the names Corey Eiseman and Gustavo Romano were mentioned. It is said that this work is like a Blog, where the digital collage is consistently reworked, and everyday the "previous entry" is used as the starting point. The work is consistently updated, like a documentation of current issues and other things. Since it is like a documentation, news from the media can be seen within the artwork. Of course, the artist(s) could be trying to question the value and concept of Art by putting in the text "IS IT ART?" and "OR IS IT SPAM?". Perhaps what the artist is trying to say is that, Art is starting to lose its value, where everything can be made and made to be like Art. In the process, the "purity" of Art is lost, making it become like "spam". Can this digital collage be considered as Art, then? But then, maybe the artist is just trying to fool the eye with these texts; maybe the texts were just placed there, not intended to be read and comprehended at face value?