First Unit In The Bag & Out The Way !

Right, at long last my first unit is completed and handed in to be marked, which I can say, isn’t the highlight of this project by any straight of the imagination, as I fear that who ever marks the project will think that my images won’t make any sense what so ever, but yet there is a side of me that thinks sod’em ! I agree with the fact that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but at the end of the day I am proud of my work that I have produce and the time I have put into creating this project and no one can take that from me. 

However I do believe that there was and still is room for improvement, in this project, which are the following:

 

• To do more in depth research into Nature and Technology and it’s workings.
• Try to create a noticeable links between the images, for instance showing a journey progressing through the images and placing a object in all the images, which instantly recognised to the view. 
• Learn more about Photoshop and it’s wide range of tools and effects that are available.  
• To most certainly brush up on my Dreamweaver skills, as I have fail to realise that the skills for web design are seriously need. Much as I despise using Dreamweaver, due to the fact that I can’t my bloody head around the stupidly complicated html coding aspect, I believe putting extra time into this software will benefit me hugely for the future.
• Try to improve my essay writing abilities ! This is an on-going battle since I can remember as I hate doing sodding essays, yet it is a fair price to pay for not doing written exams WHOOP !!!!
• Try and use more critical ideas for any essays in the future, meaning figuring out how to use the uni library ! I would just like to point out at this point, using the uni library is not as easy as you may think it is (hard to explain and dare think that I am stupid !).  
• Lastly, try to note down all the references of any materials I use, as I have found out that Harvard Referencing comes back to kick you in the head if you don’t note it down properly from where you got it from.

 

Overall though I am very happy about my work and what I have produce. I do have to say that in this unit I have surprised myself, by how may new skills I have learnt. Well I say skills, I really mean “skill’, which is Photoshop. Before I came to uni i hadn’t had foggiest idea how to use it and now I can use it like it is second nature to me. 

Yet there is one thing I can think of that I hate, in this unit, and that is having to speak in ‘Third Person’ for my essay. As it has resulted by me speaking like a posh git, for instance it’s hard not to say in conversation “one would do this, one would say this, one thinks ?” instead just using the word ‘i’.

So well done there by me !

Moving swiftly on or back, either way. In my production of my images, I did kinda went into over kill and forgot that I only had to create five images for this project and produce more than I should of. However it did give me the chance to choose from a selection images to use in my project. I have already posted up my five final images for my project yesturday on this blog. But the images that I didn’t use for my project, I am going to post up now, which are the following:

O and please leave your comments/feedback about these images as well as my five final images, that I posted up yesturday.

Thank you

Unpublished Image for Project

 

The Power Of Flight

 

This image conveys how the idea of flying, empowered us, mankind to invent aviation. This is emphasised through the layer fading of a bird (a Hawk specifically) turning into a plane to advancement. I has occured to me that the back end of the plane should be the bird and the front end the plane to fully justify my idea of advancement, but if I was to do this, no one would recognise that the back end is a bird, hence why I have shown the bird at the front as it is iconic to us that it is a bird. 

This image was one of my original ideas and you can view my post about it further down this blog. The reason why I didn’t use it for my final five images because I felt that it was to simplistic and would properly fit in with the other images, for this reason I replaced it with the image of Natures Symphony, which was one of my images for my first one day project, which is called Revolution last month. I have posted up Revolution and Natures Symphony on this blog, so you can view the development that was undertaken. 

This next image was also going to be featured in my image project, which is the other image, that I created in my first one day project, called Encounter

 

Unpublished Image for Project

Developed Image of Encounter

 

This image was developed further to justify and represent the true workings that could be undergone by nature and showing it’s true form. The original image of Encounter that I created only showed the Matrix reflecting in the frogs eye, this was achieved by cutting & layering the Matrix and the frogs eye and turning down the opacity of the Matrix to look like it was being reflecting in the eye (just like light would do on a sunny day as it reflects off glass and shinny surfaces). The original image of Encounter can be found at the bottom of this blog, so you can view the development of these images for you self.

 

So there we are, that is the images unit completed and in the bag. The next unit that I will be undertaking will be called the Narratives Unit, which evolves having to work within a group this time, which should be interesting and how I have an operation in the new year early January, which could affect how this unit will go for me and my group. To give a idea about what this next unit is going to be about, each group in the course have to produce an interactive story, whether it is a nursery rime or a fairy tail, which allows the user to interact with the story dictate how events unfolds.

The Five Finished Nature & Technology Images

At long last it has got to that time of the month where the hand in date for the Images Project is due for Wednesday 19th November, and as I said in my last post I would post up the finished images, so here they are. 

Please leave any comments and feedback about these images as I would like to know your opinions about them. 

Cheers 

Image 1: The Wind Is Our Technology

 

The Wind Is Our Technology

 

Image 2: Natures Symphony

 

Natures Symphony

 

Image 3: Technology At Natures Front Door Step

 

Technology At Natures Front Door Step

 

Image 4: The Corporate Hunt

 

The Corporate Hunt

 

Image 5: Mother Nature Advancing

 

Mother Nature Advancing

 

 

 

 

 

Seventh And Final Idea !

Right, this is my last idea for this image project. I do have to say I am sorry it has taken so long to get this post up as another one day project was sprung upon us the other day and was a total waste of time from my point of view seeing as the brief that was given to us was not made clear what so ever and trying to find out what I had to do was a right mission by itself and I hadn’t a clue what to do for it as you can see from my last post I published until the next day when one of the other lectures made it as clear as pancakes (and yes I fully well know that pancakes are not transparent !!!!). I have to say that it was not my finest piece of work by any stretch of the imagination, but on reflection I can see how it kinda ties into the Nature & Technology project.

Anyway moving swiftly on ! Here is my seventh and final idea:

 

Changing Environments

 

I want this image to give the representation of changing environments, by showing an animal, for instance a Tiger walking down a street in an iconic city, such as New York where big corporate brands are the predators of this environment and the Tiger is the prey. This representation of changing environments also gives another representation within the original representation, which is role reversal as mentioned above earlier.

I was thinking if were to use an iconic city street I want to some how show corporate logos such as, Coca Cola, Nike, Apple, McDonnell’s etc. By showing these logos this should meet the technology aspect of the image and for the nature aspect, showing the Tiger walking through the street should work out.  

However I can see this image having room for improvement, in that way that I could show a Tiger chasing a deer of some description through the street with the corporate logo showing in the background. This could give the representation of the Tiger being emphasised as the corporate brands chasing the deer, which is emphasised as the customers who the are being chased down to be sold something by the corporate brands. This new idea could help me improve upon the original name for this image as well.  

As this is my last idea, I will be not posting anymore ideas up until I have developed these idea properly and finished them. However once the images are finished upon completion I will publish them on this blog for viewing and giving you the chance to leave feedback, which is always helpful.

Sixth Idea !

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.

Could My One Day Project Images Actually Work ?

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.

Fifth Idea !

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.

Fourth Idea ! New Found Inspiration

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.

Third Idea ! Me Having Sod All Inspiration

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.

Second Idea !

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.

The First Idea !

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.