Tag Archives: Christopher Agostino’s Transformations

YouTube has age-restricted my video and I don’t know why

This is the message you get when YouTube restricts a video:

“The YouTube Community has flagged one or more of your videos as inappropriate. Once a video is flagged, it is reviewed by the YouTube Team against our Community Guidelines. Upon review, we have determined that the following video(s) contain content that may not be suitable for all viewers:  2008 Transformations by Christopher Agostino

As a result, we have age-restricted this content.  For more information on YouTube’s Community Guidelines and how they are enforced, please visit the help center http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=92486.  “

You can check out the video, or my post about it:

45,000 Views — 2008 Transformations    http://wp.me/p1sRkg-tD

I am very glad that they have only age-restricted it, and not removed it completely. Below is the relevant section of their guidelines, I think, which explains that things deemed inappropriate by Community Guidelines may still be allowed for artistic content with the age-restriction warning.  I was talking just yesterday about online censorship issues (before getting this message) with my very slashdot savvy son, who has a much wider understanding than I do about just how many problem areas there about what some people post, and that therefor there do need to be some lines draw as to what is or isn’t appropriate, especially on a completely open platform like YouTube.

I do remain concerned, as an artist, that judgement on my video here is only in the hands of a “YouTube Team” and they don’t offer me a chance to ask why? Where is their line? What image is ok, what is not? Can I take an image or two out and get the age-restriction removed?

I am also concerned that the process is initiated by some anonymous  viewer deeming my work inappropriate and flagging it by clicking a button. I think that is too easy, clicking a button. I invite whoever flagged it to send me a message explaining what images are inappropriate and why—I’d like to be able to add your side of this to the discussion. Or you can add your viewpoint as  a comment here if you prefer. (I won’t get into a  fight with you, you can say your piece and I’ll leave it at that)

From YouTube’s site:

“When videos violate our Community Guidelines, we remove them. Some videos don’t violate our policies, but may not be appropriate for all audiences. We age-restrict these.  When a video is age-restricted, a warning screen displays before the video plays. Only users 18 years of age or older can then proceed to view the material. In order to reduce the chances of users accidentally stumbling across these videos, they are not shown in certain sections of YouTube (e.g. honors pages like ‘Most Viewed’).

In deciding whether to age restrict content we consider issues such as violence, disturbing imagery, nudity, sexually suggestive content, and portrayal of dangerous or illegal activities.

Notable Exceptions

There are exceptions for some educational, artistic, documentary and scientificcontent (e.g. health education, documenting human rights issues, etc.), but only if this is the sole purpose of the video and it is not gratuitously graphic. For example, a documentary on breast cancer would be appropriate, but posting clips out of context from a documentary might not be. Videos that qualify as educational, artistic, documentary or scientific that would otherwise have been removed are typically age-restricted instead.”

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To see some more possibly inappropriate fine art bodypainting:   https://thestorybehindthefaces.com/body-painting/

A few related posts about censorship of bodypainting images:

84-  Breast Cancer Awareness Body Painting Project  and  SURVIVORS Magazine    http://wp.me/p1sRkg-r0 

85-  Body Painting on TV in a Superbowl Ad, a Good Thing, Right?  http://wp.me/p1sRkg-rx   

86-  What really bothers me about this…  http://wp.me/p1sRkg-rH  

87-  Nipples    http://wp.me/s1sRkg-nipples 

88-  Is this ok, Twitter?    http://wp.me/p1sRkg-sg  

New Shows for Library Summer Reading Theme — Dream Big READ

Dream BIG this Summer with Timeless Tales in Two GREAT Shows!

———     SHOW #1:      THE LITTLE MOUSE THAT DREAMED BIG     ——–

Christopher Agostino returns with a special selection of stories for this Summer Reading Club theme. 

The Mouse that becomes an Eagle

Featuring  “The Story of Jumping Mouse”, a traditional Native American folktale that captures the power of our dreams to transform our lives. This inspirational tale, made into a children’s book by John Steptoe, is about a brave little mouse that follows his dream and against all odds reaches the far off  land where he is transformed into a mighty eagle. Plus the show includes other exciting tales that encourage young people to dream big and never give up, brought to life through Christopher’s playful storytelling and amazing facepainting.

Magic Frog gives him his Name

Christopher Agostino’s Transformations Storytelling is a very different kind of a show. Audience volunteers are brought on to the stage and facepainted very quickly to illustrate the stories he tells. The amazing facepainting holds kids attention while they listen to folktales from around the world and his original tales. With his extensive repertoire of stories he can perform successfully for any size audience and any age: kids, teens and adults, and each summer he crafts a new selection of stories to fit the Reading Club Theme. In most shows he paints 8 to 12 volunteers while mesmerizing the audience with a theatrical storytelling style and tales that range from the comic adventure of the first time a man met a crocodile to the heroic tale of the boy Punia and the King of the Sharks. It’s surprising and delightful theater for any age. Several themes are available and special shows can be crafted to feature specific cultures and special topics.  Christopher has appeared on the NBC Today Show and the CBS Early Show and performed for hundreds of theaters, schools, libraries and festivals.

