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.