Pill Storage

I liked this image as i feel it could represent the replacement of packed lunch boxes in the future.

Damien Hirst

http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=21809&tabview=text Pharmacy  1992

© Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. This work is a room-sized installation representing a pharmacy. It was conceived as a site-specific installation and initially shown at the Cohen Gallery, New York, in 1992. Hirst had been using glass-fronted cabinets of the type found in a laboratory or hospital, stacked with pharmaceutical drugs as well as other objects, since 1989. In these works (but not in Pharmacy) he arranged the drugs on the shelves so that they offer a model of the body: those at the top are medicines for the head; in the middle are medications for the stomach; those at the bottom treat ailments of the feet. These works are related to his famous ‘spot’ paintings, which bear the names of pharmaceuticals as their titles. Hirst’s spot paintings and pharmaceutical works recall an early work by Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) also titled Pharmacy (1914). One of Duchamp’s first ready-mades, this is a commercial print of a winter landscape signed by an unknown artist onto which Duchamp painted two small drops of colour (red and yellow) suggesting personages, which for him represented the coloured apothecary bottles generally seen in pharmacy windows at that time. T07187, like all Hirst’s smaller medicine cabinet works, also recalls the series of Pharmacies created by Joseph Cornell (1903–72) during the 1940s and 1950s. These comprise such poetic fragments as leaves, feathers, shells, papers, mineral and wood samples, coloured liquids and powders assembled in rows of glass bottles lined up on the shelves of old wooden medicine chests. Two of these dating from 1943, both Untitled (Pharmacy) (reproduced in Diane Waldman, Joseph Cornell: Master of Dreams, New York 2002, pp.52–3), feature rows of identical bottles partitioned with glass shelving that runs vertically as well as horizontally, forming a grid – the structure that orders Hirst’s spot paintings and such works as Life Without You 1991 (T12749) and the Untitled print from London 1992, P77930. In Hirst’s Pharmacy the small medicine cabinets of the earlier pieces have been expanded to cover the walls with rows of packaged drugs behind glass. Four glass apothecary bottles filled with coloured liquids stand in a row on a counter and represent the four elements: earth, air, fire, water. Their traditional form is a reminder of more ancient practices of treating and healing the body. The counter fronts three desks, covered with an array of office equipment and stationery, and three chairs. Four bowls containing honeycomb sit on four footstools arranged around an electric insect-o-cutor, which hangs from the ceiling. Hirst has commented: ‘I’ve always seen medicine cabinets as bodies, but also like a cityscape or civilization, with some sort of hierarchy within it. It’s also like a contemporary museum of the Middle Ages. In a hundred years time this will look like an old apothecary. A museum of something that’s around today.’ (Quoted in Dannatt, p.59.) Medicine and drugs are recurring themes in Hirst’s work as means of altering perception and providing a short-lived cure, ineffectual in the face of death. Here the honeycomb operates as the central metaphor: it potentially attracts flies, only to lure them on to a quick and brutal death. In a similar manner the pharmaceutical drugs with their inevitable side effects could be seen to represent a range of impermanent means for escape from sickness and pain. Pharmacy, with its clinical and authoritative atmosphere, made cheerful by the colourful apothecary bottles, connects the laboratory or hospital (the source and location of modern medicine) with the museum or gallery space. For Hirst medicine, like art, provides a belief system which is both seductive and illusory. He has commented: ‘I can’t understand why some people believe completely in medicine and not in art, without questioning either’ (quoted in Damien Hirst, p.9). By reproducing the area of a pharmacy the public is normally denied access to in a highly aestheticised context, Hirst has created a kind of temple to modern medicine, ironically centred around an agent of death (the insect-o-cutor). Offering endless rows of palliative hopes for a diseased cultural body, Hirst’s Pharmacy could be seen as a representation of the multiple range of philosophies, theories and belief systems available as possible means of structuring and redeeming a life. Like medicine, however, these attempts to think a way around death are eternally doomed to failure.