See the Transformations-Storytelling video at:

for additional information and videos see: https://thestorybehindthefaces.com/storytelling-show/

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———  SHOW # 2:      The BODACIOUS Book Show CLASSICS    ———-

Including our special version of Jack and the Beanstalk starring kids from the audience and a 60’ beanstalk!

Beatrice the Bookworm

Beatrice the Bookworm is back in the show that’s so much fun it gets everyone inspired to pick up a book and read. Our Bodacious Book Show Classics edition is all about the books that have kept readers dreaming big for generations, from Dr. Seuss and Charlotte’s Web to timeless fairytales like Jack & the Beanstalk. Also featuring the Quiz Show Game that gets the entire audience thinking and talking about great books:“Have You READ It?”

"Have You READ It?" Quiz Show

This fast paced variety show really gets kids inspired to read, because great books make great readers. It features The “Have You READ It?” Game, a TV-style Quiz Show hosted for laughs by Bob Bookmark and Rita Digest in which the whole audience competes, parents included. It’s great to see kids jumping up and down in their seats with answers to such questions as “What kind of eggs does Sam like with his ham?” The questions and challenges are designed to remind young readers of all the fun they’ve had with books they’ve read and to introduce them to other great books so they’ll want to read more. And we bring to life some funny poetry from great authors such as Shel Silverstein and Ogden Nash.

Jack and the Beanstalk starring audience volunteers: The Magic Dancing Bean

Plus there are special guest stars: Professor Fineprint lectures on “1001 Uses for a Book” (but he doesn’t know you can read them); and the very popular Beatrice the Bookworm enlists younger audiences to join in her pledge to “always read my books before I eat them”. The grand finale is a hilarious rendition of “Jack and the Beanstalk” with kids playing the parts onstage and a 60’ beanstalk growing through the audience. The Bodacious Book Show was created to support reading programs in schools and libraries by reminding kids of the fun books they’ve read and interesting them in new ones, because the best way to develop good readers is to let kids discover books so fun they can’t wait to read more.

CLICK HERE for a printable pdf flyer:  BodaciousBookShow1_Flyer2pgs_agostinoarts  (it opens in a new window, click on the link there to get the pdf)

In 2011, the Bodacious Book Show was selected to host the kick-off celebration for the Target Read Across America literacy initiative at the New York Public Library, and introduce the celebrity readers such as Mark Ruffalo and Uma Thurman.

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SPECIAL DISCOUNTS available forLibrary Performances.

CONTACT US by email: info@agostinoarts.com, or call 516-771-8086

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Agostino Arts Theatre has been presenting programs in schools, libraries, theaters and other venues throughout the Tri-State area for nearly 30 years.

Libraries we appeared at in 2011 include:

Mechanicville Library, Hewlett-Woodmere  Library, Garden City Library, Sayville Library, Atlantic City Free Public Library, Harborfields Library, Wyandanch Public Library, Farmingdale Library, Lynbrook Library, New London Library Festival, East Williston Public Library, Riverhead Public Library, Newburgh Free Library, West Milford Township Library, South Huntington Library, Goshen Public Library, Mastic-Moriches-Shirley Libarary, Burlington Library, Bryant Library, Jamesburg Public Library, Half Hollow Hills Library, West Babylon Library, Rye Free Reading Room, Connetquot Library, Big Flats Library, Horseheads Free Library

When Target planned their launch for the Target Read Across America literacy initiative at the New York Public Library, they asked us to host the kick-off celebration. Beatrice the Bookworm opened the show, then Bob Bookmark and Rita Digest played the exciting “Have You READ It?” Game with the entire audience in between a stellar lineup of celebrity readers, including Uma Thurman and Mark Ruffalo.  http://reading.target.com/read-across-america/

Our Bodacious Book Shows involve the entire audience in the fun

Jack and the Beanstalk - The Singing Golden Harp Duet

“Everyone Has Nipples”

by ChristopherAgostino – Posted 2/5/2012

Janet and Justin  – Superbowl XXXVIII

On the day of the Superbowl it seems appropriate to write about nipples. I’ve been reading a bit on the habit Facebook has of censoring body painting images, and the surmise that Facebook measures the level of offense based on the relative visibility of a female model’s nipples in the final image. One blog referred to it as “Facebook’s war against nipples”. Well, I have a relevant quote, too: “Everyone has nipples.”

