Final project

With the growing number of free and open software, which give alternatives to proprietary software like for example Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, the power of its users is growing significantly. With the expansion of Libre Graphics, every person, whether amateur or professional, has the ability to create something and put it out into the world.

At first, I thought about designing a memory game, where famous paintings should appear. More precisely, my idea was to take already existing images and completely disfigure and manipulate them with Gimp or Inkscape. The goal was that the receiver should not recognise the original of the modified picture at the very first glance. By the expression ‘famous paintings’, I mean art works like for example the ‘Mona Lisa’ or ‘Van Gogh’s self-portrait', paintings that most of the people should know. So the idea was, to create a memory game with 12 pairs of cards, where you need to match the original and the new manipulated version with each other. This should allude to the issues of authorship that exist today. If it is that easy for anybody to have access to already existing material and being able to modify it and distribute it within seconds, how is it possible to know who the initial author is and how would he get the recognition that he deserves?





























































































As I was not really satisfied yet after my research and my first idea, I decided to dig deeper into the subject by informing myself more about copyright and appropriation to create a link between my essay and my main project. However, before starting my research, I had to find out what a paper protoype is:




A paper prototype is a sketch, a quick visualization of your idea. The purpose of paper prototyping is to evaluate the idea behind the user interface, not the sketch itself. Paper prototypes are quite literally 'artless', simple, unaffected. In fact, it is a widely used method in the user-centered design process to meet the user’s expectations and needs and involves creating rough, hand-sketched drawings.





























After finding out, how a paper prototype should look like, I researched, what exactly copyright and appropriation meant.





Copyright is one of the main types of intellectual property - others include designs, patents and trademarks. Intellectual property allows a person to own things they create in the same way as something physical can be owned. It is the right to prevent others copying or reproducing someone's work.

The main legislation dealing with copyright in the United Kingdom is the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988.

Copyright is a form of intellectual property, which are applied to certain forms of creative work. Copyright refers to a legal right created by a country’s law that allows the author of an original work exclusive rights for its use and distribution. These rights often include reproduction, control over derivative works, distribution and public performance. However, this exclusive rights granted, are limited by limitations and exceptions to copyright law, including fair use.

As already mentioned, copyright laws vary by country. Nevertheless, many aspects of national copyright laws have been standardized. Typically, the duration of a copyright spans the author's life plus 50 to 100 years.

Most jurisdictions recognize copyright limitations, allowing "fair" exceptions to the creator's exclusivity of copyright and giving users certain rights. The development of digital media and computer network technologies have prompted reinterpretation of these exceptions, introduced new difficulties in enforcing copyright, and inspired additional challenges to copyright law's philosophic basis. Simultaneously, businesses with great economic dependence upon copyright, such as those in the music business, have advocated the extension and expansion of copyright and sought additional legal and technological enforcement.

There are a number of specified copyright exceptions in UK law which permit copying in certain circumstances (for instance for use in judicial proceedings) or for certain categories of people (for instance for those who are visually impaired). More detailed information regarding these exceptions is beyond the scope of this overview but can be found in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or on the UK Intellectual Property Office's website.

In addition to the specified exceptions, there exists a group of exceptions which fall within the scope of ‘fair dealing'. Material reproduced for the purposes of non-commercial research or private study, for criticism or review or for the reporting of current events is included in this group. If material is reproduced for these purposes, provided it is genuinely and fairly used for the stated purpose, and is accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement, it may be considered fair dealing and thus exempt from clearance. However, the test is subjective and will depend on the circumstances of each case.





Appropriation in art is the use of pre-existing objects or images with little or no transformation applied to them. The use of appropriation has played a significant role in the history of the arts(literary, visual, musical and performing arts). To appropriate means to properly adopt, borrow, recycle or sample aspects of human-made visual culture. Notable in this respect are the Readymades of Marcel Duchamps. Another artist, important to mention, is Andy Warhol, who appropriated the Campbell soup can to make his own work out of it. Inherent in our understanding of appropriation is the concept that the new work recontextualizes whatever it borrows to create the new work. In most cases the original 'thing' remains accessible as the original, without change.