Diet Pills

http://www.something-fishy.org/dangers/methods.phpDiet Pills, Laxatives and Dangerous Methods

Many people use an assortment of dangerous over-the-counter medications while in the clutches of their Eating Disorder, all of which present great dangers whether taken "as directed" or in excess.
Diet Scams
There are many Diet Scams out there that claim "quick and easy weight loss"... most of them don't work, and in addition can contain harmful chemicals and mixtures of substances that could put you at serious health risks. Don't be fooled by products claiming to be "All Natural" - Herbal formulas and medicines are not regulated by the FDA/Government and may not even contain what the labels say they do. They can also have too much of a vitamin, mineral or herb, or a dangerous combination of all three (that can be toxic to your system). More often they claim to "work miracles" that are just flat out not true!
Links About Diet Scams:
U.S. Food and Drug Administration
FTC Consumer Alert on E-Mail Scams

Diet Pills

These range from common over the counter appetite suppressants such as phenylpropanolamine, caffeine pills and ephedrine hydrochloride (ephedrine is not an appetite suppressant, though often misused as one - commonly referred to as "white crosses" or "mini thins") to prescription medications like Redux and Phen/Fen. There are a wide variety of diet pills on the market that are available, many of them have addictive qualities, and some even contain small amounts of laxative.
Diet pills, both over-the-counter and prescription, (as recommended, continuously, or in excess) can cause the following: nervousness, restlessness, insomnia, high blood pressure, fatigue and hyperactivity, heart arrhythmias and palpitations, congestive heart failure or heart attack, stroke, headaches, dry mouth, vomitting and diarrhea or constipation, intestinal disturbances, tightness in chest, tingling in extremities, excessive persperation, dizziness, disruption in mentrual cycle, change in sex drive, hair loss, blurred vision, fever and urinary tract problems. Overdoses can cause tremors, confusion, hallucinations, shallow breathing, renal failure, heart attack and convulsions.
Prescription diet pills like the new and popular Phen/Fen (phentermine/fenfluramine) should never be taken without the written prescription of a doctor. There is an ongoing debate about their effectiveness, and all the health risks and benefits should be weighed. It should only be used in cases of extreme obesity. In addition to the health risks above, taking Phen/Fen increases your chances of Primary Pulmonary Hypertension, which is a disease that attacks the lungs, has a poor prognosis, and is fatal. Please Read the special announcement on the dangers of Phen/Fen and its link to valvular heart disease!
Caffeine pills and/or Ephedrine Hydrochloride should never be taken for weight control, and should not be taken continuously. Ephedrine is a medication used occassionally to treat asthma, but more commonly allergies and hayfever - it is a bronchial dialator. Both can cause all the side effects as diet pills, with an increased risk of addiction (both physical and psychological), headaches, high blood pressure and heart palpitations and arrhythmias, including heart attack. Ephedrine use can contribute to psychosis, anxiety and depression.
What is Ephedrine
Dangers of Ephedra
It is also important to keep in mind that any medication, whether prescription or over-the-counter, can interract with other medications causing adverse effects, or decreasing the effectiveness of one or both.

Laxatives
Pills or liquid, herbal or otherwise, laxative abuse is a common form of "weight control" in people suffering with Eating Disorders. The use of laxatives as a way to lose or control weight is not only dangerous, but irrational. The actual purpose of taking a laxative is to stimulate the large bowel to empty, which occurs only after the food and it's calories for energy have been absorbed through the small intestines. Essentially, a person taking laxatives to control weight is only going to cause their body to lose fluid, which can potentionally be followed by periods of water retention and an appearance of bloating (causing the sufferer to want to lose more weight and ingest more laxatives). The reason people suffering from eating disorders seem to lose weight while taking laxatives is because in most cases they are increasingly watching calorie intake and restricting food consumption, inducing vomiting, and/or compulsively exercising.
Continued laxative use can cause bloating, cramping, dehydration, electrolyte disturbances and imbalances, cardiac arrhythmias, irregular heart beat and heart attack, renal problems, and death.
Phenolphthalein, a popular ingredient previously found in many brands of laxatives has now been recalled by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration, United States) due to studies indicating that it has been linked to cancer.
Withdrawal symptoms can be expected in stopping the use of laxatives after a continued period of using them as a "weight loss" method. These include, abdominal cramping, mild to severe constipation, bloating, mood swings and general feelings of fatigue and "feeling sick." In less severe cases the symptoms will usually subside in about 2 weeks, but in cases where a person have ingested handfuls or more laxatives on a regular basis, it may take longer and require medical assistance.

