MEDI 323: Finger Painting Studies

As part of this project I wanted to focus on child-like or childrens art. I chose to investigate this by producing collaborative finger-paintings with my friends four year old son.

When I scanned in the images to use them for making Dreamscapes they lost some of thier depth of colour.

This lack of colour put me off of making a Dreamscape image with them as they had lost quite a lot of original colour and therefore meanings and connertations would be lost or skewed. Also later I opted to keep the project a more personal and self reflective effort on the advice of my tutor but I have found some intresting things on finger-painting in the process.



I had originally wanted to prove that finger painting wasn't childish and was a valid art form which I feel the video does. Its increadible what you can actually paint with your fingers.

It would have been intreresting to produce a Dreamscape using the art that me and Mauwgan had made together and maybe something to look into in the future.

MEDI 323: Pop Art + Appropriation Art

I have always been interested in Pop Art. It has influenced this project quite a lot with its ties to Appropriation Art. I have been looking into this art style, as it is similar to what I have been doing with my images and my methods.

I have also tried to blend the ideas of photomontage and collage which also seem to be fairly prevalent in the pop art movement.

Appropriation art however is accesible for anybody nowadays with the internet freeing people to actually create. This image below being a prime example.

However it still is a vaild form of so called 'high' art. One of the most iconic appropriation images in high art being Andy Warhol's can of soup. It is simply a picture of a tin of Campbells Soup...

There is naturally a constant war between this style of art and Copyright Law because of its very nature. The artist WANTS the original work to be noticed, it the point to make comment upon the original, a notion that should fall under the terms of fair use. 

I do however very much like Appropriation Art even if my images don't quite fit the definition. Pop Art has definately been an influence.

One of the most inspiring Apropreation Arts for me on a personal level is Caroline Shotton. I have enjoyed her work for a long time and think is both witty and pleasing. She sticks to a very definate theme, being cows, which I like as it sets her aside and makes her instantly recognisable.

MEDI 323: Copyright and Art

I have been extensively researching copyright and have read a few law journals and art law journals.

The relationship between art and copyright has and maybe will always be fraught and

in my opinion the rules need to be relaxed a lot more. The laws affect all kinds of artists including the music industry especially in the case of DJ Girl Talk who I took a particular interest in because his music is referred to as ‘danceable musical collages’ since I both am interesting in collages and I love the imagery that is invoked by the term musical collage. 

The contraversial track 'Feed the Animals'

Copyright should be fair, protecting the artist whilst not crushing others freedom to speak, yet sometimes it falls short of this task I feel.

MEDI 323: Final Pagan Image

This image needed to be lighter for printing. It doesn't make a huge amount of difference on screen as the detail can be seen clearer on a screen than printed but to look its best printed it needed to be lighter.

MEDI 323: My Terms

Dreamscape: A digitally created image showing the pictorial representation of an imagined space.

The term Dreamscape lacks any real formal definition, yet it does have a shared notion of meaning. How I apply the term is probably the most common way people would understand it, as simply an image or ‘landscape’ of a dream, essentially forming a portmanteau of these two words and concepts.


Unrealestate: An abstract term categorizing material, which only exists conceptually or within a technological medium.

A portmanteau, but also a parody on the word real-estate. I haven’t found any definition matching mine but there is evidence of some kind of common notion that loosely fits with my definition. How I view this term is that Unrealestate is what exists both in cyberspace and purely conceptually. We perceive to have at least some degree of ownership over it, regardless of sates of copyright or actual legal ownership. Essentially this term can be used to describe the new entities that exist because of modern media and our ever-increasing relationship with the Internet. I think the best few examples of Unrealestate that I can give would be things like my World of Warcraft character. I pay £8.99 a month to play the game, but who actually owns my character? I didn’t draw her or program her, yet she is a part of me and I have spent effort and money on her. Another example would be fandoms in general, if you write fan fiction who actually owns the characters? Does buying the original book and mugs etc. entitle you to then feel some ownership over your fandom? Another common thing is for people to feel a degree of ownership over a song, first dances at weddings, the song playing the first time you met your partner, that particular song that everyone says is your theme tune… despite having nothing to do with the original creative input people still feel some degree of ownership.

MEDI 323: Refined Images