Photoshop: The Surreal is Now Only a Few Clicks Away!

I took several photos at Coney Island that weren't in the photo essay for several reasons, but putting them into the collage makes them a whole lot more interesting. Here are my top three (though the third isn't my favorite.)

Abstracts

Seth F. Kreimer, “Technologies of Protest: Insurgent Social Movements and the First Amendment in the Era of the Internet,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 150 (2001)

With the passage of time, each new generation finds different means in which to organize publicly. With the advent of the internet, new opportunities and legal boundaries emerge. Does the internet cover what Supreme Court Justice Black called “essential to the poorly financed causes of little people?” The internet gives organizational power to groups outside the mainstream discourse, but access is limited to those who can afford it. Furthermore, traditional rules of advertising and capital apply when it comes to viewer access. These methods include begging, borrowing attention through networking, and direct hacking. Websites still fall under the rules of libel, and under with risky political discourse many ISPs or internet rings may choose to self-censor their content to protect from legal issues. While anonymity may protect the identities of those involved legally, it also disassociates their message and potentially weakens it.

Barney Warf and John Grimes, “Counterhegemoic Discourses and the Internet,” Geographical Review 87 (1997)

The internet can be harnessed for political discourses that remain outside the mainstream, although most of the internet serves as a reinforcement of the mainstream ideology. The quantity of voices that exist within this new sphere can be cacophonous at times, creating issues of space and directionality. While the new medium to capture new audiences, the digital attention span is comparatively shorter. Furthermore, the internet removes the need to converse directly with those one may be attempting to politically support, instead conversing with only like-minded people. The powers of the internet lie in its ability to cross disciplines and subjects rapidly and fluidly while remaining within task.

Douglas Rushkoff, Open Source Democracy. Project Gutenberg (2004)

Many of the theories encompassing the internet fail to encompass the volunteer effort that brought the world wide web into existence today. While investors attempted to bring mass commerce and products onto the internet, the efforts largely failed and the internet has reverted back to its roots as a powerful networking tool. The internet represents the apex of interactivity in the electronic age that began with the simple invention of the remote control, and much potential exists to create a sustainable society based on the ethos of the open source community. While many efforts have been made for “teledemocracy” and political organization, the open source ideal holds people to a higher responsibility by keeping their contributions to society’s “programming” in the open.

Coney Island: The Playground of the World is Now Surmised in Five Images

I want to clear the rumors now, many of you know I was sick, but it was not swine flu. If I breathe in your general direction, you should be fine.


I did a photo essay originally of my dog wearing cute things, doing cute things, and so forth. It has been lost, due to unforeseen circumstances, and that's all I'm going to say on that.

So instead I went to Coney Island. Always wanted to go. I tried to take photos in the vein of a small child observing it for the first time, and how glorious it is. Here are the photos

Intellectual Autobiography

Michael Crosby
N10059857

Less than a week ago, I turned down a job as an electronics technician. The job encompassed television, microwave, and air conditioner repair. It was an exceedingly difficult decision. You see, while I’m proficient in computer repair, biodynamic farm maintenance, carpentry, music, television and radio engineering, beer brewing, bicycle repair, and yes television repair, I don’t know enough about fixing microwaves.

Turning down that job was exceedingly difficult for a man whose business card would simply state his name and the catchphrase “Yeah, I can probably do that too.” All my life my interest has been about knowing how everything around me works at the micro-level, and for years my primary interests have lied in media studies. My all-encompassing fear is simple to understand: how does this self-proclaimed jack-of-all-trades focus himself enough to find his niche in graduate studies?

My first foray into the world of media began when my mother bequeathed her single-lens reflex camera to me in seventh grade. After becoming a devout shutterbug, I was accepted into my school district’s brand new pet project, Communications High School. I was the second class to be accepted into the school, and few things were in order during my first years there. Over time, my friends and I who reveled in television and radio built up both the studios and the clubs that staffed them. Every morning I would dutifully and creatively present such trite material such as “the journalism club will meet in room 204 at 10:30.” If I were to attend the school today, I certainly would not have received the same education I did. The school’s unfinished nature brought me a unique constructionist education that would set the framework for the mode of learning I’ve always seemed to thrive within.

