Project 2: Mediated Reality

"A basic tenet of postmodernism is that our understanding of the world is based first and foremost on mediated images." - Eleanor Heartney in Postmodernism

For this project, create an artwork that exposes either a particular or a general class of media manipulation in our culture. Your artwork should somehow demonstrate the fallacy of an idea that is being fed to us. Your definition of media and media manipulation can be broadly defined. The manipulation may be subtle, and in fact exposing subtle yet insidious manipulations are probably the strongest subject for this project. Bring to light something that we take for granted, something that has become second nature to us. These can be cultural norms, conventions of our time, generational differences, etc.

Ideas that come to mind are: notions of family, becoming an adult, material wealth, etc. For this project, try to stay away from the obvious areas of advertising and political spin – the intrinsic reality-bending of these two areas has already been worked over pretty well, hence it is extremely easy to fall into tired and cliched treatments. However, I am not going so far as to say that these areas are off-limits, just be careful to take a unique approach. As an alternative, you may want to search for some not-so-obvious manipulation to bring to light. You may find it more personally relevant to look at areas where you have been the target of some sort of manipulation. Particularly pay attention to implied cultural assumptions.

In your exposure of the manipulation, a deeper and longer lasting meaning for the viewer is usually created if you allow the viewer to come up with the "proper" interpretation rather than to hit them over the head with a message.Your artwork .

As usual, the project may be executed in any medium and may be object-oriented or otherwise, but you must bring your work to a professional level of finish and install it in the gallery space during the allotted time. Also, you must turn in a 250-word artist statement with the piece for critique.