Final Paper: Compare and Contrast of 2 artist

Christian Aranas
Art 245
Clint Sleeper
December 16, 2014
Final Paper
Compare and Contrast of Damien Hypolite and Chloe Varelidi

Art is ever evolving as technology progress’s over time. In the beginning art was considered as painting, drawing, sculpting, etc. However, as the 21st century continues to flourish with devices, art has also included Digital Media. In today’s world, Digital Media is the most prominent medium of exposing knowledge, entertainment, news, and art to the world in the the most easiest fashion. Digital Media can range from T.V. shows to online ads and is easily bared to the public so long as there is a T.V. or computer near. With such exposure, it isn’t surprising that artist too have taken the opportunity to play with this new medium of art.
Artist such as Damien Hypolite and Chloe Varelidi have delved into Digital Media and molded it to use for their own Art. These artist have both found fascination in game art and the way it affects the world. However they both use it in different ways. Games today have also evolved as graphics become more and more lifelike. Video games are notoriously seen as just a tool to pass the time for adults and children alike. It is also feared to be the reason for violence in the new generations whom parents allow their children to play. What is not understood is that video games are tools for learning as well. If children can supposedly learn violence through games, they too can learn history, art, and other knowledge put in games.
Assassin’s Creed by Ubisoft, is a game series that evoke violence but it is also well known for its grand library of history. In the game, the developers placed important cities and buildings from all over the world and also provide a bit of history to them. With that in mind, Artist Damien Hypolite, a French photographer as well as a chief editor of infographics at Avenire, uses Ubisoft’s latest Assassin Creed game for his recognized photography work. As an avid gamer, Damien was impressed with the photo realism that Assassin’s Creed: Unity displayed in the game and decided to take screenshots of the in game buildings. Since Assassin’s Creed: Unity also takes place where Damien lived, he scouted for the actual buildings located in his area. He then decided to combine the real locations with the photos of the buildings in the game and thus his “Then and Now” series was born.
The photographic comparison between the in game and real life buildings were extravagant. With Damien’s side by side comparison, it showed the gaming photorealism to the extremity it can be taken today. The amount of work it must have taken the programmers to duplicate the grandeur of a building must have been painstakingly staggering. The photos were as close to realistic as it can possibly get. With Damien’s demonstration for his combined love of videogames and art, we are able to see how digital media was used to display art. Both in video games as well as photography.
Chloe Varelidi, a game designer from New York, also uses games as a medium for art. However, unlike Damien, Chloe produces creative games for people to learn and prosper of off. Her work was actually used in the 2013 Mozilla Festival in London during Halloween. It’s called “Werefox” where Chloe and a fellow colleague designed a game of two factions. One side bourgeois, whom are trying to kill people. Then there are the Publicans, a group of pub owners who over heard the bourgeois’ plans and tried to save people. Another one of Chloe’s games, which is more child friendly, is a game called firefly. It’s basic game play is like that of tag. People wear a badge that Chloe creates, they also wear lights and people must collaborate to steal one another’s badge. Chloe’s art can be found as pieces for the games she create for digital media such as cards, badges and on occasion apps.
The five reason for Chloe‘s love for video games are because:1. they make people more social. 2. They empower people to become more creative. 3. By playing video games with others, they learn empathy due to trying to see other’s and their way of playing games. 4. They give us life by being more playful and silly. Finally 5. Video games doesn’t make people quitters. If they come upon an obstacle, they get up and try again.
These two artist are completely different in the way they use games to exploit digital media. Damien is one who is inspired by in game art and builds upon that art to create a juxtapose photorealistic series. Whereas Chloe builds interesting games through digital media to involve get children and adults alike to learn and play. These two artist may not be the same though they use games as an outlet for their art.
It is easy to see that Digital media is an aspect that contemporary artist are starting to utilize to get the best affect for their ideals. They use it to show that there is much more artist have done since technology had moved forward. Video game concepts that are based on real buildings, help inspire artist to go out and see for themselves the architectural beauty that inspiration came from. Artist such as Chloe, provide digital media their talents to make interactive games for children.
I tried to get in contact with both Chloe and Damien, but to no avail was I successful. Nevertheless it’s interesting to see where technology and digital media has brought the world of art. It’s intricate designs being used for interactive games or to help spread history of a world long gone. I find that these artist were amazing with their work and their interest were the same as my own. I’m astonished by their use of digital media in their works.

Youtube HTML Mixer

Youtube mixer
The link above will direct you to my Youtube mixer. The reason I choose to do my mixer the way it is is because I found it intriguing when I played with the previous guys videos and they mixed so well. No matter how many videos I put in mine, it also had the same effect. So that's how my mixer was born. I choose to do videos of me, something funny, something that interest me, music, and videos you learn things off off. It's pretty cool how the music adds so much more to the random videos, it kind of blows my mind. My only qualms about this project was that my background didn't get to show but that may have been my mistake with the HTML. It's been a long time since I've used it, which was in the myspace days. Another thing was that I wasn't able to control the volume of the videos I choose. Other than that, this project was cool and I learn that some things mix well if you give it a chance.

