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Electronic Art

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  • ItemOpen Access
    Jaiden Stanford: capstone
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Stanford, Jaiden, artist
    The artist's statement: Every artist has their own style when it comes to creating and expressing themselves thought their work. Some people like the physical hands-on aspect of creating and others like me enjoy creating with technology and in a digital format. As my portfolio has shaped itself into what it is today, it took a lot of trial and error. Lots of time and effort has gone into creating my work and it means everything to me, my portfolio is a small reflection of who I am as a creative and I would say it will forever shape into a new format because I am always looking to explore new ways in creating and enhancing my skill list. The process of creating work just depends on the project, but I always start off with a "story board" aspect on paper to Envision what I want to accomplish for the final aspect. My work is everything as stated before it's a small reflection of who I am as a person, but as a creative it shows what I am passionate about and what I love doing. My medium is anything with a camera and sitting down and editing, so digital content creation. I really do enjoy the feeling of capturing a moment in time and history that only happens once but will forever be remembered and documented.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Teagan Keeler: capstone
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Keeler, Teagan, artist
    The artist's statement: Animation has always been a passion of mine, since I could remember cartoons were always my main inspiration and comfort. I always wanted to make a connection with my future employment and these shows, so I stuck with Electronic media. I use various software to create characters and stories, these tools are not just means to achieve a goal, they are also channels to my imagination. Procreate is great for experiencing the same sense of euphoria and ease that my childhood drawings brought, with an easy upfront program and a remarkable database for improvement, I have learned to excel and sometimes even animate in Procreate. The ability to use Adobe Premiere to transform raw animation into a visual story, is one of the many things I have been experimenting and excelling with in school. With Blender, I can create intricate 3D landscapes that transport viewers to magical places and bring the flat drawing from procreate to life. My work now is mostly 2D animation with touches of 3D. I test with rotoscoping but I stick mostly to 2D character work. By embarking on this journey, I hope viewers establish a bond with my work and embody the same sense of wonder and happiness that filled me during my childhood.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Sabrina Moskoe: capstone
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Moskoe, Sabrina, artist and filmmaker
    The artist's statement: I'm a visual designer, new media artist, and researcher who creates art and design. Driven by interdisciplinary thought that encompasses art, design, technology, and social science, my work explores physical and digital landscapes as well as the human perception of these spaces. Working primarily in digital software and computer programming, I utilize my experience in graphic design, game design, and illustration to experiment with various media such as virtual/augmented reality, animation, large-scale installations, and computer vision. My artistic endeavors reference and take inspiration from the experiences provided by video games and the field of UI/product design.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Nicolaus Lasher: capstone
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Lasher, Nicolaus, artist
    The artist's statement: Hello, my name is Nicolaus Lasher, and I'd like to present my electronic artwork from Colorado State University during the 2022- 2023 year. For as long I can remember, I have been enthralled with movies and video games, which has cultivated an active imagination without many bounds. This has played a big part in my artwork by allowing me to envision a variety of worlds and characters with which I saw myself interacting and exploring. I created many fictional universes throughout the years, some of which I can still remember today. I intend to bring them to life in the form of films, TV series, and video games. I enjoy creating concept art for these universes, which often appear in my work in some form, be it physically or as part of a backstory that I envision. When this happens, it gives me a place to escape the stress of the real world, providing an outlet to undertake my fictional adventures and allowing me to continually test the limits of my creativity. My work encompasses a variety of themes, including dreams, inner feelings, and senses beyond the normal perception. I often employ storytelling and worldbuilding in my projects, which helps guide me through the process of creating my work by providing a map of where to explore when I craft my work. I use various artistic software, including the Adobe Suite and Blender, to create images and videos conveying my stories. My goal is to immerse the viewer in the fictional worlds, allowing them to traverse beyond reality and see the universe through different lenses. I hope that by doing this, the viewers can image themselves in the shoes of the characters, both onscreen and offscreen, and feel connected to the fictional worlds in order to find enlightenment through their adventures. When this happens, it will allow them to apply their newfound knowledge to the real world, giving them a starting point for lessons to preserve for future generations. As shown by my work, I hope to share my unique vision with the world, and inspire others to come up with their stories and tap into their imaginations to create more immersive experiences in the process.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Lucille Wright: capstone
