I thought it’d be useful to try to honestly answer all of the questions on the ADP sheet.

“Have you represented your thought and making process in your blog? i.e. how have your work and ideas developed? How references link to ideas? How your ideas change over time?”

I’d say I’ve represented my thoughts in the blog – I try to talk about how I interpret all the different things. I haven’t depicted stages in making things visually, but I do talk about the process I’ve undergone in adapting ideas and processes used to make any work. My work and ideas have changed through linking to each other – I do a lot of research on art history, contemporary artists, law, sociology, theories on art. It’s only through these ideas that my physical work develops, but I’d say that the ideas and learning are more important than the actual art – the art is a representation of the ideas.

“Are you making relationships between the ADP lectures/processes and your own work?”

I wouldn’t say that I’ve made all that many links between the ADP lectures and my work – I tried to at first, but it wasn’t working for me. There are some themes from the lectures that I attended that I decided to pick up on, but they’ve branched out from the original stimulus. I think I was very interested in the idea of social networking causing people to be constantly connected to the outside world, and obviously I’ve worked around the themes of the internet being a place for free expression, with blogs being used to express alternative opinions – for example, in one of the lectures blogging on the Iranian elections was mentioned, but I looked at different examples of these ideas. As for processes, I use them where necessary. I think it undermines the integrity of work to use techniques for the sake of it.

“How have other practitioners/artists/ideas/movements influenced your thinking? And who/what are they?”

There are a number of artists I’ve looked at, for example, Lauren Greenfield, Susan Anderson, Balthus, Roy Stuart, Alan Bennett, because of the ideas and themes their work links to. I’ve also looked at a lot of media that can’t be classified as being by a particular artist, for example, pornography, fashion photography, and advertising. During the course of this project, I also did a lot of research into censorship laws that have come into place recently, or that are proposed for the future. I’ve tried to link all these different sorts of ideas together to try to understand them as a whole – for example by comparing modern pornography to classic art, such as John Everett Millais’s Ophelia. I think my views on pornography as art was very influenced by Bound & Gagged by Lauren Kipnis, which encompasses a lot of the things that fascinate me about these subjects – law, case studies, censorship, blasphemy, comparing pornography to fine art photography.

“How many different technical and digital processes have you used? What are they? Why have you used these processes?”

During this project I’ve used digital photography, photoshop editing tools, screenshots, webcam photography, blogging, constant internet use for… research, and Paint to draw my cat Stripey. That may be all of them, I don’t know. I used these processes because they were necessary to articulate my work – they were the best way I could think of to get my ideas across.

“Did you make work that was specific to the digital format/blog? What did you do? How did this work? What did you learn from this?”

All of the photography is digital, and I wanted to present it on a blog instead of in a sketchbook because it can be looked at in more detail and definition. Printers can never really do justice to an image. It can be nice to have a physical copy of it, but I prefer to view photographs online, unless they are specifically nostalgic or textural and so need to be viewed as a ‘real’ photograph. I’d say nearly all of my work is specific to digital format, because nearly all of my work is on a blog. Even if there are images that appear in my sketchbook, those images are totally reinvented by being in digital format – I view them in totally different ways depending on whether I’m looking at them on my blog, or in my sketchbook. I suppose that I learned that I want to continue to use blogging as I find it useful to compile my images in one place, and to write about them in a way that I can’t in a sketchbook.

“What have you learnt from using the blog? i.e. through seeing other students work – discussions that have taken place on the blog with your peer group?”

I’ve learnt a lot of things from using the blog – firstly, simple things, like that blogging is very useful to me as an artist. I’d never appreciated the idea before, but now I see it differently. I really enjoyed being in an environment where I could discuss peoples’ work, that I could have a constant view onto what people were sharing of their work on the blog, and I’ll miss being able to have that dialogue with people. I’ve had some really interesting discussions with people in which I feel I’ve had to think properly to convey my point, and in talking to people who don’t agree with me, it gives me the opportunity to find out what others think, why they don’t share my opinions, and through being challenged in this way, it helps me to re-evaluate what I think, to find answers to their questions. Most notably, for me, these discussions have been on religion, and on censorship. It’s also opened up discussions with staff – I’ve found it valuable to talk to certain members of staff in person, while others seem unable or unwilling to engage in any dialogue with me. I suppose this has taught me that blogging is useful, but I need full control over what I’m publishing – there’s no point in me being subject to a higher power who can change my work, because it’s too frustrating for me, although it has really kickstarted my work and made me more determined.

“Has looking at and adding to the blog altered your relationship to a new group/university? How has it changed your learning experience?”

