Okay, so it's not exactly a masterpiece, but it's a good first step. The first project for FA2000, Computers and the Arts, was to create a Surrealist collage in Photoshop. After much hemming and hawing, I decided to create an image of my family and I escaping Utah as a smiling Senator Mike Lee (one of our fine, fine Congressional Tea Party demagogues) looms overhead in the manner of, say, Lord Voldemort and the Death Eaters. Unfortunately, we're driving in a 1960 Citroën DS wagon and getting passed by a Galapagos tortoise (although we have made it to the Bonneville Salt Flats and are therefore just a few miles from Nevada, where a Democrat is in the Senate). Here's the end result:
The whole thing, though, reminds me of a 2008 article I read about the Photoshop spoofs of Sarah Palin entitled "Photoshop for Democracy Revisited: The Sarah Palin File." In it, the author, Henry Jenkins, argues that such creations are actually a useful way of investigating the collective beliefs and prejudices of the nation. As a researcher, therefore, it may be premature to throw such dross in the junk mail folder but, rather, to use them as social indicators. Fascinating.
I must say, however, my all time favorite is the one of Obama and Palin as contestants in Dancing with the Stars:
