Meanings
For my Photoshop Remix assignment I chose the Frank Lloyd Wright quote. The idea of chewing gum is something that is slightly annoying to bystanders, enjoyable to the user, and generally innocuous. My collage, I believe supports this interpretation by showing television as being innocuous and fun, like bubble gum. By placing the figure of the boy inside a television, though, I am showing the unreality of it, which brings in some ambiguity, I suppose. By showing the unreality of the figure and reinforcing the idea of television being unreal, I may be showing that the quote is fictional as well, and the idea of television as innocuous pastime is equally fictitious.
Processes
The first thing I did was choose a quote. The Frank Lloyd Write quote appealed to me because of the lighthearted and irreverent nature of it. Chewing gum is, after all, flavorful, fun, and non-nutritive. So to begin, I started to sketch out a few ideas for the quote. The sketch I settled on featured the television as chewing gum, literally, by making the television a bubble being blown. So I stated looking for an image of a gum bubble on Google Images. I found one being blown by a young man, and used that. I also found a picture of an old-fashioned television on Google Images. I wanted an old-fashioned television because it is nostalgic and brings to mind more “innocent” times. These ideals seem to fit with a young man blowing a bubble as an iconic image of youth.
I extracted the young man from the image, and then I added the television to the image of the boy and warped it so that it covered over the original bubble. By now, I felt that the image was there, but needed some kind of context. I found images of living rooms and media rooms and put the figure into those to see if one had the right tone, but was not feeling that any of these were right. The television that became the background began as an element of a room. When I was trying to place it in the room, I imagined what the picture would look like if the television were the only context, and that seemed to work for me. After I had the boy blowing the television bubble, I felt I need a reference to the eye, so I used the CBS trademark eye. To place it on the screen, I erased the image that had been on the screen, and replace it with the stylized eye looking out. I warped the eye image slightly so that it would take up most of the screen. The image seemed complete, so I stopped.
This is completely different from my writing process. Nothing ever feels complete when I write. It is just due, so I have to let go. In fact, the whole process is different for me. When I write, I rarely plan ahead before I begin writing. Most of my planning takes place as I brainstorm. I write to explore, then I go through what I have done and pick out the parts that seem useful. Then I list the ideas that I think I should pursue. And then I write and revise and write some more.
Choices
I chose the images that I did because they fit into the idea that I had sketched. The exception was the background, which changed as I progressed. First, I had intended to put the youth in a contemporary home media room so that it would have a context. I ended up with the youth inside a television, which emphasizes the unreality of it, rather than in a living room that would have grounded as being more within the realm of normalcy.
I made several modifications to the images. I resized some of the images. I cut the boy out of the background that was in the original image. The vintage television was cropped slightly, and the image that was on the screen was erased and replaced with the eye logo.
I am not sure that I really considered that many alternatives. I was pleased with the concept that I had sketched. I did, however, tinker with the background to get something that I thought fit with the concept that I was trying to convey.
Connections
Bush, in his 1945 descriptions of all the many inventions that we can expect to see in the future, noted that "it would be advantageous to be able to snap the camera and look at the picture immediately" (39). By 1963, Sutherland’s description of Sketchapad seems to more closely anticipate Photoshop. The magnification of the image that I am working on is always vital when I do any image work. I cannot imagine trying to do this kind of collage work without digital equipment, although, people certainly made collages before Photoshop.
Wysocki's definition of “new media” from "Opening New Media to Writing" is one that immediately comes to mind as I work on this piece. Not because it was done in Photoshop, which is kind of the popular definition of new media, but because I believe that I am showing an awareness that the image does not “function independently of how it is made” (15). One way that I show how it is made is by the surreal-ness of the television set as a bubble being blown. Also surreal is the boy silhouetted against the clouds in the sky, which makes him look as though he is suspended in the air. Other than those elements, the collage could be realistic, and might not be considered new media under Wysocki’s definition.
Works Cited:
- Bush, Vannevar. “As We May Think” (1945). The New Media Reader. Ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin & Nick Montfort. MIT UP: Cambridge, MA, 2003. 35-48.
- Sutherland, Ivan. “Sketchpad: A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System” (1963). The New Media Reader. Ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin & Nick Montfort. MIT UP: Cambridge, MA, 2003. 35-48.
- Wysocki, Anne. “Opening New Media to Writing." Writing New Media. Ed. Anne Francis Wysocki, Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Cynthia L. Selfe, & Geoffrey Sirc. Utah State UP: Logan, UT, 2004. 1-42.
Photo credits:
- Boy Chewing Gum from http://www.ecok.edu/centers_programs/tgu/students.htm
- Vintage Television from http://www.qualityinformationpublishers.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=137
- Sony Television from http://securitytags.biz/detachers/image/Sony-Plasma-television.jpg
- CBS Logo from http://www.basketballcity.com/images/medialeague/cbs_eye.jpg
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