Diuretics
Sufferers of Eating Disorders sometimes use diuretics as a way to attempt controlling their weight. Again, this is dangerous and irrational. Diuretics work on reducing water retention, and only decrease the amount of water in the body... this can cause dehydration and electrolyte imbalances and specifically potassium deficiencies that can result in hospitalization. Continued use can lead to long and short-term fluid retention even when the diuretics are discontinued.

Ipecac Syrup
The use of Ipecac Syrup can cause instant death! Using Syrup of Ipecac for anything other than its purpose (to induce vomitting in cases of accidental poisoning, or drug overdose) causes systemic toxicity which can cause weakness, tenderness and stiffness of muscles, cardiac disease and heart failure, coma, seizures, shock, increase in blood pressure, with possible hemorrhage, dehydration, aspiration pneumonia and death.
This cumulative effect (taking it more than once, for reasons other than its indications) can increase the possibility of serious adverse effects, and if ipecac fails to produce vomitting, patients should go to the hospital IMMEDIATELY.

The Telegraph, 'thin pills'

New 'thin pill' could replace surgery

The weight loss pill would work by preventing the gut from expanding, thus giving the sensation of fullness 

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor

12:01AM GMT 04 Mar 2008

Comment

A new generation of diet pills that could achieve the same dramatic weight loss as surgery could be available within a decade.

• Your View: Is the 'thin pill' the solution to the obesity crisis?

A team at University College London is working towards developing a weight loss pill that makes people feel they are full after eating a small amount of food.

The stomach has to expand to digest food, the basic process by which the body harvests calories from meals, but scientists have found a way of stopping this from happening.

The pill could offer an alternative to stomach stapling - gastroplasty - in which a band or surgery is used to reduce the size of the stomach. This can result in weight loss of up to 7st in a year.

However, surgery can be risky with one in every 100 patients dying within 12 months. The potential new drug is described in the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics by Dr Brian King and Dr Andrea Townsend-Nicholson.

"It is chemical gastric banding," said Dr Townsend-Nicholson, adding that the pill could be available for use within five to 10 years.

The team found two proteins - P2Y1 and P2Y11 - which are receptors that pick up signals from nerves to control the size of the gut. These were identified in the guinea pig, but are also present in humans. Dr King said: "This would be a brand new approach to weight control."

Dr Brian King says: "The mechanisms we have identified are important to the normal workings of the stomach - a hollow organ which actively relaxes to help accommodate the size of your meal.

"The human stomach has a 'resting' internal volume of 75 millilitres (one tenth of a pint) but, by relaxing its muscular wall, can expand to an internal volume of two litres (3.5 pints) or more - a 25-fold increase in the volume it can accept.

"This expansion is controlled by nerves inside the stomach wall and these release molecules that stimulate the P2Y1 and P2Y11 receptor proteins embedded in muscle cells in the gut wall. The mechanism of this slow relaxation of the stomach might represent a future drug target in the fight to control weight gain and reverse obesity.

"We are looking to identify drugs that would block the P2Y11 receptor and, therefore, prevent slow relaxation of the stomach. As a result of blocking the P2Y11-based mechanism, meal size would be smaller, offering the person a better chance of regulating their food intake.

"This would be a brand new approach to weight control. At present, the most successful way to help obese patients lose weight is gastric banding or stomach stapling, both of which reduce the maximum volume of the stomach.

"But these are also tricky surgical procedures, not without attendant risks. A pill that could replace this surgery, yet have the same effect, might be a useful alternative."

If the gastric bypass is anything to go by, there may be side effects. In the wake of stomach stapling, high fibre foods and foods with a more dense, natural consistency can become very difficult to eat relative to highly refined foods. There can be vomiting and severe discomfort if food is not properly chewed or if food is eaten too quickly.

However, the UCL team believes that any possible side effects of chemical gastric banding are likely to outweigh the adverse health consequences of obesity.

Figures released in January showed that more than one million prescriptions for obesity drugs are now given to patients by GPs.