The blog has definitely altered my learning experience and relation to people. At first, I found it very intimidating to post onto a blog where I didn’t know anyone, where I knew I’d be sharing ideas that were very important to me that would make me vulnerable, but it helped my confidence and sense of self to get past this and do something that I found very difficult. I’m not really sure how people view me at university, in regard to either staff or students. I’ve probably talked more to other students in discussions on the blog than I have in person – some of the people I’ve talked to most, I haven’t even met in person. I probably see them most days, but have no idea who they are. I kind of like that anonymity that the blog gave, because I wonder whether people know who I am. I suppose that kind of helps me, to be a figure where no one really knows or connects both my name and face – people probably know one or the other, but not both. Or maybe I’m totally wrong and I’m completely accountable, I dont know. Either way, I’ve found it quite stressful to be in a position of vulnerability, sharing ideas that were apparently unpopular if their censorship is anything to go by, and it has been an emotional thing. I’ve gone through various stages of resenting the school, feeling bitter, angry, upset, nervous, self-conscious. It’s lucky that I’m not in this new university environment on my own, or I would have been under too much pressure from all of this, and I think I could have given up on university either when I was angry about it, or totally deflated, thinking that no one was prepared to listen to or respect my ideas.

“Look at the artist book collection in the library and find a link to your work – how are your posts contributing to the development of an idea? How do they add up as a set of pages or references – a book?”

The only book I really identified with that I saw in the collection was the book that was seized by the police, as it made me think more about the issues of depiction and what is seen as unacceptable – it all linked perfectly to the themes of my work, but it’s more the context around the book than the actual object. With the other books, there was another that interested me – the book that when opened made the noise and sensation of breathing. Because of what I was looking at, I wanted to link it to asphyxiation, snuff films, the romanticised idea of female death, etc. but the actual book isn’t my style of working, it just sparked off ideas.

….Something about “references” …. ?

So it says that there’s a link to Harvard referencing. Personally, I think it’s a bit out of context – I reference anything I can reference, but I’d probably be more put off about doing this if I had to use Harvard referencing each time. I’d do it for an essay, but probably not for a blog. I agree that you definitely need to reference other peoples’ work somehow – I find it infuriating how people some times post images and don’t explain whether they belong to them or someone else, or quotes that never manifest as quotes because no one is referenced, or even full essays with no name to them, and no commentary as to what it meant to the person posting it.

At first, I was disheartened and intimidated by posting on a communal blog as this wasn’t what I expected, and adapting to this shift took a few days, so I created a blog to practice getting my ideas into blog format, and decided to create posts like this, then copy them to the ADP blog. Until this, I hadn’t engaged with or enjoyed blogging, but as my projects progressed, I found that I was more suited to a blog than a sketchbook as I write lots, so this influenced my working process, and blogging is something I want to continue with as it’s effective in sharing ideas with a potentially large audience. I was very enthusiastic about this with the shared blog, as I enjoyed seeing other peoples’ ideas, and being able to comment and discuss them, but because of my work being taken down, I feel that I was denied this freedom to share ideas and get feedback on them from others. My work being deleted has probably caused more discussion than I think it would have if it had been left up, but at the same time, people don’t actually know the content that was taken down, so it’s hard for them to form opinions without seeing it for themselves. The reaction to the ADP posts have heavily influenced what I want to work with in the future, by challenging views and pushing boundaries.

I’ve linked my work more to the International Perspectives on Art lectures because I’ve engaged with them in a way that I haven’t with ADP, although the post applying those lectures to my work was ‘removed from view’. I haven’t felt motivated by ADP lectures – I eventually gave up on them, because I felt I could be learning things that were relevant to my practice instead of the general view that the internet is big. The themes were too broad for me, they almost touched on points of interest but never quite got there because nothing was looked at in detail. It seems like a module where people are forced to use technology for the sake of it, so assessors can check the right boxes at the end to say people can do it, but it seems like people who couldn’t use computers still can’t. I still can’t do anything practical like use the printers, which was initially why I started using a blog as my sketchbook, but the idea has stuck. I’ve used a lot more digital techniques in posts I haven’t added to the ADP blog, because the techniques were relevant rather than making sure I’d hit all the marking criteria, but I feel unable to post these because all my work is interlinked and I can’t share all of it. I have used themes linking self-portraiture and technology through constant connectivity with social networking and how new technology has changed how modern teenagers express themselves, but these posts use self-portraits of underage models, which I was censored for once already. Blogging is a really valuable way of  sharing ideas, but only when you have the creative freedom to express what you truly think in an environment where criticism is valid but removing work from debate is not.

We met again this month at ACHIEVA on the South Side. We will be at this location for the rest of 2009.

Here are the various resources discussed during this month’s meeting:

• ADP w/Kronos on the back end for time and attendance tracking (a hosted model is available) – http://www.adp.com/solutions/employer-services/time-and-attendance.aspx
• DonorPro, which has an event management module among other things – http://www.donorpro.com
• Orange Leap, CRM software – http://www.orangeleap.com
• Postini, will back up Google email aka Gmail – http://www.google.com/postini/
• USA.net, email, MS Exchange and SharePoint hosting – http://www.usa.net/
• WebEx, for webcasts or broadcasting items such as training sessions, live meeting broadcasts, and lectures – http://www.webex.com

Our next meeting will be held at ACHIEVA on the South Side, on December 2. Please note that we are now holding our meeting from 8:30 – 10 am each month.

Join us for the Bagels & Bytes Holiday Party on Friday, December 4, from 1-4 p.m. at the Carnegie Science Center!

