Graduation! Results:

Well I have finally graduated!

My final score was a 2:1 (Second class upper division)

I now finally have a BA.

For information on how to get a copy of my dissertation click here.

For Any further work please go to my Other Blog. 

MEDI 323: Critical Evaluation

Critical Evaluation:

The brief was very open on this project but stated that we had to explore and experiment with themes, ideas and different mediums of art. It was to be a self directed study culminating in an exhibition.

At the very beginning I wanted to focus on developing my ‘Dreamscapes’ project that I produced for the Experiment module in year 2. It was an enjoyable project that I felt had a lot of territory unexplored and a huge amount of scope. I started to research refining my ideas and the actual physicality of making the image, through practice it became smoother and more organic to actually produce the images. I wanted to try and paint a more complete image of thoughts and feelings and realised very quickly that a large portion of my life belonged to things that were not ‘real’ such as video games and cartoons or fantasy stories etc. this lead me to the notion of the term Unrealestate, a term which I have defined and made my own in a very concrete way throughout this project. The downside to the fact that my work has to incorporate the unreal is that more often than not the images are copyright. I am not sure whether or not my usage of the images falls under fair use or not and frankly in the interest of free speech in art I do not feel that I am obliged to care. I personally feel that copyright has gotten to be less about art integrity and more about fat cats turning a profit with artists that believe they are upper crust turning on artists that are ‘beneath’ them as evidenced in the case of Damien Hurst’s actions towards a graffiti artist known as Cartrain.

“Damien Hurst threatened to sue breach of copyright when a piece of his art was parodied. Walker comments ‘This legalistic response by a contemporary artist to an instance of plagiarism (or homage) was rather preposterous, given the number of times artists have borrowed imagery from the mass media without obtaining permission or paying for the privilege.” (Walker, 1999, p.185)

I therefore do not mind joining the rising tide of Appropriation Artists that are lashing back at copyright. That being said I do not feel that my art fits that definition rigidly since I am not trying to make a political comment but more of a social and psychological point with my images. I do however understand the need for copyright; people deserve to make money off of their ideas and their work and also to not have this stolen. I would want to have the royalties of my own art and have my ideas protected.

“Ursula Smart defines copyright as ‘ Copyright essentially prevents one person from benefiting from another’s skill and labour or directly copying or passing off another’s work.’” (Hill & Paris, 2001, p.295)

This I feel however has been warped, it has become much to stringent and I would argue that if something is changed in some way then it is no longer exactly the original. I think it is very hard to actually totally plagiarize something in terms of art, even a group of artists referring to themselves as the ‘new plagiarists’ altered the images and thus made comment on the original.

“In practice, pure plagiarism rarely took place because in most cases transformations of the originals occurred.” (Walker, 2001, p. 132)

I had a lot more ideas besides working on taking the Dreamscapes to a new level and blending Unrealestate into them. One of my main Ideas was to produce a series of mixed media collages that focused on copyright, censorship and consumerism as I have studied these topics extensively over the course of my degree and feel that they are very relevant and current issues that can always be addressed in an artistic manner. The main Idea that I started to refine and even did a trial image for was the mixed-media collage of consumerism that I wanted to produce on a huge board, I was going to collect things I had consumed, cut things out from magazines and newspapers but have it based solidly on what I personally consume, I was then going to add pictures of printed money both British and American with some of the printed notes burnt. To finish this image I was going to, in red paint, add in my finger and hand prints. This is an idea I still want to do as I feel that it can be impacting but due to time restraints because of my ill health and also because I feared the image would be viewed as childish I dropped the idea for this current piece of work. Likewise with the censorship image which I wanted a black canvas or board with the word ‘censored’ in the middle of in a white stamp effect. I wanted to do this because of my research and also even more because of the recent legal debates over censorship of the Internet such as SOPA and PIPA. I dislike the idea of censorship intently, I think free speech is a very good thing and even if I dislike someone’s viewpoint I will still defend his or her right to be able to voice it. That being said my latest point of contention does revolve around the Internet, something that I very much think of as mine, the Internet should always be free and open because that is what makes it the entity that it is. Again given more time and better health I would have liked to explore this to a much greater extent. I also had an idea to study the psychology of Child Art and see if I could make Dreamscapes from a child's perspective.

