Flash Project Analysis

I thoroughly enjoyed the Jameson project and any difficulties I had while creating the Flash project were only hurdles that forced me learn more about a new system I was unfamiliar with. It was definitely an enlightening experience and working with Flash combined with incorporating the Jameson essay proved to be arduous, yet rewarding work.

My main challenges were mainly learning how to use Flash since I had no prior experience and condensing my ideas down to something that was feasible with the little experience that I had. My original concept for the interactive media was much more encompassing and interactive, but as the project progressed, I realized I would have to scale my ideas down to something more simple so I could finish in the time allotted. I believe the toughest part was making my vision simpler without losing any of the meaning from the Jameson quote.

In the end, when it's all said and done, I felt positive about how my project turned out and after the still image assignments, Flash was the most interesting assignment I've had this semester at IML. If given the opportunity and given as complex and thought-provoking a prompt as Jameson, I would definitely use Flash again. I went into this project knowing nothing and through trial and error, I learned so much and have more confidence in my abilities when it comes to utilizing technology.

Though I found my Jameson quote particularly interesting, I most likely will not read Jameson again because the material is so dry. It makes his ideas had to grasp, and even though the ideas are ingenious, the complexity makes it difficult for the common man to identify with and comprehend.

I believe projects like this will be more widespread in the post paper world because they take complex ideas and present them in a way that is engaging and interactive. In the post paper world, society will need a new mode of education and interactive media is the next step.

Amazing semester, sayonara....

Everyone Needs a Little Atomic Bomb

"Just give me a little atomic bomb. Not too much...." Everyone wishes for a little atomic bomb every now and then in order to utterly remove the elements of life they find undesirable. This video becomes literally poetry in motion in the way Bukowski's original poem is rendered graphically for the purpose of dramatic effect.

The darkness and overall formidable atmosphere of the video poem makes the viewer feel lost and uncertain, a feeling created by graphic nuances not found in the original poem. The darkness of the background, the black splatters of ink that are reminiscent of blood give the graphic poem an Armageddon feel and I felt apprehensive when watching the film. The way the camera zooms in and out through the space makes the normally two-dimensional poetic experience a three-dimensional one. The viewer slowly loses control as they struggle to comprehend with the moving and evolving text.

All of these elements combined with how the rhythm of the video keeps pace with the pauses in the poem create a distorted, but poetically symmetrical reality for the viewer. The graphics of the film were dark and dreary, adding to the formidable environment made by the poem and pathos is utilized effectively as the author relate tales from the emotional anorexia of his life.

The Utopian News Media: Hieroglyphics become the Future

The Falling Times, the news translation machine, poses a new, innovative way of getting pertinent information. Using mere pictographs and headlines, it provides a simple and quick way of keeping up with current events without having to sit through an opinionated, sensationalized news show. When I first looked at the website and saw the falling icons, I was lost and had no idea what the symbols meant; it was like trying to decipher hieroglyphics. However, as I clicked on the icons to reveal the story behind them, I slowly began to associate certain symbols with certain events. A coffin meant death, a man with a star atop the globe meant something had happened in China, and a stick figure shooting another stick figure meant murder, etc.

As a journalism major, I found this method of receiving news effective and futuristic. It presents the news in three levels, one is the rudimentary level of a simple pictograph where the user knows that something of a certain nature, based on the symbol, happened. The second level is when they see the headline the symbol is representing. The user now has a brief synopsis of what occurred in the world and even only if it's just a mere headline, it is still one step aware from complete ignorance. The third level is when you actually click the hyperlink that goes to the news website.

Having only to look at icons is good enough to hold the attention span of younger viewers. The artists feel that news doesn't need paragraphs or sound bites, but does need to be communicated in the simplest way possible. The more complicated and detailed the news gets, the more room there is for bias. I do view this as scholarly multimedia because they are taking a common element everyone is familiar with, the news, and remediating it in order to cater to a society where many citizens are tuned out on current events.

The Dumpster: A Catharsis of Emotion

The first thing I noticed about this website interface was the homepage where the bouncing and accumulating circles took up the screen. I was automatically drawn in by the graphic form and when I found out each of those balls represented a failed attempt at love, I was even more fascinated by the blatant symbolism. By clicking on one of the balls, other circles that were similar to the random relationship you clicked gravitated towards that circle. The metaphor found in this interface is that all relationship problems share a common strand. As soon as you find a relationship circle that looks unique, other circles holding similar stories emerge. The user realizes that none of the broken-hearted stories is alone, they all have others that hold the same pain.