We will eat lunch in the cafe (each attendee pays for his or her own meal), receive a tour of RoboWorld led by our very own B&B-er Joe McLaughlin (who helped build the exhibit), and otherwise check out the rest of the exhibits and have fun!

The cost to attend is $6 per person (lunch not included) and RSVPs are required.  Call or email Cindy Leonard – 412-397-6007 or leonard@rmu.edu – to register.  Attendees from all Bagels & Bytes group are welcome to attend!

The Bagels & Bytes 2009 Calendar (including directions) is here.

Nem tudom, hogy ti hogy vagytok vele, de engem személyesen marhára idegesítenek az olyan weboldalak, amelyeknek a tartalmát csak úgy tehintheted meg, hogy kitöltesz egy bizonyos kérdőívet. Ez az egészet egy állatira szemét szkript okozza. Többféle létezik belőle, ezért nincsen univerzális megoldás, én mégis megtaláltam a módját, hogy hogyan lehetséges ezeket kikerülni. A dolog pofonegyszerű, Firefox webböngészőre van szükséged, és AdBlock Plus addonra. Az AdBlock Plus egy oldal bizonyoz előre meghatározott objektumait tudja blokkolni. A szkriptek megszűntetésére létezik többféle addon is, talán a legnépszerűbb a NoScript. A NoScripttel az a baj, hogy az oldal minden lehetséges szkriptjét blokkolja, ezáltal bizony azokat is, amelyek számodra hasznosak lehetnek. Ezért fogom a dolgot az ADP-vel bemutatni. (amennyiben azt szeretnéd, hogy minden script blokkolva legyen, ezáltal az oldalak bizonyos funkciói elérhetetlenek legyenek, akkor Használhatod a NoScriptet, és társait, és úgy nincsen macera)

Tipikus tartalomblokkoló Szkript

Mit is csináljunk?
Először is, meg kell nézni, hogy ki hostolja a szkriptet. Erre több metódus is létezik, én most a legegyszerűbbet fogom bemutatni. A jobb alsó sarkában a szövegdoboznak láthatunk egy szöveget, amivel a cég önmagát reklámozza, “Powered by CPAlead”. Ha nincs ilyen önreklám, akkor jobbklikkel kattintsunk rá valamelyik fölső zöld gombra, majd válasszuk a Tulajdonságok (AKA Preferences) menüpontot. Itt láthatjuk, hogy a cpalead-hez tartozik (*www.cpalead.com*).
Tipp: Ha ilyen gombok sincsenek, akkor ugorj az oldal forrására, és keress rá a script szóra. Mivel szkriptből több is lehet, ezért nem biztos, hogy elsőre megtalálod azt, amelyik a kérdőives blokkolásért felelős. Próbálgass!
Miután megbizonyosodtál róla, nyitsd meg az oldal forrását (CTRL+U, vagy Nézet > Oldal forrása), majd keress rá (CTRL+F) a cpalead szóra.

Az oldal forrása

Ha ez megvan, nyitsd meg az AdBlock Plus blokkolható elemek listáját (Nézet menü)
Innentől két lehetőséged van, ami azon múlik, hogy milyen blokkolási szabályt adsz hozzá az ADP adatbázisához. Ha csak ezt a surveyt akarod számodra véglegesen eltörölni, akkor CSAK a szkript címét, ha viszont az összes CPAlead terméket (weboldal, képek onnan, satöbbi), akkor a következő szabályt kell hozzáadnod:

*cpalead.com*

Csillagokkal együtt. Fissítsd az oldalt, ha végeztél.
Voila:

Blokkolás blokkolva!

]]> http://writeman.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/handicapa%c8%9bi/ Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:29:17 +0000 writeman http://writeman.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/handicapa%c8%9bi/ http://qandeelwelfare.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/disabled-kinds-waiting-for-you/ Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:26:04 +0000 Fawad Zafar http://qandeelwelfare.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/disabled-kinds-waiting-for-you/

To stay clean is basic right of every human being, if a mentally disabled kid cannot clean his/her under arm and under leg hair, what is his/her fault. Being normal humans we need to think about them.

Qandeel Welfare Organization is working specifically for the under arm and under leg laser treatment of mentally disabled poor children. Qandeel Welfare Organization has completed laser treatment of two disabled children on its own basis, we have got multiple patients in our reach. We want make their treatment possible.

We need your contributions too. Kindly help these mentally disabled poor children. Kindly give us your donations.

Qandeel Welfare Organization has drawn very clean and clear methods to provide such treatments for needy people. You can sponsor one kid too.  It requires 8 sessions to complete the treatment of hair removal.