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Wright, Lucille, artist
    The artist's statement: We plant seeds in soil made from decomposed corpses and wonder why the flower looks familiar. I work in a combination of traditional 2D animation, stop-motion, rotoscoping, scanned-image animation, and collected footage. My pieces combine techniques and imagery. I find inspiration for my pieces by looking backwards. What is happening now has happened before. What is happening now is a culmination of the efforts of those who came before us. This fight is an old one. And the fight before it was even older. History has proven to us again and again that we are fickle creatures, set on repeating ourselves. I try to express this in my pieces. The iterative nature of our problems. They evolve. We make progress. But we fall into the same worn-down ruts.I am interested in how history repeats itself. How our human race manages to run itself in a circle. Animation is to bring life. It comes from the latin root "anima," meaning life and breath. While I believe my art is alive, its purpose is not to birth something new. My artwork has a much more fungal quality. It lingers between life and death. It secretes itself into the contemporary and takes it over with something fouler. Something old. Digesting in order to create.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Courtney Fichter: capstone
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Fichter, Courtney, artist
    The artist's statement: My body of work is focused on conceptual experimental video. I very much focus on centering my themes in each video around my own lived experiences. These topics have expanded from anxiety, mental health, and cultural differences within locations. I utilize sound and samples to bring the viewer discomfort when watching my work. I often utilize looping to create a monotonous yet uncomfortable experience. Sound is an integral part of the viewing experience of my work as it turns mundane, average shots to something else.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Abril Maranon: capstone
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Maranon, Abril, artist
    The artist's statement: Contaminated is a video installation that explores the issue of gun violence and access to guns, how gun culture has impacted today's incidents of gun violence on civilians. Informed by the Columbine massacre, this work focuses more specifically on the effect the resulting legislation surrounding the culture has had on children as the continued target of shootings. There seems to be a disconnect at the legislative level between what politicians are saying and what is happening outside the white house. This inaction appears to be spreading to the civilian level as school shootings and shootings in public spaces have become commonplace. Contaminated is a multichannel video installation in which video is projected onto a screen made of thin fabric and a columbine flower that sits on the ground. The video starts with an undisturbed flower projected on a screen and on the ground. Stock footage of idealized school environments fade into the flower imagery while the second amendment and politicians begin to appear on the screen hanging from the ceiling. This installation looks at the legislative side of this issue, with video of the second amendment being the topmost video followed by three screens of politicians giving their speeches on the matter of guns. A recording of web searches surrounding the amendment begins to invade the first screen and slowly leaks into the other screens until it finally manages to invade the shape of the flower below. The screen recording of google searches starts with research on the second amendment and its implications but soon turns into a search about buying guns and reveals where one might find them. Once the screen recording has contaminated all the screens, the search moves to Walmart, showing that one has access to guns even here. As the other four screens begin to fade under the screen recording, the stock footage in the flower shifts into and begins to play footage from a documentary discussing the Columbine massacre. The juxtaposition of past and present upon one symbol is meant to highlight what we stand to lose through continued inaction both at the government level and the individual level. How have we come to accept the killing of children as something that happens in a school? How have we allowed continued access to guns? Moreover, how could we do nothing about it when the same thing continues to happen? This installation focuses on the political aspects of this issue as video of Cruz, Pence, and Randpaul begin to glitch. Parts of their dialogue can be heard in direct contrast to the reality of easy access to guns being demonstrated in their backgrounds. These politicians are shown defending a culture that holds on tightly to the second amendment despite its impact on the safety of civilians and children across the nation. This project tries to hit refresh on the issue and wake the viewer up to the gravity of the situation.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Sara Arnold: capstone
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Arnold, Sara, artist
