0 0 0 9 0 The Michigan Daily-Sunday, Octobei Page 8-Sunday, October 26, 1980-The Michigan Daily EROXEROXEROXEROXEROXEROXBROZEROXER OXEROXER( By MARK DIGHTON It's finally here. Accept no sub- stitutes. The first true Art of the People. How else can you turn a nickel and a bunch of pictures you cut out of magazines into a Statement on the Aesthetics of the Everyday, an Insight- ful Portrayal of the Human Condition, or simply The Stupidest Thing You Ever Saw in Your Life? Xerox art is the only answer. Woah, before you laugh you should realize that xerox art is now a well- respected art form (at least in some small circles). Many of the kiosk adver- tisements you see around town are simply skillful xeroxes. Several of the galleries around town even display xerox art. SO THIS IS your big chance for your 15 minutes of fame. You don't even need any expensive equipment ... well, you do, but you don't have to buy it. All you need is a pair of scissors or an exacto knife; some glue (Liquid Paper ac- tually works best); an ample sup- ply of any kind of visual material; and a keen eye for meaningful or absurd jux- tapositions. The kind of visual material you can use is limited only by your imagination. Many people comb old picture magazines for their most ludicrously out-of-date photos, but some of the most striking xeroxes are assembled from recent material. Of course, the type of material you choose also depends on the purpose of your xerox. Whether you want to comment on the anti-war movement or send an absurd birthday card to a friend deter- mines what type of material you will choose to a large degree. The purpose of your xerox is also reflected in the style of xerox you choose to do. The earliest form of xerox is what I call the Paste-Everything- You-Own-Onto-One-Sheet-of-Paper Style. It basically involves gluing small pictures and typed passages (often unrelated) down on a piece of paper more or less randomly. It often took hours to decipher the early examples of this style and sometimes wasn't worth it, since this style is especially prone to a variation on the "If you can't amaze them with intellect, baffle them with bullshit" syndrome. Lots of people seem to equate lots of vague sexual and violent symbolism with profundity .. . or hoped their audience would. This style is still useful if you have some sort of informational (especially written) content you want to get across, although it is almost impossible to make it artistically appealing. At the other end of the spectrum is the Photo-Montage Xerox. Whereas the previous style makes no attempt to represent itself as anything more than what it is-a flat page with stuff stuck on it-photo-montage xeroxes usually try to represent some three- dimensional object or scene. The ideal photo-montage xerox should be in- distinguishable from a real photo-you don't want to drop any clues that this scene doesn't really exist. For that reason they are often more difficult to assemble. They require at least a minimal sense of perspective, point-of- view, and space. Rather than just laying snippets indiscriminately over each other, the objects in a photo- montage xerox often have to be cut and interwoven with each other to create a sense of three-dimensional reality. In fact, the more depth created by the layering of objects, the more real (and thus more striking) the xerox appears. IT ALMOST goes without saying that most of the xeroxes you see every day lie somewhere between these two ex- tremes. Most people recognize that the Everything-You-Own-Style is pretty unattractive in its purest form. Thus, they rely on fewer pieces to convey a more intelligible and better-construe- ted message. Often, these hybrid xeroxes utilize some of the elements of photo-montage as the basis of their xerox, though the establishment of an independent, believable sense of per- spective is rarely their aim. If you don't feel like cutting up magazines; you shouldn't forget that you can also use xerox machines much like cameras to create xerox art. The only limitation is that you have to be able to put whatever you want to xerox onto the glass plate of the machine. A good xerox machine can give a star- tling amount of accuracy and texture to xeroxed objects, but other than that it is often difficult to make a collection of objects floating in a black void appear very interesting. The most arresting use of the photographic quality of xerox has been in the area of self-portraits. If you can get up enough nerve to ask the person behind the counter, they probably won't hesitate to let you xerox your face. After all, it's your skin that is going to turn red and fall off in big chunks, anyway. Actually, xerox machines use only ordinary fluorescent light at a very high intensity. They do as much harm to you as sitting in a classroom in Angell Hall for an hour. Beware, though, the aforementioned accuracy of most machines expose every single pimple and blemish on your face . . . and xeroxes cannot be retouched! THERE ARE ALSO some peculiar characteristics of xerox machines that wise xeroxists can use to their advan- tage. First of all, instead of exposing an entire surface all at once as cameras do, xerox machines xerox from the top to the bottom of the plate at a relatively slow rate. Thus, one can move an object slowly while it is being xeroxed and produce an image that looks like it has been stretched and twisted on Silly Put- ty. Also, keep in mind that xeroxes do not *A A - > . A -7 L n pp rust ~4 ~( s~4 .S'