Joseph Cornell

Joseph Cornell


Joseph Cornell was born in 1903 in Nyack, New York. At the age of 14 his father died, and he moved, with his mother and three siblings, to the Queens section of New York City. Despite his relatively sheltered life, living as an adult with his mother and brother, his art was contemporary and sophisticated. His most famous and distinctive works were boxes he created out of wood, glass, and innumerable objects and photos he collected in New York City's antique and secondhand shops, which conveyed a poetic and magical aura. His first job at 18 was as a salesman in the textile industry. At this time, he also began to collect all sorts of natural objects, memorabilia and antique and contemporary images, and arranged these 'found' objects into collages and constructions. In 1931, he saw an exhibition of Surrealist art in a New York gallery, and later met Surrealist writers and artists at the Julien Levy Gallery, eventually showing his work in Surrealist exhibitions. Artistic influences included Dada artists Marcel Duchamp and Kurt Schwitters, and Surrealist Max Ernst; other influences were his interest in ballet, music and literature.

His small wooden boxes (from 10-12 inches to 20 or more inches in size), carefully filled with various objects, were usually covered with a pane of glass. Some of the elements were kinetic. These works of art are referred to as assemblages, mainly three-dimensional works of combined objects. The objects were chosen carefully, although many held no intrinsic value alone; only when combined did these objects reveal a deeper meaning. Birds were a common image, as were constellations and other heavenly bodies, either as two-dimensional images or merely evoked by a round sphere. Juxtapositions were always poetic, evoking associations often explored by Surrealists, of mystery, fantasy, the subconscious, dreams, etc., however his work differed from the Surrealists in that, while they were interested in unexpected or shocking juxtapositions, he was more interested in finding poetic connections of meaning between disparate objects. The miniature world in itself has a unique charm, and when these few objects are isolated in such a way, they force us to really look at them, perhaps for the first time, and to think about their possible meanings. The spareness of the compositions also contributes to the expressiveness, with their geometry, curves and two- and three-dimensional spaces.

Duchamp, the Dada artist, developed the idea of the 'readymade' as an art object, early in the 20th century. Basically as an intellectual questioning of what the nature of art truly is, as well as a Dada shock tactic, Duchamp placed a urinal in a New York exhibition in 1915 (an object is art if the artist says it is). From this point on, the 'found' object could also be art, alone or with other objects. Cornell had already been collecting bits and pieces and putting them together into collages when he met Duchamp in the early 1930's. His acquaintance with Duchamp and the Surrealists influenced his thinking and his work, as well as the box constructions of Kurt Schwitters, another Dada artist. Schwitters' abstract collages and constructions were composed of materials which had already been thrown away and 'useless,' however, rather than precious items chosen carefully for their meanings. Cornell had no formal art training, and didn't draw or paint or sculpt in the traditional sense, however in the true sense, he was the very definition of artistic and creative - that is, an artist is one who takes materials and/or elements, and combines them in inventive and/or expressive ways. What the materials/elements are is of lesser concern, as well as is the method used to combine them - the bottom line is how successful the final product is, as art.

Although he was associated with the Surrealists, as well as later movements (Abstract Expressionism and Pop art), he was perhaps an artist not part of a group, but an individual following his personal vision. He was especially interested in past times, such as the Victorian era, and his work may have evolved from the Victorian practice of preserving souvenirs and mementos in boxes, as well as Victorian parlor games. His range of subjects was vast - Hollywood stars, birds, astrology, ballet (a swan), opera, Medicis of the Renaissance, travel, artists (Juan Gris), poetry (Emily Dickinson), the cosmos. The materials he used were also wide-ranging: cut-outs from various publications, marbles, butterfly wings, scraps of wallpaper, souvenirs and memorabilia, sky charts, old advertisements, broken glassware, music boxes, feathers, metal springs, maps, seashells, mirrors, plastic ice cubes. He was also influenced by the philosophy of Christian Science, with its emphasis on harmony and the spirit.

These object show really intresting bottles filled with intresting things, not just pills. I liked looking at these objects because they show a way of displaying medication in a safe manner. These objects are unique and somthing really draws me to them.