    The artist's statement: My work addresses the nature of internet language and how it is comprehended in contemporary issues of self image. My interest is in a new era of “wokeness” that manifests through competition. My work tries to visually explain this phenomenon by addressing being chronically online. I want to express the moment of distortion that happens when information is regurgitated through a lens clouded by the need to be socially conscious in an altruistic fashion. The moment of distortion is described through real time video processing, the viewer of the work therefore becomes part of the art object as they are forced to see a distorted version of their person. The separation from the real world or analog world is defined by the output to the real time video processing; I want the viewer to see themselves become distorted, to reveal the unsee-able phenomenon that I'm describing. The use of text in my work is meant to emulate the impermanence of a social media timeline, as well as frequent subjects of internet discourse. This brevity is further stressed by a scrolling of the text as a motif in a few of my works. The use of text in my work is about examining how language is changed in internet spaces with the removal of aural conversation, and the addition of a slang - based vernacular. Language In Cyberspace focuses on the language used by Generation Z and Millennials on social media platforms. As a generation I find the language that is often used to talk about complex subjects such as socio-political movements, human rights, oppression of marginalized groups, and the power struggle of generations older, is often more casual and even uses memes or internet trends. The use of this more casual language often contradicts the subject matter of the text. In this piece I re-contextualize these texts using a familiar text to speech voice used heavily in memes to drown out the seriousness of the messages while also making content with darker themes more palatable. This piece considers the human side of internet language, as a coping mechanism. Expanding on media language as represented through text, audio, and visuals, Means of Communication uses internet language to inform different modes of communication, which is then manipulated to emphasize the ways information is distorted through exchange. Textual visuals, audio visualization, and the audio used in the piece are all informed by one another, each representing how communication of information through internet language is used differently. Additionally the different manipulations of the same piece of information echoes how thoughts and remarks of internet language are layered and informed by one another, and distorted by one another. The concept of the piece is based around the dematerialization of communication, exploring different representations of communication through sound, text, and the visualization of sound. The piece also acts as a sequel to "Language in Cyberspace”, however in this piece the means of communication "and visual representation of internet language informs the process of the piece.
  • ItemOpen Access
    William Schmitz: capstone
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Schmitz, Will, artist
    The artist's statement: I'm interested in the permanence of digital media and the ethereal experience of viewing it. Once you click away from a video it stops for you, but it continues to exist without you. I use 2D and 3D programs to explore our relationship with this ethereal experience. The push and pull we feel from using these advanced machines and algorithms to regulate our moods. There is a constant flow of content to consume leaving something for everyone online. This leads me to produce a wide variety of media and formats. All my pieces are still tied together through the reliance on digital fabrication and housing. My workspace is inside a computer and many of my pieces cannot be separated from the workspace.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Sofia Hernandez: capstone
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Hernandez, Sofia, artist
    The artist's statement: My artwork is an intensive overview of social and cultural issues that inhabit aspects of everyday life. I am interested in exploring the relationship between the digital realm and the real-world; and the impact that the relationship has on its users. The focal point of my work is rooted in the feminine perspective. Muliebrity is a topic that I am captivated by because I feel that it is essential to speak and bring attention to issues that have been neglected in the past. There are many more obstacles to maneuver over to experience unequivocal equality between all genders. My inspiration comes from not only my experience but the experience of the women around me, whether it's someone from my personal life or a stranger on the internet. It is critical to listen and learn from what they have to share. I use a variety of materials in making my projects, such as video, sound, printmaking, installations, and a variety of other digital media forms. My current approach to creating work is with video and live image processing. I construct image processing programs and combine them with videos to produce a non-traditional relationship between the audience and the screen.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Taylor Morrow: capstone
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Morrow, Taylor, artist
    The artist's statement: Art is derived from basic forms found in nature, crafted and stylized with our own complex perception of reality. Using simple lines of metal to form trees, creating large stone circles, or making wooden cubes allow the initial framework to be universally recognizable. Details such as the addition of paint, smaller wires, glossy beads, dynamically cut wood, or pools of liquid resin can be added to these basic, or more abstract forms to create a new layer or dimension of realism. The placement of smaller materials help the eye flow across the overall form, with accents such as resin seeming to flow like rivers, clusters of beads stretching outward, and various carvings of shapes pointing in certain directions, organizing together in patterns and recognizable symbols. This essentially lets the viewer find themselves lost in the artwork, finding intentional, or unintentional meanings in the art whilst still being able to return in larger composition. A diversity of materials allows the art to portray a variety of aesthetics ranging from something raw and organic, like the look of plants, stone, or burnt wood, to something entirely artificial, with the use of industrial parts, polished metal, glass, fluorescent paints, digital fabrication, and computer animation. This allows the art to tell a multitude of narratives. In many cases, it is a physical representation of our evolution from the primitive to the modern. Furthermore, the synthesis of these materials in unconventional ways allows for environments to form that only exist in imaginative space.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Dom Baca: capstone
