Political Issue

My political issue that I chose to do for my poster was about the negative effect drug use can have on a family's relationship. I think that people who do drugs don't realize just how much it affects their family because they are so caught up in how the drugs make them feel they don't realize to think about any of the other side effects. It not only becomes a toll on the person using drugs, but also on the family that loves and cares about this person. I think that I did this poster because if people who do drugs realize how much it hurts everyone else they would think twice about using drugs. I really did enjoy this project and think that it made me think more about color and how it affects and triggers different feelings.

GOOD Transparency: Water Conservation

water conservation

For my issue I chose to humorously highlight the issue of water conservation. I used a recognizably dirty figure and suggested that not showering is a good thing to do in order to save water; although this is not likely something the average person would actually do. There are far less smelly extremes that one could go to in order to minimize their personal water usage. A neat video online I found that shows this is above. What I really liked about this was that it focuses on how simple daily choices have a large impact overall in water conservation efforts. This was kind of the goal of my poster, to hopefully have someone realize that although they might not stop showering to save water, it is still an important issue that they have the ability to help out with. All the little choices we make throughout each day can help to save water which is an important environmental and social issue, due to the indispensable role water plays for all living things.

The Big Buisness Devil

For my poster i wanted to convey the, what I feel to be, the absurd amount of greed that comes with big buisness. The monopoly man is an inconographic image, and that is why used him as the focal point of my piece. I think that the messsage came accros clearly, and that people were intriged by my design. When I was installing my pieces people we staring at me, and looking at my posters. However no one asked me what they were about. So I am assuming that the message came across. Over all i think the instalment went well, along with my piece. The opposites of the red and green really caught peoples' attentions.

Wasting Paint?

My poster is just about wasting our daily resources, and not valuing what we have. So much of what Americans throw away as waste, could have been recycled. The statistics are only about one-tenth of all solid garbage in the United States gets recycled. Another shocking one is Americans throw away about 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour. Meanwhile, deforestization is taking over the rainforest and americans always want the newest product out to replace last season. I just think people can be very wastful, and I wanted to try and reflect that with my posted.

Let us breathe

Have you ever gone camping and breathed in a breath of clean air? It's so crispy and easy to breath. Now have you ever stood next to a smoker and inhaled the fumes? Not as satisfying, right. I just went to a web site where I read about the "Brown Cloud" (http://phoenix.about.com/od/weather/a/browncloud.htm). The Brown Cloud is where it gets extremely polluted in Phoenix. I also found out that about 79% of the residents of Phoenix are at risk for contracting some breathing complications. That's over 2.6 million people. We need to change this. My brother in particular has asthma and I know there are certain times when he's feeling worse due to the amount of pollution outside. Breathing isn't an option, we all have to do it. So, why don't we make it better for ourselves so that we don't have to go hiking in the woods to enjoy that crispy breath of fresh air.

Education

I have always been taught that education is paramount. As I have grow up I have recognized the validity of this statement through personal experience. However I do believe the U.S. Government cares about education, I don't believe we share the same emphasis. I struggle to understand why weapons are made when teachers go underpaid and schools underfunded. Which is why it baffles me that the U.S. Government spends 683.7 billion USD on National Security, and only 46.8 billion on education. (enacted 2010) Below is a link to the table where I found my statistics, you can find it on page 30 of 'summary tables'

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Overview

Understanding: that is all I ask!

With my poster design I decided to tackle the issues dealing with the Muslim and Christian worlds. I feel that many biases and much hatred could be resolved, peacefully, with understanding. I think if both parties would realize that we are all just trying to be good people tolerance would increase. I posted my picture near a Mosque, a church not of my faith, my church, by the library (where there is usually a lot of religious bickering), and on a stairwell. I know that we can get to this place of understanding, but it will be a climb. You can do some reading here!

Uninspiring Places

I had way too much fun finding places for this poster. It started out being a huge chore after I got off of work at 5 pm today, Monday, before it is due tomorrow, Tuesday. Now this may sound like procrastination, but in fact, I had to cover for my boss all weekend at work. Anyway. The only copier I knew of on campus WASN'T letting people copy anymore, SO IF IT WAS BECAUSE OF EVERYONE ELSE IN HERE, THANK YOU! I wouldn't have had as much fun if I could have installed it correctly. So, for my "installations," which was just me bringing my finished crescent board to random places, I had very good reasons for each of my photographs. I brought it to places that I didn't like, for very good reasons in my own mind, and that worked better in the end. I was originally going to post the posters just on boards and lightposts and things like that, places that get heavy traffic but not necessarily any specific area. Instead, I had the mean homeless man hold the board, and I conned the Starbuck's Kids into smiling for my malicious photograph, and I photographed it outside of AlphaGraphics, because they refused to copy it for me because I hadn't had time to spray it with fixatif. And that makes more sense anyways, because all of those things to me were very uninspiring, so they added a sense of irony and a message of small change to my seemingly silly poster. As annoying as the installation part of it started out being, it really made my night.