Photoshop

selection tool

selection tools in Photoshop include:

rectangular marquee tool

elliptical marquee tool

single row marquee tool

single column marquee tool

quick selection tool

magic wand tool

lasso tool

freeform lasso tool

magnetic lasso tool

  magic wand tool:

To use the magic wand tool, I clicked on the icon with the arrow pointing to it on the left on the image below. In order to include more colour range within the image the selection you can increase the tolerances which is shown by the arrow pointing upwards on the image below.

Refine edge tool


This tool allows you to smooth out the edges of your selection. By selecting the view button you can change the background of your selection, you are then able to see the edges of your selection easier.

spot healing tool

Original image. As you can see the person in this image suffers from bad spots so by using the spot healing tool and the the Blur tool you can smooth the skin.

the final image shows how I used this tool.

layer masks

Apply the layer mask by dragging and dropping into the square with the circle in, then by painting black onto the layer you will be able to see through to the layer underneath. By adding white you will bring the original layer back. By adding shades of grey it will let you see lightly to the layer below.

creating steam

original image:

final image:

 To achieve this I clicked on filter, clouds, apply, then motion blur. I then changed the opacity to suit the image.

Raoul Hausmann

Raoul Hausmann

Der Dada: A New Periodical
After Hausmann contributed to the first group show, held at Isaac Neumann's Gallery, April 1919, the first edition of Der Dada appeared in June 1919. Edited by Hausmann and Baader, after receiving permission from Tristan Tzara in Zurich to use the name, the magazine also featured significant contributions from Huelsenbeck. The periodical contained drawings, polemics, poems and satires, all typeset in a multiplicity of opposing fonts and signs.
At the beginning of 1920, Baader (President of All The World) Hausmann (the Dadasopher) and the 'World-Dada' Huelsenbeck undertook a six week tour of Eastern Germany and Czechoslovakia, drawing large crowds and bemused reviews.^[11] The programme included primitivist verse, simultaneous poetry recitals by Baader and Hausmann, and Hausmann's Dada-Trot (Sixty-One Step) described as 'a truly splendid send-up of the most modern exotic-erotic social dances that have befallen us like a plague...'^[12]

The First International Dada Fair, 1920

Organised by Hausmann, Grosz and Heartfield, along with Max Ernst, the fair was to become the most famous of all Berlin Dada's exploits, featuring almost 200 works by artists including Francis Picabia, Hans Arp, Ernst, Otto Dix & Rudolf Schlichter, as well as key works by Grosz, Höch and Hausmann. The work Tatlin At Home, 1920, can be clearly seen in one of the publicity photos taken by a professional photographer; the exhibition, whilst financially unsuccessful, gained prominent exposure in Amsterdam, Milan, Rome and Boston.^[13] The exhibition also proved to be one of the main influences on the content and layout of Entartete Kunst, the show of degenerate art put on by the Nazis in 1937, with key slogans such as 'Nehmen Sie DADA Ernst' (Take Dada seriously!) appearing in both exhibitions.

The Mechanical Head

The most famous work by Hausmann, Der Geist Unserer Zeit – Mechanischer Kopf (Mechanical Head [The Spirit of Our Age]), c. 1920, is the only surviving assemblage that Hausmann produced around 1919–20. Constructed from a Hairdresser's wig-making dummy, the piece has various measuring devices attached including a ruler, pocket watch mechanism, typewriter, camera segments and a crocodile wallet.^[14]

"Der Geist Unserer Zeit – Mechanischer Kopf specifically evokes the philosopher George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). For Hegel...everything is mind. Among Hegel's disciples and critics was Karl Marx. Hausmann's sculpture might be seen as an aggressively Marxist reversal of Hegel: this is a head whose "thoughts" are materially determined by objects literally fixed to it. However, there are deeper targets in western culture that give this modern masterpiece its force. Hausmann turns inside out the notion of the head as seat of reason, an assumption that lies behind the European fascination with the portrait. He reveals a head that is penetrated and governed by brute external forces." Jonathan Jones,^[15]

