Shipka and Making Radiolab

Sound Project

        The article by Shipka raises some good questions to ask yourself.  The beginning of a project is always the most difficult part for me.  I usually do not have a clear idea of what I want to do or where I want the project to go.  Shipka raises four points to help students to find out if their ideas can be turned into a good project.  These questions get students to question themselves and to go deeper into their project, and they will most likely help me write out the rationale for the project.  1. What is the your project trying to do? 2. How does the technology or material you use complement your project? 3. What made you decide to chose this project? 4. Did you receive any help in completing your project?"

        I found the example of Dan's project the most interesting to me.  Dan's assignment was to use create music by using data about a word from the Oxford Dictionary,  The idea of creating these purposefully horrible songs to create your project appeals to me.  His though processes also showed good rationale thought.  This wasn't a half-baked idea that falls apart.  He was able to really augment his project with this great use of technology.

         The Making Radiolab podcast was interesting as well.  It did a great job in showing us how the mashing of different sounds together can create something wholly original.  This can be applied to the Everything is a Remix video that we watched.  By mixing in these different sounds, you are able to breathe new life into them.  The example I remember is using the electric sound and the hard "s" in distance and combining them to sound like the beeps of a space craft.  I enjoyed seeing how interesting it can be to mix different sounds together.  

         A long time ago, Star Wars sound designers were having to create the sound of things that never have existed before.  How do you capture the right sound for something that isn't real?  I remember seeing a feature on the sound design of the film.  They interviewed the sound man and he told us that the sound that a lightsaber makes is made from things that exist today.  He used a motor from a projector booth and a TV sound transmitted through a microphone. 

          

Here is the youtube link for the interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0WJ-8B6aUM

Ideas for Mapping

I have a small idea for a mapping project.  I was thinking of using those constant crime alert emails that we receive.  By using this data,  I would be able to mark the locations of where a lot of these crimes occur.  With these dots, I would be able to find some way to clearly represent the areas of campus that the most crime occurs.  This is still a rough idea that I will probably change.  

Drucker and Young

          My first experience that I can remember regarding street art is a stencil art.  This stencil simply had the face of George W. Bush and the words "F*ck Bush," except it wasn't censored.  The Young reading made me think about this.  I was pretty young, so this seemed very startling to me.  The Young reading made some interesting points as to identifying what makes graffiti into street art.  Young makes the argument that the location plays a pivotal part in the classification.  Drucker’s reading talks about the strength that language can have in an environment.  Banksy manages to mix words and art together, melding the ideas of Drucker and Young.  This also brings up a point that Young made.  She states that some street art is very valuable and expensive.  This reminded me of an episode of “Pawn Stars” where someone attempted to sell off a piece of the Berlin Wall.  The clerk did not accept it.  He said that if it was a part of graffiti art from some famous graffiti artists then it would have fetched a high price.  The art that was once on the Berlin Wall is wonderful.  It also highlights the temporariness of street art.  It may last years or hours, but it is eventually removed.  

http://www.photosnack.com/abcwaterboy/photo-essay-reverence-of-celebrity-culture.html

Reflection on Photo Essay

Without Sanctuary

           This is a very powerful photo essay.  Each one of the images is powerful enough to stand on its own.  The creator of the photo essay was able to put these images together to create something more powerful than if he had just used one or a couple of images.  With all these images combined,  we can understand how horrific our past was.  The title is also great.  It is vague, until you look at the photo essay and you realize what he means by saying "Without Sanctuary." 

Photo Essay Rough Draft

PHOTO ESSAY ROUGH DRAFT

               My photo essay will be a critique on our society's worship and reverence to celebrity culture.  It seems like something that will be hard to do, but rewarding.  I plan to photo shop the faces of celebrities into some famous religious paintings.  The last image will be of "The Last Supper" with celebrity faces photo shopped onto the image.  It will be awesome to photo shop Angelia Jolie's face onto "The Birth of Venus."  This will likely take me a lot of time to do, but I am confident in my patience and my power to Google any problems I may have. The following is the start of my photo essay.  I plan to photo shop celebrities faces into these portraits.

MAPPING

     This was an interesting read.  I enjoyed the idea of creating art of political statements by creating maps. This is really a great time to bring up this topic.  About a week ago, my Political Sociology professor showed us these cities around the world.  These maps were bright and colorful.  They also served to prove his point about the government becoming more centralized and creating more organized cities as the years move on.