Child Abuse

My issue that I choose was child abuse. I knew I didn't want to use children that were hurt in my pictures, but wasn't sure how to portray child abuse and neglect in another way. I decided to go with everyday pictures because that is the majority of the kids that are abused or neglected, everyday ordinary kids. You might not know from the surface that a child is being abused. While i came across some shocking statistics I wanted to bring it down to a common fact that one might not think about when they are abusing their children and that is the future of the child. While I have a hard time understanding how anyone can hurt a child, especially after having a child of my own, it is an issue that is happening all across america. I have an hard time watching and looking at the ads that show beat up kids and the facts are often lost because I simply don't want to look at the pictures. I wanted to use some color so I choose the red for the title on the top because of its emotional effect. I also stuck with the bleached out colors because I wanted it to sort of have that real feel and not something that is too bold. The children are being placed second when they are abused so it kind of gives them a drifted off look. I had a hard time with the colors on this project because when too much color was added into the background it took away from the pics but then it got an overall faded look. I wanted the cement look though and since it was about being in prison and abused it needed an more sober look to it. I do think that my poster portrays what I am trying to say, since there is so many aspects to child abuse I feel there is so much that could be done and one poster just doesnt portray everything but its a start!

What's Hurting California

For my poster I brought forth the issue of politics hurting California right now. From my stand point, The legislation of California are taking away effortlessly from those in need. For example, money is being taken out from public school systems, and also from the teachers that our educating our youth. There has even been discussion of taking away welfare in the state of California, or lowering the amount of welfare given. I feel that that taking away from Californians is not the correct thing to do, but instead working on a way to settle this debt without taking away from those who need it.

Limitless Display of Music on MTV

When I hear about kids watching MTV, I literally see them watching TV and their brain cells are turning to mush. The phrase "TV rots your brain" comes to a whole new meaning with this garbage. Honestly, I'm really tired of always hearing about the stupid new jokes that kids and teenagers watch on MTV. The stuff they broadcast on there is so provocative and annoying. Is this generation really attracted to watching girls fight and complain about how one girl slept with the other girl's ex-boyfriend but really he just got the other girl pregnant the night before? Really? Or how about watching people go to the club every night and just get "totally smashed!" Well there's also the fact of judging people by their weight and calling them "grenades" or the best friend that brings this girl along and calling her a "grenade launcher." I'm completely appalled by this display of rude, vulgar activity. And to top things off, the company that produces these circus-like shows is called Music Television. Unless you decide you want to wake up for a couple hours around four or five in the morning, MTV will not be showing any music. My personal favorite way of keeping the music gig going is the fifteen second display of a music video in between shows. All I have to say to MTV is if your goal was to degrade the lives of children and teenagers who will soon be adults and have them be knocked up, in debt, alcohols, drug addicts, and general sluts and assholes, congratulations! You have succeeded. Anyways, hopefully this art project will be the start of many and people will start to get the message,"Where's the music?"

Super Size Me opening

My Burger Poster

During unit 4 we have been learning about emotional/symbolic color and how color affects how people feel. For my project I decided to create a poster that had to the do with the rapid rate of obesity in America. Not only are adults becoming obese but young children around the country are as well. People in America don't realize what exactly is being put in their food at different fast food restaurants but seem to not care because it taste good, right? My poster presents a giant burger stacked with tasty foods as well as stuff that is not edible. I'm just trying to say people will eat anything that a major fast food business has to offer, but are oblivious to what is actually hidden in the food that is being served. I just want to show an awareness! The reason I picked this issue was because of watching the movie "Super Size Me", it changed how I look at fast food now. Check out this short clip!

TED video

A really interesting aspect of the talk was the perception of color related to evolution. I attempted to look up some more info on it and found the Munsell Color Science laboratory page 'Ask a Color Scientist' which answered a couple questions, why do we have color vision? what environmental factors encouraged the survival of individuals with color vision? Also this website they had a link to was interesting.

One of the answers that was interesting was that evolutionary advantages of sensing changes in illumination (that came along with the development of cones sensitive to a variety of wavelengths) was to better respond to changes in weather and time of day. Perception of red-green differences was advantageous to improving the ability to find ripe food, which usually varies in color from surrounding vegetation.

None of that really answers the question Miranda and Mario were asking, but I was wondering that too. It is just interesting to see the evolutionary aspect and maybe this info can be related to why color change based on background would be associated with our evolutionary perception of the world. Taking what Lotto said, that the association and what we do behaviorally with information we receive (retinal information or otherwise) is what is really important, then background affects color perception because the distinctions between vegetation and differently colored predators or food was behaviorally advantageous. I guess even though this makes sense to me it doesn't explain why similar colors will display differently depending on the background or why that is.