Hannah Hoch

Hannah Hoch

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_H%C3%B6ch

Hannah Höch was born Anna Therese Johanne Höch^[1] in Gotha, Germany. From 1912 to 1914 she studied at the College of Arts and Crafts in Berlin under the guidance of Harold Bergen. She chose the curriculum glass design and graphic arts, rather than fine arts, to please her father. In 1914, at the start of World War I, she left the school to work with the Red Cross. In 1915 she returned to schooling, entering the graphics class of the National Institute of the Museum of Arts and Crafts. Also in 1915, Höch began an influential friendship with Raoul Hausmann, a member of the Berlin Dada movement. Höch's involvement with the Berlin Dadists began in earnest in 1919. After her schooling, she worked in the handicrafts department for Ullstein Verlag [The Ullstein Press], designing dress and embroidery patterns for Die Dame [The Lady] and Die Praktische Berlinerin [The Practical Berlin Woman]. The influence of this early work and training can be seen in her later work involving references to dress patterns and textiles. From 1926 to 1929 she lived and worked in the Netherlands. Höch made many influential friendships over the years, with Kurt Schwitters and Piet Mondrian among others. Hausmann, along with Höch, was one of the first pioneers of the art form that would come to be known as photomontage.

 

 Höch's sexuality and relationship with Hausmann

Höch's personal relationship with Hausmann grew from friendship to romance over time. While this was the first crucial relationship to have an influence on Höch's artistic work, she often reflected upon her relationships in such pieces as Love (1926). After her involvement with Hausmann, she was sexually involved with women and had a relationship from 1926 to 1929 with the Dutch writer and linguist Til Brugman. Hausmann was married to another woman during their involvement, and refused to marry Höch. She supported women's right to reproductive control; she had two abortions during her involvement with Hausmann, who was physically abusive. Höch and Hausmann separated in 1922, at which point Höch was well on her way to becoming an artist in her own right, independent of her involvement with Hausmann. Incidentally, it was during Höch's relationship with Hausmann that both artists began to work more thoroughly with collage, extending the art form established by cubistic painters. Höch collaborated with Hausmann, on the piece Dada-Cordial in 1920.,^[2] and even so Höch was still considered Hausmann's lover and not his equal.^[3]

 Feminism

While the Dadaists "paid lip service to women's emancipation" they were clearly reluctant to include a woman among their ranks. Hans Richter described Höch's contribution to the Dada movement as the "sandwiches, beer and coffee she managed somehow to conjure up despite the shortage of money." Raoul Hausmann even suggested that Höch get a job to support him financially. Höch was the lone woman among the Berlin Dada group, although Sophie Täuber, Beatrice Wood, and Baroness Else von Freytag-Loringhoven were also important (if overlooked) Dada figures. Höch references the hypocrisy of the Berlin Dada group and German society as a whole in her photomontage, Da-Dandy.
Höch's work at Verlang working with magazines targeted to women made her acutely aware of the difference between women in media and reality, even as the workplace provided her with many of the images that served as raw material for her own work. Marriage did not escape her criticism—she depicted brides as mannequins and children, reflecting the idea that women are not seen as complete people and have little control over their lives. Höch saw herself as part of the women's movement in the 1920s, as shown in her depiction of herself in Schnitt mit dem Küchenmesser DADA durch die letzte weimarer Bierbauchkulturepoche Deutschlands (1919–20). Her pieces also commonly combine male and female into one being. During the era of the Weimar Republic, "mannish women were both celebrated and castigated for breaking down traditional gender roles." Her androgynous characters may also have been related to her bisexuality, and attraction to masculinity in women. That is, having the shape of woman (even if altered in Höch's work) with the society embraced attitude and outlook of stereo-typed masculinity.

Dada

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/davepalmer/cutandpaste/dada.html

There will always be an argument over who invented the word "photomontage". What is not at issue is that it was one of the members of the Berlin Dada group: the debate is about which one. This is hardly surprising since much of the early montage work was the result of collaboration, and many early works are credited to more than one artist. So the official (and diplomatic) version is that the five exponents of Dada montage, John Heartfield, Hannah Höch, Johannes Baader, Raoul Hausmann, and George Grosz all agreed that their new art form required a new name (to distinguish it from the painterly collage of the Cubists.)

Dada was always about kicking out against the status quo. After all, the status quo had just produced the most devastating war in European history, and the artists, who had mostly spent the war years in the safety of neutral Switzerland, returned to Germany desperate to find ways of conveying the madness of the age. One early Dada exhibition was held in a men's public toilet, and visitors were given an axe to destroy the exhibits: it was never a movement much concerned with commercialism or posterity!

