Decode/Recode
Again, shot on 35mm Lomography Redscale film
Again, I took these down at Media City last week of some of my work on the screens at Decode Recode. I also took one whilst we was taking part with the network system session, however, as mentioned, this film doesn’t like the indoors, so it’s come out quite bad, but i’ve posted it nonetheless.
boldesol:
Alan Turing is the father of computer science. He is largely responsible for development of the Turing-Welchman bombe, which effectively cracked Enigma-encoded messages during WWII. He created a formal definition of the algorithm and created the Turing machine. Without him, we may not have computers as we know them to be today.
In 1952, Turing was arrested in the UK for being gay. Instead of serving prison time, he chose the alternative– chemical castration through estrogen therapy. He lost all of his security clearance and could no longer work on his life career of cryptology as a result. Turing’s favorite children’s tale was Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. In 1954, he was discovered dead in his bedroom. He had committed suicide by eating an apple soaked in cyanide. A memorial for Turing depicts him holding an apple- a symbol for forbidden love. In 2011, a petition was made asking the British Government to pardon Turing’s conviction of gross-indecency. It was rejected by Lord MacNally, who summarily stated Turing knew his actions would result in a criminal offense and therefore should have been prosecuted.Mr. Turing, I’m sorry. The world can be a cruel place. You are respected and won’t be forgotten. The same can’t be said of many.
I’ve just spotted this and i’ve noticed the picture on the side of my tumblr wall all day without realising that it was an image of Alan Turing.
Last night I was explaining to my girlfriend who Alan Turing was and what he did (after seeing a Turing exhibition poster outside the Manchester Museum) and I realised that, even though by the end of the Decode Recode project I was slightly sick of it all, I learnt so much about Turing and I have the greatest amount of Respect for him.
(Source: boldesol, via tumblrradararchive)
Yesterday we popped down to Media City to test out the new string network.
The network can be found on the top floor of what is a very very smart looking university building.
Altogether, it was a really good opportunity and it helped to produce ideas about what the network could be used for.
(Source: chadwickideas)
Alan Turing Brief - Evaluation
Overall, despite being really really happy with my final photomontage pieces and my motion piece, I don’t feel completely satisfied with my project overall, especially the work leading up to the the final pieces. This is down to a number of reasons that i’ll explain throughout this evaluation.
After a six week break over the christmas holidays, I’d started to become unmotivated and I really wanted to get back and start a new brief. When we returned back, we were briefed on the Alan Turing project and initially I felt unclear about the aim of the project. Looking back at the brief now, the project was really quite straightforward, I just found the initial briefing confusing. This threw me and wrongly caused me to concentrate more on other projects, like procons and the group presentation, as well as the Type meetings and my own personal type work. Rather than concentrate on these other projects, I should of tackled the issue of the Turing Brief as this caused me to fall behind.
It was a week later, that the project had started to become clearer after a group brain storming session in the studios. I found this session to be really helpful as it made things a lot clearer and it gave me something to start gathering my ideas up after my research. So I went ahead and begun to research Alan Turing, and I believe that I did so in quite a lot of detail. I feel that my research into Turing, and the subjects that surround him, was one of my projects strongest points. Whilst researching, I found that the documentary that had been suggested to us was really really useful.
After researching, I brain stormed words like Turing and Codes in order to gather up ideas. Brainstorming really helped me to gather upideas and with that I begun to write my ideas down within my sketchbook. Again, I think I went into a lot of detail when talking about my ideas, which I think was another strong part of my project. I believe that my ideas were all quite nice and strong and had lots of room for experimentation. However, it was the next part of my project, the experimentation, that I believe let my project down.
So after I had written down my initial ideas, I then listed the ideas which I liked the most and wanted to develop further. However, as time was running short, rather than planning and experimenting thoroughly, I kind of jumped straight to my final designs.
At first I had the idea about producing a multiple layer poster, that had a tracing paper layer that worked with the layer underneath (This idea is explained within my sketchbook). In my head, I had an idea of how this poster would look, so I went ahead and tried to create the poster. Obviously as I mentioned in a previous post, I had issues with printing A3 at Staples, so I gave it a bash using my A4 printer at home. As you can see in the same post, I used text that read ‘100 years of Alan Turing’ for the purpose of this experiment. As mentioned, I had a few issues with the tracing paper and how it was hard to match the colour of the layer underneath. I managed to match the colours up as best I could after reprinting the tracing paper layer a dozen times. However, due to these issues, rather than tackling them and developing this idea further, I simply moved on to the next idea. Before that though, I did create a few GIF animations of this poster idea that all seemed to work really nicely, again though, these animations were unplanned and created on the spot.
