Seeing Change Means Thinking Change

For this project I chose to use Photoshop to create a new image. With the election often being the topic of conversation wherever I go, I’m not surprised that the ideas that I played with in my mind were of Barack Obama and his campaign. His slogans for his campaign are always along the lines of “Change” and what he and it will do for America. To illustrate this concept of “change” very clearly, I thought of having an image of Obama cropped into or on top of or next to actual currency “change”, U.S. quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies. Not only is it a play on words of what “change” means in the English language, but it toils with something specific Obama wants to change, that being the economy. What better way to show the “change” he wants to accomplish in an image than with money itself?

Because Obama has the reputation of being an “intellectual”, I definitely wanted to find a way to make the image I was trying to create include the coins as part of him and also part of the surrounding image, almost as if the change was coming from him internally and he was staring down at it as it was happening around him. In Photoshop I was able to edit this photo of Obama looking down to be placed on top of the image of United States currency change all in the background. It got the point across, that being that Obama is and will bring change (not just economically, though the $$ indicates that mostly). However that didn’t look complete and I felt there were better ways to get this Obama slogan/platform across.

With the helpful comments from my neighbors (And you too, Jon), the idea of making the change become apparent in Obama’s head/brain started to emerge. To do this in Photoshop, I first had to find another image that I could make a shape in Obama’s head with. I played around with different images of cartoon brains but none of the images I found had high enough resolution to be able to cut out and still keep its shape as a brain. After that didn’t work out, I started to play around with the different auto-shapes Photoshop gives us and decided to use a “thought bubble” to cut out a selection of Obama’s head. I did not intentionally decide before hand to use a thought bubble in Obama’s head, however this worked out quite well and I think further shows that Obama is and will be and will bring change to the country. The image suggests (because this thought process is “change” in this image) that “change” is constantly on Obama’s mind and he has the power to execute a plan (that he has/will create) to make this change come to life. The thought bubble fit well in to Obama’s head in terms of shape and size (without much tweaking) and it (by accident) helped to reiterate the idea that he is constantly thinking of ways to make “change” possible.

One of the first things Berger talks about in his book is that the way we see things is affected by what we know. Because many people are familiar with the fact Obama’s slogan is “Change”, this image and the message it is trying to get across is probably very clear. However for those who don’t know who Obama is or what his platform is based off of, what are they going to “see” when they encounter this image? They will obviously recognize that a form of money is inside of another man’s head – this could be interpreted as the man in the image is concerned with money, is made of money, and/or has an idea (because the coins are in the shape of a thought bubble mostly) of how to generate money. But how would it become possible for one to associate this image with the idea of the other meaning of the word “change”? That could only happen if the person had previously knowledge of Obama and his campaign, proving another thing Berger wrote,that what we know completely affects what we see (the knowing would have to come first, obviously). Berger also says the photographer’s (in this case the image-creator) way of seeing is reflected in his subject choice. Obviously what I saw previously, which would have been Obama demonstrating he has the ability to “change” America for the better, affected/influenced this image. It took me to “see” this first for others to be able to “see” with me, and it took both of our previous knowledge to finish the “seeing” process.

I finally got my image to satisfy me by messing with the layers on Photoshop to be able to erase all the change around Obama and leave only the change that was visible in the thought bubble. This in my opinion helped to illustrate the double meaning of the image (change for the country, including economic change) most clearly, by really illuminating the fact that Obama can be and will if elected the one to bring/execute this plan for “change", not only because of his constant thoughts on how to do so but also because he has the gift (intelligence would be considered a gift in most places...the brain/head symbolically represents intelligence) to do so.

Response to Eric's Question

1. How often do you look at a sign and actually read what it says? Or, do you just see the red octagon and know without reading the words what is means?

I don't think I read signs anymore while driving. I definitely have made associations or links between colors and their meaning in my brain and use them while driving, walking, exploring. These are shortcuts that we all make I think when we are in familiar environments. I think that it is interesting to note that when I studied abroad this summer I definitely read all the signs. Not exactly for meaning though....over there, street signs (and their colors/shapes) were the same as they are (in meaning) in America (at least in Chicago...). However, just the simple fact that "Stop" was spelled in a different language (Arabic...قِف ) was enough for me to not use my usual associations with STOP in English and the color red. I did know automatically that a red octagon with letters in white did mean stop, but I think because I was not in my familiar environment I actually stopped to read the signs. Or maybe I just liked hearing myself speak another language. Who knows...!

