Will89’s Weblog

I think this idea is going to be stupidly hard to do in Photoshop, and in past experience I have never done anything that is simple, so sod it, just goes to show that ideas like this can go horribly wrong or amazingly well (I’m hoping for the second part).

So here goes ! This sixth idea of mine is called “Mother Nature Advancing” 

Mother Nature Advancing

When we were given the brief for this image project and was told that we had to focus around the themes of Nature & Technology, I always had this idea of what mother nature would look like as a robot. I never really gave much thought to making an image that had mother nature in it, until one night back at the flat I was watching Terminator 3. Now for people who don’t know what the film is about, as few words possible, it is about killer robots that have been manufactured to have an organic look to them, like humans and kill people.

This gave me inspiration to create an image where you would see one half of mother nature as a human and the other half as a robot, with the gradient background going from green to black to emphasise advancement and good and evil. 

The reason why I wanted to do this image, is that it would put the two themes together in one image, giving a wide and varied amount of different ideologies and representations, for example as I said earlier:

• Advancement
• Good & Evil
• Co-existing

This image will allow the audience/viewers to make up there own opinions and interpretations, of what the image to trying to depict and also deliver an strong sense of Xenophobia, which means, having an intense or irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries. I know you may think that this definition has no relevance’s to what I am talking about, yet it is used in media and is interpreted differently, in the way that some people have fear against media and technology, and I hope in some form this picture does scared some viewers as it may reflect on today’s society, seeing how we have advanced over the past 100 years and how much we as people rely on technology in order to live.

After creating a number of images that you have probably seen on my blog from what I have published over the weeks, I have given absolutely sod all thought about my one day project images, which I was told by my course leaders that we could use them in our projects, if we were to develop them more.

The reason why I hadn’t given the sliest bit of thought too the two images, that I had created and of which, have been published on this blog (Named Encounter {the frog one} and Revolution {the one with a plant and wavy line}), is due to the fact that I felt that the response I received about my work, when showing it was not that great, in the way that no one knew what the bloody hell I was depicting nor representing, which made me feel in some way like a right muppet, and kinda got this nagging feeling of failure. Yes I know it was my first project and yes, my first proper week of uni and being on the course, but when trying to talk to some people about what they thought about it, I had this sense of “what is this?”.

On reflection now, and 3 weeks down the line into the project and looking at those two pictures, I can probably understand why I may have gotten that response to it, even though I said nothing about the whole thing till now and seeing how in PDP we have been told to blog everything thing we do so we can write an essay on how well we have performed over the year, well here’s how I felt about my first piece of work !

Now as I said earlier, if we do use the images that we created on the one day project, they need to be developed more so that they can be used in image project, well I have chosen to improve them and try and develop them more to get the representations and meanings across in a better way. However you won’t be able to see them until I hand in the whole project in early November.

After regaining inspiration the other day, I started to think back to some images I saw from the one day project 2 weeks ago and notice how a few people played on the idea of flight, between a bird and a plane.

This fifth idea of mine is called “The Power of Flight”

The Power of Flight

This sketch shows a bird, in this case a Hawk, blended into a fighter jet, which is also called the Hawk ironically. The reason why I wanted to create an image like this, was to get the viewer to understand the meaning of advancement from nature to technology, in the way that birds have inspired us to invent machines that can fly great heights and long distances.

Also this image delivers another meaning to the viewer, which is evolution. The reason why I believe this image gives this meaning, is due to the fact that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution said that in order to survive, we have to adapt to are environments (evolve), and quite rightly as well.

This can be compare to aviation history, with the Wrights Brothers aeronautical work and developing the first aeronautical machine in the 1900’s, and how we have advanced to today’s commercial passenger planes and military aircraft. This is why I have shown an image of a Hawk fading into an aircraft to emphasise advancement and evolution.

However me being the stupid idiot, have constructed the image wrong, in the way that we read left to right not right to left, and the image shows that the aircraft first and the Hawk last, when it should be the other way around, and this will show the meaning that I am trying to put across the audience, to be back to front. Yet I can’t but not feel that this is not my fault, because if I showed the back end of a bird (Not the type of bird you would find on page 3 of The Sun), being faded into an aircraft. The audience would instantly recongise the front part of aircraft but probably won’t be able to work out what the back end would be, which would be the bird.