To contact us kindly email us at qandeelwelfare@live.com

for donations our account number is

Bank Alfalah ltd : 0066-01003999

regards

Muhammad Fawad Zafar

Chairman Qandeel Welfare Organization

URL: http://e.thenews.com.pk/mag_details.asp?id=4465

It seems that I agree with the UK government on so very few things, but I want to thank WSA for giving me the opportunity to find new things to disagree with. In censoring me, of course I’m going to look more into the subjects that I assume I was censored because of. This caused me to find out more about the Child Pornography Acts that are in place in the UK. Now, of course I agree that child abuse is wrong and should not be documented or distributed to the internet, but that’s as far as I think it should go. But, naturally, the UK laws go much further than this. In my opinion of what is acceptable and inacceptable, it’s acceptable for there to be laws to prevent harm to children, and therefore it is important that photographs and videos depicting sexual activity with a child are not allowed to be produced. I’d like to highlight that I think it should be the people who make this sort of pornography that are punished for actually committing a crime towards children, not the people who consume such pornography, as they haven’t committed any crime except a thought crime. If people did not produce child pornography, there would be no crime of people owning child pornography because it would not exist. It doesn’t work the other way around as the media tries to insist – “well, if people didn’t look at child pornography, there would be no demand for it and it wouldnt be made”. As it stands, the government is using an easy get-out clause of saying that “making” child pornography includes copying, saving or printing an image created by someone else, because this is “making” a copy of the image that would not otherwise exist. Basically, it’s easier to place the blame on people who are easier to identify and prosecute than actually finding the real source of child pornography.

In the UK, it is also illegal to have tracings or pseudo-photographs, and now there are plans to make it illegal to have any image that depicts or appears to depict child abuse – this includes computer-generated images and drawings. So if this includes drawings, where would the work of Balthus stand in regard to the law now? Some of his paintings show sexual activity with children, so I assume that would mean a 3 year prison sentence and unlimited fine. But it’s art. All this does is hold back progress because of the idea that it’s protecting children. Laws like this clearly don’t protect children – there’s nothing to protect them from. All this law does is punish people for having unconventional sexual fantasies, under the guise of preventing them from committing crimes against children. Surely it’s much better for people to be able to legally view material like cartoons or computer-generated images of child abuse, because making that material didn’t ever involve real children, and it means that people have an outlet for their fantasies.

Included under material people will not be allowed to own under the proposed Coroners and Justice Bill are photos, drawings, computer-generated images, videos or cartoons that depict, even non-realistic, sex with under-18s, even though the age of consent in the UK is 16. This also applies if the person is over 18, but it’s implied that they’re under 18.

So if this image was distributed with the implication that the woman was actually still a highschool cheerleader, this would be illegal, even though it has nothing to do with children except fantasy. Doesn’t the government know that however much people play pretend, it’s not just going to pop into reality because they thought about it enough?

image from Lost Girls by Alan Moore

“For more than a century, Alice, Wendy and Dorothy have been our guides through the Wonderland, Neverland and Land of Oz of our childhoods. Now like us, these three lost girls have grown up and are ready to guide us again, this time through the realms of our sexual awakening and fulfillment. Through their familiar fairytales they share with us their most intimate revelations of desire in its many forms, revelations that shine out radiantly through the dark clouds of war gathering around a luxury Austrian hotel. Drawing on the rich heritage of erotica, Lost Girls is the rediscovery of the power of ecstatic writing and art in a sublime union that only the medium of comics can achieve. Exquisite, thoughtful, and human, Lost Girls is a work of breathtaking scope that challenges the very notion of art fettered by convention.”

These laws don’t even try to make a distinction between pornography and art – when the government was questioned on whether material such as graphic novels like “Lost Girls”, “Sandman” or “Watchmen” would be illegal under the new law, they replied that they may already be considered illegal to publish or supply under the Obscene Publication Act if a jury considers that they “corrupt or deprave”. But a jury is made up of ordinary people who are likely to be very biased against images showing child abuse because they’ve been socialised into this moral panic – would you let a jury of homophobes precide over the murder of a gay person, or racists over the trial of a defendant from an ethnic minority, or misogynists over a rape trial? I’d hope not. But it’s going to be basically impossible to find people so removed from social norms and values to not be biased in cases of child abuse or paedophilia.

“We are unaware of any specific research into whether there is a link between accessing these fantasy images of child sexual abuse and the commission of offences against children, but it is felt by police and childrens’ welfare organisations that the possession and circulation of these images serves to legitimize and reinforce highly inappropriate views about children.”

This image is very similar to one of the photos in a post that got deleted from my blog. No one’s told me whether it was the photo that got it deleted, so I’ll have to feel out the boundaries for myself and see if this one disappears as well. At least in getting censored, I know I’m finding the sore spots in society, the things people would rather not acknowledge – it lets me know that I’m on the right track for my project in finding what is inside and outside acceptability because if I get censored, I’ve hit the right buttons and should continue pushing that subject.

So, the differences between the images are that the girl in the photo that got deleted was naked (except for knee high socks), and that the image that was deleted was an amateur self-portrait. I’m sure everyone’s seen that sort of picture – taking a photo into a mirror or such like. The above image is of a professional model, taken by a professional photographer, and instead of being naked, she’s in a school uniform. Both images showed the girls’ bedrooms and their personal belongings, which gave the impression of them being childish. But who’s to say – why can’t adults have toys in their bedroom? I have toys in mine and I’m not a child. One thing that I will suggest is that if these images, or the image deleted previously, are seen as inacceptable, this is because of their using symbols from childhood, because I could put up photos of the same women in adult clothing without fear of censorship, forcing me to conclude that it is their clothing and context that leave them at risk of being seen as not acceptable.

