My online diary was a collection of different pieces like art, media and new technologies which interested me but I wanted to also look into other sections which had been under scrutiny for its problems and public reactions. The art work which I chose for my visual diary were ones which I had seen before and interested me but also a mix of ones which had been taught during are lectures. Coincidentally they were binary opposites of each other; my own personal art was a modern mix of pop art and expressive pieces such as Roy Lichtenstein’s “Comic Book” pieces in comparison to the detailed and renaissance pieces such as “Venus and Mars” painted by Alessandro Botticelli which showed more personal emotion and relationships between characters (unlike Pop Art which was just expressive pieces with (seen further away but actually small dots) of block colour surrounded by thick black dividing lines).
I looked into new pieces of technology which had come out recently and tied to see how they will affect the future of media and its platforms. For example, one of my blogs looked at the introduction of 3D across film, television and recently with Nintendo’s newest console, the 3DS, gaming. The introduction of 3D was first seen in cinema as test pieces in 1922 and we further adapted into mainstream cinema with the “golden era of 3D” in 1952. Audiences were amazed with the films technique of how it made the people and props around them “come to life”. In the 2010, the popularity boomed again when more and more of the films were inserted in the mainstream market. The pinnacle of the popularity was the release of James Cameron’s “Avatar” with its amazing fight scenes, landscape and people. People were amazed how the film created this “Utopian pleasure” were people could escape into this “blue” world were the landscapes and people were all fascinating. This however created problems and some people became so immersed that it created a tear-back- the “Avatar syndrome” were people believed that they were so much in the world that their brains ceased functioning properly and they committed suicide. This was very much the problem in the 1990’s with the release of “The Matrix” when people were so immersed in “The Matrix” that they thought they could do anything. This was dubbed as the “Matrix Psychosis”. However the popularity increased further and more and more films were released in 3D. In 2011 they finally were able to create the technology to allow televisions to show 3D films and programs allowing the experience to “be brought into people’s homes”. This came with its own problems however as the televisions were expensive, there isn’t very many channels and programs to use the 3D experience to its fullest capabilities. My blog post however, didn’t really go into detail about the problems which were relative to 3D and focused too much on what the future for gaming and television was with this technology now readily available which could be a criticism as I didn’t look at both sides of the spectrum in detail.
My photography within the blog was limited and a little boring. Most of the pictures were taken around campus and the local Bradford area without going further out to get pictures of either landscapes or ones which had an interesting view . The pictures were mostly architectural (such as the pictures of Bradford and the University) and didn’t really follow the artist or modern look which the rest of my blog tried to envisage. However some of the photos do show some form of art, with some landscapes that were taken on a train ride, some images of technology (such as the photos of the Bradford Media Museum) and some just had a naturalist and public look (like the town centre and the green around the University)
My blog could have used a variety of different platforms of my own work. My blog focused a lot on drawn and Photoshop/ GIMP created images and I didn’t go into depth with practising with video graphics, filming or relations to gaming such as a Flash game etc. Although the Photo-shopped images were adapted to show colour – which is important in art as colour can relay information, emotion and an ambience of a picture. The emotion of an image is important as it can give someone an idea of how the subjects within the paintings are feeling but can also give a look on the relationship of the two. In John Burgess’ “Ways of Seeing” he explains how the “faces of paintings become messages” meaning that the face and emotion it shows can relay a “message” to the viewer of the painting in different ways depending on the person’s own feelings and evaluation.
Although I did try to focus my blog on new media pieces but also pieces I enjoyed and previously knew, some didn’t flow as well as others. My presentation and blogs were slightly random and could have been better organised to allow the blog to flow better from one to another. For example, the blogs about some of the artist research could have been grouped together at the start instead of being once every few posts. The post of Da Vinci and his work is a good example of this as although I did link the research I did with some of my own studies of his work, I could have linked that to another artist instead of going onto a newer piece of video or one of my own images.
My final product which I created was a intermix of the two things which I enjoy, art and comic book styling pieces. I tried to mimic a Roy Lichtenstein approach with the characters with simplistic facial features and use of the speech bubbles and action text to show the movement and interaction of the characters but I combined it with the block colouring and black lines of a simple comic book. For an added element, I based my comic around an issue which has become more and more predominate which is the problem with domestic violence. Domestic violence has become one of the most campaigned problem in media adverts as well as problems such as child abuse, poverty and other variations of aid. The use of this adds to another platform of new media issues allowing my final piece to incorporate three different aspects to create one product to have a mix of older art (Pop Art) and newer media aspects (Domestic Violence campaign such as endviolenceagainstwomen.org.uk)
Overall my blog was a good mix of picture, video and new media technology posts which in turn allowed me to experiment and create my own new pieces of artwork and drawings to further my creative ability in some subjects. In the future however I may need to look into more video based blogs of my own creation. If I experimented with short films or title graphics next time, I could use my Photoshop and GIMP skills to create new and visual appealing pieces of work. Also I would need to be able to link more of work to different theories to show how the public react to them and show that even when new technologies come in and change what was seen as “the norm”, it can still be relative to things of today.
