Author: Chengan Bai

Video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1a_C-8-WfQzP6zmlCtR2rsVL0BOUQGPsx/view?usp=share_link

Project name: The Shawshank Redemption

Response

The significance of authenticity and representation of the media that I consume on a daily basis plays a big role in changing my perception of things. The article mentions that sometimes documentary forms create false intimacy and even false presence, which reminds me of one of the marketing tools we learned about in marketing. Bloggers who are closer to users through apps like Little Red Book write product feedback from the user’s perspective. But in reality, these bloggers are marketers paid by the company. But as an audience, there is no way to distinguish whether these “user feedback” is real.

I Compared to a photograph, a live broadcast is more credible to the viewer. Because there is no way to edit the live broadcast, except for the limitations of the camera, the live broadcast can show almost all the content to the audience. But the conditions are limited, it is still difficult to show the audience the whole “truth”. Name 

I will redo my project and update the final one later.

Concept:

About the diptych, my idea is that I want to show that in the process of socializing, everyone is different from what they appear to be. Some people look very lively, but inside they are an introvert. Some people seem to be very enthusiastic, but in fact, she likes to talk badly about others. And for my project this time, I wanted to mainly show those people who are not noticed in society but want to be friends with everyone. I represented different characters with different dolls by shooting Popmart. I wanted to show the doll that has been unnoticed by others by using focus to bokeh her when I took the first photo. The bokeh doll represents the marginalized people in society, while the “key people” in society, who are noticed by everyone, are in the center of the picture.

Process

When I took the first photo, I kept adjusting each doll’s position to give each of them a different character. The two in the middle are the center of everyone’s attention and are good at socializing. On the other hand, some of the people on either side were excluded because they like to talk badly about others, and everyone turned their backs on her. Some stood by the “key people” represent the people who like to follow those who are good at socializing. And the person I wanted to show who had been out of everyone’s attention was hiding behind everyone. I bokeh him by adjusting the focus. As for the light, I kept adjusting the indoor light first, and secondly, I changed the aperture to give the picture a suitable light.

When I did the second one, I adjusted the focus to make the people around him bokeh, and I wanted to show his inner world through here. I first added the photo I took of him alone to the original photo, then distorted the people around him through Photoshop to show that he was in his inner world at this time and that he was only concerned with his own feelings. At the same time, a hand was added behind him to show that he wanted to integrate himself into society and did not want to be a marginal figure. A black border is added around him to show that he wants the viewer to focus on the center of the picture instead of the surroundings.

I don’t think my current work is a good representation of my ideas. I didn’t change the introvert’s appearance through Photoshop to show his desire to get attention from people. So I would like to redesign my project, this time I will redesign my project to really show how he wants to be noticed inside through Photoshop by distorting some of his features.

The piece of memory I decided to choose is a typical day in my childhood. When I was a kid, the happiest moment every day was the sound of the door opening. It represents that my mom or dad came back home from work. I used to be at home by myself every day, watching TV and playing with my toys. It was not until more than five o ‘clock in the afternoon that Mom and Dad came home from work. I would be happy to sit at the door and wait for them to open. The sounds associated with this memory need to be the sound of a door opening, the sound of a clock, the sound of toys, the sound of water dripping from the toilet inside the house, the sound of the wind outside the window, and the sound of people talking in the street. Composing these sounds together is a typical day in my childhood.

1. What does Ritchin mean with the “Fluidity of the digital” Give an example of digital imaging/digital photography that exemplifies this.

According to Fredd Rithcin’s article In Our Own Image, “Fluidity of the digital” means that digital photos are highly maneuverable and easily changed. With the progress of science and technology, mechanical photography is gradually being replaced by digital photography. In the old mechanical age, photographs were hard to change and often the most reliable historical evidence. But technology has evolved so far that photographs become sketches and are constantly being redrawn. The photos we post on WeChat, Facebook, and other social media are also often doctored. Photo editing is often related to people’s expectations. If people want to be taller, they will make their legs very long. However, this kind of digital photo editing is also gradually accepted by the audience. That’s what keeps the technology evolving.

1. Reflect on the extent to which photography is capable of capturing reality; and compare it to other media (technology) (eg. text, video, virtual reality, books).

The “inauthenticity” of the photo can lead to creativity and imagination. Although traditional photographs can well capture reality, the Angle and color of light are affected by the environment and equipment when capturing light. This is no longer the reality of that moment. So no matter what time, photographs can never completely restore the scene at that time. Digital technology, however, allows us to artificially change the color of light on the basis of the original. This can help maximize the human imagination and change the original photo for the human aesthetic. By this time, photography had changed from revealing the truth to art. So I think that whether it’s able or not to capture the truth doesn’t matter anymore.

The overall concept for my diptych project is In real life, the relationship between people seems to be very friendly, but in fact, everyone has his own idea. Two friends who seem to be very close may have had a rift in their relationship. A person looks very friendly, but behind her back, she goes around saying bad things about others. It is also possible that a person seems to be alone every day, but her own spiritual world is rich, and she fills her leisure time with her own interests. Everyone has his own mind, but on the surface, everyone will greet each other warmly when they meet.

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I’d like to arrange my two photos symmetrically. I will use my POP-MART dolls to represent people. It will be colored, representing the relationship between everyone on the surface every day. Underneath it will be different colors, representing the hidden inner world of people. I wanted to represent their real different relationship by changing the position between them. By changing their shape to represent some of their unknown characteristics. For example, if a person likes to talk bad behind other people’s backs, then I will make her mouth bigger to show that she likes to talk bad around others, and everyone will turn their backs to her to show that they don’t like her behavior. In addition, I want to change their color, based on the original color, to dim or lighten their color according to their personality.