I was interested in Child Art because I have studied child psychology in the past and also I think that finger-painting is a very underrated medium, an opinion that has only amplified with research. It is very expressive and freeing and also I think intrinsic. It relates to our ancient ancestors that painted with their hands on cave walls, in the sand, on stones etc. because I feel that we all have an inherent need of and appreciation for art and also, high art critique aside, have the ability to produce art. I understand that at first glance this avenue of study may appear completely tangential on my part and in some ways this can be considered true. I was worried that focusing on just myself would make the project a little one-dimensional so I wanted to expand my scope by collaborating with a child. I do regret that this idea was only half complete, however due to time restraints caused by illness it would have been impossible to follow my tangent to its full conclusion. So this Idea may seem quite unrelated but I planned to make Dreamscapes using the Unrealestate accumulated by a child. I’d have liked to gone further with this but there would always have been the danger that it would not have been received well because of its evident childish nature.       

In the end I chose to stick with combining Dreamscapes and Unreal estate and taking both of my home-grown concepts to new artistic levels. I have drawn heavily on my own experiences, feelings, emotions and influences, as my reality is the one I know best. I understand that other people will have different perspectives to me and may interpret things in my images I had not originally thought of or intended but that I feel is a huge part of what art as a whole is about and if people add new layers of meaning then my images have new layers of meaning and I am happy to embrace that. I hope that some things will be obviously conveyed and that my reality is not so different from other peoples as to render the contexts void. I have opted to make a somewhat risky move and include my faith as a Pagan in this project. It is not always viewed correctly and often portrayed in a horrible light and I wanted to dispel that. I have played into certain widely held notions but I have done so respectfully and not compromised the integrity of what I believe. I have tried in my final series to include a wide range of topics that I feel my life revolves around and the elements feature heavily in this both in terms of faith and gaming, again a large part of my life, so elements have a triptych in their own right. I have also covered time, faith, a season, an actual dream and chosen my room and how I view it with my thoughts and feelings as the center because that is where most of my reality happens and where all the images were made.    

This project has naturally been hugely influenced by the things I do. Video games have played a huge role in my life so naturally they influence my idea of art and also my art in general. I have been gaming for as long as I can remember so most video games are like old friends to me. This odd relationship I have with video games was one of the starting points of my theories of Unrealestate.

This project has been fairly hard to achieve, as I have been limited massively with time due my ill health. I have had massive troubles with back pain and then as a result very strong medication which has made it hard to stay awake, let alone focus. It has limited the amount of what I could do both in terms of focus and mobility so a few ideas have had to be shelved. It has also made sticking to my schedule a nightmare owing to falling asleep because of the medication when I had work to be doing. There have been some bonuses to being on the medication however, not least of all the pain relief, but due to the fact that my back problems are so bad I am taking opiate based medication, which has been helpful in boosting creativity. I know that several of my inspirations, in terms of literature, in life were using opium at the time of writing their great works. I find this quite ironic really that I am unintentionally following in the footsteps of Poe all be it to a much lesser degree. I feel that re-working the images has been easier and a lot more fluid because of this, I have been able look at my images in a different way and in some ways see more clearly what needed to be altered in my images in order to achieve my desired effect. However the pain-killers have made writing anything extremely difficult as they tend to leave me drowsy and quite confused which seems to happen in waves, this means I have had very limited time where I have been completely lucid and focused.

Despite these massive setbacks I am happy with the direction the project went in and the actual end result, I feel I have worked very hard to ensure that the setbacks I faced didn't sway my project too much off course and that the end result still is in line with the goals I had in mind both at the start and as the project developed. In a funny way this has very passively altered the project because art comes from life thus life experience can only serve to enrich art.