Also the timeline on the sides of the Dumpster resemble the pulse rate of someones heart which resonates with how the heartaches of all these starstruck youth are represented within the Dumpster. Even the name of the project: the Dumpster is symbolic because all of the pent-up emotions are being unceremoniously dumped into the anonymity of this visualization. Instead of being a compilation of trash and worthless , unwanted items, the Dumpster is an archive of the experiences of youth who are struggling in relationships.

The user the interface presumes is obviously a teenager who has fallen out of a relationship and who needs a outlet of catharsis for all the tumultuous emotions that come with unrequited love.

The YouTube Debates/Debacle

Even though YouTube is a forum for public debate to only a limited extent due to its censorship, it still provides a new, interesting way of reaching the masses. YouTube is often seen as a paragon of civic media in how anyone regardless of social standing can make their voice heard and as the site's slogan states, broadcast themselves. So what better way to involve the great majority of apolitical citizens than by creating a political outlet within an entertainment one like YouTube? The normal medium of news and magazines as a way to keep people politically aloof has failed and society is being forced to search for innovative ways to draw the average American into the political sphere. Allowing citizens to submit their own video questions from their own homes adds a sense of grassroots authenticity to televised political debates that often seem out of touch with the reality of the common man.

But, in the end, it falls short of civic media because civic media isn't truly civic if it is being monitored by a conglomerate news network that may have political supporters to kowtow to. Censorship strips the YouTube debates of its authenticity and eliminates its validity as a gateway into the true heart of America. CNN is free to select the questions that would be the least controversial, the easier questions the candidates would want to answer. Instead of being an uninterrupted channel of the common American's attempt at participating in a democracy, it becomes a pseudo civic media where political convenience takes precedence over the public's true concern. Despite its failings, it still is a manifestation of the need for a new public venue where the indifferent masses can inject their beliefs into mainstream politics.

The Sonic Memorial Project: A Sound Monument to 9/11

The argument being made in this website is that the emotional turmoil of an event that brought a nation to its knees needs to be recorded. By listening to the actual sounds of survivors, victims, and bystanders, we incarnate the bravery and sacrifice the world witnessed that day and form an audio monument to those who passed.

This interactive website that allows you to listen to ambient sounds and archival recordings appeals to both pathos and ethos. It primarily appeals to emotion since by listening to sounds from 9/11 people are able to mentally reconstruct that events that transpired that day and remember where they were and what they were doing. The user is forced back into the mentality of fortitude over tragedy and Sonic Memorial proves to be a testament of hope in the face of despair that tugs at one's heartstrings. In a way that is tasteful and never trite, people are reminded to pay homage to the voices and sounds in these audio archives. Sonic Memorial can also appeal to ones morality because to forget these sounds, images, and memories that formed such a defining moment in our nation's history and to discount them as relics of a disappearing past is immoral. These sounds emphasize the moral imperative of giving reverence to September 11th and to those who were affected by it.

What I found most interesting about the Sonic Memorial's form was the organization of the home page. All of the criss-crossing lines seem to form a web that connects all of the links together. It is symbolic of how all of these saved sounds collectively form a portrait of 9/11 and the range of emotions people felt that day from grief to rage. All of the photos featured on the site are partially cut off, making the scenes they depict more abrupt which also forms a striking parallel to the abrupt and unexpected attacks that rattled the American spirit and served as true test of a nation's resilience.

War and Sex: The Male Gaze

This scintillating photo of war and sex depicts two women being filmed and objectified by three men, one involved in the scene and two as onlookers. In this picture, the two women have become mere works of art to be manipulated and documented which is denoted by their provocative poses. The focus is constantly on them as the audience’s eyes as well as the men’s eyes are on them, illustrating as Mulvey stated the “woman as image, man as bearer of the look…”All of the men are staring at the women as though they are simply commodities no different from a car or a house. The women seem either oblivious to the fact the they are being watched like the woman posing in front of the projector screen or relish in their status as sex objects as the woman standing over the entranced man does. In this picture as well as all of the “Make Love Not War” pictures, the women are displayed in some erotic pose that accentuates their sensuality. Eyes always sultry, lips always pursed in an orgasmic “o”, chest thrown out, “she is isolated, glamorous, a display, sexualized”. The photo explicitly introduces the pleasure of looking, scopophilia, denoted by the gawking soldiers, the projector screen, and the camcorder so that the scantily clad women can “connote to be looked-at-ness” as stated in Mulvey’s essay. In the photo, the center is never on the male, turning the males and the audience into spectators and the women depicted into “symbolic orders in which man can live out his fantasies and obsessions”.

