SOUND/IMAGE EXCERCISE

Use Audacity to build a sound track for an imaginary scene. Draw or make a photo to accompany the sound track. Post to IMAGE/SOUND BLOG. PLACE BOTH THE IMAGE AND THE SOUND INTO ONE POST. The sound track should be 5-20 seconds in duration. Your sounds should be recorded with your built in mics.

VISIT A VIRTUAL MUSEUM

CLICK HERE!


Comment to THIS POST in paragraph form describing your virtual experience at the Museum of the Moving Image.

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TRANSFORMATION EXCERCISE

Make an animation using Photoshop that is based on the ideas of transformation and transition. Look up these words and think about their meanings in visual terms.
This animation should be 5-20 seconds long, rendered as a Quicktime movie and posted to the BLOG entitled TRANSFORMATION.

Examples:
Use shape to make something skinny fat
Use scale to make something big small
Use value and form to make a building melt
Use texture to make something dry wet
Use color to make something hot cold


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Samantha's Responses

Can be found in our blogger dashboard at the bottom ("blogs I am following")

http://digitalfrances.blogspot.com


M. McLuhan

Media Theorist, Marshall McLuhan produced writings that propelled the study of popular, print, oral, and visual culture. The starting point of many of McLuhan's studies was the individual, as he defined media as "technological extensions of the body."
In his writing The Medium is the Massage McLuhan places emphasis on the media or medium themselves and not the content for which they become a vehicle. In this age of internet and information overload, I find McLuhan to be very prophetic in his theories. He's suggested that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role, not only by the content delivered over the medium, but by the characteristics of the medium itself.

Excercise #2: Photo Response

Image Credit: Behherit

I find the following image to be quite intriguing. However, the question is not whether I find the image visually appealing but "why" I find it visually appealing.

To begin, I find the colors in the image to be a perfect mixture of pure color and muted tones. I think the mix of intense and muted tones really help to draw the eye forward and focus as it would naturally, on the red berry like forms, making them the center of interest in the piece. To drive the nail further, the rest of the image in comparison to the berries which are quite focused compared to the background brings the eye continually to the berries but not without some wandering first. The berries in the foreground of the image act as a resting and focal point for the eye.
The drops of dew on the piece create several diagonal lines that act as guides, inviting the eye and the viewer to move through the image. However, the viewer does not move aimlessly and without end through the image, as the size of the berries and the fact that the berries are front and center in the picture, leads the eye to rest on them.
There is also a wonderful contrast in the image that is dealt with through not only the colors but also through the blend of blur and focus in the picture. It is as if we, the viewer are standing in front of the branch and looking only at the red berries, leaving the rest of the branch and it's surrounding to fade and blend into a whirl of mush. Even the subject matter, draws out some interesting natural contrasts, such as, the hardness of the branch and the softness and fluidity of the dew dropping down like strands of iridescent pearls.
The image is also a wonderful example of the kind of value that is desired in a photograph or a drawing. At the bottom of the photo the darkest shades of color are represented. However, the photo is not bottom heavy because some bits of dark also draw the eye to the top of the piece, where the lightest shades are represented.
There is a certain balance to the piece that is not achieved through symmetry but through asymmetrical means. However, despite the image being skewed to one side the viewer gets a sense of unity and balance because of the the other complimentary components listed above.
In short, we get a feeling of real atmosphere, not only due to the subject, but because of the use of space, line, color, value, etc. throughout the image. The use of these elements and principles of design help to create a convincing and intriguing piece that allows the viewer to experience a piece that is aesthetically appealing, but in a way far more than that. We get a real sense of depth, visually, and emotionally.

- Juleah Chandler

Marshall McLuhan

Born in Canada in 1911 to a real estate salesman and actress, McLuhan did not meet with academic success until college. He became interested in the way communication influences society. In 1959 he became the director of the Media Project of the National Association of Educational Broadcasters and the United States Office of Education. It was during this project that McLuhan met with great critical success, winning the prestigious Governor General's Award. He believed that the most important aspect of media is the technical medium of communication. The medium, he claimed, was the message, and that 'print is the technology of individualism.' McLuhan foresaw electronic media as a powerful tool that would unify and stabilize the human race. He went on to write many successful and insightful books, including 'Understanding Media' and 'The Mechanical Bride.' McLuhan is best remembered as an influential writer, theorist, and educator of mass media in culture. He died in 1980, just years before the Internet revolution took flight.

