Internet

Just some general musings on the Internet.

Recently discovered this myspace page which caught my eye

www.myspace.com/larouxuk

The artist has used Myspace as a platform to create quite a distinctive page. Myspace is generally seen as the music artists way of getting attention, and is successful. Lily Allen for example built up a significant following on her Myspace to help launch her career before getting signed to a major record label. However, many of these pages can be formulaic; good for uploading songs and pictures and networking but lacking originality. La Roux have used Myspace to build their own website. The video at the top is unusual and changes the normal layout, grabbing the attention of the audience immediately, although the video does need to buffer occasionally on slower internet connections. There is also the 'touch it' box, which is a clever interactive way of getting the audience to engage with the page and not just click on to the next. This is something I learned about in the What is Visual Communication brief. 

YouTube is another platform used by artists and labels to promote their music. Recently Universal Music Group have begun to generate significant revenue as a result of users viewing the music videos of their artists. Having signed a groundbreaking deal with YouTube to split advertising revenues, they are reported to have made almost $100 million during 2008. Universals YouTube channel is the most viewed of all time, with 3.11 billion views! And the most viewed video of all time....? 

Avril Lavigne's 'Girlfriend'. Unsurprisingly, Lavigne is signed to Universal.

The video that's recently caught my eye is Coldplay's 'Life in Technicolour ii'. Firstly, because it's an unusual video for Coldplay, but secondly, and most interesting to me is that it is in HD. It's the first music video that I've come across in HD and is a sign of what is to come. However, I learned today during a conversation that the human eye cannot actually focus on film in HD as too much is in focus at any one time, and we are used to only looking at parts in focus whilst our mind perceives the rest. For example when we look at a person, only their eyes are in focus and we see the rest in our peripheral vision. 

National Media Museum, Bradford 20/01/2009

The visit to the National Media Museum was very helpful for my project, as the first gallery is the Kodak history of photography.

 'The ever-changing cultural and technical landscape has ensured that photography continues to fascinate and challenge us. Through our photography collections permanent galleries, changing exhibitions and events we reflect and explore photography's multiple roles, its history and its continuing impact on society.' - http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/photography

Spot on then! The gallery documents the beginning of photography with illustrations, information, models and early photographs (including the first ever negative) all the way through to the Box Brownie, advertisements and the up to date DSLR's. It felt quite ironic and almost sacrificial to be taking quick snaps on my digital camera of the information boards to save time and of digital reproductions of the old dauggerotypes. (I'm reminding myself of Berger - Ways of Seeing!) 

The museum also contained large galleries devoted to film, television and broadcast, animation and a photography exhibition featuring Peter Ainsworth and Tess Hurrell. The shop also sold various Lomography cameras and displayed photos taken on Holgas and Actionsamplers. I think an Actionsampler/Supersampler or fish eye lens for the Holga is next on my list. I also picked up a beautiful little photography book on the 1930's for £3.99!

Well worth a visit!

As part of the day we also had to undertake our assigned 'urban interaction' games. The game our group created was to photograph various things, worth different points - varying from a CCTV camera (10 points) a pink umbrella (50 points) to an empty bus (100 points). The game we were assigned was to take a photo of the group with each letter of 'BRADFORD' in the roads marked on a map in the shape of each letter.

Plan

Have been struggling to blog, as jotting things down and working out what to do seems to come more naturally in a sketchbook. 

Decided upon my direction with the Communication Technology brief - 

Exploring the lo-fi technology of a Holga camera, which is new to me and allows me to document my experience and what I learn from it. I have never used medium format and only in the past used a 35mm film in a Lomography camera (I broke my ColourSplash!) 

I will then contrast this with digital photography - the precision and polishing, from seeing the shot on screen immediately to polishing photos to perfection in Photoshop. 

I found Photoshop tutorials whilst trying to help someone create a CD cover for a project. One that seemed particularly straight forward was 'blending' as part of photomanipulation. The blogger who wrote the tutorial used two images and blended the two on top of each other. I therefore decided for the first film using the Holga I would experiment with double exposure, a popular technique. 

I have also decided, upon speaking to my tutor, that I will look at the history of photography and where it is going - for example digital cameras with in built GPS to geo-tag each photo in flickr, or iPhoto's new application in the revamped iWorks - face recognition and tagging.

I will compare the results of double exposure on the Holga and it's 'happy accidents' with the more precise photomaniuplation on a digital photo. 

Links;

http://tutorials.lombergar.com/blending_your_own_cd_cover.html

'The unassuming Holga is here to save you from a future of didgital pixels and images shared on small screens on cameras or phones.' 

http://www.lomography.com/holga

Sandpit

Going to use this blog for the current brief 'Sandpit', examining my relationship with technology.