To me, this image shows Lolita fashion, which involves dressing in such a way that makes girls look younger than they are. Often this fashion style involves using clothing or objects that are symbolic of childhood – ribbons or bows, gingham pattern (much like found on many primary school uniforms for girls), knee high socks, wearing minimal makeup to emphasise natural childlike features, and even carrying cuddly toys. It’s interesting that this fashion style is generally quite conservative, drawing influences from Victorian dress styles, but at the same time Lolita fashion is popular in pornography because the women are seen as modest, conservative, offlimits, and obviously this heightens their desirability.

The term “Lolita” comes from the book of the same name by Vladimir Nabokov, in which the main character is attracted to an underage girl, who he nicknames Lolita. I can’t imagine anyone in modern society being able to write on this subject any more, because it’s just too charged, but that’s why it’s important to discuss these issues. Censoring them doesn’t mean that the issues don’t exist any more, it just means that whoever censored it is socialised enough into the mainstream to not think that discussion of or exposure to the things that society deems inappropriate is important, thus limiting creative and academic freedom and progress.

One thing that has really interested me throughout this project is the issue of context. At the beginning, I thought that a lot of this context of acceptability or inacceptability would be defined by whether the images were considered high art or not, but I’m not sure whether this is the case seeing as a post that contained only the images of recognised documentary photographers was deleted (presumably because their subjects were children).

So, testing the boundaries is important. Maybe I should try to work out what is or is not considered acceptable for society by using the university as a microcosm of society – it’s probably going to censor the ideas that do not adhere to mainstream norms and values, and so noting what gets censored by the university says a lot about what is acceptable or inacceptable in wider society.

image by Roy Stuart

Roy Stuart is an erotic photographer whose work is mainstreamly acceptable enough to be on the shelves of major bookstores, and therefore is not seen as pornography. If this was in a pornographic context, would it be more sinister? Would we be more willing to believe that this woman has been kidnapped, is about to be raped or murdered, rather than seeing it as a staged photograph?

image by Roy Stuart

So, obviously this image isn’t sexually explicit, but within the context of a book on erotic photography, it gains sexual meaning. This is one thing that has interested me – does putting images of children near images of sex make the images of children interpreted as sexual? Like, for this project I have one folder where I’ve saved all the artist images that I’ve been using, and so this folder includes both pictures by Lauren Greenfield and Susan Anderson of children, and bdsm pornography. Having them in the same folder doesn’t actually link them, but maybe people see it as not acceptable. I’m still having to speculate over why my work was taken down, and am wondering if maybe the reason was that it’s not ok to have images of children and images of pornography on the same blog, even if they’re in different posts making different points. But then some images of children have stayed up while others were taken down, so maybe not. Who knows? I certainly haven’t been given any answers yet.

Anyway, obviously the image above can be interpreted as sexualising a child. The model probably isn’t actually a child, but they appear in such a way that makes them seem like a child – the image fetishises things that are associated with childhood, like piano lessons and what looks like a school uniform. This probably a very unpopular idea, but maybe these things are sexualised because people under the age of consent do have a sexuality. However uncomfortable it is for people to admit it, I believe that it is true – just because our modern moral panic society doesn’t want it to be true doesn’t mean it isn’t. Think of Freud’s theories on sexual development – childhood is an important time in this, and therefore it makes sense that in later life people would be aroused by things from their childhood. Children often play in a way that involves nudity or things that would be interpreted as sexual by adults, but to children it isn’t shameful, they don’t know it’s considered “wrong” by adults – it’s only parents’ reactions that condition children to be ashamed of their bodies. Why is it seemingly not ok to make these points? A very common male fantasy is to have a woman dress up in a school uniform – it sexualises the uniform which is associated with childhood, but projects it onto a woman who is over the age of consent, so it’s not that men want to have sex with minors, it’s that they find the object of the school uniform arousing when it’s applied to an attractive woman. In the context of the uniform being on an actual child, I’m sure most men would not find it arousing – they probably see it as so far removed from their fantasy that they don’t even connect them.

This image is taken of a model who isn’t underage, but it also isn’t fine art. It’s obviously strikingly similar to the above fine art photograph – which is more or less acceptable? The image is intended to be softcore erotica, showing the idea that fantasies often involve school uniforms on women who are no longer schoolgirls, or women acting younger than they are. Surely this makes sense from a biological perspective – based on primal instincts, men want to dominate women in sex, and this is a lot easier if they are in a position of power, for example in the fantasy situation of being the female’s piano teacher.

(I wonder if this post will get deleted…It says similar things to the last one, but the photos are less obvious. I wonder if the writing in my blog posts were even read last time. If so, I hope the irony of censoring a project on censorship was appreciated.)

Brigthstar has announced ADP2 handsets will go on sale soon, see this post. Caution, starts out having Android 1.6.

