Author: Qianyi Chen

Final version

Preparation

For this week’s assignment, my initial idea was to create an image of a woman dancing with the ice. The style will be mysterious and I choose blue as the theme color to present cold tone.

Here are the images used for this work:

Process

I started with deleting the background using the pen tool to select the outline of the dance and create a new selection (see Figure 1). And then I put this dancer in a new document with a white background and dragged other background images.

To better combine the background, I added a picture of smoke above the forest. I also used the mask and desaturate function to erase the edge of the picture. (Figure 3 & 4)

Next I added the highlight image and the image of ice using different blend modes and did some distortion with the ice to let it fit with the gesture of the dancer better.

A few more editing to the image – add the reflection of the dance, edit attributes like photo filter, contrast, hue/saturation, etc.

Works DONE!

Screenshot of the layers:

Several steps to improve in the future: refine the shadow and the ice image, refine the light-shade relation between character(dancer) and the background

“The medium is the message”, as Mcluhan argues in his book, emphasize the effect of medium itself rather than the “content” it carries. Mcluhan provides a new way to look at the relationship between “medium” and “content” (or “message”). Instead of the traditional dichotomy view, from Mcluhan’s perspective, the medium is not only a container and the content is not just something carried by the medium. As Mcluhan explains, “the ‘content’ of any medium is always another medium”. The medium is the message, and the users are the message of the medium. For example, today every web user is producing content for the internet and in return, this content consists of the internet itself. According to Mcluhan, what matters more is not “what is the content” but “how does the way it is conveyed affect ourselves”. Mcluhan’s argument provokes us to observe the development of human history in terms of the development of the medium. People used to perceive the world with five senses. But the medium alters the sense ratio, resulting in the imbalance of using different senses. The invention of printing with the emphasis on vision turned our way of thinking into a linear form. As writing becomes the main method of communication, logic, and rationality original from the independent and linear way of thinking. Besides, it also contributed to the rise of nationalism and individualism. While the invention of television engages more listening and touching and brings up the level of human interaction.

In the macro level, the medium has such a huge impact on the sensation structure of human beings and influence the whole society. The appearance of a new media even marks a new stage of human civilization. In that sense, the content carried by the media becomes less important. In the micro level or the individual level, we can also feel the power of the medium. For example, we are now living in the Internet era. The so-called “Internet thinking” is related to the characteristics of the internet such as “connection”, “interaction” and “network”. We are also becoming more and more dependent on the media — we turn to Google when we have questions, we look at the map on mobile phone when going to some places… The Internet has largely changed our way of thinking and behaviors but we are not aware of that. Only when we realize the existence of the medium can we recognize the changes brought by the medium.

http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~qc532/week01/hw1.html

Reflection: I wrote this portfolio page with the basic html tags I learned this week. The first welcome page contains two links to my self-introduction and contact info. In the “about me” page I use the summary tag to hide the details like photo and comments to make the page look more organized. And in the “contact” page I use the list tag to showcase my social media account and contact information. Since I haven’t learned CSS yet, the style remains quite simple but I can improve them in the future.