Star Trek Mundi

Followers of my blog may wonder what the hell happened to me. Well, I’ve been working hard on this feature-length art documentary, including, among many other things, my own recreation of the Salvator Mundi. I decided to share with you some custom graphics I made on the fly.

Anyone who grew up watching Star Trek will recognize this alien guy who would appear briefly during the ending credits. As part of my video — which is mercifully coming down the home stretch — I churn out some custom images. They are just something to look at while you follow along with the unfolding narrative. In this case I slapped in the Star Trek alien where the Salvator Mundi had previously resided.

I did a lot of them, because it was easy, and this was because the alien, oddly enough, always looked better than the original painting.

Sure, there’s some underlying psychological message/lesson, about how any image can become “iconic” when placed in the right context, but mostly it’s just for comic and coolness effect.

My condemnable video is sufficiently comprehensive that it’s coming in around a massive 2 hours. Is it too long? Yes. Will few people watch the whole thing. Yes, again. But, I’ll use time stamps so people can skip around to the sections they are interested in. I didn’t intend for it to be this long, but as I was making it people were grilling me with challenging questions in the comments section of my prior two videos on the Mundi, and elsewhere. So, I decided to address the main arguments for and against the authenticity of the painting, as well as the counter-arguments for each, for starters. It will be the longest and most in-depth analysis of the painting in video form, for whatever that’s worth.

These images are just background fodder for my section about “The Emperor’s New Canvas”. They do subtly undermine the dominant narrative in ways I could probably write about extensively, but I think this is an instance where you can get the message just by looking at a picture rather than me having to spell it out in written language.

Of course the video will showcase my final recreation of what the Salvator Mundi might have looked like if it hadn’t been damaged and restored, both in spades.

Making videos is a ton of work, if you have perfectionist tendencies, and if you like to throw in the kitchen sink. For example, other people, I noticed, will use one background song for their entire video, and sometimes the same one for all their videos. I carefully select music for each segment. I have a whole playlist with 892 songs I can use without copyright issues. I listen to it on shuffle, and slowly have discovered the best pieces that I can incorporate.

And of course, because I’m a Photoshop fiend, as you can see, I use those skills to add another dimension of editing, supplementing, and tomfoolery. But there’s also the issue of providing original content, and analyzing the subject matter. I’m not going to just rehash the same stuff you could get from any art or art history channel, or book, or article, with the same old perspective.

I’ll balance wackiness with rather incisive analysis. Note that I chose the name of my channel to be “Art vs Machine” in order to allow for my sci-fi, psychedelic, and humorous content to creep in, and it allows me to be distinct.

Stay tunes for the full video — probably another week or so — and my final digital recreation of the Salvator Mundi.

~ Ends

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