This is an alternative idea for my project that I’m sure people will find less controversial. I am going to talk about how flowers and fluffy animals can live both inside, or outside. I am going to back this up with an art history context, but also apply it to modern society. I may also look at art created by flowers and fluffy animals, because I think this will be relevant to showing how the art of these artists is not widely recognised by the art world.

(Oh damn, now I’ll have to check the box that says I’m working with animals for my project on the Ethics form…. Is it going to be ok to use a picture of my cat Stripey even though he’s identifiable because I drew his tabby markings, and wrote his name? And he’s under the age of 18, and, try as I might, I can’t wrestle him into any clothes – am I a paedophile now? )

Alan Bennett’s Playing Sandwiches

This monologue by Alan Bennett is an interesting point for inside/outside acceptability because it’s a very controversial piece because it humanises a character who is a paedophile. In that way, I see it as similar to “Peeping Tom”, which was criticised for being perverse seeing as it gave its main character too much depth, too much humanity. It makes people feel uncomfortable to not have a clean cut distinction between who is good and who is bad, that maybe good people can do bad things, and that they are doing bad things for reasons other than just that they are a bad person, that maybe you’ll feel sympathy towards them and not be able to blanketly damn them as evil.

One difference worth noting between “Playing Sandwiches” and “Peeping Tom” is that in the former, there are no other actors, no dialogue, it’s just a story being told by one person so you dont actually get to see anything other than what you imagine. It tells the story so well that I forget that I’ve made up what all the other characters look and sound like, that actually it’s all only my imagination and my perspective.

My partner was working as a teaching assistant in a secondary school where this was being taught as part of a year 9 English class. Before the piece was even shown, one member of staff announced to the class that she thought it was appalling that it was being shown, and that she couldnt watch it because she had children of her own – she walked out, leaving another member of staff who didnt challenge this or give an alternative view to the students. The piece was shown, and then the students discussed what they thought of it, with the response being the resounding view that he was “a paedo” and so “deserved it”, with the teacher agreeing before looking at her notes and remembering that one of the points of the monologue was trying to create sympathy for the main character, so half-heartedly tried to mention this, and then that was the end of the discussion.

image by Lauren Greenfield

I think that a combination of media and socialisation causes girls to grow up to see appearance as an important thing, to believe that they are always being looked at and judged according to how they look, and that they can only be validated by other people thinking they are pretty. Children are sexual beings to some extent from a young age, because they are trying to look older than they are, trying to be attractive because they feel that that’s how to make people like them, so is it really any wonder that people then react to this by finding children attractive when the media fetishises children, making them desirable but unattainable? Bearing this in mind, I think it’s interesting that there’s an idea that children can never be to blame for abuse, but then when they reach an age where they are no longer a child, if a woman is raped then it’s her fault for wearing slutty clothes. With 1/4 of people surveyed in Britain saying that they thought a woman was partially or solely to blame for rape if they wore revealing clothing, it’s difficult to work out how such a shift in opinion can be made. Children can wear revealing clothing, but it’s not interpreted as sexual maybe because there’s the idea that the child cant intend it to be sexual, and so if it is interpreted as sexual then it must be the fault of the adult. Maybe it’s that children are perceived as innocent, so any sexual abuse towards them cant be their fault, whereas if an adult woman is abused then on some level it’s her fault for not being innocent enough. In a lot of rape cases it’s virtually impossible to get a guilty verdict unless the woman was a virgin – it’s like if they didnt have innocence to begin with then it didnt matter, because nothing was taken away from them.

As I’ve set the boundaries for my spaces as being inside and outside acceptability, I think it’s important to look at the issue of children because whether things are explicitly about children or not, they’re always there at the heart of things. Whether it’s children in “inappropriate situations” or censoring material from adults in case children see it, children are a very important part of acceptability or inacceptability.

One thing I wanted to look at within this was the self-image and sexualisation of young girls. Lauren Greenfield looks at this well with her series “Girl Culture”, which used photos of girls with interviews alongside them.

images by Lauren Greenfield

These photos show how girls are brought up in a culture that teaches them to value their looks from an early age, with the girls in the top photo dressing up, applying makeup, and the latter photo showing a girl shopping at a boutique, with her saying in the accompanying interview that she wants to look just like Britney Spears because it would make her cool and popular. She also says “I want to be famous so everyone can see my pretty face, and my whole body, and how I look”, and that someone she knows is ‘cool’ because “she blows her hair straight”.