To conclude, initially in this project I wanted to take a very psychological stand point to my art because of my previous interest in the subject of psychology. I feel that I have achieved this through extensive research into the fields of art psychology in terms of the project as a whole. I have paid particular attention to colour and its meanings and connotations so that I could have more control over how my images would be viewed and thus manipulating the psychological tonalities of my images. I wanted to explore children’s art from a psychological standpoint and although I ultimately did not opt to incorporate any of the child collaborated images into the final exhibition run of images it was a very valid practise as well as a very interesting experiment.

From the outset of developing this from the ideas formed in my second year I wanted the finished images to convey a sense of liminality, blurring the lines between the ‘real’ and ‘un-real’ to paint a more rounded picture of what I consider true reality. I feel that I have achieved this with the final direction I have taken the project in and the final exhibited images I have produced. I personally feel that I have taken my original concepts and pushed and refined them to the limits. I would have liked to play with more mediums and maybe have combined a lot more mediums but that is an avenue I can still explore in the future. I do feel that I experimented a lot with both concepts and mediums and through extensive research have produced something that I am very happy with.       

MEDI 323: Final Exibition

The layout got changed for the better... here is my final exibition.

MEDI 323: Finger Painting Studies

As part of this project I wanted to focus on child-like or childrens art. I chose to investigate this by producing collaborative finger-paintings with my friends four year old son.

When I scanned in the images to use them for making Dreamscapes they lost some of thier depth of colour.

This lack of colour put me off of making a Dreamscape image with them as they had lost quite a lot of original colour and therefore meanings and connertations would be lost or skewed. Also later I opted to keep the project a more personal and self reflective effort on the advice of my tutor but I have found some intresting things on finger-painting in the process.



I had originally wanted to prove that finger painting wasn't childish and was a valid art form which I feel the video does. Its increadible what you can actually paint with your fingers.

It would have been intreresting to produce a Dreamscape using the art that me and Mauwgan had made together and maybe something to look into in the future.

MEDI 323: Pop Art + Appropriation Art

I have always been interested in Pop Art. It has influenced this project quite a lot with its ties to Appropriation Art. I have been looking into this art style, as it is similar to what I have been doing with my images and my methods.

I have also tried to blend the ideas of photomontage and collage which also seem to be fairly prevalent in the pop art movement.

Appropriation art however is accesible for anybody nowadays with the internet freeing people to actually create. This image below being a prime example.

However it still is a vaild form of so called 'high' art. One of the most iconic appropriation images in high art being Andy Warhol's can of soup. It is simply a picture of a tin of Campbells Soup...

There is naturally a constant war between this style of art and Copyright Law because of its very nature. The artist WANTS the original work to be noticed, it the point to make comment upon the original, a notion that should fall under the terms of fair use. 

I do however very much like Appropriation Art even if my images don't quite fit the definition. Pop Art has definately been an influence.

One of the most inspiring Apropreation Arts for me on a personal level is Caroline Shotton. I have enjoyed her work for a long time and think is both witty and pleasing. She sticks to a very definate theme, being cows, which I like as it sets her aside and makes her instantly recognisable.

MEDI 323: Copyright and Art

I have been extensively researching copyright and have read a few law journals and art law journals.

The relationship between art and copyright has and maybe will always be fraught and

in my opinion the rules need to be relaxed a lot more. The laws affect all kinds of artists including the music industry especially in the case of DJ Girl Talk who I took a particular interest in because his music is referred to as ‘danceable musical collages’ since I both am interesting in collages and I love the imagery that is invoked by the term musical collage. 

The contraversial track 'Feed the Animals'

Copyright should be fair, protecting the artist whilst not crushing others freedom to speak, yet sometimes it falls short of this task I feel.

MEDI 323: Final Pagan Image

This image needed to be lighter for printing. It doesn't make a huge amount of difference on screen as the detail can be seen clearer on a screen than printed but to look its best printed it needed to be lighter.

MEDI 323: My Terms

Dreamscape: A digitally created image showing the pictorial representation of an imagined space.