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Baca, Dom, artist
    The artist's statement: My journey as an artist can be explained in three similar words, Communication, Community and Computers. Visual arts to me has always been like standing on a stage with a megaphone in front of a crowd of people. Design is a way to communicate with others and connect with them emotionally. When I first began my journey as an artist, I didn't quite know what to say. With limitless possibilities and an unknown number of listeners, I often questioned what I wanted to communicate through my art. In recent years, I have begun to find my voice in standing up for what I believe in and that at its core is creating community. I have used my art to fuel my passion for standing up against the oppressions and injustices we see in the world today in the hopes it will educate others to help make change. I believe when we have equality and equity within our society, we will be able to thrive as a community. Since then my interest has grown and I found my message to communicate, my next step was to find my megaphone, also known as my medium. I began to learn how people communicate online in virtual spaces with the changing digital world. This has led me to explore more electronic and computer-based arts such as graphic design and the electronic arts. I am interested in the aesthetics, functionality and the ease of communication working with computers brings. Within my personal explorations as an artist I am constantly looking for ways to communicate my message with the audience while hoping that it will spark a conversation of their own. I believe the best artwork is work that gets people talking. As of right now, I am experimenting with virtual clothing and its effects on our online personas. Within my work I have been digitally modeling clothes and working on ways to bring them to life by mixing them with digital photography as well as augmented reality software. Within this I am looking at ways we can change our online appearance and what that means in relation to those around us within online spaces. In my work I am always looking to spark up a conversation. When working with clients to help bring their visual messages to life, I always try to use my knowledge of design to help effectively communicate their messages and the emotional undertones behind them. I am an active listener who understands the importance of the client's voice within the project. I always see through that the client's vision, passion, and messages are the center focal point throughout the design process. Additionally, I find it important to make sure that I am transparent and explain my process thoroughly, so the client feels involved and welcomed within the design process. I see the project through to completion and I always give an expected timeline, so there is always transparency within the design process.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Seirra Swanson: capstone
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Swanson, Seirra, artist
    The artist's statement: I often find myself seeking out nature for clarity and artistic inspirations. My body of work intertwines nature and technology, creating a dichotomy between the wonder of the natural world and the industrial uses of technology. Recently I often find myself experimenting with the different visuals I can create only occasionally turning back to the natural environment. My works mainly focus on 3D modeling, animation, video, and the occasional code used to distort images. I often use the organic shape and movement of the environment as a starting point. The icons resembling nature will later become distorted, as this nature is manmade much like the technology destroying it. Through processes like drawing, animating and 3D modeling I can deconstruct and reconstruct the idea of the natural environment in a digital form.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Anna-Maria Meiser: capstone
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020) Meiser, Anna-Maria, artist
    The artist's statement: I am an electronic artist who explores relationships and examines shared human experience. I enjoy observing the pull between opposing forces and creating bridges between subject matter through electronic art. I build digital expressions through sound, video, code, and stop motion works. As an artist I am often drawn to creating works that discuss unique aspects of my identity or human experience. My earliest work as a student often explored loss and the division between running out of time and time continuing without you. I tried to make sense of the loss of my parents through digital imagery and sound. I used props from my time in hospitals and arranging funerals to create stop motions that told my story in playdough and colorful antihistamine pills. As I continued my studies in electronic art, my interests broadened and I felt the influence of other electronic artists such as Yayoi Kusama, and Kristin Lucas impacting my art. At CSU I have explored many more relationships between topics such as micro and macro destruction, humanities survival versus the climate crisis, and most recently the relationships between humans and technology such as female identity within the digital age. Discovery, exploration, and connectivity unify my various bodies of work and have become a significant part of my process. As a student, I have spent most of my time researching other great artists and movements, focusing on experimentation, and pushing my work out of my comfort zone. As I grow in my skill and adopt new software’s such as Unreal Engine and P5.js I find my focus narrowing. I am currently feeling inspired to create works that express the volatile nature of our current pandemic. While my most recent works are videos pieces discussing it, I am also undertaking projects in which I am learning how to create art in three dimensional digital environments and VR. My goal is to incorporate these new skills into future artistic endeavors.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Taliesun Landrey: capstone