Max Coady

Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan is a man of great depth. His words though irrational to many have given others an alarming sense of truth regarding the path down which society has traveled. He is much like a piece of fine art. He gives us just enough information to see the image; which in his case is a society consumed by technology, all the while allowing his viewers the space to make their own criticisms.

            He speaks of extensions and amputations- those tools that both add and take away from the endeavors of mankind. He speaks about these as two separate things while in fact they are the same. He’s giving us the option to choose. It’s like asking someone if the glass is half full or half empty. Is technology- helping society, or are we just hurting the potential we have to make progress within our endeavors? For instance someone who views the glass as half full might say that a computer has aided society in many ways by giving us a faster more condensed way to access and store information, whereas a viewer of a glass half empty would say that we are losing more than we are gaining due to the lack of human connection lost in the hours spent in front of the glowing screen.

His arguments have left a lasting impression as he has challenged us to face the lives that we live and decide whether or not we are “extending” our abilities or “amputating” our progress. Getting people to more thoroughly examine their lives and the choices they have made could quite possibly be the greatest of all his accomplishments.

D. Whitcomb

Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan is a monumental figure in the field of new and digital media and has been referred to as "the first father and leading prophet of the electronic age. He dedicated his work to learning and understanding how technology and popular culture are interrelated, and how each has helped shape the other. His knowledge of how a message is changed by the medium by which it is presented is really interesting, and is a point that can be taken into account in the advertising industry. What's even more interesting is that, in the 1960s when TV was brand new and the internet and cell phones did not exist, he created phrases like "global village," which describes our age much more than his. He had many predictions concerning technology and communication, and noted how technologies that "extend" the human mind or body in some way make certain skills obsolete, such as a car extending feet or binoculars extending the human eye.

-Stefany Townsend

VIDEO AND DIGITAL RESOURCE LIST AND SOME FILMS TO WATCH

http://uwf.edu/fcarlisle/digital_practice/video/art4630_video_resources_carlisle.htm

Media Interpretations

Marshall McLuhan is an important figure in media studies because he changed the way mediums were interpreted and viewed by audiences. McLuhan adapted this view of thinking from two of his Cambridge University professors. This first being, I.A. Richards, in which the idea was to not look at literature, in McLuhan's case Media, in how it can be restated or easily interpreted, but how it mentally effects the reader or audience. The second was F.R. Leavis, who taught McLuhan to analyze his social surroundings. McLuhan applied those teachings into his analyzing of mediums and how they affected the mental perception of those who viewed them. Also showing the cultural beliefs and common assumptions that are perpetuated in the media through advertising.

McLuhan personally speaks to me as an advertising major, to take notice of the subliminal messages that are being fed to viewers through all forms of media (television, radio, etc.) His research and the technique he used to apply to media shows how in our society, stereotypes are able to be able to continually be perpetuated by the role media plays in our day-to-day existence.

-Alexis Cummings

McLuhan the prophet

"In the mid-sixties, McLuhan presaged that TV would prompt politicians to become entertainers as style and image dwarfed substance, while 'the news' turned into an entertainment package. McLuhan noted that 'a four-year stint in the White House is no longer easily distinguishable from something arranged by a booking agency.'"
-Judith Fitzgerald for The Globe and Mail


What a genius. More to Come.

-Brooke

Marshall McLuhan and the Pre-digital Age

Marshall McLuhan could be considered prophetic for his ideas and concepts about the digital age. He is well known today as the man who coined many one-lined phrases, but more importantly changed the way people thought about technology and the digital medium. The idea of postmodernism is closely connected to many of McLuhan's original ideas, even though he was 20 years before the invention of the modern computer. Jim Andrews explains, "Marshall McLuhan's lasting contribution is his vision of the ways in which history and culture and individuals are modified and, to some extent, determined by technology." His idea of people being just extensions of technology, their own creation, is a very strong concept which is still continually used the field and studies of digital art, as well as most advertisements that postmodern society is bombarded with today. Many of McLuhan's concepts caused the postmodern generation to think before they use a digital medium and to consider some of the effect of the messages that technology can hold.

Works Cited

Marshall McLuhan: "The Medium is the Message": http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/mcluhhan.html

McLuhan Reconsidered: http://vispo.com/writing/essays/mcluhana.htm#A_techno


Karen Borden

ANOTHER EXCERCISE!!

