breaktheaddiction-blog1

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This is a video of my presentation slideshow. I’ve posted this in video format instead of slides because most of my slides are videos so I couldn’t export the slideshow as pdfs. This video goes for 13 minutes but my presentation will be 10 minutes because I will move to the next slide before some of these videos have finished.

Here’s the script that I’ve written for the presentation:

[SLIDE 1 - ALL SIX VIDEOS PLAYING IN CIRCLE]

My project is a video installation called Anthroposcenery. At the surface level this is not a traditional design project, in fact it’s more likely to fit under the category of fine art than design. But I see Anthroposcenery as a redefining of what design can be, this project blurs the line between art and design. Much like a piece of art, this project doesn’t have a specific target audience, there are people who will engage with it well and people who won’t understand it, and that’s ok. Anthroposcenery is an exhibition piece, designed for a specific function, to provoke a response to one single question. But before I reveal that question I would like to explain the research that I did in first semester which provided the contextual setting that Anthroposcenery exists within.

[SLIDE 2 - BRIEF]

Last semester I created this brief which theorised that humans have become addicted to money and the overconsumption that money affords us. The brief addressed a wealth of problems within current society, from economic issues to human wellbeing issues to environmental issues. My research was set around the societal institutionalisation that caused this addiction and the environmental repercussions that are resulting from it.

Over the course of semester two however, I found that the brief I had created raised issues across a spectrum that was too broad for me to respond to within the time frame that I was working within. In reaction to this, I narrowed these large scale problems to a single question:

[SLIDE 3 - END MASS CONSUMPTION    or    COLONISE A NEW PLANET?]

Our addiction to money and the overconsumption that it represents, has caused such significant environmental damage that Earth may soon be rendered inhospitable to humans. Therefore, we are faced with a dilemma, do we attempt to break our addiction to mass consumption and revoke our impact on the planet, or do we invest Earth's final resources in developing the technology to colonise new planets? Anthroposcenery was designed not to answer this question, but to provoke critical consideration of these two options.

[SLIDE 4 - VIDEO OF EXHIBITION]

The video installation is designed to exist within a gallery setting for this exact reason. Originally I had planned to make a documentary style short film, but I pivoted towards the medium of video installation to encourage people to approach my work with the attitude one has towards artwork rather than journalism. I wanted the people viewing my work to be open to having their views challenged and to actively interpret and discuss the work’s meaning. Overall I wanted to create an experience that would provoke people to ponder my question long after they left the gallery. This is a video of a group exhibition two weeks ago, where I displayed and prototyped Anthroposcenery.

So that’s the contextual background of my project, now I’m going to talk about the three videos that make up the installation.

[SLIDE 5 - SIX SWITCH TO THREE]

During the course of semester two I actually made a total of six different videos but as we neared the end of the year I culled them down to just three.

I chose the three videos that remain because they were all distinctly unique from each other in style but unified in the message that they presented. During the multiple critiques that happened during the year these were the three videos that consistently received the best responses.

The three videos that comprise Anthroposcenery share a conceptual relationship with each other where one video poses this fight or flight question and the other two each discuss the opposing solutions. The order that the audience engages with the videos is free for them to choose and may impact how they interpret the question being raised, but this is an intentional part of the non-linear experience designed to encourage discussion from different perspectives. Each of these videos is around four minutes long so unfortunately I don’t have time to show you all of them in their entirety. Instead I’ve chosen to talk over two and then finish by showing you one in full length.

[SLIDE 6 - MONEY - SOUND DROPS FOR ME TO TALK]

So this video is called ‘Money’ and it’s about societies conditioning of humans to commit their entire lives to the pursuit of money. This video was designed to open peoples minds to the realisation that we spend almost our entire adult lives either consuming or facilitating the consumption of Earth’s resources. This video poses the question that because of the way we live we are now at a crossroads where we must choose between these two difficult solutions.

[SLIDE 7 - VACATE - SOUND DROPS FOR ME TO TALK]

This video is called Vacate and it’s about what it would be like for humans to leave Earth in search of a new planet to colonise. The video discusses how our species has become extremely parasitic towards the Earth and suggests that it might be beneficial for both humans and Earth if we parted ways. Vacate also discusses the psychological impact that this experience could have on our species. We share a spiritual connection with Earth that directly relates to our wellbeing. Vacate asks whether we would have the same spiritual connection with the nature of a different planet.

To finish up I’m going to play you the last video of this trio called Earth which is constructed around a quote from an environmental activist named David Suzuki. This video is a visual metaphor for Suzuki’s quote about seeing the world from a different perspective. But as well as this it’s a visualisation of removing urban areas from the planet and returning nature to its original state. In essence this video is about the mindset that we would need to adopt in order to properly revoke our environmental impact, if we were to choose that path.

[SLIDE 8 - EARTH]

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Vacate

This is the final version of ‘Vacate’ which is one part of my three part video installation. This video is about what it would be like for humans to leave Earth in search of a new planet to colonise. 

Vacate begins with the sentence “And the picture it asked me...”, this is a meta reference to the fact that I’m trying to ask the audience a question through my artwork. The way that this sentence appears like it’s picking up midway through a conversation is another meta reference to the non linear nature of the exhibition.

