Final Project Wrap U

For my final project in this class, I settled on creating computer images that look like you would have just sat down at one of the E-media computers and seen a program up on the desktop, except the images will click through to read statistics taken from The Miniature Earth.

The Miniature Earth is a project with a video about what the world would look like if it were reduced to 100 people. I picked some of the ones with the most impact and tried to put them in a context that people look at all the time. For example, many people are so used to looking at the same screen, like an itunes window or a google search bar, that it's jarring and bizarre to read facts about the percentages of the earth. On the Miniature earth website's about page, it says "There are many types of reports that use the Earth's population reduced to 100 people, especially in the internet. Ideas like this should be more often shared, especially nowadays when the world seems to be in need of dialogue and understanding among different cultures, in a way that it has never been before."

I think you will find if you watch the video what kind of impact it has. "The text that originated this webmovie was published on May 29, 1990 with the title "State of the Village Report," and it was written by Donella Meadows." (Found on about page) This current version of the film is the third one.

I'm really pleased with what I learned in this class, and I'm very grateful for the opportunity to try new things and do things I normally wouldn't have. I hope that my final project reflects what I feel about the Miniature Earth project, because it was quite a turn around from my original plan to make ambient screen shots. I felt that it would have been beating someone over the head with a pan to tell them what they already know, but the interesting facts in Miniature earth is more basic, simple and powerful than what I was trying to do already.

Hope you enjoyed it!

So here are some factoids that I've gathered about saving energy, saving water, saving paper, etc...

- Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours

- Enough aluminum is thrown away to rebuild our commercial air fleet four times every year.

- Recycling one glass container saves enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for four hours

- Glass can be reused an infinite number of times; over 41 billion glass containers are made each year

- Recycling one ton of paper saves 17 trees and 7,000 gallons of water

- Every year, enough paper is thrown away to make a 12 foot wall from New York to California

Taken from here.

- If you throw away 2 aluminum cans, you waste more energy than 1,000,000,0000 (one billion) of the world's poorest people use a day.

- Making a new can from scratch uses the energy equal to half a can of gasoline

- About one third of what an average American throws out is packaging

- About 90% of the energy used in lighting a standard (incandescent) light bulb is lost as heat

Found here.

- Less than 1% of the earth's water supply can be used for drinking

- A small drip from a tap can waste as much as four litres of water a day.

- Two thirds of the water used in a home is used in the bathroom

- Most of the world's people must walk at least three hours to fetch water.

- Leaving the tap running while you clean your teeth can waste nine litres of water

- Waiting until you have full load for your washing machine can save up to 70 litres.

- Waiting until you have a full load for your dishwasher can save up to 30 litres.

- A five minute shower uses about a third of the water of a bath, saving up to 400 litres per week.

Found here.

- The garbage in a landfill stays for about 30 years.

- 84% of all household waste can be recycled

- Computers pose an environmental threat because much of the material that makes them up is hazardous. A typical monitor contains 4-5 pounds of lead.

- Each year billions of used batteries are thrown away in the United States. This constitutes 88% of the mercury and 54% of the cadmium deposited into our landfills

Found here.

Inspiration for Final Project

For inspiration for this project, I decided to compile a collection of ambient advertising. Ambient advertising can be anything, that shows up in the real world where you least expect it. It's a brilliant way to advertise, because it brings the message that is normally found on the internet or magazines into the real world. All of the images are from a brilliant blog made by Szymon Blaszczyk called "Inspire me, now!"

You can find it here, and I highly recommend you do. I've collected some of his most recent images of ambient advertising (which are taken by other people but credited and linked to well), but he has a huge amount of other fun things to look at. I've wasted hours on his blog.

As you can see, it's very powerful the way these things turn up the way you least expect them. I would like to do something like this, but with the aim of letting people know how much energy they're using.

One thing that has impressed me about Australia is the outlets. Switches on the outlets are a wonderful way to prevent phantom energy from seeping out into appliances, something that a lot of people don't think about; usually once something's plugged in, they still assume they don't use energy if it isn't on. This isn't true, and the switches on outlets here are safer and remind people to completely shut off power if an appliance is not in use.

I would like my project to be an ambient reminder to turn things off, basically. I'll make my next entry about research on this topic!

