thoughts on tumblr, making things, art and credit. and life.
two days ago i reblogged that poll about making gifs and using and reposting them and credit. it was then reblogged me with the following tags;
#like don't repost the whole set or say you made it #but if it's a reaction gif go ahead #they're not fine art it's a recording of something i didn't make #and then did some color adjustment on #the gif finder here barely works. it's fine #gif culture on tumblr is wierd to me sorry #those things are public domain #i guess not the really fussy hyperedited ones but then i doubt those see much use outside of the original set
i'm not gonna say who wrote these tags because they're incredibly divisive. and i suppose rightfully so. in the days since i've wondered why the gifs can't be art and who decides what's art and what isn't. the gif embedder works completely fine if you know how to use it, and gifs are very much so not in the public domain... what is meant by hyperedited and where is that line? creative gifs that were meant to be viewed within a set get reposted too, people have reposted my most intricate work on various social medias with zero credit, as they have simpler things, but where am i supposed to draw the line? where am i supposed to decide which ones of the things i made are art and which aren't and which i'm allowed to defend as something i put my heart into?
i don't do anything in life that isn't art in some way. and maybe that's hard to grasp if everything you do isn't art but understand when i say everything i do is art. it's all art. every single thing. my existence is performance art. this entire blog is art to me. if you understand collaging, if you understand pastiche, if you understand sampling... i suppose i do sort of think if you're doing something transformative with what i've done, if you make a web weave, if you draw on top of it, it becomes a part of a new thing and i don't think you necessarily need to credit it to me anymore. you've transformed it. but that's not the issue most gif makers face with reposters... i think there's a nuanced conversation that could be had but i would never ever describe what i do as "some color adjustment on a recording" because that doesn't even begin to explain my actual process, which is important when talking about art. but are gifs not art? do they not count? why not?
i've been trying to write with less concern as to what other people think or wanna read and more with what kind of stories i want to tell, even if they are a couple hundred words and even if they don't get the sort of attention i crave from my art... i haven't been really able to make much on tumblr and especially right now i don't know what i should even be making i suppose, so i've been turning to writing. what i wrote for rpf4rpf was such a massive success compared to what i expected from it and that was like a lifeline to me because i think i've been writing really good stuff this year and it has all underperformed spectacularly. sure what i expect is imaginary and made up and me shooting myself in the foot but i have to set some sort of expectations don't i?
at least the weather is supposed to cool down next week. my apartment is getting inhumane. no amount of keeping the blinds closed and opening every window at night is stopping the foot thick concrete walls from being 27 degrees through and thus making it impossible for me to make my apartment cooler than that... and mostly it's hotter. because i'm in here, putting out body heat.
i imagine it probably depends on the photographer how they feel about it, god knows i flipflop on my own photography, but i wonder how many sports photographers consider their craft art and are proud of it as artists. there are some sports photographers that are definitely artists in the sense of purposefully creating artful images, but i don't think you need to exhibit purposefulness to create art. they're all artists in their own right, but i wonder how many of them understand that... and identify with it. especially when talking about sports photographers in the major (haha) leagues like mlb, nhl, nfl, etc. where most of their work isn't created for the purpose of viewing it as art but for being used together with journalism. but they're creating art just as much as any street photographer is creating art. i could probably talk about this for another several hundred words.
kind of a long one this. i hope you're having a good day. i hope you can have a nice treat today.