images from the High Glitz series by Susan Anderson

Child beauty pageants are an interesting expression of childhood femininity, because it’s the absolute height of femininity – it expresses female beauty in such a concentrated way it almost becomes grotesque. Lois Ann Holey-Dort writes “Playing dress-up is part of being a kid, but when adults step in, apply the makeup, the clothes and instructions on composure, posture and gesture the game becomes something else.  A new version of the child as both she and others perceive her emerges. Children begin to think of themselves in the manner in which they are valued, in other words, in terms of surface beauty.”  Both media portrayals of women and the role models young girls get from such media causes them to see themselves as only having worth because of their appearance, because the media only places worth on women because of their appearance. It also leads to young girls acting in a provocative way – dressing in clothes that are more thought of as being teenaged or adult garments, wearing makeup, just generally having a preoccupation with their appearance, and thinking that to be valued as a female you must be not only attractive, but sexy too.
The rosettes in the above image by Susan Anderson remind me of prizes given out at pet shows, and that these same awards can be given to people is astounding to me. Notice there’s only one prize for “best personality”, which I would guess is almost a consolation prize, something that proclaims “you’re pretty on the inside” in an arena where the outside is all that counts. I’d guess that some form of male beauty pageant exists, but it obviously has no where near as much cultural exposure as these shows for women… As Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw so eloquently puts it, “women are treated like dogs you can put your nob in.”

(As an afterthought, I remembered a series by an artist, in which they videoed business women in an office setting, acting like dogs. Unfortunately I don’t remember the artist’s name, but it shows how remarkably similarly art can be to pornography, as I’ve seen basically the same thing enacted in video on a pornography site, where business women act like cats and eat icecream.)

I wanted to post some of my street photography of children… I like to think that I wont be affected by social norms and values, but I have noticed that in doing street photography, I’m reluctant to take pictures of children because of how socially unacceptable it’s become. And I think that’s something I need to get over, because it’s stupid to go along with conventions like this. By not taking photographs of children, they’re separated from adults and from society. Will we have art that shows what childhood was like in this society when people are conditioned to be frightened of interacting with children? Maybe the lack of imagery of children symbolically reflects their removal from culture better than images ever could.

I think this is a lot based on context too… People are punished for taking photos of children based on who they are. Like, I think that if I was male, I would have had a lot more problems in my street photography, because men taking photos of children is infinitely more sinister than women taking photos of children. Women are seen as maternal, having an affinity with children, that a man is much more likely to harm a child than a woman. It’s much more ok for a teenage female to be taking pictures of children than, say, a middleaged male, because I dont fit the stereotype of someone who is a danger to children, whereas a middleaged male is the prime candidate for being labelled as a paedophile.

From the artist book viewing a while ago, I found out about a past student’s book that sparked controversy because of it apparently showing children in an “inappropriate situation” or something, and a member of the public that went to the exhibition complained. It made me think about the issue of context, and how things can so easily cross over from being inside acceptability to outside acceptability, and it’s not necessarily obvious what makes something unacceptable.

Like, the image from the book that I saw in the book handling session was a drawing of 2 children standing at the bar of a pub – quite how this is unacceptable, I’m not sure, particularly because it’s a drawing, it’s not even real. But then there’s such a ridiculous moral panic about the safety of children these days that anything involving children is unacceptable.

I think this moral panic is shown through the fact that people are so readily reprimanded for taking photographs of children now… This is shown in bureaucratic measures that prohibit parents from taking pictures at school nativity plays or sports days, or people not being allowed to use mobile phones in changing rooms or swimming pools because they might be using a phone camera to take photos of children. It even goes so far as a recent case where the police were called when a man was taking photos of children at an event, and the man was arrested, his house searched, and his camera and computer seized. It’s deeply worrying both for the medium of street photography and freedom of expression.

But what about artists that use children in their work? Maybe if you already have the label of being an artist your work must have pure intentions. But then again, apparently the worry about taking photos of children in public is that those images will be edited. Surely works of art could be edited – so should no art of children be allowed? I’m sure this is probably an unpopular opinion, but what actually is the problem in images being edited? In my opinion, it’s better that images be falsified than creating real child pornography where children are harmed. Bit of an obscure reference here, but the Bonsai Kitten site – it has lots of photoshopped images of kittens in jars, it claims to be a real business selling modified kittens online, and enough people thought that it was real to start petitions against the site for cruelty to animals. Just because people photoshopped some images of kittens doesnt mean that the real kittens were harmed or traumatised or forever haunted by images that werent real in the first place. I noticed that the ethics form we’re meant to complete asks whether we’ll be working with anyone under a certain age, whether they will be fully clothed, whether we have parental permission….

The Guitar Lesson by Balthus, 1934

Balthus’s work has always been controversial, but would it even be able to be created in this modern society where children have to be protected from everything? I’d guess that any work explicitly relating to adolescent sexuality would now lead at least to police enquiries.

photograph by Lauren Greenfield

Lauren Greenfield is a documentary photographer who works on the themes of youth culture, with her main subjects being children and adolescents. I felt that a parallel could be drawn between this image and the one in the student’s artist book that showed children at a bar. Is there anything wrong with this image? Why is a bar an inappropriate place for a child? There wouldnt have been such a problem with children in adult contexts in the past because children were treated the same as adults, there was no such thing as a “childhood”… I’d even go so far as to say that in the past paedophilia was fine, it’s only the context of our society that makes it wrong. In past societies, sex with children was a norm, so clearly paedophilia isnt universally wrong because it has been considered ok in the past. So something that is considered outside acceptability in this society wasnt necessarily outside acceptability in the past, and wont necessarily be in the future, just as things that are acceptable now werent in the past and may not be in the future, so being inside or outside acceptability is totally dependent on the context of the society and the time.

