Interim Review Critical Appraisal

ENVIRONMENT: LIGHT POLLUTION

Introduction
In my environment unit, I wanted to highlight the

problem that is Light Pollution. Some would argue for its beauty, which I could agree with somewhat, but I have been plagued by the idea of it fogging up the sky completely. Every night you can look out and just see a misty haze of Light that covers the sky, making it difficult to see the light coming from the stars deep in space. In this unit I looked at Ori Gersht, amongst others, for inspiration in how to display my imagery. He has done his very own work on this particular subject and I wanted to make something of my own highlighting my concern.

Ori Gersht
This particular image was my main inspiration, as it shows an orangelike haze overcasting the midnight sky with a subtle hint of City buildings at the bottom. This photo brilliantly captures the simple issue that is gradually becoming a problem that people overlook.

David Spero
After I had looked at Ori Gershts work as a baseline inspirational reference, I went out to see upon an aesthetic that could aid my own creation. After looking at David Spero I was convinced by his works overall Brightness and Contrast, particularly in this one. With my foundations set, my idea was ready to shoot.

 Ori Gersht was obviously the big influence within

the issue I was studying. Aiming to reflect his work whilst combining Davids aesthetic was my main goal. My final images successfully translate this with that combination but also through being printed Black & White to bring focus on the light pollution itself. Black & White easily presents itself as proof for this, while retaining a beauty which may invoke guilt within its context.

Interim Review Critical Appraisal

OBJECT: THE OBSESSION OF TECHNOLOGY

Introduction
The irony of studying a course which utilizes technology

at its fullest is not lost on me. We present our work here in Blogs, and use Websites to try and communicate large amounts of information. This is all good, except when we become too dependent. I see people around me in groups together, but individually using their phones to communicate with others over text or through Facebook, and with the rising popularity of Smartphones, this is only going to increase. There are many factors I could touch upon, but I will focus on the Mobile Communications and Social Networking aspects of this project, as that seems to be the biggest one I observe on a daily basis. I, myself, may be guilty.

Todd McLellan
Todd has done a series of photographs

where he dissembles objects and lays them all out in an ordered manner. The idea behind this seems to show a passion for how things work, a desire to see what makes up these objects - among them is a Pentax camera. If you look closely at all the tiny parts, you can see he has deconstructed it right down to the smallest of pieces, even the bolts are individually placed on the canvas. This shows a great attention to detail, you could say he was obsessed with seeing every part of the object to specify exactly what it fully consisted of. This obsession ties in quite nicely with what I'm trying to trying to achieve with my own project, although there are differences obviously

Development
Through looking at Todds style, I attempted to implement this myself through my own

idea of displaying mobile phones in a similar manner, but found the result to be ineffective. At this point, I re-evaluated his work and tried to represent the same concept but from a totally different angle. His relevance to my work can be seen through the literal display of each piece of the puzzle that constructs the idea. His pieces represent an object in full, and my pieces represent a collection of devices that used to communicate endlessly.

Evaluation

I would say I am well informed with the issues that are raised within my Environment Unit, as the light pollution can be seen as ugly and an indirect result of energy waste. My object unit similarly is seen as a social issue rather to be fixed within people themselves, at least in the aspects I focused on anyway. I would place my object unit within the context of human interaction and its gradual fading of face to face interaction. As for environment, it very much fits in with many other nature activists, but is an unusual pick in itself, as many other projects would focus on something more common like the amount of landfill sites being used for rubbish dumping. I feel strongly compelled towards preserving what is beautiful already, and by that I mean the visibility of the stars in space. Contrastingly, I feel like it is our duty to keep social activity for physical presence, not online ones, or we may lose ourselves in the grab for attention that online life sometimes bestows upon people. I would say my ideas translates fluently from idea to physicality through my references. For object, the focus is put upon the phone and the blur of phones connected towards the laptop in the background insinuate the connection that has been adopted for many of the people living in the richer parts of the world. For environment, the light pollution is evident and I provide that through a documentative process mixed with my references methods. I needed mostly to reflect upon my ideas at the beginning as I find myself searching for an aesthetic first before the issue which is something I had to come to terms with, so that has in fact been the most challenging part of doing these projects. Next time, I shall provide myself with a step-by-step process of creating an idea first before even thinking about how I can achieve a final presentation.