The college I attended was the Park School of Communication at Ithaca College. While at Ithaca, I pursued the studio of audio, where I learned advanced recording and microphone techniques. Throughout my time there I was the handyman on several projects, often receiving calls from frustrated friends in the editing room wondering what tool they were looking for in Final Cut Pro. In my last year I began to study archival techniques and became a teaching assistant for a television production class. While there, I pursued a minor in history, focusing on both Russia and America in the twentieth century.

At this crucial juncture I realize that I must finally distill my being into a concentration. Some may disagree and say that I should continue to branch out; I say it is time for me to consolidate my interests into a coherent whole. I am tired of working this angle, and I wish to finally study theories that comprise the world I’ve dwelled within. With my firm grounding in history, I wish to take part in the upcoming seismic shift in our field. With a mediascape that is converging at a rapid pace, the distribution guidelines remaining amorphous, and the technology doubling in power every eighteen months, it has never been a more exciting time to study the media. (Intel, Moore’s Law) In an age where the internet is poised to absorb the bulk of communication mediums, what options exist for creating strong content that is accessible, professional, and cannot be pirated? What new distribution and revenue structures will form?

The changing mediums also mean changing styles. How will the content of the future be edited together as a whole? The technology of a field always dictates the content. Can anyone imagine what a 24-hour news network would look like before satellite feeds and advanced computer graphics? A great example of one of the stylistic changes brought about by a new medium is the infamous “lonelygirl15” video channel on YouTube. Not only was the channel successful in popularizing itself via viral marketing, it also employed mostly single-camera shots where only the talent moved. In essence, the talent is manipulating the camera’s output to achieve a gestalt, rather than the camera manipulating the performance of the talent. (Youtube, LonelyGirl15)

As a born engineer, I love every aspect of working on any project handed to me. As a young man in New York City with his whole life ahead of him, I have no intention of settling down now and retiring at sixty-five after working the same job. In my time here I hope to work in several fields. I want to share my passion for music by working to help artists record and distribute their music. I want to be a powerful force in grassroots activism through the teaching media literacy. If there’s any time left I want to help make films, both fictional and documentary, with my friends and fellow students.

The New School’s program has provided me the resources and the flexibility to not only explore my goals as a technician, but to have a strong knowledge of the theories underlying the medium. For the longest time I believed that there were two divergent roads: the theoretician and the practitioner. Now I believe that it is a single superhighway, where no work can be fully mastered without understanding the theological underpinnings. As a student of history, it has always been within me to know the foundations of the restless world we live in. In my time at the New School I plan to pursue the study of history with a media-centric bent, forging a mind to understand every milepost on my so-called “highway.” I hope to begin work on a thesis project, but I am not sure just how I will yet pursue this option. Looking through other thesis projects completed by New School students, I hope to create a work that involves several disciplines. One idea I have bounced around in my mind is extrapolating the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words,” having graduate writing students describe iconic photos in one thousand words, and then have graphic artists illustrate the writings to see how close they are to original photo. I have also considered making a documentary of this process.

Ten years from now, I hope to still be doing what I love. While I know many people who came to graduate school after working professionally due to the recession, I’ve always known that someday I will teach. At the New School, I will be able to build the broad knowledge I would demand of myself to teach future generations this art. In Neil Postman’s Technopoly, he concludes that the best way to educate oneself is by knowing the history and underpinnings of any field. (Postman, 186) This is what the New School can provide for me.

To write a concise prediction of my future goals is difficult for a wandering and wondering jack-of-all-trades like myself. Wherever I end up I know that my time at the New School will be academically fulfilling and creatively bountiful.