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020) Landrey, Taliesun, artist
    The artist's statement: Ever since I was young, I always adored editing videos. I started out on a Movie maker and imovie and I always wanted to push that limit. I wanted to explore past the capabilities of those programs. I would see something on television and I wanted to learn how to achieve that. Soon I was asking my parents for video editing software with more capabilities, such as Adobe products and Sony Vegas. Thus began my journey on what I wanted to study for my undergraduate degree, which led me to the Electronic Art concentration. In the past, my work was more about my personal interests in nature. For instance, I completed a past piece called, Flower/Flour, which was a short stop animation, that had a flower turn into flour. Since then, my work has taken a more serious approach in terms of topics, than my original playfulness. Recently, my work has been focused on social issues around how the western society often responds to events. I feel as there is a lack of acknowledgement on multiple issues, we often focus too much on mundane issues with the online world, but are not always able to recognize past that. One of my most successful pieces revolves around Amber Alerts and how we lack compassion or acknowledgement toward these. I often found myself asking questions like, "What am I supposed to do about the Amber Alert? The chances of me finding the suspect is slim." That is when I realized that not only do I ignore these alerts, but others do too, despite me wanting to advocate for children. Although, I am not sure how to improve upon the Amber Alert system, the least I could do was raise awareness to the situation, which is the goal of my current work. I also recently focused another piece around the publicity of 911 calls and how we are desensitized to the horrid events happening around us, that we are able to perform normal tasks while we hear these events through our radios and see them displayed on our televisions.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Andrea Buer: capstone
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020) Buer, Andrea, artist
    The artist's statement: An integral aspect of my growth as an artist has been an insatiable curiosity for how things function and how they can be combined to create something new. This goes hand in hand with my foundation in traditional sciences thanks to my intended goal of becoming a doctor, which has given me a unique perspective to explore. The diversity of my educational background shows up in my work. For example, my piece Presence used live tracking of a person in a space to effectively translate their movements into an audio and visual glitch that appeared on a prerecorded video. This utilized studies in anatomy and physiology alongside coding and film to create the effect. Presence was a critique on the impact that we have on our surroundings, sometimes unknowingly, a concern frequently addressed in my artwork this past year. Presence is but one of many pieces that require an interdisciplinary approach to realize the concept while addressing the issue that I am interested in. My art has always focused on the human experience alongside nature but has recently been refined to a more specific idea related to ancestry and local legends. Growing up, I was raised on stories and lore specific to not only my family heritage but to the mountains and rural plains we came from. This reconnection to my childhood resulted in an exploration of the spiritual realm. Specifically, I have begun to analyze both the modern and ancient phenomena of cryptids. Cryptids are creatures like Bigfoot or Hidebehind that have eyewitnesses, but little to no evidence to prove their existence. There are countless cryptids around the world, varying from one location to the next and they are often more prominent in rural areas that are inherently closer to nature. Humanity has this uncanny ability to create our own boogeymen out of the unknown and I want to analyze why this is and how it has changed over the centuries. Technology has advanced alongside reporting's of cryptids, and in some cases has given them an even stronger presence. I am interested in researching and creating art that digs into the phenomena of our created boogeymen and our relationship to them as our relationship with technology deepens in turn. My most recent works explore coding of interactive stories and games, using film to push the narrative of a world that intersects our own, bringing the cryptic and unsettling into a more personalized experience for the viewer/participant. This has been used in various projects of mine, from a coded website (Cryptids'R'Us) to surreal videos (Merging) and my biggest undertaking, a work in progress titled Cryptic Calling which will be a fully interactive game made in Unity. I hope to get people thinking about their own folklore and how, despite advances in technology and medical understanding, our modern minds continue to adapt and maintain these cryptic traditions in our lives.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Ethan Worker: capstone
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Worker, Ethan, artist and filmmaker