Drucker & Elkins

1. In Drucker it states: "The forms of written language are twofold". Which of the two parts he identifies has more impact do you think, the visible features or the forms of language?

2. Why would it be difficult to find any written language that is purely informative?

3. Why would one want to design/view a stamp as a metaphor? Why is meaning needed behind sending something from one place to another?

Obama 4 Change

I did not take this picture, however one of my friend's have had it as their Facebook picture for a long time now and I think it goes really well with what we have been talking about for a few weeks. This picture was actually spray painted on a wall and my friend took a photo of it. It is an amazing graffiti-ed masterpiece, one of the reasons being it was "pun-intended" to play on the word change and use a stereotype of someone who would usually ask for "change" to mean the other meaning painting is mostly dark shades and the wall its painted on is white as well as the "sign" the shaded person is holding. To me, that would speak to me as being the whole "light at the end of the tunnel" type message. Another thing I find really interesting is the "change" cup at the bottom of the person is dark gray and the inside of it is black, as if it was empty. It is rather subtle but it could raise some questions...is it dark because it is indeed empty, there has been no change "given"? Or is it dark because no change has been sufficient enough to fill the cup? Whatever the artist's true intentions were, I think the the typical foam cup used to collect "change" makes this piece extremely different.

One of Seth's Q's

3. As asked in the reading, why is our culture so in thrall to the simplified reality of the cartoon?

I think some of the very appreciated aspects of American culture is its obsession with simplicity and related to that things like convenience and quick-fixes. As McCloud says in his article, a cartoon simplifies the meaning of something to basically its core. You can look at that as one of American culture's main characterists. a desire to make things (everything) easier. If the meaning of a media piece can be made super easy and convenient to understand, American's are going to prefer that over something complicated.

McCloud Questions

1. The McCloud article states: "We see ourselves in everything." Taking that into mind, how does one creating a type of media adjust their creation to utilize this fact?

2. Why can't "realistic art" amplify the meaning of something like a simple cartoon can?

3. What does McCould mean by "We become the car"? Why are humans as a race so interested in inanimate objects?

The World as We'll Know it

For my project (taking “world problem” into consideration), I chose to graffiti an image (or try to, anyway) that would illustrate one of the many effects of global warming. To do this I chose to graffiti something rather simple and something that almost all of us are familiar with: a flat map of the world. At first glance, the drawing might seem like a drawing of the world done by a four year old who cannot draw right. However, what’s supposed to come to mind is what the world – or what’s left of it anyway – is supposedly going to look like after global warming’s worst case scenario takes place.

I started off tracing a map of the world on a box of cereal just most of us did with an

x-acto knife. After I made my stencil of the actual continents, I distorted (as well as deleted) some of the continents to show how they could possibly look if Antarctica as a continent (as well as all other ice burgs of the world) melted and if the sea level rose dramatically (as many Scientists now say is happening and will continue to happen) as a result or effect of warming temperatures. The graffiti is far from an exact or accurate image, but that’s one of the points – no one really knows what the heck is going to happen or what it is going to look like. So I took it upon myself to imagine what the world (via flat map) and its continents would look like if what Scientists say what’s going to happen actually happens. I mean obviously I’m not a Scientist or anything but to be fair Scientists aren’t psychic.

So, the finished graffiti drawing is a silver painted stencil of the earth in the year on a blue background. I chose to have text on this stencil because I did distort the original image. Also, like I said earlier, someone could just look at this stencil and think a four year old tried to copy a map. I hope “2070” clarified my stencil and the meaning behind it a little more than just the distorted image of the world would alone. Having a stencil include just “2070” is still vary vague however I did not want something too apparent because ideally I would want someone to look at this and have to think at least a few seconds (or minutes) to get the global warming message. Preferably I would like a person to see it and at first be like “What does that person not know how to use a pencil?” and then a few seconds later say to themselves (however out loud) “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh”. As far as the location of my stencil’s final outcome, I would say that is on a billboard located on a highway that’s remotely in the middle of no-where (say the I-57, for example). A highway like this would be perfect because all you see around when you are driving on the 57 (for a big part anyway on the drive from Chicago to Champaign) are fields of corn or other crops. A distorted image of the world (in a place that seems so flat for the moment) with a crazy-far-away year (with a prediction attached to it) on the bottom of it in the middle of no where sparks curiosity and thought – it has to (what else are we supposed to do when we’re driving for so long on a road like that?)!