Nevertheless I still believe that the sketch I have drawn up still delivers the same message and representation, that I set out to show. Even though, it is back to front.

There were a couple of days where I could sketch anything down as I had no inspiration what so ever. After doing the one day project, which I have published on this blog, and seeing my seminar groups work, gave me new inspiration think about different elements more and how to incorporate text into my idea more.

This fourth idea of mine is called “The Wind Is Are Technology”. Originally is was called “Technology Replacing Wind”, but I had decided to change it, as the title sounded really boring and plane, also not sounding like the title had any meaningful depth to it.

The Wind Is Are Technology

In this image I wanted to represent nature as much as possible. I first got the inspiration for this image when I was walking along the sea front yesturday when it was sunny before it tried to start to rain. I saw out to sea that there were a number of sailing boats out on the sea powering through the waves due to the wind blowing an absolute gale. Now to be honest I was getting quite tired and wanted to head back halls because it was so cold, however walking back up the hill, this stupid little French Peugeot 106 sped past blearing out music from the it’s radio and made me immediately think about radio waves and transmitted them across the atmosphere. 

Now most of the technology we use today transmit and receive signals, for example:

• Radios
• Computers
• Mobile Phones
• Television
• Etc.

I began think how to put this image I had in mind together. I originally wanted to use a boat for my image, for example this one:

I had trouble thinking how I could incorporate the technology aspect into this image. So I started to think how does a boat work, what does it need to power itself ? The wind. This gave me the idea to some how imic the transmitted signals that we product and can not see, just like wind, as we can’t see that either, but is produced by nature, to act as the wind for the boat to move it.

So by showing representing the transmitted signals we produce, as the wind to power the boat, it emphases that wind is more than just forcing the boat through the wave, but actually using information that is being transmitted to power the boat.

This means that I will be able to show more text within the image, which will hopefully boost the overall aesthetic appearance of the image and get the meaning across to the audience.

Right, I can gladly say this third image i’ll probably won’t use, as at the time when doing this sketch, I had no inspiration what so ever, due to the fact that I had fresher’s flu and was brain dead !

On the other hand I can see why I sketched this image.

The name for this image is called “Technology Governing Nature”

Technology Governing Nature

This image represents technology having control over nature.

When I first started sketching this idea I decided to start to deal with the nature element of the image first. I wanted to depict image as being iconic and recognisable to the mass media. So began to think about to my first key note lecture about intertextual images and signs the where lecture Claudia Vieira, talked about iconic images that are recognised by the audience and how they perceive and interpret them.

This is when I thought about Apollo’s 17’s iconic photograph of the Earth, as it was one the first photographs of the Earth at the time it was captured.

Please click on this hyper-link to view the Apollo 17’s photograph of the Earth: http://www.ehartwell.com/Apollo17/images/550px-The_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_17.jpg

After I had a foundation for my image and completing the nature element side of the image, I had trouble with how I could incorporate the technology element into the image. I always has this sense of this idea was taking too long to do and was beginning to waste time, which made me think “why don’t I just use “Time” as the technology element of the image?” This gave me the opportunity to think how I could emphasise “Time” through technology. After a while I had the idea of using the Earth as the clock face to a pocket watch and having the clock hands and number in motion, to represent that everything is governed by “Time”, for example growth and advancement.

However I do believe that this image has yet to be improved to a higher level of meaning than it is at the moment.

Here is my second idea for the image project.

This image is called “Changing The Seasons Through An iPod”

Changing The Seasons Through An iPod

For this idea I did some thinking about the technology, we the consumers of technology use on a regular basis. So I started to think about objects of technology that are popular within the global society, for example mobile phones, allowing us to make telephone calls to anyone anywhere depending on what network you are with (so if you have poor signal all the time to people out there, change your network!). Also with the advancement of mobile technology rapidly increasing by every year, we have the opportunity to create media with are mobile phones, for example, taking photographs and video recording, then having the ability to published them straight onto a blog on the internet for the mass media viewers to view within a matter of minutes capturing it.   

However I decided not to go down the route of using a mobile in my image as I believe that it wasn’t of a high iconic level, (don’t get me wrong, mobiles are iconic object in today’s society, it shows how we have developed from carrying a brick around with us, to mobiles that are millimetres thin, that have a very high aesthetic creative designs incorporated into them). However as there are a vast range of models that have been produce over the year, it is hard to find one that everyone can associate with and being accepted as a iconic object/ image.