Bibliography

Intel, Moore’s Law: Made Real by Intel Innovation. Retrieved October 6^th, 2009

http://www.intel.com/technology/mooreslaw/

YouTube, LonelyGirl15’s Channel: The Equinox. Retrieved October 6^th 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEz0lOecgvU

Postman, Neil (1993). Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology.

New York, NY. Vintage Books.

Three-Dimensions: The Two-Dimensional Photo is now the Clever Illusion

So I started this whole thing thinking I was going to make a thirty-second animatic... then after realizing how ridiculously difficult that is to do and how long it tends to take I decided to do a still shot instead.

It started with the concept of this ad I made after last class:

It's for my housemate who wanted to start a production company. I say "wanted" because she hasn't mentioned anything since and I've already got a logo fit for a business card. The was made in illustrator, and I wanted to do an animatic in the program Lightwave with this same guy. Instead I just did a stillshot


I forgot how hard and time consuming this is, but I'll leave that just as such.

Also, minor correction to last weeks ad.

2-D Advertisement: The Person is now the Glorified Self-Image

For this project I decided to forego the use of Illustrator, and instead went with an open-source program known as "InkScape." It's free to use, and has a robust set of features. Somewhat unstable at times, but is overall a great program. For the bitmaps I used Photoshop, while there is certainly an open-source version of this (GIMP, also a great program), I know my way around Photoshop much better.
For this advertisement, let's assume I'm a comedian, whether I'm funny or not is unimportant. I used diagonal lines very strongly. I also took the idea of the curtain from a racing poster that flashed by in the movie Helvetica. From bottom-left to top-right is the double double-entendre of "He's out there, making you think." I chose the princeton font for the sake of being able to see clearly without hiding the curtain. The top-left to bottom-right shines the spotlight on myself, with information on the show at a particular "comedy club." It uses mostly black and white, with splashes of red and yellow.

Five Advertisements: The encryption is now the analysis.

My friend's father is an insurance agent in Linden, NJ. This is him on the billboard, and it says "the cheapest insurance." The whitespace in the background keeps your concentration on the foreground, also effectively utilizing positive/negative space. The font is Helvetica, and the pink font highlights the message and the phone number. The balance lies to the left where Mr. Gawel is smiling and pointing upwards, directing everyone to his message.


This 1959 budweiser ad is a combination of what looks like both drawing and photography. The font is playful for the logo, and the script seems handwritten. The caption is in an extremely "typographical" font, pointing out the matter-of-fact nature of what's being said. There are three layers that I see in this. The beer can and glass, the man at the table, and the background of the house. His eyes are leading us to what may be the best moment of his day.


I love this ad. It's to the point and cheeky. Why? The font is bold, loud, and distinguisable from a distance, with shadowing and italicization to further push its point. The background is the union jack, indicating the span of the paper's coverage... the design of the flag itself directs the eye to the center. Everything is centered and the message is clear: why haven't you read the sun? It's inexpensive and covers everything that happens here.


This is a great ad for the phantom of the opera. The font (dont know which one) is romantic to match the message: remember how great it was to see the phantom on broadway? The romanticism is played up by the black background and the only color being the rose near the mask. By the time you finish the sentence you arrive at the familiar symbol of the play, the sole occupier of the lower half of the billboard.



I think by posting this particular ad I've tainted my self-image amongst my classmates, but its so outrageous and awful I just had to make an example of it (here's a link to an ad that distills it down to just sex appeal) Long story short, Evony is a strategy game that has absolutely nothing to do with saving the queen, at all. The logo itself is a Time New Roman typeface bolded with a pattern laid into to give it a rustic yet distinguished look, reinforced by the shadowed font with excessive seriffs. The world inside the O and the map in the background are meant to convey the idea that this is a whole world to play around in. The position and balance is to the right... the sword indicating direction without the slightest sense of shame.