The stencil of the world does not include Antartica, about 25 percent of South America (it was stenciled to scale), the northern part of Canada, Iceland, Greenland, a huge part of Russia and Asia (mostly China), the Indian subcontinent, most of the Pacific islands, and most of Australia and New Zealand.

Oh, another note is the text on my project has “zero’s” that are split in the middle. I chose this specifically to get the whole the “world is drowning” across even more.

Seth's question

1. How do you think changes in Font, boldface, italics, Size of Font, etc. have people read the text differently? Why do we put emphasis on italics or have all caps feel like its SHOUTING?

-As we have learned from some of the readings (or maybe all of them in a way), one of the usual goals of the media is to make what is being portrayed/talked about as real as possible. When it comes to a written text (whether online or in a book, etc) it might be really hard to make the fact that we're reading something transparent because words have to be seen to be read. However with added variation to a text, whether it be pictures, or differences in font (size, color, shape) it starts to make the person experiencing the media relate to what is being read. Changing the font also is a rhetorical technique, where the different fonts and their sizes can call to different emotions for the reader, helping the "transparency" of the text become as effective as possible and the experience of reading the text as enjoyable as possible as well.

Questions for Sept. 9

1. Describe the content and form of picture "D", or "De Beers" on page 8 of the "Design Basics" article.
2. What does the term "vernacular" refer to in the "Design Basics" article? What would be an example of such an art form?
3. How can the rules/components of Rhetoric affect the "visuality" (as used in the Wysocki piece) of something (whether it be a composition, t.v. advertisement, painting, etc)?

A New Generation of Advertising

This is a photo I took when I was in Dubai this summer. When first looking at it (in person or in a photo) it appears to be a Six-Flags type theme park half-covered by a billboard of descriptions in front. However what most people don't know is that the entire display in this picture is not the actual theme park and there is no typical billboard to advertise it. All of those rides and fake people and fake mountains that this photo shows is the essence of the actual advertisement (not in the typical sense where seeing a little bit of the actual park is a marketing scheme alone). All these rides are not real (think along the lines of a 3-D billboard) and the extravagance and sophistication of this display really illustrates the lavishness and wonder not only that this park is going to offer but of what the whole city of Dubai is. For those of you who don't know, Dubai is one of the richest and over-the-top countries in the world. Nothing there is "typical" or "average" and no one seeks to be. The detail and astonishment that this "advertisement" attains is what makes Dubai so extraordinary - every new development is bigger and better than the next, and no one is afraid to out-do one another. What's most interesting about this picture I think is the type of medium it uses, which would be a physical display, and how it can be argued both as transparent or the complete opposite. At first glance you don't even realize theres a message behind it or that its even at ad. But at the same time, the display is very in your face which makes it far from being transparent.

Immediacy, Hypermediacy, and Remediation Questions

1. Why does the media (in most forms) strive to reach transparency?
2. How would a three-dimensional type of medium (ex: virtual reality) enhance/take away from a more basic media experience (like a painting)? Is this for better, or for worse?
3. How is/can the concept of "hypermediacy" influenced by "cultural logic"?

Glenn's question

3. Will people ever allow virtual reality (the ultimate form of media) into the home or will it always be considered a novelty?

I don't think virtual reality will ever become part of every one's home like television or radio or Internet has. I think that VR is unfeasible not only because of its costs $$ but the sometimes far-from-simple procedure that VR requires (putting on different types of equiptment, etc) makes VR unattractive to the American household. I know our society has picked up more and more forms of entertainment that use the whole concept of virtual reality (like Wii), but I don't think VR will ever become the norm for families. Though virtual reality feels extremely real, it appears on the outside completely bizarre that factor alone is something that will make most home's hesitant to accept this type of media.