With further more thinking, about other things that were completely nothing to do with development of this idea, (yes, day dreaming as one does), also getting very bored sitting in the library, listening to my iPod. It occurred to me that everyone, well a large amount of people in the library had headphones in their ears listening to music. This lead me to think about iPod’s and how the Apple had made on of the most iconic mp3 players of all time, and also that it is a very popular product brought by millions, for it’s music, photo and video features. For example the iPod Classic has been developed, so you can watch videos and movies on the go.

So after thinking about how iconic the iPod is and that a large amount of the world population owns one. I decided that this would be ideal to use in my image.

Now to begin with I had pictured this street in New York, (iconic place in the world) just coming to the end of the autumn and entering the winter season. With the iPod as my foundation of a piece of iconic technology, I wanted to focus on the video feature part of the iPod and show an image/ video of the street on the iPod changing seasons from autumn to winter. While the image is shown on the iPod I wanted to represent the iPod, (technology) changing the surrounding of the seasons, (nature) of the street covered in brown/ gold coloured leafs being blown around to a snowy white street in winter.

As much as I like this idea, I believe this could be challenging to depict as an image, but as a moving image video, I would probably have better luck representing the idea across to the audience.

As I said in my last post that I published called “The Beginning”, I said that I had written a few posts but couldn’t understand why they weren’t showing up on the blog, this was because, stupid me didn’t click the publish button on the side. So there maybe a few posts being published on my blog today that I had written last week that were not published. 

Moving swiftly on. Here is my first idea for the Nature & Technology image project.

Technology At Nature's Front Door Step!

   Basically, how this idea came about, was when I was sitting in back of my first Media Theory lecture, thinking about the brief that was only just given to me about 3 hours before. So there’s me thinking o bugger what i’m I going to do. So I immediately thought of nature/animals and how us human with are technology, effects nature. This reminded me of my bike ride to uni that morning and tragically running over a frog, who decided to jump out in the middle of the cycle path, straight under my front wheel, which completely squished the poor little sod into my tyre and sending what was left of him, through my front brakes, with a loud crunching noise. Nevertheless how tragic this event was (for the frog), it made me think of how there is the sense of a battle going on between nature and technology, kinda like survival of the fittest. What I’m trying to put across is that nature is threaten by technology to a certain degree, and this be shown by the results of deforestation in some parts of the world. 

So this image represents a city of technology and big corporate brand logos on the side of tower blocks/ skyscrapers e.g. Apple, Microsoft, Nike, Coca Cola, advancing upon nature (as depicted a rain-forest overlooking the city). 

However this image also has an element of vice-versa to it. Meaning that the image can also represent nature fighting back/ over powering technology. It has been said by a number of people that technology has limits of advancement, which yet to be seen. Yet nature doesn’t have limits, and constantly grows around us.

Nature may not grow/ advance as rapidly as we know technology does in society today but in the end there is one question, who will prevail?

This image was also to commemorate the frog that I unfortunately splattered on the way to uni.

Right, at last I have manage to work out how to use wordpress blogs and have found out that all my blogs I have wrote haven’t been publish as the idiot I am didn’t notice the stupid “Publish” button on the side.

So, with the stupidity aside, This blog will show my “Nature & Technology” Image Project, which I will try to update regularly over the next couple of weeks with ideas and the final 5 images I have to produce.

The brief for this image project states that I have to create a website gallery, showing five Photoshop images that refers to the “over-arching’ theme of Nature & Technology.

Nearer the time of the hand in date I will try and post up the website gallery address so it can be viewed by all, however making the website is going to be a bit of a challenge….. Good Times!

Over the course of this project I will be keeping a visual diary (meaning sketchbook, I don’t understand why they can’t just say sketchbook, but I have to be professional about it, which is quite true). I will post these drawings up so you can understand where my ideas have come from and reassure you that I am not going crazy. 

However on any project there are always constrains, and I am required to use a combination of original and found images, explore the signs and symbols we use in our culture to represent meaning, and include text into the images, whether it is the title of the piece, a quotation or an advertising slogan etc.

So to conclude this introduction, I can gladly say I have a lot of work to do….. 

P.s. Please leave feedback on any of my ideas as it will be gladly taken

Thank you