YouTube Sculpting

This assignment grew to be particularly meaningful for me, more so than I expected. For my YouTube Sculpture, I searched for terms relating to themes of Mormonism and Cinema and found some really interesting and unique stuff. My searches evolved from being related to film representations of Joseph Smith or Brigham Young to Mormons in Media to "Mormon Media"; there were all sorts of things out there. Far more than I expected. The assignment took a lot longer than I expected, and I found that while there were tons and tons of results, simply combing through them and finding the part of the clip I wanted that I could relate in my compilation of clips took time. After actually doing the project, I see some major advantages and disadvantages to this sort of appropriation art. An affordance is that it's really easy to find material. There is an abundance of it. It may be time consuming to shift through to find something you really like, but the content is all there at your fingertips. Unintended new meanings may be formed by combining related but different material. For example, the beginning clips of different versions of Joseph Smith happened to take on an "origin story" and even "militaristic" tone. This was unintentional, but when I noticed it in my clips, I rearranged them to give it that meaning. In fact, the same thing was true of my entire project. Although I had variation in my searches, I found that once I had all the clips I needed, I could rearrange them to give the piece more flow and meaning. 
A possible limitation to this sort of art is that, while surrounded by options, the artist is still limited to what's available. Perhaps this artistic approach is not as inherently limited as the artist's intent may be, depending on what the intent it. For example, if someone were to approach this assignment trying to envision or predetermine what they wanted their video to be like, they might run into some problems. You are dictated by what's available, and that may take a very different direction. Using someone else's art or content to create your own new artwork still puts you at the mercy of the original artist to some extent. Another limitation is the fact that one cannot do too much with the art or content of someone else. Sure, you can create it, you can copy it, you can even sample it, but once you start to use it in its copyrighted form, things get tricky. A great example of this is the famous "Hope" poster of President Obama from his first campaign. While the red and blue poster has become iconic, it is based off of a photograph of Obama that someone else took, and that person had major issues with their work being appropriated without permission being given. 



As I previously stated, this project was meaningful for me because it dealt with and dabbled in Mormon Cinema, some of the ways it's been explored, represented, self-represented, etc. That's a very important issue to me. But I also know that the project was dictated by my findings on YouTube, and may not be the best representation of a cinematic movement within a religion as much as it's a representation of what people upload to YouTube when they think "Mormon Movie". I also know that I can't do too much with this art other than keep it on YouTube since the subject I picked in particular deals with other people's copyrighted content. Overall, I really enjoyed the assignment, and especially enjoyed the reactions and insights when I tested my video on different people, such as my wife or cousin.