Num dia de agenda corporativa fraca nos EUA a divulgação do Payroll ganha ainda mais relevância. As figuras principais do mercado de trabalho nos EUA devem parar de piorar, entre elas a Taxa de Desemprego. É isso o que sugere os dados da ADP divulgados na quarta-feira. > Leia mais

The what is an artist? lecture also got me to thinking that maybe pornography isn’t seen as art because it tends to be produced by a company, so it is collaborative work, and modern society sees the artist as an individual figure. Maybe the anonymity of the people who make pornography is also a factor, because it’s expected that an “artist” is one person who has a name. I’d suggest that maybe pornography companies are more akin to the workshops of the past, where art was created in collaboration and so the work wasnt classified as the work of one person, but the work of that particular workshop or company. I think a good example of this is ewprod.com, where it states explicitly that there is a huge credits list for their work – it’s not just actors and photographers, but makeup artists, editors, special effects, post-production… It’s harder to see work as art if there were so many people in collaboration – it makes people see the work more like they’d see a film, maybe.

An interesting comparison is the work of erotic or fetish photographers – their work is seen as being closer to fine art photography because work is credited to a particular artist rather than it being anonymous. I guess that photographs being anonymous gives the impression that it’s not the photograph that’s important, it’s whatever’s happening within the photograph, and so the photo itself isnt seen as artwork.

(waterbondage.com doesnt credit particular photographers – if they did, would their documentation of acts be seen as fine art, rather than simply their acts being seen as fetish pornography?)

(Conversely, metart advertises itself as a fine art nude photography site, crediting individual photographers, but if the images were seen out of this context, they would probably just be thought of as any other pornography. Maybe this is because the site does not just carry the work of one photographer, so it’s still a company, and therefore there isnt necessarily consistency in the work. Or possibly metart is seen as a fine art site because all of the images are nudes that can be interpreted sexually, but that intention isnt clear other than that the site is Pay per view – there arent sex acts, so can it be seen as solely or primarily for sexual arousal? But then many sites containing “extreme pornography” advertise themselves as fantasy horror or such like, stating that nothing on their site is pornographic – is it enough to say that your material isnt pornographic, what other purposes are there for this material? Not that I’m saying it’s a bad thing, more that I think something should be able to be labelled as pornography and still not censored, because it can be viewed as art despite how it is labelled.)

I found the what is an artist? lecture really interesting because of it going into ideas of self-portraits not being an objective viewpoint, that it’s how the artist sees themselves or how they want to be seen by others. I’ve started to look at these themes in my Inside/Outside project by looking at amateur self-portraits and why they aren’t considered art like the self-portraits of “real artists”, particularly within the field of photography.

I found this image on 4chan, and felt like it had a lot of artistic potential – I think that if it was framed in the context of being a high art piece, then it would be read into a lot more. So I decided to paint from the photo to see whether it changed anything to have the same image in a more recognised and readily accepted format for the art world. I love how much you can read into the picture if you want to look close enough, that the subject and her surroundings can be analysed, and that so many questions can be considered, building up a picture of who this anonymous girl is – these ideas will always just be based on guesses and assumptions, but it gives the image more depth if you really look at the details. To me, the image has a lot to say on youth, sexuality, self-image, gender, the differences/similarities between a ‘nude’ and ‘pornography’, and society as a whole. I wanted to compare it both to art history and contemporary work, and started by reading John Berger’s views on early oil paintings. He suggests that from that time, womens’ presence in art has been through their physical appearance, while men are shown through their possessions. I think that this image is a nice extension of this, that it shows that the image was made in a society which still allows and encourages the objectification of women, but in modern society this is in a more sexual context. However, I think that her possessions are also something that can be read into, so maybe things have shifted in the sense that now everyone, regardless of gender, is judged by their possessions – possibly this is a reflection on the nature of capitalist society.

acrylic painting by David Hancock

I thought that the image was quite similar to the work of David Hancock, who paints on the theme of youth culture, mainly painting teenagers in their bedrooms. Some of his pieces include nudity, but they are not seen as perverse, they’re considered as a nude, because they’re painted. But then, a lot of his work is photo-realistic, so if there wasnt a label telling viewers that they are paintings, maybe they would think they were photographs and they might be viewed and classified differently.

photograph by Lauren Greenfield

Documentary photographer Lauren Greenfield works on the themes of youth, gender and sexuality. If the photo above was in a context other than being a fine art photograph, for instance if it was found on 4chan, where my original image came from, it would probably be assumed that the image was a self-portrait taken for “non-artistic” reasons, and was instead for validation or self-esteem. (I’d suggest that validation or self-esteem are perfectly artistic reasons to take a photograph, seeing as the photo would then make a comment on the human condition, of uncertainty and self-image.) The image doesnt obey aesthetic conventions of a photograph – it looks like a snapshot because of the cluttered background, but because of its context and its author already having been labelled as an artist, it is categorised as art, while other images similar to this would not be.