One of the first discussions I had about all this was with a European body painter back in 2006 on the conflicted duality of the American cultural fascination with female breasts (in Playboy, advertising, Superbowls, etc.) versus the fear of the exposed female nipple. The subject came up because of the restrictions imposed about just how much of the model we could paint at the convention we were teaching at. The quote above is from Carolyn Roper, another European body painter, at a different convention in 2008. That convention had one of the strictest modesty requirements. Not even pasties or nipple covers were enough, the female models had to wear tube tops or bras to get painted for the classes and competitions. I’ve written before how poorly I think it works to paint over someone’s underwear, and at this convention I found it very awkward—and I’m an American, how much more so for the Europeans teaching there, like Carolyn. So she arranged to have a male model for her demonstration class to avoid the problem, and as she painted the salient portion of his chest she remarked about how everyone has nipples and so she didn’t see what all the fuss was about painting a woman’s as opposed to a man’s.

You really can’t got much more naked than this, can you?

If Ingres’s Venus, fully naked, hangs as a treasured masterpiece in a museum, if it is acceptable for an artist to paint nipples on a canvas portrait of a naked model, why should I have to hide a model’s nipples in a body painting? We already had Demi Moore‘s nipples on the cover of Vanity Fair on newsstands twenty years ago (see http://wp.me/p1sRkg-6v), so why all the fuss still today?

There was a funny sequence in the U.S. Supreme Court just recently as they adjudicated the case regarding decency standards on prime time TV when the question turned towards the offensive nature of a bare buttocks being seen (from the side) in an episode of NYPD Blue some years ago and the lawyer arguing against that interpretation pointed out that the US Supreme Court building was full of classic art images that included bare butts, many bare butts. Looking back at the most famous “nipple slip”, Janet Jackson’s at the Superbowl, which is also a topic of the larger case the Supreme Court is considering, it’s hard to decide which part of that half time show all about sex was the most offensive. I’m pretty prudish, or, rather, I have real trouble with what I perceive as sexism and the objectification of women, so the part that troubled me most was when the dancers dressed as cheerleaders chose to “take off all their clothes” because “it’s getting hot in here.” Janet’s breast was anticlimactic after that. You can review the show and form your own opinion:  http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x45h8i_super-bowl-xxxviii-halftime-show-fu_music

I believe that we each should have the freedom to control how we use or decorate our own bodies. And in regard to the freedom to display our bodies, I go along the lines of the way it’s handled on New York State beaches: “nude but not lewd”. In New York State a women can go topless any where that a man can, otherwise it is considered sexual discrimination. Just to know that this is the law is a good thing. It’s not overly taken advantage of. There is topless sunbathing sometimes on some NY beaches, even fully naked men and women on some, but that tends to be in generally understood areas of certain beaches (“nude but not lewd” is said to be the New York State Parks guideline on that.) I have thought that the more that American women are given the opportunity to be topless (at the beach, for example) the less power there will be in the cultural insistence on women’s breasts as indecent sex objects (and it is that  implication of indecency that bothers me, not the sexuality.), but I am less certain of that than I was.  Occasionally you’ll see a topless woman on a NY city street, usually for a political cause, like the topless women holding signs at the start of Occupy Wall Street that pundits used to ridicule the nascent movement and which John Stewart made fun of (he didn’t show them naked on TV, because even though he’s on a cable channel without any relevant FCC restrictions about that it’s just not done in the U.S. for fear of public outrage—but my local Comedy Central channel airs ads for a strip club just about every night during his show.)

Regarding the public acceptance of nudity in body painting, the best advocate for that acceptance is to expose the public to beautifully painted bodies, male and female in all shapes and sizes. Significantly, I think, there will be a step in the right direction at this year’s Face and Body Art International Convention (FABAIC http://www.fabaic.com/) in Fort Lauderdale as they have invited the general public to attend the body painting competition for the first time, on May 27 (2012). That’s gotta be a good thing and I am looking forward to being there—though I expect nipple covers will still be required for the female models, we are not in Austria yet.

Painting at the World Bodypainting Festival

The Horned Goddess, topless rock art from before 2000 BC, about as old as a painting can get….

Yet when I painted her onto a model’s face for my book, I felt compelled to remove the breasts so as not to offend anyone. Silly, right?

As I don’t want to leave anyone with the impression that all I got out of that class with World-Champion body painter Carolyn Roper in 2008 was a better understanding of nipples, from my notes on that class here is one great insight into painting technique and a pro hint about caring for your model:

1- All water based makeup colors sink in to the color beneath, so every color you paint on top of another will pick up a tint from the underlying color. It is especially true of white going on top of colors. So plan for this in how you lay down your background colors, and leave extra time to go over white highlights again at the end of the painting.

2- Keep the model’s butt, hands and mouth clear until the last stages of the painting, so they can sit, eat, drink and hold things as needed during the long hours you are working together.

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Enjoy the Superbowl! GO GIANTS!

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