3D Utopian Modeling project

This project was absolutely awesome! I enjoyed every aspect of it up until the painting because the paint, my object, and I were not agreeing upon what color stayed. Besides that point, I decided to make my Utopian building futuristic. My building is supposed to represent a Hospital, a Police Station, and a Fire station. My main inspiration was that of a tree of life so I decided to have the structure based upon a tree. The "Trunk" of my building is colored brown with a grey entrance because it is a building and people will need to understand that it is an entrance. I decided that I would add some green to the middle of the building to represent life especially since the middle looked like it already had vines on it. I added orange to the pods on the base to represent energy and growth. As you move up the tree, there's a circular doughnut combine with more pods on top of it. This was supposed to be colored green because it is a tree but I decided that since it's futuristic and it is a combination of things, I would paint it in colors that represented those buildings. Red and blue for the Police station. Red and white for the Fire station. White for the hospital. One thing I would have liked for this model was that it was bigger than it is. Originally I wanted it to be maybe 4 inches so I can possibly paint it easier. Also because it's a tree and their big. All in all, it was a fun project.

This building was a collaborative building with Allie. We were in charge of making an info. booth for the city and this is how it turned out. We wanted it to be a small building with a cone shape for it's design, so it can be easily spotted. Info. booths aren't normally big anyway so this was was pretty spot on. I'm glad with the way it turned out and how Allie and I designed it. One thing that disappointed me with this model is that it didn't print out the way we envisioned it but when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.

Art Gallery thoughts

Late Harvest Gallery

Nevada Museum of Art

November 20, 2014

            Ironically there was a Taxidermy Gallery at the Nevada Museum of Art the day I went to listen to Melissa Milgroms artist lecture. In this gallery they had many stuffed animals but as I had mentioned in the artist lecture paper, some of these animals were given human characteristics. The one piece that stuck out the most for me was this taxidermy antelope with a face of a human. It seriously look genuine and it was sort of freaky. The body was perfectly copied from the antelope and the face gruesomely depicted that of a man. I’m not sure if it was just the fact that the face seemed realistic that freaked me out or because the man’s face on an animal seem to just look natural. Either way it was artistically well done.

            As I progressed through the gallery, I saw this huge looking window that looked like stained glass. When I gave a closer look, it wasn’t stain glass but beautiful butterfly wings of various colors! It was honestly intriguing. The piece was called The Kingdom of the Father by Damien Hirst. Hirst uses butterfly wings in many of his pieces and the reason for that is because they embody the fragility of life but as butterflies die they retain that beauty.

            Finally the last two pieces that caught my eye were called Untitled and Geologische Vondst II (Geological Discover II). Untitled was created by Nicolas Galanin and his art consisted of a Taxidermy Wolf. Its lower have is flattened and it’s upper half is molded into a wolf ready to run. Galanin purposely did his art this way to depict the way he feels about him and his people. The bottom half represents his culture trapped by a colonizer while the upper half represents those of his people who continue to fight for their own creativity. Geologische Vondst II was created by Afke Golsteijn and Floris Bakker. Their piece is that of a taxidermy lion that looks to be cut in half. The insides of the lion has amethyst and forged iron inside. I found these pieces interesting because they don’t follow the taxidermy the way it’s supposed to be done. They put their twist into it and with their experiment, the piece came out quite well! I truly enjoyed this gallery and it just helped me see with my own eyes what Melissa Molgrim saw in Taxidermy.

Artist Talk Impression

Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy

Melissa Milgrom

November 20, 2014

Melissa Milgrom held an artist talk at the Nevada Museum of Art about Taxidermy and how it correlated with art. She had also written a book titled Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy, which was the main topic of the talk. Melissa conversed about her many adventures with other taxidermist and shared interesting stories of museums selling and buying stuffed animals. While some believe that taxidermy is just a job of stuffing animals, it is also an art form. It can depict recreation of an animal or by the words of Melissa, a simple mistake can make the piece go from realistic to imaginary.

“Artist are not obliged to tell the truth…,” which is true of many art forms. In taxidermy, it is their task to recreate the animal in such a way that it resembles the animal as if it were in its own niche. However some artist have taken the art form and provided a spin to the process. Artists experimented with taxidermy by providing the animal with human characteristics such as fox heads on a man’s body holding guns.

Taxidermy itself, in my opinion, is an art form of recreating animals, especially when some animals are endangered. Milgrom spoke of a process that some taxidermist had to undergo just to recreate the Panda. They found furs of the same color and manipulated it so that it can fit the size of an actual Panda. These artist went far to capture the essence of the animal without hunting them down.

            Listening to Melissa’s artist talk was truly interesting. I had learned a lot of something I was ignorant about and honestly I see taxidermy in a new way. My impressions about her talk at first was that it was boring, however after fifteen minutes in I found myself being drawn into this alternative art form. Starting from Darwin, Taxidermy was just to provide an image of the wonderful animals of the world. The process though is much like sculpting but more involved. They work with wires, mold, furs and special materials to make the animal more animate. It’s a world of preserving the essence of an animal just like sculpting does for human beings.