This video discusses how our species has become extremely parasitic towards the Earth. Furthermore it suggests that it might be beneficial for both humans and Earth if we parted ways. However Vacate also discusses the psychological impact that this experience could have on our species, because we are after all a product of Earth. We share a spiritual connection with this planet that directly relates to our wellbeing. Often the best remedy for depression is to immerse yourself in nature. But would we share the same spirituality with the nature of a different planet? 

The footage for this video was sourced from the creative commons NASA archives. I created the soundtrack and the text is my writing.

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Money

This is the final version of ‘Money’ one part of my three part video installation. This video is about how society conditions us to commit our entire lives to the pursuit of money. We spend our whole lives either consuming or facilitating the consumption of Earth’s resources. 

This mass consumption has accelerated climate change to the point where we are left with a painful dilemma; is there any hope of revoking our environmental impact or should we commit the remainder of Earths resources to colonising a new planet?

The footage from this video was sourced from creative commons stock footage websites and my own personally recorded film. The audio is a soundtrack that I created, with voice overs from an ai text to speech bot which I recorded. The dialogue is composed from a mix of quotes and my own thoughts. The quotes used are:

Ralph Waldo Emerson - Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.

Ralph Waldo Emerson - The Earth laughs in flowers

Christopher Rice - Everyday is a bank account, and time is our currency. No one is rich, no one is poor, we've got 24 hours each.��� 

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Earth

This is the final version of ‘Earth’, one part of my three part video installation. This video discusses the mindset that humans would need to adopt in order to return to a more nature-centric, animistic lifestyle. The video is based around a quote from environmental activist David Suzuki who said: 

The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it. If a mountain is a deity, not a pile of ore; if a river is one of the veins of the land, not potential irrigation water; if a forest is a sacred grove, not timber; if other species are biological kin, not resources; or if the planet is our mother, not an opportunity -- then we will treat each other with greater respect. Thus is the challenge, to look at the world from a different perspective.

This video is a metaphor for seeing the world from a different perspective as well as a visualisation of removing urban areas from the planet and returning nature to its original state. 

I recorded the footage for this video on Google Earth and created the audio myself.

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This is the first half of my report. Because of Tumblr's photo limit, I had to put the second half in a different post.

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This is the second half of my report. Because of Tumblr's photo limit, I had to put the first half in a different post.

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Report test prints.

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This post, similarly to the last one, is to try and offer some insight into the production work I’ve done for this project. This time i’m talking about the music. I know this is a design degree and therefore it might be hard to grade me on how I’ve created the music for my project, but in my opinion the music is just as much a part of the design as the video. My music sets the tone and atmosphere of my videos and is every bit as functional as it is aesthetic. Creating the music for Anthroposcenery was a highly considered process and I would appreciate if this was thought about when assessing the project.

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This is a screenshot of my working file for ‘Earth’. I’m posting this to hopefully offer a little bit of insight into how much work has gone into creating the videos for this project. I always knew that doing a video project would be heavy on the production side of things. This semester I have spent around 80 percent of my time purely editing. I recorded upwards of 100 files for this individual video.

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Exposure Project Description

Anthroposcenery is a three part installation that explores the emotional power of video, music and design while offering visualisations of opposing solutions to climate change. The contrast between these solutions asks; should humans cut all engagement with consumerism and current society, favouring a return to more animistic civilisations? Or should we instead commit Earths final resources towards the colonisation of new planets, in the hope of maintaining our luxurious lifestyle?

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This is the poster for Anthroposcenery and the two exhibitions it is being displayed at. The below images are two draft iterations that lead to the development of this final poster.

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Titles for the beginning of each video.

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These are the feedback notes that I received from my mock presentation.

The presentation went well and by the end of it I feel like everyone fully understood my project and why I did it. However, I ended up being about five minutes overtime. I was overtime because I played all three of my videos which range from about 3-4 minutes in duration. This means that I won’t be able to play all of my videos in the real presentation so I’m either going to have to figure out some way to condense them into some type of highlight reel, or I’m going to have to play only one or two videos.

The key ideas that I received from this session were:

The contextual explanation at the beginning was helpful for understanding the work because the presentation doesn't offer enough time to fully engage with them as artwork.

I could use Prezzi to make some sort of virtual exhibition that the panel could go through while I present

I could make a fully video presentation where I could record myself talking over the videos.

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This is the draft that I wrote for our week 10 mock presentations. The script has an introduction where I explain the context of my project and then goes into explaining the meaning behind each video. During the presentation I pretty much stuck to this script and between each paragraph I played one of my videos. 

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New typography for Earth. Inspired by the video typography of Adam Curtis.

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This is the latest version of ‘Earth’. 

The changes that I still need to make are:

Change the type to something more in the style of Adam Curtis

Bring down the bass a bit because I found out during my exhibition that it’s too overwhelming through proper speakers

Colour grade every shot to be more “hyper-realistic” - I think I’ll get this effect through increased saturation and contrast

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This video was recommended to me by Karl for the “anti-design” typography that Adam Curtis uses. 

I’ve said this before but just to reiterate that I’m using anti-design typographic styles because I don’t want my design to feel in anyway attached to classical advertising design styles as that would go against everything that my project stands for.

As well as the typography I also really enjoyed the style of Adam Curtis’ editing. I like how abrupt his cuts are and how he switches from one subject to another suddenly but in a way that doesn't jar the audience.