Category: Communications Lab

 When Steyerl mentions an “unbroken belief” in the documentary images that we see in today’s news coverage, this is basically mentioning how we live in a world that needs to be heavily doubted for it to even be considered truth. In the past, people have had that “unbroken belief” that everything they have been fed was the truth and with the newer technology today, we have to question that. We see in today’s society, we desire more of an intense news coverage or document versus accuracy because we are consumed with the drama that follows. This is how truth can feed fiction, in a way, because rumors and falsities flow out of a smidgen of truth and vis versa. Authenticity is rare to come by but still alive in the documentation process if done correctly. When documenting images or film, the accuracy needs to be spot on so the audience will be consuming correct information. 

My idea for this upcoming project is a memory of my parent returning from work as my sister and I had just came back from school. The noises that would go on during this interaction is very prominent in my mind. It signifies the gathering of my family together after we all had worked hard all day. Since I am currently at home, the recreation of these sounds will be a lot simpler. I would like to include various sounds such as the garage door opening, my dog barking, the stairs creaking from me and my sister going down to meet them, pots and pans clanking around as the preparation for dinner is started, etc. I am still thinking about other sounds I can include but those are the basis of them so far. This memory is being conveying with no words, at first, stumped me because I would have thought to include the greetings that we would express but now I believe I can convey the sense of coming home after a long day with words. Words aren’t needed to convey the gathering of my family at the end of the day and I hope to produce this successfully.

Diptych Project – People Watching

Emma Blosser

The concept for this project was to explore the concept of “sonder” which is the concept explaining how everyone has a complex life that we as individuals might not initially realize. My goal for this project was to somehow express this realization with a comparison of the two images. The comparison shows the first initial glance you might have towards the everyday society and the edited picture shows the other side of the coin. It shows the various emotions and stages of life someone might be in just as they’re walking on the street through the use of colors, repetition, the varying sizes of the subjects.

The first part of my process was to find a place nearby that I knew would be somewhat populated in that I would be able to photograph people walking on the street or in passing. At first, it was turning out to be difficult to get a shot without being so obvious that I was taking a picture. My goal was for it to be more of candid shot so I ended up shooting from across the street to get a more observational shot. 

Going into the editing process, I already had a vision of what I wanted the piece to somehow look and be composed. I originally started the piece out with greying out the whole picture so that the colors I would add later would be the focus. The next step would be the coloring of the subjects and repetition of some of them. The process for the digital editing section was proving to be difficult at first because of my lack of experience with the Photoshop App.  But after some experimenting with the tools, I found the ones that would serve my purpose. 

Overall, the conversation between the images, I believe, allows the audience to reflect on the everyday society they live in and dig deeper into the lives of others. If I had more time to work on this, I would like to explore more variety with the subjects in the picture or go to a more populate place to take a better quality picture that I can edit with more ease. With this being a picture I took on my phone, the editing process proved to be a little more difficult. But I believe this turned out the way I envisioned from the beginning.

The “fluidity of the digital” statement means that with the digital age up and coming, there is more fluidity that can be achieved, especially in the pictorial sense.More freedom is given because of the various software that is coming out on the internet versus the more mechanical way of taking photos. We have more freedom to choose what to do with raw pictures nowadays because of the digital revolution. Mechanical photography allowed for little to no altering of images which was freeing but restricting at the same time. There was no questioning whether or not the pictures were altered so, in that sense, it relieved lots of doubts. On the other hand, it was restricting in the sense that it was limiting creativity in a way. With the digital age now, we are able to find creativity in the manipulation of images. The author refers to it as “artificially opaque rather than translucent…”This is just another path people may be able to express themselves in. In journalistic photography though, this may not be the best evolution due to misinformation spreading more often than not. Photography, in general, has the power to make waves in society. There are many avenues to take with photography due to the fluidity in the digital world. An example of how photography is capable of capturing reality is when using it for some kind of evidence. The author describes a scenario where pictures can provide evidence to a greater extent versus a handful of eye-witnesses because of the subjectivity that can come with that. Although the manipulation of images is more accessible now, there is still credibility within that image. A manipulated image shouldn’t automatically be written off as fully illegitimate but also shouldn’t be categorized as fully reliable either. Compared to other media, I believe photography has a way of saying many ideas without using text or speech to convey. It also allows for the audience to make their own assumptions about the topic being shown. This is a very powerful tool that photographers can take advantage of. I believe that photography is evolving with society in a positive way, if chosen to view it in that perspective. The impact on society because of photography will always be that of a positive effect.

After the initial introduction to this project, my first immediate thought was to create something with a concept more tailored towards society as a whole. Something that most everyone could relate to. After some of observation and research, the concept I narrowed it down to was expressing how everyone has their own problems in life and, very rarely, we know or understand the full picture. I would ideally like to have the piece be in portrait and the top image will be the actual picture depicting a regular scene of society with people walking on the street. The bottom image with be somewhat of a collage of the same image but distorted. I would like to manipulate this image in a way that could add different moods to each person in the picture by adding symbols or figures around each subject. I would like to take a special trip to take these pictures to a more populated city so I can make sure multiple types of people are in the images. Each image will compliment each other well in that they can be interpreted separately with a more 2D approach, but when comprehended together, I believe the complexity will show through in itself.  