"Montage" in German means "fitting" or "assembly line" and "monteur" means "mechanic" or "engineer". John Heartfield, the best known practitioner of montage who used to work in overalls, came to be known as Monteur Heartfield, in recognition of his attitude to the world of art. Hannah Höch, who uniquely continued to produce montages throughout her long and varied life, said: "Our whole purpose was to integrate objects from the world of machines and industry into the world of art."

Many of the earliest Dada montages were used as covers and illustrations for magazines and manifestos of the movement. Their style was usually wildly anarchic, utilising many elements, some of which inevitably included photos of the Dada artists, juxtaposed with much apparently random newspaper text. From these initial experiments, the major figures in Dada photomontage emerged with vastly different styles and agendas.

Photomontage

The art of photomontage could be said to have started just after the First World War, but the manipulation of photographs already had a history going back to the invention of photography in the mid 19th century.

Direct contact printing of objects placed on photographic plates, double exposures, and composite pictures made by darkroom masking were all popular in the Victorian era. Besides this practical use of combination photography, Victorians discovered the amusement to be had from postcards of the wrong head stuck on a different body, or the creation of strange or impossible creatures.

But it was not until the revolutionary times following the "Great War" that artists began to see the use of montage as a truly new art form. The centre of this explosion of creativity was Berlin, where a group of artists calling themselves Dada was looking for a new means of expression: one that had more meaning than the prevailing drift into abstraction, but that did not simply return to the traditions of figurative painting.

As Surrealism became the dominant European art form, photomontage gradually faded into obscurity for many years, until there was a revival in the 1960s, partly inspired by a renewed interest in Dada. Several of the artists connected with the Pop Art movement used magazine photos and text to convey the ethos of the age. At this time, and to an extent in response to the increasing populism of art, advertisers jumped on the bandwagon and started to produce more photomontages, a trend that continues to this day.

The next great revival in the use of montage in Europe was connected with the politics of the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s. Much of the imagery at this time was designed for use in banners for demonstrations, producing a very graphic means of communication.

The history of the "cut-up" started with the still image and cinema, but since those days the field has expanded to include text, sound, and digital montage using graphics programs like Photoshop, which will be included in version 2 of this site.

USB finger

Finn creates USB 'finger drive' http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7949018.stm

Mr Jalava says he was inspired by a joke made by the doctors treating him A Finnish computer programmer who lost one of his fingers in a motorcycle accident has made himself a prosthetic replacement with a USB drive attached. Jerry Jalava uses the 2GB memory stick, accessed by peeling back the "nail", to store photos, movies and programmes. The finger is not permanently attached to his hand, so it can be easily left plugged into a computer when in use. Mr Jalava says he is already thinking about upgrading the finger to include more storage and wireless technology. "I'm planning to use another prosthetic as a shell for the next version, which will have removable fingertip and RFID tag," he wrote on his blog, ProtoBlogr.net. Half of Mr Jalava's left ring finger had to be amputated last summer after he crashed into a deer while riding his motorbike near Helsinki. He says he was inspired to create the unique storage device when doctors treating him joked that he should have a USB "finger drive" after finding out that he was a software developer.

Martha Rosler

Martha Rosler was born in Brooklyn, New York. She took her B.A. from Brooklyn College in 1965 and her M.F.A. from University of California, San Diego in 1974.

Rosler works in video, photo-text, installation, and performance, and writes criticism. She has lectured extensively nationally and internationally. Her work in the public sphere ranges from everyday life — often with an eye to women's experience — and the media to architecture and the built environment.

She has published several books of photographs, texts, and commentary on public space, ranging from airports and roads to housing and homelessness. Her work has been seen in the "Documenta" exhibition in Kassel, Germany; several Whitney biennials; the Institute of Contemporary Art in London; the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Dia Center for the Arts in New York; and many other international venues.

A retrospective of her work has been shown in five European cities and in New York at the New Museum and the International Center of Photography (2000). An accompanying book has been published by MIT Press. Her writing has been published widely in catalogs and magazines, such asArtforum, Afterimage, and NU Magazine.

