Author: trp297

Written by Joy Garnett and Susan Meiselas, “On the Rights of Molotov Man”, explores the issue regarding plagiarism through art. Throughout the article, the authors are aiming to raise the questions of such, “who owns the rights to this man’s struggle?” (55). This man’s struggle is referring to the controversies on the extent to which an artist have the right to control their work to who and how can comment. 

The article starts out with the progression of Joy’s beautiful artwork of the Molotov man. Her painting was created based upon an image on the internet that inspired her.  However, she did not acknowledge the picture’s credit and was called in by Susan Meiselas’ lawyer. Meanwhile, Joy was caught in the long process of negotiation of the image permission, Joy’s painting went viral through the Internet. More and more people start to create an appropriation and thus the real meaning behind this image had vanished and was taken away. Susan supports that “the image has been subjected to many kinds of reappropriations, most of which, far from condemning, I have welcomed” (57). 

Since I used to learn art in high school and did much analysis of artworks. I know that just a little bit of similarities should be acknowledged. No matter where the image is from, you should give credit to it. Even if you were inspired by someone, you should also document it down. I feel like what Joy did was wrong as she is taking another person’s work for granted, plus she changed the intention behind it. However, it seems that it Internet really made this whole process of appropriation or plagiarism available. This is because everyone has access to it. For instance, as an artist myself, I sometimes draw images from the internet. It is very hard to acknowledge everything we use. The artist herself sees the images as very different and that we are not ruining or effecting anything but actually it might be changing many things that weren’t meant to be. Therefore, it is very important to acknowledge what we have done by giving credits and thus consider the effects it has on everyone. 

I never listen to podcasts and audio. When I first got the assignment, I assumed that we are going to watch a video and pay attention to the audio they used. However, I never thought that we are going to listen to purely audios, without visual. When I noticed that, I was really surprised.

Audios are much more delicate than watching videos. This is because we couldn’t see what is happening. What the audience can do is to listen to those words and sounds and compose a picture by ourselves. As I am writing this blog post, I am wondering whether other people’s image of the story would be the same as me. I think it would be interesting to consider which parts differ and which parts are similar. Even though this audio’s storyline was pretty clear to me, I guess there would be people who disagree with how I interpreted it. Therefore, I feel like audios are open for audience interpretations. I feel like the audience would pay more attention to the audio media compared to the movies. For instance, I paid attention to the background voice such as the bubbly sound of the water and the turn of the pages. If I’m watching a movie, I would rather look at it without thinking about what I am hearing.  After listening to this audio, it made me feel like it could be another entertainment media that I can listen to for fun. Without experience this audio, I would always believe that audios are outdated, boring, and why listen when we can watch movies. 

I wanna bring out on some key things that got to me while experiencing the audio. First of all, there are many scenes that go back and forth; starting from the restaurant to the office with the throwback of Walter Cruz, and then to the phone call to Colin, back to Walter Cruz, and finally ending at the restaurant. I really like how it changes the scene with different background voices which indicates to the audience the change in time and place. For instance, at the restaurant, there were dishes clattering; and at the office, there were sounds of pages flipping. It really set the scene and allow the audience to place themselves in that mood. Another thing I think it is important to notice is that even though there were no visuals, we could also sense the character types of each person. For instance, Colin is seen as being scared and frightened; which is heard through his voice and the ways he chooses his wording. In addition, Haidi is seen to be calm as she comforted Colin. All in all, this assignment is really interesting since I see the other side of the new media, which inspires and interests me. 

Final Interactive Comic Project Link: (By Angel, April, and Ploy)

http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~zy1193/project1/project.html

Description 

Our comic is about the journey of the four characters – rabbit, dog, pig, and panda – in the haunted house, seeking to find the magic crystal ball that will grant them a wish. Initially, we want it to end with their realization that there was no magic crystal ball and realized that all it matters is each other. However, if we stick to that plot, the storyline would be much more complex as we need to think of experiences that will bond them together to the point where they see the importance of each other greatly. Therefore, we changed the concept to be simpler by ending with the grant of their wish. 

structure 

For the storyline to flow, we created 5 pages in total. The first page is the main page with a link to the outside the door, first floor, second floor, and the third floor. We introduced the background information of the story on the first page. Then outside the door page, we introduced each of our characters. Into our first page, our characters faced their first challenge to find the way through the maze. The second page is their second obstacle to cross the water with the boat. Finally, the last page is the point where they found the magic crystal ball which is hidden in the treasure box. 

Discussion of Process 

We simultaneously create both the drawings and the codings together. We chose to draw on the iPad since it is easier to manage.

First off, I start to draw a lot of images, however, when we think about our main task of incorporating these images into the website through HTML, CSS, and JS we decide to change a lot of the drawings. For instance, since we decide to create buttons to move between images, we decide to make the characters move by changing the position of each thing. For example, when they crossed the river, I changed the position of the boat in each drawing. Therefore, when we click the button the boat would move from one position to the other until it reaches the other side. By using Ipad, it wasn’t so hard since it is similar to photoshop in ways that we can draw on different layers and then we can transform the layers accordingly, by not affecting the background. 

My role in this project is to create the script, draw the images, and code on the last two pages. The coding on the last two pages wasn’t that hard since it is similar to each other. However, there are parts that are really challenging. I started out creating the easy part, such as the button and the caption and placing in the images. I find the most challenging part to be in the javascript when we need to define var and then the if-conditions statement so that the images would move at each state. In addition, when we revise the project, we decide that we want the image to flow continuously without always pressing the button. Therefore, we use the timeout function to let the code flow through many images in one press of the button. The time is used to indicate when the image should be changed. This also causes mistakes that make our code invalid. We later found out that the timeout should be placed after the changed in button. I initially placed the timeout of all the functions together at the top of the javascript page. Lastly, there were a lot of careless mistakes such as misspelling and not closing the brackets at the end of the functions. These small mistakes also prevent the code from working. 

Post-Mortem

Overall, I think our project was pretty good. It is what I expected. It might be because we worked on the drawings at the same time as the coding. Therefore, we know what to change to these drawings to make a better understanding of the comic, keeping in mind the job behind the codes. I’m really proud of the first IMA project. It was a lot of work, but I’m really happy to see this successful outcome after many trials and errors. 

Link to the Javascript Excercise:  

http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~trp297/week3/cats.html

I think this assignment wasn’t that hard because it wasn’t such a huge jump. I feel like it builds on what we know from CSS and HTML which makes javascript a little bit easier. At first I was confused about the functions and how to write it out such as the document.getElementById(‘info1’).innerHTML=”Comm Lab”. However, from doing the exercise, I get a better understanding. Since I changed the button styles in CSS, I thought I can change the colour and size of the caption’s font in CSS as well. However, I realized that the caption of the first one doesn’t suppose to be changed. Therefore, I have to apply the change in the javascript. Ultimately, I learned a lot from javascript such as the buttons which are really cool. I’m glad that we covered Javascript as it would be beneficial to my comic project.