A:  Find an intriguing image on the net. Post this image with a paragraph description. Use lots of adjectives and words found in the elements and principles of design link here:   http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/Files/elements2.htm

and the color theory link here:  http://www.colormatters.com/colortheory.html

B:  

1. Go out and take a picture of a scene that emphasizes distance/depth/perspective using line.

2. Take another picture that uses shape and contrast to illustrate some sort of balance, ie. symmetrical, asymmetrical, radial,etc...

3. Take a 3rd picture that uses a specific color theme/scheme...

POST THE PICTURES TO THE BLOG TITLED PHOTOS AND DESIGN

On Marshall McLuhan.

Marshall McLuhan first qoined the phrase "The Medium is the Message". He wrote a book with this same title only message is mAssage as a play on words. His book was a glimpse into the future for its time, looking at media as creating a "Global Village" and different technologies as extensions of ourselves. Examples being cars as extensions of our feet, and even the internet as an extension of our perceptions and personalities: we can take on whole differnet personas this way and communicate to people globally.
Somehow McLuhan was able to forsee the direction technology was headed and how it would also impact us on cultural level. Having a computer went from something only the nerdiest of us would have to a necessity for every home. Its become a primary source of information and communication amongst ourselves, our family, and friends.
~Justin Marking

McLuhan's Global Village

Living from 1911 to 1980, Marshall McLuhan was able to analyze the advancing of technology and predict the coming roll of mass electronic media.  He published the book Understanding Media:  The Extensions of Man.  Within this book he spoke philosophically of media.  One of the most important thoughts that McLuhan expressed was “electric media.”  He brought forward the idea of the world as a society intertwined globally by mass media.  This was his idea of “the global village.”  He was probably the first person crazy enough to see the potential of media in advancing technology and electronic media.

 

We now have his “global village.”  Computers, the Internet, and television are viable mediums for art and media.  McLuhan foresaw the coming age that we now live in, and how mass media would affect the world.  Electronic media has connected the world, and it is the digital canvas that is our medium. 

 

~Travis Erickson

Marshall McLuhan - A Response

Marshall McLuhan lived from 1911 - 1980. He was once referred to as the "Oracle of the Electronic Age." It evident through blurbs and quotations from his numerous writings why many should come to this conclusion. McLuhan is quoted for saying that, "We shape our tools and they in turn shape us." I find this line to be quite profound in that it relates to several things in life, including but not limited to, that of computers and digital art. Not only did we, as humans, create the computer and the many programs available to us on it, the computer in turn has helped to shape our culture, our mindset, and even in a way, how we do art. I believe that as students of digital art, we only have to look at ourselves to understand that concept and see the truth behind it.

cites:

• http://www.marshallmcluhan.com/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan
• http://www.regent.edu/acad/schcom/rojc/mdic/mcluhan.html

- Juleah Chandler

Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan coined phrases many people have heard without understanding--or at least I've heard them without taking the time to understand. "The medium is the message," McLuhan proclaimed. Logical being that I am, my first thought was, "The message is the message." McLuhan was right, though. The very medium used to send a message shapes and changes the message. The same advertisement delivered on television, in print, or over the radio is changed by each new medium. Each medium makes a new advertisement, whether that creation was intentional or not. McLuhan recognized and understood this concept. He encouraged people to step back and analyze what each new technology or medium does, not only to our messages, but also to our culture and ourselves. It was this emphasis on what a technology does to our culture and ourselves that made McLuhan so influential.

-Kim Spann

Marshall Mcluhan

Glacing at the idea o f Marshall Mcluhan, he seems to be a man that seems to analyze things by media analysis, with reference to a center of interest in his work. For instance, there is a commentary about the shock of his classs that led him to the idea of media analysis. Whether if is learning from it, or just by plain observation. Basically, I find it quite positive, and relating, to notice a man that actually seems to break down media understanding. Coming from noticing a writing of his, such as "Understanding Media", it is known to me that it is important to know yourself. For it is through Marshall Mcluhan that we can understand how we act, sense, feel, bodies, and why we do what we do.


-William Waitman (October 9,2008)

Who is Marshall Mcluhan?

Please start a discussion with a paragraph about why Marshall Mcluhan is an important figure in New Media studies. Research and find something of personal interest within his writings and respond by starting a dialogue. It can be in the form of a comment to this post, your own post, or even your own blog. 

Each student should be reading and responding on a regular basis to the posts, blogs and commentary. REMEMBER TO SIGN YOUR COMMENTS

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