Rosler has ten published books. She has produced numerous other "Word Works" and photo/text publications — now exploring cookery in a mock dialogue between Julia Child and Craig Claiborne, now analyzing imagery of women in Russia or exploring responses to repression, crisis, and war.

She is also known for her writing and her lectures and has toured her lectures internationally in addition to publishing 15 books and textbooks on the role of photography and art, public spaces and expressing an interest in airports, roads, transportation and public housing/homelessness. Smaller examples of her writing have been published in magazines like Artforum, Afterimage, Grey Room, Quaderns and NU Magazine.
Her book collection (7,500+) also went on international tour in 2007 as the "The Martha Rosler Library" and has thus far toured New York, Frankfurt, Berlin, Antwerp and Paris.
Her 1981 essay on documentary photography "In, around, and Afterthoughts" has been widely republished & translated, is about myths of photographic disinterestedness and how people determine meaning from photographs.
Martha Rosler teaches at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University and the Städelschule in Frankfurt

Though she has an opinion on everything from the assassination of Osama bin Laden to the utility of Facebook, what concerns Rosler most about the current state of affairs is the conflation of consumer choice with political agency. “There’s very little distinction between an objective social process and a subjective feeling. What you get is this heavy insistence that women are different, blacks are different, Asians are different, because they occupy a different stance in relation to objects and social life, but absolutely no explanation of their different relationship to social power. Everything becomes a lifestyle choice.” She has written extensively about the birth of the creative class, and how in late capitalism, artists and hipsters have become the shock troops of real-estate revaluation, putting them in the awkward position of being unwitting accomplices of capital and the bankers on Wall Street. Rosler’s work seeks to restore the role of the artist to that of a worker and a citizen; her work is a palpable form of dissent. “Shopping is not the solution to all of life’s discontent. If you think it is, what is it that you’re not seeing? What is the role of agency that you really perceive for yourself? According to her, the Occupy Wall Street movement—forged in part in the discussion precincts of artists—is one of the most hopeful things to happen in the Untied States since the world-changing grass-roots movements of the 1960s. It is clear that social engagement and political agency are not just strategies of her art, but the lifeblood of her practice, and both her art and writing help us to see.

http://www.joansdigest.com/issue-1/article-8

I like Martha Roslers work as it confronts things that are going on in the world today with things that we do in our everyday life, combining the two often gives a comical result but these images do have a very serious point. I feel many can relate to her work and that she brings real issues into the world we inhabit everyday without a thought of what maybe happening outside are own lives.

KennardPhillipps-collaboration of works

kennardphillipps is a collaboration working since 2002 to produce art in response to the invasion of Iraq. It has evolved to confront power and war across the globe. The work is made for the street, the gallery, the web, newspapers & magazines, and to lead workshops that develop peoples’ skills and help them express their thoughts on what’s happening in the world through visual means. The work is made as a critical tool that connects to international movements for social and political change. We don’t see the work as separate to social and political movements that are confronting established political and economic systems. We see it as part of those movements, the visual arm of protest. We want it to be used by people as a part of their own activism, not just as pictures on the wall to contemplate. To facilitate this, as well as selling our limited edition prints on the site enabling us to fund the making of the work, there is a free download page of images with a voluntary contribution to the International Solidarity Movement.
http://www.kennardphillipps.com/category/photomontage/

Peter Kennard

Peter Kennard photomontage

http://www.artofthestate.co.uk/banksy/santas_ghetto_2006_tony_blair.htm

   'In its form and power, Peter Kennard's art ranks among the most important of the late twentieth century. It is important because it breaks the consensual silence surrounding the most urgent issues of the day. His pictures brilliantly evoke the faces that cry out from the silent war.'    John Pilger. The Guardian   

   

'Peter Kennard's work is haunting. Eschewing words, it insists upon not being forgotten. His images are impossible to convey with words because of their unmistakable visual texture, suggesting a strange amalgam of X-ray, satellite image and slag. The future - which for so long was a mine of gory rhetoric for those holding power - today depends upon those who insist upon looking beyond their lifetime. And to do this we have to scrutinise, like Peter Kennard, our nightmares and suppressed hopes. His art cannot be ignored.'   John Berger, The Guardian

  'Britain's foremost agit-prop artist'    Creative Camera