logan_B2210 Working Critique I

Project Title: The Bennie Bucker Abstract: A study on the Bennie Bucker—a fictional character who exemplifies the signifiers of millennial success within the framework of Corporate America. The final project will be displayed visually through three physical mixed-media pieces, two videos, and one short story. Intro to Project Idea: The Bennie Bucker is a character I am interested in studying and developing through my artistic practice. Drawing inspiration from personal relationships, work experiences, and trends in contemporary culture, I will present visual and textual imagery crafted around aspects of the Bennie’s existence.  Basic facts about the Bennie: he is in the millennial age range (25-35), he is recently married and considers himself to be a family man. He lives in a trendy part of the city, and he works for a new media conglomerate in the corporate headquarters while earning a large salary. His job function is to analyze customer data through targeted advertis...

https://lachap8.wixsite.com/critproj1

Project 1 - Completed Proposal Title: Experiments in Visualizing the News Abstract: Experiments in Visualizing the News is a web-based media work that seeks to provide insights and reflection on the functioning of the news media in our contemporary moment, over the course of a two week period during September-October 2017. Four different experiments involving news headlines--a visual comparison of four media outlets homepages, a documentation of personal news consumption, a video-based work of scrolling headlines, and a computer-voice reading of headlines and poems created from the headlines--are individually accessed through links on a single web page. Each of the experiments results in a different way of conceptualizing and experiencing the news headlines during the time period, and is situated within the media ecosystem of the United States. Proposal: This project is a series of web-based media experiments related to my investigation into the nature of the contempor...

The final form of Project 1 is a web-based work, with a simple homepage linking to the four different experiments conducted. I created the page using Wix, and placed each of the various media elements onto their respective page. Experiment one is created in photoshop, each image exported as a .jpeg, and then uploaded into a slideshow image viewer than allows for the user's control. Experiment two, below is documentation of the running list of saved links, and then a screenshot of how it is embedded via html code into the webpage from Adobe Spark. Experiment three is an embedded Vimeo link, created from the .mov file in Adobe After Effects. Experiment four is created using different audio player widgets, the individual .mp3 output files connected to each one.

I'm documenting the news links I've chosen to click on as visualize the webpage headline via screenshot in a scrolling format. This will be in contrast to the "Grid" of 4 previously selected websites whose homepage I am documenting each day. The visual documentation/prototype is here: https://spark.adobe.com/page/UigdBcVyQTPrN/ Then, I used the Apple voice reader to "read" out loud the headlines. The following two versions were created: first, in order of the visualized images, and then, as a cut-up, using words from each of the headlines. https://youtu.be/UOeKFsWwSXw  

Below are initial mock-ups/examples of Phase 2 of the project, which consists of taking the screenshot of four particular websites onto a grid. I have examples from 5 days: 9/26, 9/27, 9/28, 10/2 and 10/3. There are a few caveats that I will refine before proceeding in my continued documentation.  The first is to have a more standardized size of screenshot. Next, I will be more precise in placing the four images into the grid in exactly equal proportions. Third, I will seek a continuity across time of day that I make my documentations. Another altered step is to close or minimize all possible advertisements. The "Political Grid" quadrant map I used as a template for visualizing placing the screenshots 4 different sites on the same plane. However, I do not use this same vertical axis. Instead, I Place "corporate" on the upper half, represented by CNN & Fox News, and "Independent" on the lower half of the vertical axis. Again, CNN is not defined...

Title: Experiments in Visualizing the News Abstract:  A mixed-media work that seeks to provide insights and clues on the functioning of the news media in our contemporary moment, over the course of a two week period. Questions the work seeks to raise include: In our consumption of the news, how do we determine what story is most important? What outlets are directing our attention to a particular story and how are those related to the biases of the organizations and audiences? What politics is at work in determining the editorial decisions? What deserves our attention and for how long before another story takes over the top headline?  Proposal:   This project is a series of experiments related to my investigation into the news media and will take the form of mixed-media elements in three phases. In phase one, I will start by observing and recording my own news consumption habits for a two-week period. I will save and take a screenshot of every news article t...