Moving Forward: Studium and Punctum

Note: In the photo I edited, the man's shirt was made red, but when being uploaded to blogger, it somehow changed to blue...I don't know why. But keep in mind, the shirt was supposed to be red.

Studium: The studium of this racialized photograph I edited says little…. several people are sitting on a city bus or train on their way to somewhere. By the black and white and the clothing style one could deduce that this photo was taken in the mid 20th century in the South.

Punctum: The punctum is found in my manipulation of the original photo. The original photo taken by Franks depicts two black men sitting at the back of the bus with a white woman and her children sitting near the front, both parties with pensive and severe expressions on their faces. This photo was obviously taken during a time of racial intensity in the U.S. and in an era when the unjust laws of Jim Crow prevailed. I manipulated this striking portrait of institutionalized racism to reflect the progress that African-Americans have made since segregation and how their assertion of their rights from the 1960s to now has radically changed the face of American culture. No longer at the back of the bus, the man highlighted in red has surged to the forefront of society and wears the face of silent pride and dignity instead of sorrow. I made his shirt a dull red to make him stand out and also to represent how his transition from the dregs of society to a place of respect was not a trivial revolution, but a battle won with the spilt blood of others. I left one African-American man in the back instead of completely mixing all the riders to connote that though Blacks have come a long way in the struggle for equality, it's not yet over. Like the bus that these passengers of history are frozen in, African-Americans continue to move forward.

EXAMPLES OF TYPOGRAPHY

This quote has been used repeatedly in everything from Billy Joel's 1977 pop rock album to 2PAC Shakur lyrics and always holds a resonating ring of truth. This example of typography uses color and type to connote the underlying message of the quote and to visually as well as verbally convey the the unfairness of a reality that snatches the best creation has to offer away before they can truly live.

The first interesting thing that I noticed about this typography was the how the word "die" was emphasized over "the","good" and "young". Using dashes of orange that make the word seem to glow above the morbid darkness of the other words, the word "die" seems to jump off of the page, similar to how death of a loved one comes unexpectedly and there is no way one can prepare themselves for it. The splatter of what emulates blood emanates from "die" and contaminates the other words, connoting how death overshadows all the other aspects of one's life so that nothing seems normal anymore. Since the other words have been splattered they no longer appear benign but look ominous and foreboding, their innocence taken away. The type is bold and confrontational, in all caps, which grabs the viewers' attention and adds a sense of urgency to the sentiments being expressed. The arrangement of the words in three lines gives it order and symmetry which forms a sharp contrast to the chaos behind the words and behind the colors. The fact that the words are stark black and the word "die" is orange manifests a juxtapositioning of color and this combined with the splatter escaping outside the words, makes it more real and applicable, reflecting how death cannot be contained.

Nature Trumps Humanity

Walk at Night

President Bush and Australia's Governor-General Michael Jeffery stroll the grounds of Admiralty House in Sydney prior to the beginning of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

The first thing that captivated me about this photo was the massive tree in the center where the branches seemed to reach endlessly outside the frame of the photo. The fact that this tree is my focus of attention and not the two world leaders beneath its shadow or the distant echos of civilization in its background epitomizes the triumph of nature over humanity. With an initial glance of this photograph, the studium (denotative meaning) would be two men taking a stroll under a tree with a city behind them. Upon reading the caption, the studium evolves with more detail, President Bush and Australia's governor taking a stroll in Sydney before an economic conference. The new knowledge of their power does not change my perception of the photo...they are still overshadowed by the enormity of the tree. The punctum, connotative meaning,eludes to something deeper, a deeper truth that illustrates no matter what heights civilization attains it will always be subject to and held in awe by the mystery of nature.

The tree is the highest structure in the photograph, dwarfing the two leaders who reign below and the entire city behind it with quiet power and dignity. Its placement at the forefront of the photograph allows it dominance over the picture and even when I looked at the dazzling city of Sydney in the background and at the pensive expressions of the two men walking, my eyes always wandered back to that tree, fixated on the allure it emanated, and how it made all man made objects pale in comparison. The only illumination in the picture is found mostly near or in the branches of the tree, reflecting how enlightenment in that transition to a higher plane of spirituality will always come from nature and never from the adulterated efforts of man.

The myth that this photo propagates is the power of something greater that will always hold dominion over us and in a nation that was founded on Christianity, this higher power could mean God, not just nature. Two of the most powerful men in the world are reduced to items of insignificance as they are humbled by the gentle ferocity of the ethereal. The city is immersed in darkness, the only source of light, of hope is found in the tree, a microcosm of the pull of the otherworldly.