    The artist's statement: When setting out to make new work, my aim is to process and unpack topics and issues that have affected and altered our modern perceptions of reality. By working with significant mental concepts such as memory, self-perception, nostalgia, and escapism, I seek to gain a greater understanding of my own reality, as well as identify the factors and forces that influence many of us in today's landscape. Through digital manipulation and 3d motion-based techniques, I hope to build a sense of reflection and introspection. My aim is to recontextualize these issues of self-realization in the vacuum of a distorted, yet familiar setting. By reframing these topics in a reflective alternative context, distance can be gained from biases and preconceptions, hopefully resulting in a greater ability to step back and contemplate the means by which our individual realities and senses of self are constructed. Working in a digital 3d setting allows for an ability to create this alternate lens of reality, defying physics, social influences, scale, and realism. Instead, symbols of humanity and identity can be reappropriated and viewed within the context of an isolated, singular objectivity. My work doesn't aim to depict the world and all of its complexities photorealistically, but rather it seeks to hold a mirror to these individualized processes within each of our lives; to explore these concepts of mind and worldview in a self-contained, untethered space.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Cheyenna Boley: capstone
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Boley, Cheyenna, artist and filmmaker
    The artist's statement: When involving myself within my work, I make whimsical styled artworks. My artwork allows me to express my imagination which I was not able to communicate as a kid. My work allows me to connect with everyone, not just a select audience. When starting a piece, I focus on the emotions or hobbies I happen to be feeling or pursuing at the time. Whether it is involved with depression or listening to music, my work reaches people on a global scale and be relatable to all ages. I want my art to make people happy like the happiness it brings me when I see the finished product. My imagination leads to my inspiration for my artwork. The emotions that I feel fuels my artwork, as well as activities that I am involved with. If I am in a depressive state, my artwork tends to find itself on the dark side of images and color scale. If my hobbies have lifted my mood my artwork tends to be lighthearted and includes lighter tone colors. My work represents my life. It portrays the struggles I have faced throughout my life and the hardships I have overcome thus far in my college career. I hope that my interpretations of what I have experienced will allow my community to understand the life of an artist and hardships they face when making works from inspirations that have flooded their imaginations. My process of making art was influenced by how I grew up. I wasn't the most productive kid, when I was in classes my mind would wander off topic. I would begin to sketch images from my memory. Images that I would remember from dreams that I have had or details that have come from listening to friend's stories. My materials and current works include things from Adobe software programs; Illustrator, markers and pencils, and paper. I used the sketches I make for an outline to use in adobe illustrating. I find this easier to do in comparison to free handing artwork with the computer. I tend to go through rough drafts before I settle on an idea that I think suits my concept.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Madison Gould: capstone
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Gould, Madison, artist and filmmaker
    The artist's statement: Like most artists, creating, more specifically drawing, was my only escape growing up. The older I got the more I played with Adobe products, and eventually fell into videography as well as animation. This was the start of my artistic career. These days, I tend to lean more towards videography and animation because it is an authentic medium, while also allowing room for distortion of reality. It is the distortion that has always interested me, taking something out of the real world and adding/subtracting things in order to create a whole new reality. My style tends to vary based off of what medium I'm using, for example, my graphic design work uses heavily saturated colors in order to create a dreamlike effect. Whereas my video work tends to lean towards the darker side of life. I recently created a piece titled "Daemonium" which is meant to emphasize and give insight to mental illness and the effects that it can have on the people who suffer from it. In contrast, I also recently made a series of pieces in photoshop that are meant to reflect the inner battles I have with myself. They depict anamorphic individuals that are surrounded by an array of colors, representing the bright and cheery exterior that I show others on a daily basis, while the animals demonstrate my deepest darkest demons that are constantly fighting to get out. Sometimes life does make one feel like they are trapped in a change, but sometimes society tells us we aren't allowed to feel sadness, only positivity. I have suffered from depression and anxiety since I was 15, and I think my work truly reflects that. Even if it's on purpose or subconsciously, I have always let my emotions dictate what I create. I also believe emotions are truly the one thing all humans can relate to, whether that be envy, joy, or curiosity, humans feel and experience these emotions, and I want to give them a face.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Christian (CJ) Johnson: capstone
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Johnson, Christian, artist and filmmaker
    The artist's statement: The focus of my practice and research in Electronic Art is to criticize and investigate the semantics of our actions as humans and as a society through the means of video, installation and new media. Concepts and ideas such as individuality, cultural trends, gender norms, sexuality, are what I use to inspire my Experimental Video and Sound art pieces. Using tactics such as appropriation,repetition and progressive abstraction of subject to express these ideas and to call attention to things that we as a society do and actions we partake in that are intrinsic. This work isn't made to point fingers at anyone or anything, but rather to bring attention to the weird tendencies we have as human beings and to explore why we do them. I hope to achieve a dialogue with my audience with this work that guides people to look inwards and to question things that we may see as normal, then to ask ourselves is this normal?