The term Dreamscape lacks any real formal definition, yet it does have a shared notion of meaning. How I apply the term is probably the most common way people would understand it, as simply an image or ‘landscape’ of a dream, essentially forming a portmanteau of these two words and concepts.


Unrealestate: An abstract term categorizing material, which only exists conceptually or within a technological medium.

A portmanteau, but also a parody on the word real-estate. I haven’t found any definition matching mine but there is evidence of some kind of common notion that loosely fits with my definition. How I view this term is that Unrealestate is what exists both in cyberspace and purely conceptually. We perceive to have at least some degree of ownership over it, regardless of sates of copyright or actual legal ownership. Essentially this term can be used to describe the new entities that exist because of modern media and our ever-increasing relationship with the Internet. I think the best few examples of Unrealestate that I can give would be things like my World of Warcraft character. I pay £8.99 a month to play the game, but who actually owns my character? I didn’t draw her or program her, yet she is a part of me and I have spent effort and money on her. Another example would be fandoms in general, if you write fan fiction who actually owns the characters? Does buying the original book and mugs etc. entitle you to then feel some ownership over your fandom? Another common thing is for people to feel a degree of ownership over a song, first dances at weddings, the song playing the first time you met your partner, that particular song that everyone says is your theme tune… despite having nothing to do with the original creative input people still feel some degree of ownership.

MEDI 323: Refined Images

MEDI 317 + MEDI 323: Dissertation: Front Cover!

Since these projects are running in tandem it made sense that they influenced each other. Lots of the research has run into each other and inspired different aspects or avenues of the projects. I thought it would be a nice idea to produce the front cover of my Dissertation in the same style as the ‘Dreamscape’ images of my MEDI 323 project. This image is effectively a Dreamscape of the Internet and also all of the topics covered in my dissertation. So whilst it isn’t part of the final series of images I feel it is still an important progression and interesting given the overlap of research.

MEDI 323: DADA

Something that has also been an inspiration to me has been the Dada art movement. Its rebelliousness and certain amount of chaos appeal to me and it also founded the basis of surrealism.

Apparently a common thing in the Dada movement was to make a poem with bits that you cut out of a newspaper and picked at random! I thought I would also try this for brevity!

"She friend at bespoke south heard.
For training university businesses,
Innovative motorcycle networking is presentations.


West meeting dictator; explicit, unique, promoted.
The where and fused something freindly website.
Royal host Rockers question man died.

Find a yesterday with persuasive American.
Sex can being crashed, answer in social that flies.
A can mix, photographs of space,


Used giant posted room, his drunken sixties
Early of a during court, to on morning
Of the plans, a big circular the."  

• I find it very interesting how adding some punctuations makes it make more sense even though it is totally random and chaotic in its assembly. Yet given the fact I picked each word out (of a bag no less) at random it still feels like MY poem. My punctuation and the form I have set it out in further reinforce this but it is a wonderfully creative way of working. 

• I found a site that sells things to use in collage and also has a lot of information about Dada artists.

MEDI 323: Individual: Googling Unrealestate

My tutor said that I should Google the term Unrealestate to see if I really was being original and also to see what other people thought it was.

It ranges from a cool name for an estate agents to something actually a bit more relevant in this article about online worlds and the wacky way that they effect the worlds economy. Most notably for me I am the fifth hit down!

From the article in wired this paragraph stands out most to me:

"These little economies raise big questions, therefore, and by no coincidence, they tend to be the big questions of the economic age. How, for instance, do we assign value to immaterial goods? What defines ownership when property becomes as fluid as thought? What defines productivity when work becomes a game and games become work?" -Julian Dibbell

The article case studies a man that works as a carpenter and also makes money selling the virtual houses he makes with the use of his blacksmith character in the game 'Ultima Online'. To me this article is exactly what i mean when I talk about Unrealestate. More and more due to a combination of the internet, consumerist culture and brand selling is this phenomenon becoming more apparent, prevalent and with it much more run-of-the-mill.

