Perez Gutierrez, Richard (Week Seven)

    The Claudia Zepata essay really expanded my idea of what art can be. Throughout this course so far we have seen a more traditional form of art and art activism. Many of the artists we have seen use murals, prints, and sculptures to express their works. These all required people to physically be present at a location or building to view the work. With the new digital age we are now able to share work instantly and to across the world.

    Social media platforms have allowed artists to expand the way they do art and the people they reach. Zapata explains how, “Artists are now able to create a ‘born-digital’ work, or images that are electronically developed and distributed” (138). Zapata shares the way artist Lalo Alcaraz used social media to spread awareness for gun violence. Alcaraz drew an image for standing in solidarity with gun control activist Emma Gonzalez who survived a school shooting. Alcaraz allowed users to screenshot their image and share it on their own social media platforms. Zepata called this form of activism “open-source artwork”. Similar to how we call some software's open source, the idea of open-source artwork allows new users to modify and share the original artwork. This allows a continuous and evolving dialogue from what the original artist intended. 

    Living within the new digital age has made me overlook how this was not the norm some years ago. Over the last year we saw a boom in social media activism with the Black Lives Matter and Stop Asian Hate campaigns mixed with the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Art, recordings, hashtags, and solidarity were all used on social media to spread awareness of these issues. It makes me wonder how these events would have unfolded 20 years ago when social media was not a thing yet.