After this, I moved onto the collage/photomontage idea. Earlier on in the project, whilst taking a brief break from researching, I had created a Turing themed collage, using a piece of wood that I had found and different images/text/patterns that I printed onto tracing paper as it gave a nice effect when layered. I was really happy with this collage, but again, rather than develop it further like I’d mentioned in my sketchbook, I simply moved on.
So my next idea was to create a series of Turing themed photomontages that were inspired by the work of Cristiana Couceiro. I’d previously look at Cristiana’s work last year on my foundation course and I rediscovered her whilst looking for inspiration in my old sketchbooks. I really like the minimal, simple, tidy look of Cristiana work and I felt that as her pieces always seem to be centered around an old black and white image, a similar technique would work with Turing based imagery. So I went ahead and created my first photomontage, the ‘100 years of Alan Turing’ one. The only planning that I had was a little doodle of the layout idea that I had in my head. Although I should have included this within my sketchbook, I felt that these doodles weren’t anything of great importance as they were made on scrap paper using a biro pen. Nonetheless, I went ahead and created the first photomontage and I felt that it worked well, so I moved onto the next one. As I felt really happy with each piece, this continued all the way through. Originally I wanted to create 10 pieces just because it seemed like a nice round number, however, due to time, I only created 8, but I still felt that this was plenty enough. As I was happy with my photomontages, I immediately decided that these would be my final pieces, this meant that I didn’t experiment with my illustration ideas, although I did experiment with lino printing, which I felt worked nicely.
So with my final pieces finished, I moved onto the motion piece, which was a similar story. I went ahead and experimented with my first idea of creating a stop motion animation of text on a black board that would read ‘100 years of Alan Turing’. As mentioned when I posted the video on here, the experiment went really well and there was loads of room for further development, however, I didn’t feel that it linked with the theme of Turing and it didn’t link in with my final designs therefore I moved onto my next idea, which I thought would link in more with my final pieces. As explained, my next idea was to create a montage of video footage that was related to Turing. So with a list of shot ideas, I went ahead and filmed short clips of things like barcodes and numerical symbols and even parts of my final pieces. As I had shot these clips on a camera that wasn’t HD, the quality wouldn’t be really high, therefore I thought about using this to my advantage and giving the video a rough, TV static look to it. So with my footage shot, I edited the video in Final Cut. Overall, I really like this video as I think the digital element to it, the TV static, links in with the theme of Turing and the montage element of it works with my final pieces. As explained in the evaluation of the video a few posts previous, if I was to do it again, I’d of chosen a better piece of audio for the video and I would of made the footage and the audio a lot tighter in timing. However, I am satisfied with the video and although the quality of its not wonderful, I think the concept for it was quite good.
Towards the end of the project, I felt like I just wanted a new project and a fresh start as I knew that I hadn’t reached my full potential during this project and as I still don’t feel overly satisfied with the Turing project, I really can’t wait for a new brief so that I can learn from my mistakes during this project and give it my all (as cheesy as that sounds).
Again, I’m really proud of my photomontage pieces and I’m satisfied with my motion piece, however I’m disappointed with the lack of experimentation that I put into this project. As mentioned this was down to the amount of time that I had and this was no fault but my own. If I were to complete this project again, I would get started with the project straight away, rather than concentrate solely on other projects as I did. Overall I just can’t wait for a new project so that I can get straight into it.
Here is the motion piece that I am considering as one of my final outcomes.
I’m a bit mixed on this piece however, as I can’t decide whether I’ve made something really different and interesting from the materials that were available to me or i’ve just made a really shit video.
My initial idea, as mentioned in my sketchbook was that I want to create a very abstract, looping videos of things to do with Turing. This video would have no dialogue, it would be simply a collection of footage.
So earlier I shot footage using my mums camera, which is something like a 14mp digital camera, without HD video. To give my footage an interesting visual twist and to capture some closer detail on the subject within my footage, I used a macro lense from my camera.
When I edit video, I tend to edit the footage based around the song or audio I use, so in this case, as i’d opted for a static TV feel, I found a bonus track from an album on my itunes, that was 9 minutes worth of static sound FX. However, If I was to do this again, I’d search further for possible audio tracks, whether it be a song or audio effect.
Overall, I enjoy editing because i’m creating a link between music and moving image.
Oh yeah talking about the audio i’ve used, MAKE SURE YOUR SPEAKERS ARE TURNED DOWN.
Overall, I think like this video rather than dislike it purely because its a different outcome to anything i’ve seen so far on the blogs and such. If I was to do it again, like I said, I’d chose a bit more of an appropriate track and i’d make sure that the footage was tight alongside the audio.
I got my final photomontages printed out earlier at Staples and I’m so chuffed with them. I just wish I felt the same way about the rest of this project.
Oh and as you may have noticed, i’m well and truly taking advantage of the wooden floor in the kitchen whilst we’re having it done up.