"For if it's true that economies are in many ways like games, and that the world's economy is getting more gamelike everyday, there remains one defining difference between the two: Games attract us with their very lack of consequence, whereas economies confront us with the least trivial pursuit of all, the pursuit of happiness. And while not even Dugger himself can say precisely how much happiness he bought when he bought that imaginary house, one thing was certain from the moment Troy Stolle put it up for auction. The game was over, and something as real as life was suddenly in play." -Julian Dibbell

This is very indicative of just how absorbed we are in the 'Hyper-real' the fact that the economies of game worlds are more and more interlinking with our real world economy, thinking about it I have purchased online goods for real money in games and online community's alike.

MEDI 323: Individual: Initial Proposal

For this module I'm exploring the nature and relationship of the inner workings of the human psyche through image. I want to explore the nature of how human experience interlaces to create places in our minds eye. I have studied psychology in the past and I feel that it makes my ideas on these subjects somewhat informed, having said that however I also think that there is a very artistic and creative element to the human subconscious as most memories tend to work by linking 'pictures' of our world to other 'pictures' that are also stored in the brain relating to the first 'picture' these then link on and on eventually forming the web of own conscious and subconscious mind.

The work I'm doing builds upon images created in a module from last year which I termed 'Dreamscapes' because I wanted these to convey what humans saw when they dream and the random fusion of thoughts, memories and feelings blur to create a space that sums up something yet isn't actually that object or place etc. Dreamscapes used to be a landscape image all of my memories of a place but in this project have now evolved far beyond the original concept, with one of the new dream images I have mad actually being about a dream. This image 'Orca Dream' is essentially a picture of my dream, looking somewhat like a photograph of the unreal. 

This project also pertains to my idea of 'unreal estate', which is anything you feel some ownership over, but isn't actually real, for example  on-line games, on-line communities, or even popular franchises such as The Lion King. This idea I feel is relevant, as people often feel a sense of ownership over things such as a certain song, describing it as theirs, even though they have not written or recorded it. It is also becoming more and more prevalent in an internet obsessed, consumerism fuelled culture where sometimes the 'hyper real' is more important or valued than the 'real' and people view themselves more and more through their computer game based achievements and express themselves more and more using online avatars. 

I want my images to convey a sense liminality, of how reality and the imaginary can blur and smudge together where the thresholds cross and fuse. In some of the images I have already made I try to achieve this by havening no solid background or foreground and rather there are just layers and hidden things that 'move' when you view the images again or from a different angle.

 

My influences for this module in essence is everything, in so far as what I have seen, done and experienced in my life.  Artistically the surrealist movement and in particular Dali has been a huge inspiration to me.  Also video gaming has played a massive role in my life in all aspects including artistically and in a smaller way the same can be said for comics. I am also influenced by literature especially slightly surreal authors such as C.S. Lewis and Edgar Allen Poe.  I also like nonsense poetry since I am very much an escapist. I also think that children's or a child like style art is also very relevant to this project because children think a lot freer and faster than adults and also have a very different view point. I would like to explore what children think about when they create art or how it feels to create art in a childish way, this also relates to memories and psychology but it would be interesting to research if a 'childish' Dreamscape would be very different and how much 'Unrealestate' children accumulate.
   

The subject matter is at present quite personal to me, and I would the work to continue to evolve and steer itself, branching into any mediums I feel are relevant but I do intend for the end result to be image-based. So far the process has been very organic and it flows when I am making computer based images but it is so absorbing I will not stop until the image is (at least to me) finished or perfect.

MEDI 323: Individual Practise: Elemental Dreamscape Set Version 1

These are my newest Dreamscapes and also the only ones I have done in an actuall set. They are of course elementaly inspired and I have used what I feel about the elemts to influence them. Intrestingly when thinking on what actually shaped my ideas of the elements I came up with two basic things being my Pagan beliefs and notions of elements and also the Legend of Zelda. These two things may not seem to work at all together but it makes perfect sence in my head. I can't exactly remember when my Zelda obssesion started but I know that after playing the N64 title of 'Ocarina of Time' I became hooked. I have litterally grown up with these games. Needless to say they have influenced me hugely. One of the most notable moments for me was learning the creation story of the land called Hyrule where the games most often take place.