As mentioned above, Andy Warhol re-stylized ready-made images usually by adding colors to them to transform them into works of his own. This process is considered appropriation. In fact, this practice became much more complex at the onset of Warhol’s artistic career and gained popularity in the 20th century. Andy Warhol continued the tradition of appropriation, but the times were changing, and borrowing images to create new ones became more controversial with the onset of consumerism. Towards the mid twentieth century, mass production made branding a necessity for companies who were now competing against each other for business. Once a brand was born, it needed to be protected so that the no one else could profit from the idea. Copyright, or legal ownership of artistic material (in this case), suddenly made the art of appropriation a lot more complicated.





















Today, appropriating, remixing, and sampling images and media is common practice for visual, media, and performance artists, yet such strategies continue to challenge traditional notions of originality and test the boundaries of what it means to be an artist.





After finding out what copyright and appropriation exactly means, I decided to drop my initial idea and to pursue another idea: creating an app.































While writing my essay, there was one quote that stuck in my mind. In his essay Dmitri Siegel asserts that ‘the templated mind hungers for customization and the opportunity to add their input’ (Designing our own Graves, 2006). In my opinion, this statement is true. With new technology and media, people seek for customization options everywhere. A good example to illustrate this, is for example the massive success Coca-Cola had with their marketing idea, where all kinds of different first names were printed on the etiquettes of Coca-Cola bottles. Everyone absolutely wanted to have a bottle with his own name on it. This personalization of the product was very successful, but also Nike had an innovative idea with giving their clients the possibility to design their own shoes and personalize them completely. The client has the freedom to choose the model of the shoe, the colors, the size and can write anything he wants on them. To sum up, the client completely assumes the designer’s role in this case. After thinking about that Do-it-yourself spirit that becomes more and more common in society, I thought of the selfie-boom that took place in 2013 and still continues until today. More than a million selfies are taken per day all around the world. Selfies are being published every day on Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, Twitter etc. Thus, I thought of creating an iPhone application, which would enable its users to take a picture of themselves (selfie), transform it into a known piece of art, but with their personal touch in it, and then share it on a social platform.




Before starting off, I had to think of a name for the app. After several ideas, I came up with the name ‘Revival’, which I thought suits the concept of the app perfectly. It is all about taking old, but famous pieces of art like, for example, Andy Warhol’s pop art portrait of Marilyn Monroe or the Mona Lisa and adding your personal note to it, to share it with your friends and family afterwards. This app is addressed to people of particular interest in art, but also to the rest of the population. After looking up the word ‘revival’, I learned that ‘revival’ refers to a new presentation or publication of something old, which reflects exactly the idea of the app. To design the logo, I played with the initial letter R of the word. I chose a sans-serif typeface as it gives the app a more modern and contemporary look. In addition, I wanted to highlight the letter V, which occurs twice in the word ‘revival’, which is why I added two V’s upside down to the logo, melted together with the R. Additionally, I chose a hexagon as a shape to surround the R, because the app is composed of six categories. Here below, you can see the outcome of the logo for my app called ‘Revival’, which is really simple and clean. In fact, I created it with Illustrator. However, the logo could have been done as well with open source software like Inkscape.






























Before starting to create the layout for my iPhone application, I had to choose a phone for the scenario. I chose the iPhone 6, which is the newest iPhone on the market and I looked up the dimensions of the phone itself and its screen. I had a look at already existing applications, like for example 'Whitagram' or 'Instagram,' to see how an iPhone application is structured.




















































After getting some inspiration, I then made some sketches of how my application was supposed to turn out and drew a scenario sketch. In addition, I paid attention to which symbols need to be at the top of the iPhone screen like the operator's name, the wifi symbol, the time and the battery.






























































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































This is the user journey (the so-called scenario of my app), which gives step-by-step instructions, how the application works and looks like. The goal was to keep it simple, contemporary and user-friendly. I created the wireframe with Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign as you can see below. It is important to mention at this point that all of my outcomes could have been implemented with open source software like Gimp, Inkscape and Scribus. As I am more familiar with the tools of Adobe programs, I preferred working with those, but thanks to Libre Graphics, everyone has the possibility to create such an application. Besides the logo of my application on each of the wireframes serves as the 'home button', so the user can get back to the menu at every stage of the image manipulation.