 

Pionner Plaque:

 

Concept: Social Media

With the concept of social media, which is a form of communication in our society, humans can access postings from other humans around our globe. Using social media as a wireless connection throughout the devices in the world that people spread ideas and posts through. Anyone with a device, these days, has some sort of social media. There are multiple platforms to spread information by and most people are active on various platforms. As the aliens in Chiang’s short story might perceive this concept, humans have evolved into using this form of communication more than actual verbal communication. It’s almost like a broadcasting of information in that one person can post something and the whole world has access to it the second it comes online. Every hand-held device or any device connected to a wireless system can access posts through their accounts and people can choose if their information goes public or private for their followers. Followers are other people’s social media accounts who chose to follow another person and their postings. Since the aliens in the story have the anatomy of a 360 figure, using devices and social media that we have might prove to be difficult but not unattainable as they seem to live in a high functioning society. They probably have some sort wireless system in which they can implement applications of social media. With their writing system of Heptapod B, I would assume their postings would be more complicated and allow readers to understand the context with one look at it, versus our posts which take seconds if not minutes to read and comprehend. Their drawing language system would be beneficial for a concept such as social media because they have complicated systems in which they can easily express and spread around their communities with just one picture of their written language. The heptapods seemed to have a thinking that was almost backwards to the humans and, with this concept in mind, I believe that they could grasp and utilize social media to their advantage with little instruction. The way the heptapods communicated not via verbal speech was not given within the short excerpt so I have to suppose they have some sort of online connection within their population. The system of social media is used in human daily life to allow people to see the lives of others and to spread information that may be helpful for others. 

Song chosen:

Kwaku Asante – Molasses (Audio)

 

Background/Concept:

My first thought for this project was to find a song that had groove and a head-bopping rhythm. When I came across this song, a design immediately popped in my head of a groovy center piece with different designs building off the sides. If you listen to the song, it has almost a sticky, vibe that I thought would translate well in this project.

 

First draft:

Draft #1 Sound Visualization Project

This first draft was an initial almost sketch of what I wanted to portray with through this song. The center line of O’s was the first section I laid down with the intention of it being the focal point. The wavy concept of the line was the initial response to the song itself and the mirrored sections on the bottom right and top left of the piece were to express the stickiness mentioned before.

After the first Mini-Critique, I was told to be more experimental with the design and create more texture throughout the piece. I was contemplating what to do at this point but knew a general direction I wanted to continue in.

 

Second and Third draft:

Draft #2 Sound Visualization Project

Draft #3 Sound Visualization Project

With these next drafts, they were in attempt to add more texture to the piece. I varied the sizes of fonts, switched in and out different letters to add levels of texture and I messed with the mirroring situation I had in the first draft. Throughout this process, I couldn’t quite figure out what to replace the top left design with because I wanted it to still match with the music. I then landed on the idea that is in the final draft.

 

Final Draft:

Final Draft Sound Visualization Project

I added the rows of M’s in which they were gradually decreasing in size to represent the constant rhythm throughout the song. When I came up with this idea, I didn’t want it to be the same size of M’s so I decided to decrease the font each row to add more texture. 

 

Conclusion:

Overall, I believe this project was a great way to use a tool we wouldn’t normally use to create a design and especially with it based of a piece of music. This allowed me to stretch my creativity in ways I haven’t before and I am very happy with how this turned out.

Color Swatch Assignment

“Story of Your Life”

• Introduces the story with a mother telling her child the story of how they were conceived and how they were to grow up, almost speaking as if it hasn’t happened yet
• Skips to Dr. Banks being called in by Colonel Weber and Gary Donnelly, a physicist, to identify the linguistics of aliens that had appeared on Earth
• It is then revealed that that call would be the second most important phone call of her life and the first would be a call about identifying the daughter at a morgue.
• This reveals to the reader that the story being told is to the daughter after her untimely death, all the things that weren’t said when she was alive
• Gary and the author worked together at a site to communicate with the aliens
• They meet simulations of the heptapods and try and communicate with them, distinguishing basic sounds as their language
• Jumps to an anecdote about her teaching and how the alien experience wasn’t her favorite but child linguistics
• Goes into an anecdote about an experience with her daughter
• Keeps jumping between progress with the aliens and anecdotes about her daughter
• The progress with understanding the aliens is slow, mostly due to the configuration of their written language
• Not picture writing but writing that “conveys meaning without reference to speech”
• They made the connection that there seemed to be two different languages, one spoken and one written that didn’t have any correspondence with each other
• Started to get into the physics and mathematical discussions and ended up with no progress, the linguists, on the other hand, seemed to understand the language more and more
• They had a breakthrough with the physics communication, explained the way light moves which is more complicated than what they thought they were going to start with
• The heptapod’s version of physics was opposite to humans
• They also found that the written language had to have a foundation to build off of when forming the sentences
• She started feeling more comfortable with Heptapod B, the written language, and could form the structures in her head
• Same physical world, two different interpretations
• Jumps from talking about the daughter’s death to anecdotes about her life, somehow relating to the topics discussed about the heptapods
• They came to the conclusion of heptapod’s language being performative
• The Colonel arranged for a gift exchange between them which ended in an abrupt ending and absence of the heptapods