Technology I currently use:

Mobile phone - contact, time, camera, calendar

Internet - contact, social networking, blogs, tv (iPlayer), research, shopping

Laptop - Internet, work, managing digital photos

Digital camera - work, documentation

Technology I wish to use/understand/learn more of:

Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator - develop skills, interested in enhancing hand drawn illustrations and creating work entirely in P/I

Webdesign - looked at in previous brief, would like to learn more about

DSLR - looking to buy a DSLR, look at which model to buy and why and how to use it

Originally, following on from the introductory lecture I had wanted to research into mobile phones and where the components are made and the environmental, social and economical consequences. Or, to look at the KGOY phenomenon (Kids Getting Older Younger) as I read a Telegraph article which mentioned this in relation to the appeal of the Barbie doll. "...that makes children abandon toys earlier, but also all the other calls on their time, from mobile phones to the internet, Playstations to iPods". I think I was drawn to the KGOY thread because it genuinely saddens me to see young children hunched over Nintendo DS's or playing on the Wii rather than being outside playing creatively and with others. 

However, following the second briefing, with the hand out, I've realised I had interpreted the brief wrong. It seems I need to explore as many possible technologies as possible, and document the process. I will use this blog as much as possible, as that in itself does not come naturally - I far prefer to work in a sketchbook.

There are plenty of avenues to explore and I am still interested in researching the social implications of using current technologies.

Billboards, Thermal Paper & Tierney Gearon

Wow, so I knew it had been a while since I'd updated. Didn't realise it was a month & a half.

Saw this when driving in to Cambridge for some Christmas shopping. Poor quality as its just a quick phone snap.

The following images are experiments for a presentation on 'the fax machine', did you know the fax machine revolutionised the speed at which we receive news stories with photos?

Anyway, I found on a youtube video that thermal fax machine paper can be used with heat appliances, to create, well, pretty naff black blobs if you go by my first attempt. 

For the first two and fourth images I used ceramic hair straighteners, the third and fifth is using a hair dryer; to 'stamp' and held away, the sixth is a combination of hair dryer for the smudges and a glue gun (sans glue stick) for the more defined (attempted) animal print.

Christmas was ace, I couldn't have wished for anything more. Really great time catching up with friends & family, (and crazy family friends you haven't seen for 8 years but end up round for Christmas) eating too much chocolate and vegging out. Thanks to a genious Christmas present I am reunited with my Lumix (same model & everything!) and a rather inspired present; a Holga, which I am very excited about trying out soon. Particularly double exposures - I know its dead easy to do, but I think there are some amazing photos to be had using the technique. I've been inspired after reading an article in the Telegraph magazine from last week on Tierney Gearon (www.tierneygearon.com). She caused a media stir in March 2001, when she exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery, in I Am a Camera, with photos of her naked children. Also The Mother Project is worth a look (www.themotherproject.com) a documentary/short film about Gearon visiting her mother, which featured in the Sundance Film Festival.

Adios. x

Book

Had book binding session down at Vernon St on Friday. 

Loved it. 

Nice to do something handcrafted for a change. Somehow I managed not to glue all the pages together which was a bonus, but did in the first instance mess up - folded the pages not quite in half so some of the photos bleed onto the opposite page! But, all in all, really pleased, loved the process and happy with the results, "it looks like an actual book!!"

Still without my own digital camera and the one I'm (very kindly) being lent does not like dim light conditions or macro much, so don't have any decent photos to post up. I'll blog it later when the books are returned and pop some half decent ones up now.

Oh my

"Well I wouldn't like to murder it...

but stroke it's tail...

without getting bitten...

but I didn't think that was an option - so I didn't"

A certain someone's excited ramblings regarding a close encounter with a fox.

Nuff Said. 

Today was a huge relief, presentation done, 500 word synopsis (waay over that however...) bibliography, and hand out... handed in. Andd the book is printed! Ended up maunually feeding the paper as computer tech man advised, which meant people wouldn't accidentally print on me special glossy paper! Got the scanned in quotes looking a lot better using grayscale in photoshop rather than CMYK as with all the other tiff images. 

I decided to illustrate the quotes into speech bubbles rather than photo collaged letters as I just loved all the illustration stuff at The Baltic and Scandinavian exhibition in Newcastle. I also thought it might be a bit too much photo imagery, and detract from the full bleed images themselves.

The book should be bound on Friday and then I'll post up some photos, but what I've basically gone for is one or a couple of these illustrated quotes and then a photo on the opposite page.

I've also had to narrow my choices of photos down and with the landscape images I grouped them in twos, with some kind of relation between them. Such as 'GAS' with 'a s l e e p' and two images of graffiti and two street signs.

The printing process definitely alters the colours, but nothing too drastic was lost in the process and with the 'Wash n' Go' image the colours are saturated which worked well to give a moodier feel!

Looking forward to the book binding workshop and seeing the finished article. In the meantime its sketchbook, sketchbook, sketchbook.