Now that I am an adult I can obviously see that the land of Hyrule has similarities to my own ideas, this being the notion of more than one God and especially the notion of Goddesses since the idea of monotheism has never appealed to me even as a child.Over time and the games progression I have come to strongly associate the three Goddesses with the elements of Earth, Fire and Water, also the different zones and quests and battles are normally based around this elements as the core. All of this has lead to a strong association of these three elements with Zelda in my head.

Actually making these is a really enjoyable process. I have layered the images in a very specific way to create the effect I want, I go with what feels right, and what looks right according to the image I have in my head. It`s a very personal process that is not easy to articulate. It`s organic proccess and I will not stop until I have got the image exactly how I want it.

The images as a set rely on the use of symbols and symbolisum to tie them together as a set with a common theme being fairys. Also the key feature that makes them work coheasivly as a set are the 'pearls' or symbols of the three Goddesses.

As for the individual images they do differ quite a bit. The earth image most notably is the only dreamscape to have a solid background image in so far as the image on the lowest layer isnt opaque at all. Having said that I never actually want a clear background to be visible in the images, in the earth picture alone there are leaves, trees, parts of a forest and parched earth to add depth of feild and draw you in. The idea is that you keep finding things when you take anouther look or stare longer or change the angle at which your looking at the image so this negates the idea of foreground and background as and in fact space as being solid or fixed in some way. The images should flow and move as you look into it should feel almost as if they are a life unto themselves. 'Dreamscapes' are meant echo my thoughts, feelings, memories and dreams, the things that make me who i am they have to become `the space of the imaginary` or 'pictures of the unreal'.

Such as the earth image is solid the water and fire are lot less solid. Water in its very nature is clear so I wanted the layers to reflect this yet also keep the vidid blue and greens that I think of when I see water. The water and fire are a lot less 'overgrown' than the earth with the fire image probably being the most sparce in terms of 'life' with the only things really populating fire being mythical beasts such as dragons and the like. The water image however is subtly teeming with life as I would say water is the main life blood of the planet likewise with the earth image since I accociate earth with growth and trees. In the earth picture a notable feature is that I wanted lots of faces to reflect my belief in the 'Green Man' faces in the leaves and children of the woods.

I am very pleased with this set! I think they turned out very well!

MEDI 323: Individual Practise: Autumn Dreamscape...

Ok so I really tried to push the idea of unrealestate in this picture to the limit. Some of the images used are infact my own photographs and the main leaf pattern is the scanned image of some leaves from a really old workbook of mine. Its not so much that I am not happy with this image but I do think it has to many ideas in it and although they do work I don't feel it is as cohesive as the other dreamscapes.

I wanted this to reflect EVERYTHING that I assosiate or remember or feel when I think about autumn. Although it hits the mark I think that everything together maybe overloads it somehow. Since there is my online gaming self worked through the image and also my pagan assotiations I am thinking that I need to find better balance between these elements that make up my thoughts and feelings to work the images a little better.

MEDI 323: Individual Practise: I had a Dream about Orca...

No really. I had this crazy dream about Orca. The basics of this dream was that I was swimming with Orca, in a kind of semi ruined underwater city, I say semi ruined because bits of it were and bits of it were like New York city at night... all high tech and glowing like something from Tron. So it was kind of like a futeristic Ecco game with Orca's instead of dolphins although I am sure there were some dolphin in the background and I verry much remember a crab on the ocean floor. It was a sort of underwater atlantis but the topside of the city was full of skyscrapers. I remember it being very pretty.

So you may be wondering why on earth I have written down a dream. Well it inspired me. How could I photograph the dream and keep a memory of it? I can't so I thought I would do the next best thing and make a Dreamscape. Obviously it will never be exactly what I saw in my dream but it pretty much sums it up.

None of the stock used is mine owing to the rather obscure nature of my dream. However the stock photos are only what I could find using google search.