The link between the app I developed and my essay is obvious: The app is an interactive malleable non-linear digital product, which contains appropriated work from artists like Andy Warhol, Banksy, Roy Liechtenstein etc. Those are all artists, which took already existing material an reused it in their work. I did exactly the same thing with this app. In fact, this app refers directly to the quote I mentioned above from Dmitri Siegel, which says 'the templated mind hungers for customization and the opportunity to add their input’ (Designing our own Graves, 2006). This application enables its user to do exactly that, to customize their own selfies and add the input they choose to add.
































To apply the Andy Warhol pop art effect on the picture, I was using a tutorial, which I found on youtube. I followed the given instructions step-by-step by watching the video over and over again.




























First of all, I had to resize the image and change its resolution to 72. After doing so, I had to select my subject to separate it from the background. For this, I used the 'quick selection tool' an refined the edge of my selection. As a next step, I desaturated the picture and clicked on 'Filter' > 'Filter Gallery' > 'Halftone Pattern'. 'Dot' was the pattern type I chose. Afterwards, I clicked on 'Filter' > 'Sharpen' > 'Smart Sharpen'. After adjusting the values, this was my outcome at that point:





























Then, I changed the background of my subject to white and clicked on 'Levels' at the top menu of Photoshop to adjust the input white level from 255 to 100.






















































The next step was choosing the colour for my background. Furthermore, I chose very bright colours to highlight the different parts (face, hair, smile, teeth, clothing, eyelids) of the image and used the pencil with a size of 10 and a hartness of 100% to fill the particular areas of my subject.


































































































































This is how my self-made pop art selfie looked at the end of my photoshop session:





























































































To sum up, this is how my paper prototype of my app looked like at the end:

































































































To clarify the use of my application, I did the following video with my paper prototype:


































At the end of my main project, I still wanted to add a little supplement that I was working on during the completion of my work.

In fact, if you go to the Open Source Publishing website (OPS) and click on ‘Workshops’, you can find a very detailed description for every of their workshops if you scroll down to the bottom of the page. There you get an insight on how the design professionals worked together and who added what part to the outcome. Being inspired by this, I tried to simulate the same thing by ‘splitting’ myself up into three persons: Anni 1, who took care of the research. Anni 2, who was responsible for the design and the layout, and Anni 3, who managed the whole project and preserved structure during the process.

What is a paper prototype?

Appropriation

Copyright

Research

The picture on the left, is an example for mass appropriation. More precisely, Banksy appropriated this picture from Andy Warhol, and Warhol appropriated it from Marilyn Monroe’s photographs. Thus, this picture of Marilyn Monroe has been appropriated several times. According to MoMa, pop artists like Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselman, and Roy Lichtenstein reproduced, juxtaposed, or repeated mundane, everyday images from popular culture—both absorbing and acting as a mirror for the ideas, interactions, needs, desires, and cultural elements of the times. As Warhol stated, “Pop artists did images that anyone walking down the street would recognize in a split second—comics, picnic tables, men’s pants, celebrities, refrigerators, Coke bottles.”

Final project

Mindmap, Brainstorming

Inspiration

Scenario

Sketches to explore the wireframe

App Logo

Documentation

Final Mock-up video

Paper prototype

Bibliography

•EPhotozine. (2015). Create a pop art photo Andy Warhol style using Gimp. Available from: https://www.ephotozine.com/article/create-a-pop-art-photo-andy-warhol-style-using-gimp-9688 [Accessed 10 December 2015]
•Sheibley, M. (2013). Instagram Account PNG. Available from: http://images.mobile-patterns.com/1415735581342-2014-11-11%2009.16.22.png [Accessed 8 December 2015]
•Social Matters Digital. (2014). Andy Warhol and the Art of Appropriation. Available from: http://revolverwarholgallery.com/andy-warhol-art-appropriation/ [Accessed 6 December 2015]
•The Museum of Modern Art. (2015). Pop Art Appropriation. Available from: https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/pop-art/appropriation [Accessed 6 December 2015]
•Videomaker, Inc. (2003). Copyright: Legal issues you need to know. Available from: http://www.videomaker.com/article/c18/9195-copyright-legal-issues-you-need-to-know [Accessed 6 December 2015]
•Wordpress. (2003). Libre Graphics Magazine Manifesto. Available from: http://libregraphicsmag.com/manifesto/ [Accessed 6 December 2015]