Narrative Project

* All source images were taken from a flickr account from a man named Leif Peng, who does excellent work scanning and sourcing images from old magazines and journals.

For the first image in the narrative, I wanted to show the scene in which Hades errupts from the earth and snatches Persephone. I drew inspiration from old science fiction pulp novels.

The source images are all from the flickr set at this link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/leifpeng/sets/72157594277591720/

From this image I took Persephone, your iconic "Damsel in Distress."

And who better to play Hades, king of the underworld, than Frankenstein himself.

For when Hades erupts out of the earth, I decided to use a picture of New York sinking into the Atlantic Ocean, but I clone-stamped out all the people.

For the final image, I generated the text at the top, trying to replicate the font in "When Worlds Colide" as closely as I could. 'Color by Technicolor' was part of the original poster, but I added the directors names as the names of the three fates from greek mythology, and also the lead characters in the story to be the lead actors in the 'film.'

For the second piece, I wanted to echo a romance novel cover from the mid 40s to mid 50s. I figured the tragedy of what Demeter went though would be well represented with the soft, romantic paint and dramatic pose of the main character I found. The myth also references the creation of winter, so it was imperative that I find the perfect, cold winter shot.

I chose the part of the double page spread that didn't include the happy church goers, because I didn't feel it would fit the mood of desolation very well.

Originally I kept my eyes peeled for an older woman, since Demeter is first and foremost a mother in this story. But when the word "Desperate" jumped out at me, this woman seemed like a very reasonable greek goddess to me. She looked mature but young, since no one really ages in mythology. She was also so savvy in her coat and gloves, it seemed she could really play the part of someone who had caused a winter that was starving everyone.

And here's the final image. The "Coming to Theaters This November" was an afterthought. Even though I was planning on making it romance novel-esque, it fit in with the series better to make it a movie, plus the ability to have a very teasing tag line was appealing.

When Persephone returns, it is also the beginning of spring. I limited myself to purely springtime images, thinking it would be too much to try to tackle the idea of her permanent imprisonment to Hades and her joyous return in the same picture. Since the goal of the myth is to illustrate how seasons came to be, I stuck with the latter.

Very springtime background.

If Julie Andrews skipping on an Austrian hill top doesn't scream "GO SPRING!" I don't know what does. This image with her and her baggage definitely contrasts with the first barely dressed 'damsel' I had who was stolen away, but I figured the idea of her packing to return to Demeter would mean that she had found some sort of home in the Underworld.

This is Demeter, replenishing the world again with flowers and food upon Persephone's return.

And the final image in the series. The tagline "And it all started with a pomegranate" alludes to the fact that now spring every year is here because Persephone ate food in the underworld, and how has to return there for 6 months of every year. If it weren't for the 6 pomegranate seeds, we would be blessed with an everlasting summer, but alas, we're not. I was interested in studying the seasons because I left just as my summer in the states was starting to get good. I landed in the middle of winter in Tassie, and even though it will be plenty nice by the end of November, when I leave, I'll have to go back to another 6 months of a cold Washington winter. I can't complain though, because it's a pretty lucky thing to witness spring three times in a row.

Digital Collage 1

Welcome to my first digital journal/blog/documetation/everything. I'm going to try to keep this as organized as possible. but a lot of my work is written in my good ol' paper and pen journal, so I'll probably be scanning in quite a few of those pages as well.

My first idea for a collage looked something like this:

The project required us to take the narrative of the first collage, and put it in a digital form. I thought "Okay, well I'll make the map be the floor of my living room, since that's my new home." I thought I would put up some buildings where they would be on the floor, also some couches, windows, and picture frames and all that. My first collage had a lot of pictures in frames, but after a while of working, the idea of fitting my experience into one little living room didn't work for me. I explained it in my journal here:

So, if you got your nose up to the monitor and read all that, basically I wanted to transfer the feeling of the first collage, and not just the physical elements. My whole concept for the "first week of Utas" prompt is that I'm far away from home, and learning how to navigate a new place, but also learning how to keep in touch with people back home. I thought I'd represent that with a scene from a book that I started the day after I landed, and finished last week. While reading it I connected so strongly with the narrative, that it described perfectly how I was

feeling about my personal relationships at home.

Here are the source images I used:

I found most of them through flickr.com, a photo networking site. I also scanned in something in my own handwriting:

And the end result (cue drumroll):