 

As I said before, I’m going to use my POP-Mart dolls to represent different characters. So that I will take images of different dolls, each doll has a unique shape and color that represents her external personality and characteristics. But in fact, her inner character and characteristics are not the same as they appear. I also wanted to give a different background to the picture below. So I might take a few more diverse backgrounds and put them together.

 

With photoshop, first of all, I will arrange the orientation of the doll. Second of all, I will manipulate their shape. Third of all, I will change the color of the doll.

A. Leander Bai – The Nights By Avicii

B. Concept and Design

The main inspiration for my project is the rhythm of the music “ The Nights”. The reason why I really like this song is that the melody really helped me every time I was down and because it is a more upbeat style it would uplift me. This music has a lot of rhythms so I wanted to use some straight lines in the project rather than some flowy lines that can not show how energetic the song is. From the intro part to the chorus, the song’s motion gradually becomes more strong, so I wanted to give my project a sense of three-dimensional space. I was trying to use the Gestalt theory of closure and similarity in the project and see how was everything going on. I wanted to make the circle in my project look not that boring, so I used the closure principle on the circle. The “stroke” of the circle (which is part of the font) is discontinuous but it can still make the whole thing look like a circle.  As for the One Black Square project I was stuck in the center and I did not explore the space enough but for this project, I decided to go out more and utilize all the space I have and beyond.

C. Process

As I mentioned before, this music has a lot of rhythms. So I used straight lines with the space on the line in the project to represent the rhythm of the music (it is like the clashing on the drums, the consistent brass drum sounds). The sound doesn’t change so a straight line kind of represents its momentum. For the space part, first of all, I put a small circle in the middle and a bigger one on the side. The bigger one covers a little part of the small one so it can make it look like these two shapes are in the position of front and back (foreground and background). The upbeat sounds in the song remind me of the banging motion so I thought this composition of the two circles could represent this motion. Second of all, the right part of the paper is empty, which makes the project looks a little bit boring. So that’s why I chose to put some letters on it in all capital letters. Also, the letters are below the big circle so that the big circle can be on the top of the whole project and be an access point. In the end, I followed suggestions given by my fellow classmate Ken and all my other classmates, I changed the size of the letters to gradually become smaller, so that they can match the space principle I was following. Also, I changed the fonts in my project, but some doesn’t work so I just changed some parts of the fonts in my project. 

D. Conclusion

One thing that I want to improve on is that I should try to use more Gestalt theory in my project. I used some aspects but I feel like if I added some more it might make it more interesting. Or maybe spend a little more time testing out more fonts so that I could find one that matches the vibe of the music even more (even though I feel like the fonts I used now works well too).

E. Final Project Photo

 

 

At the very beginning, we talked about making TikTok, Little Red Book, and all the apps that people are using now. However, considering that these apps are too abstract, Hetapod should be introduced from the technical basis of these apps and the network. As the network is one of the most important technologies of modern civilization, we decided to make a timeline of all the processes from the beginning of human communication to the present, and use a circle to connect them all together. Therefore, we used a circle to represent the “timeline” of communication tools from the first murals to the current network. But in fact, due to Hetapod’s reading habit, we think it is easier for him to understand the circle without a head and a tail. Considering Hetapod’s writing habits, we used pictures instead of words. Since Hetapod had observed the Earth and humans, we assume that they could understand the symbols common to human civilization and recognize the shapes of different animals. The earliest form of human communication that historians have discovered is from cave paintings and stone carvings from Around 30000 BCE. Those are the animal-shaped images in the upper right corner, representing the original murals. The second is the transmission of books by pigeon, which is said to have begun in 776 B.C. Pigeons can fly much faster than humans can walk, increasing the speed at which people can transmit information. The next thing that looks like a letter is the post office. And then there’s Morse code, which is a way of transmitting information using electrical pulses. Then came the first use of the telephone in 1876. This almost delay-free way of transmitting information has completely changed the way humans communicate. And then there’s the network. Just like the line on the earth in the picture, two points anywhere can be connected quickly through the network. The bottom left is the satellite used by the Earth.

I hope Hetapod can understand our design

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How do aliens in the story language and communication style different from the human language (oral, pictographic, phonetic, etc.)?

-Compared to Hetapod B, Hetapod has a closer logic to human languages that they used the fraction of “words” to express. For hetapods’ spoken language, the order of clauses doesn’t matter.

-The writing language of Hetapod B is not like English which is an alphabetic language, they use a picture to represent their words. The sentence is written by adding the logograms. Their writing is chains of semagrams on a two-dimensional surface in no linear sequence and is semasiographic. And because they have the ability to predict the future, Hetopad B knows exactly what they should write before they start it. However, as a human, we don’t have the capability to predict the future. The only way that we order the latter is based on how things happened. So when the Hetapod B is writing, they don’t have the sequences. Their thoughts are directionless.

 

– Not like human who experiences time linearly from the past to the future, Heptaod experiences their entire life synchronously. That’s why they have the capability to predict their future.

How does the physical structure of our body inform the way we communicate? How about the aliens?

 Because their eyes have all the directions, maybe they can see the whole thing before the thing happens in the future. So that they can know all the conditions and sequences to choose the best one.  And also because their bodies have no ‘forward’ direction, so maybe their writing doesn’t either. Humans, only have two eyes. Make us only can see what is happening right now. So that our writing is linear based on cause and effect.