     This mapping technique clearly shows the progressing organization from the older cities to the newest in America.  Mapping is a very clever and quick way to show this information.  Just describing the change in the organization of cities doesn't make the idea clear enough.
     I loved the artist Biaussat and his "green line."  It sent a strong message about how arbitrary the border is and about how ridiculous it is that people are dying over it.

      I am excited about this project.  There are a lot of different ways to take this.  If I was funny, I could come up with some parody of an iconic image, or I can use the project to criticize something.  I had a vague idea of using the image of "The Last Supper" and inserting the faces of celebrities as a way to criticize how we have begun to idolize them.  Obviously,  Mel Gibson would be in Jesus's place at the table.  I'm sure I can find an image of "The Last Supper" on Google Images as well as other celebrities.  The problem with this idea, is that there are only 13 people in it.  I feel like I can cram others into it.  It's still an idea in progress, one that I will probably change if I can come up with something better.

Ways of Seeing

               The Harrison article is very interesting.  Harrison is a writer who is attempting to explain the importance of images and words.  The argument is mainly that words and images work best together. She discusses the term "Semiotics."  This terms means the study of signs.  She also discusses three other terms.  The Icon, Index, and Symbol.  An icon bears a similarity to the real-world object.  The Index is when the concept and object work together to convey the meaning.  The last one is Symbol.  This may not look anything like the actual object, but through social structure, we all recognize the symbol to represent the object.  The article also discusses the importance for the author to create three things when merging words and images.  Representational, interpersonal, and compositional metafunctions.  Representational is basically what is in the image.  Interpersonal is more about how you interact with the image.  Compositional is how the image and words work together to create a meaningful whole.

ICON

INDEX

SYMBOL

             

                 The Berger video "Ways of Seeing" also held my attention.  In the part we watched, Berger discusses the strength of reproductions of art, and how there meanings change.  The exercise with the Goya is what I remember most.  He would put in a short clip or image, then show us a famous Goya painting.  Depending on the clip that preceded it, we felt different things. It changed the way we though about the painting.  When it showed the tied up black men followed by the Goya,  it made me feel quite differently then when he showed the ladies dancing.  

We chose to write about these abandoned homes.  The homes were taken with a straight on angle.  Most of the yard is showing in both images.  These images don't seem to be edited.  The homes were located in empty neighborhoods.  These images seem to convey a feeling of depression and giving up.  It illustrates the city decay of Detroit.  We also get a sense of how quickly people can lose their wealth and prestige.  Some of the homes in the blog are very big and could have been beautiful, but have fallen into ruin.  

      McCloud discuess several terms in his novel Understanding Comics. The discussion of what an “icon” signifies is interesting to me. McCloud makes the point that these icons often do not resemble the real thing at all, but are still accepted and understood by the masses. He also seperates these into subcatergories, such as pictorial icon. He makes the argument that we no longer think abstractly. We put things into categories and have trouble with things that don't resemble their counterparts.

     He also goes on to seperate the world into two other categories, the realm of the concept and the realm of the senses. He uses the example of the Tin Tin comics to clarify it. The use of a fantastical or unrealistic characters inserted into realistic environments.

     He also goes on to talk about how other authors use abstract characters to talk about deep issues or mature themes. McCloud reminded me of another comic book illustrator called Art Spiegelman. He used animals to portray the people and characters in his graphic novel about the holocaust. The novel was violent and graphic, but with the substitution of creatures for humans we were able to handle his violent and gruesome images of the concentration camps during WWII.

     Chapter six is also an interesting chapter. He discusses how we are forced to turn away from books with pictures with them and move on to books with words. Comics are able to fully utilize the power of both words and images. McCloud argues that this makes comics a different and, at times, more powerful then just words alone. This depends a lot on the artistic power of the illustrator. IF it is executed correctly, then the words and images complete each other.

     The Harrison reading was also interesting.  She discusses the term "semiotics."  This is a word that I had never heard before.  This means the study of signs.  She also breaks this down into similar categories like McCloud.  The other categories are the icon, index, and symbol.  An icon is similar to the thing being represented.  An index is something that may not look like the object, but we as a society have decided to use it to represent the object.  A symbol looks nothing like its counterpart, but we have learned to accept it.

     The Wysocki reading is similar to the McCloud, although it deals with visualization differently.  It discusses the many forms that letters can be a visual form of information.  She also lays out forms of examining the information on the page.  Such as looking at the page itself, what is on it, and what helps the reader to make connections. By looking at these, we can get more meaning.  An example Wysocki uses is using large type, such as thinking of the book as a children's novel.