I am increadibly pleased with this Dreamscape since it sums up an experiance that I would have otherwise very quickly been forgotten. Also visually I think it is very pleasing!

MEDI 323: Individual Practise: Unreal Estate Dreamscapes Test Image

I have included in the image things that make me think of both winter and the holiday season in general. Some additional images are actually mine from stock however most of the additions are images either from web based communities or games I personally play (and thus feel I have some degree of ownership over) or things from games or films that equally are not technically 'real'.

I have used all the same method more or less (with the new addition of the luiquify tool to make the edges of things more dream like) keeping it still a fairly simple and organic process.

Honestly I am not sure weather or not I am happy with the image as art but it definately does paint how I personally see winter and the holidays so I am happy it serves its function for me.

Also even though the original image had an entierly different purpose (being to illustrate memory in terms of place and season) I do feel that it was still valid to use it as an original image because the original memories conveyed are still an important part of my memories of the holiday season. 

MEDI 323: Individual Practise: Unreal Estate Dreamscapes...

Basiclly my idea's have evolved out of my secound year project the Dreamscapes. I thought the project had more scope and very much enjoyed it.

To take it to the next level I want to combine the idea of the pictures painted by our thoughts, memories and dreams and add to this the notion I have of Unrealestate. Basically what this is is my idea that although something may not be phiscally real (My World of Warcraft charicter for example) we still feel we 'own' them and they can become integral parts of our lives and our personality. In essence these collections of Simulacra (things that are not in anyway tangeble) can have a huge impact on who we are as a person in the real world.

I thought these two ideas (the notions of both a Dreamscape and Unrealestate) are more and more interlinked today than ever before. I suppose a part of this process came about when I mentally stumbled on a shocking revilation about myself, I have been part of a specific online commmunity since the age of thirteen. I know in this day and age that would mostly eveoke a 'so what' kind of responce but that is entirely my point! I have effectivly 'grown up' online in a community. It has shaped who I am as person. Something compeletly untangeable, something almost not real. However to people of my generation and even more so the subsequent generations this stark fact is overlooked as part of everyday life, this would have been totally unheard of a few generations prior to mine, before the world wide web took its place as central to our daily lives.

Putting the argument of weather this a good thing or a bad thing completely aside (since it is just the way it is and that is really all there is to it) I wanted to show in images what life in the real world is like when you mix in the unreal. In my opinion it paints a more complete map of my thoughts, feelings, memories and dreams.

MEDI 259: Experiment: Final Images - Dreamscapes

MEDI 323 Individual: Literary Influences

Edgar Allen Poe:
Though it may seem a little odd one of my biggest influences as a teenager in a literary sence was indeed Edgar Allen Poe. The bizzare stories thrilled me. I was never really one to feel fear but more a chilling sensation of awe. One of my favorite poems to this day is still 'The Raven' I feel it is one of the best poems ever and enjoy a few of the adaptations of it.

Tell-Tale Heart Animation:
I like this animation of the Tell-Tale Heart as I feel that it captures the phantasmagoria of Poe's works. My copy of the complete collection is a very well loved and battered book.

Lewis Carroll:
Anouther huge influence to me was 'Alice in Wonderland' The books by Lewis Carroll, the adaptations, the Disney movie and even the new one directed by Tim Burton (offical site here)
Both the 'Looking Glass' and the 'Adventures in Wonderland' and everything relating to them have inspired me. All the works Charles Lutwidge Dodgson published under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll are very important to me.

The Disney film:
I choose the Cheshire Cat scene for a few reasons, he is my favorite character, the scene includes one of Carroll's poems and also it is one of the scenes refering to madness.

The new Tim Burton Disney film:

The new film is much darker and has been dubed somewhat of a 'gothic' version owing to Tim Burtons dark and spooky fixations. I was at first aprehensive of the pairing but I LOVED this version.

Also something 'Alice' related I loved was a videogame I only got to play a few times. American McGee's Alice. It is a very warped and twisted version of the original wonderland and was extreamly dark. I think that the Tim Burton movie drew upon this in some ways as well as combining both books well.