Die Sehnsucht/Missing my Flash...And some mistakes.

I need to explain some delays in the production of the final project. And present some developments of the idea. And identify and analyse some of the production problems and mistakes.

Due to sickness I did not manage to finish even the main chunk of the practical side of the project. I am away without Photoshop etc until 04 January 2009 and I miss my work so much:) I wish I could do some images but as I am staying over Christmas vacation I am bereft of all this nice software... I did some work on the theoretical side though- finish my adventure with Simone de Beauvoire and her book titled The Other Sex (that was really chunky). I managed to refine some texts for the section on FGM (circumcision) I decided to use shocking bits from Waris Dirie's book where she described how she was circumcised at the age of about 5 years old... My friend had a look on these excerpts and was absolutely outraged and smashed! I have some links to the organisations which fight against FGM and they provide some statistical data, I will provide these links in my website too, as hidden links maybe? But as my website is more about expression and feeling, I will try to play with emotion rather than with ratio.

Just one thing worth mentioning relating to extending my visual library. As I am spending Christmas in Wroclaw (Breslau, quite big city, quite "close" to Berlin, not in Germany though:) I met my friend Ewa, whose photographies I am using in creating images for my project. Ewa took me for an exhibition in the Wro Art Centre For New Media for a retrospective of NAM JUNE PAIK. I was so happy to finally see his works as I recently read a bit of Fredric Jameson's writings and he relates to Paik quite often... I don't think I will use links to Nam June Paik in this project, as I am already overloaded with the ideas and inspirations... However, I felt as if I were a child of luck as the exhibition was for free:))

One more note regarding AUDIO. I have some nice new music for the project. I got a completely new album by MASSKOTKI as an Xmas present and I found some interesting bits I will convert into mp3 and use in the Flash composition in my website. I got also a new album by MARIA PESZEK, a young Polish actress who is famous for her outstanding style and lyrics which deconstruct playfully the ideas of femininity, sexuality and gender identity. Although she sings mainly in Polish, I want to use bits of her songs for their ambience of sensuality and pleasure.

I finished reading David Gauntlett, Susan Faludi and Judith Butler (her Gender Trouble was a nightmarishly difficult book to read://) I will rovide full Harvard references to their books when back to London- so in less than a week from now:) And I am just about to read some linguistic papers on sexism, sexist language and what can be done to reform it. I am so much into these theories and ideas that I am really enjoying myself collecting all the materials and texts, but I can now see that my time management is very poor. I get easily distracted by some interestingly- looking stuff such as promising titled articles in the academic books. And I get inspired far too easily... Too many things have been catching my attention in relation to the research. I can now realise how difficult it is to narrow topic down and stick with the original idea in the situation of excessive amounts of materials to be used in the project. I find such time-information-research management really challenging! And it took me too much time to find proper idea for manipulating the images and too be honest I took too much time to produce a series of images I actually cannot use in my project. In the student crit session I presented images in the portrait orientation whereas I know now that I need images in the landscape one (it's better for websites as it doesn't require scrolling down as much as portrait orientation)
I try to cheer myself up and think that I can use them for my poster I only started designing before Christmas. (This still needs to be finished off:/)

Well, it sounds there is still much to be done. None the less, I hope I am able to catch up with everything and submit my website on time.

confusion c'd

Just a quick note on what I am doing now. I finished working on the images for my website. However, as they're all vertical I think I will have to produce another series of (this time:) horizontal pictures. 

I am still working on how to structure my website. Here you can see some of my doodles and drafts... but I still don't know how this is going to end up....

c'd

 This is my card; it is not really visible on the bright background, but I am sure it will look nice once it is printed out. I designed a few versions of my card, but finally decided to stick to this one. 

I am almost done with producing images of the feminine forest for the main body of my website. I am planning to start working with Flash this week and produce small interactive pieces that will be placed on the pages of my site. At first I thought that I would produce just one chunky SWF file which I could embed in Dreamweaver. However, due to discussing it with one of the MA Digital Media mentors I decided that I will produce a few pieces as this will give me more flexibility.  

The way I see the general structure is that on each page there will be an interactive SWF file. By clicking on an image of a woman (I will place invisible buttons in Flash) my audience will be able to open a scroll text window and read a text on the issue of the page. Then by clicking on other buttons audiences will be able to continue their walk in the forest and will be taken to other pages/issues. I do not know whether it is possible to produce invisible buttons in Dreamweaver that would be links to other pages? Or maybe I could add buttons that would say go left/go right/go straight and via these my pages would be linked? I feel I have to try this in practice to assess how useful it is:)

I still need some advice how to make a scroll text in Flash.. I found some tutorials online but didn't manage to follow them successfully... Hope my tutor will help me:)

I am still considering the theoretical content of the website. The more I read the more I feel inspired, that's the problem:) And I get inspired all the time, the most often completely by accident, for example whilst listening to the radio or shopping:) I really feel engaged in this project and it has a lot of meaning to me as it is a sort of personal reflection and account as well.. But I don't want to dwell on that too much:) Anyway,  I want to cover positive and negative aspects of femininity:

POSITIVE

beauty and strength 

independence

power of creation/creativity (including cult of Ioni- I will explain it later)

NEGATIVE

sexual violence

female genitals mutilation

abusive language

terrorism against reproductive freedom of women

Then, I want to get to some final reflections such as Judith Butler's suggestion to go beyond the male/female binary and some tips towards social and linguistic revolution to make the society more equal. In my opinion patriarchy is bad both for women and men and we should consider what can be done to change the status quo. My focus on femininity is caused by the fact that I am female but personally I deem patriarchy to be harmful both to women and men. (I agree with Susan Faludi that patriarchy is also oppressive for guys) So in the conclusion of my website I want to stress that we have to re-think the inter-gender relations and in doing so we should first of all RESPECT EACH OTHER. 

Ok, so this is brief description of the content for now. By the way, I feel like I am constantly getting more and more materials and I am getting overwhelmed by the amount... But I know I will have to narrow it down to keep focused. 

Tomorrow we are having a group critical session and I hope to get some invaluable feedback... 

...

Well, I didn't manage to attend the MA session today, but I will definitely go next week. I need some feedback regarding Flash, as I will probably have to use some more intermediate action scripts than I am able to do myself.

Regarding the images in Photoshop- I spent few hours today trying to find my way through the images and I think I will slightly change my idea. I want to join images of females with pictures of forest in order to produce compositions as the one on the right. My friend Ewa (whose photographs can be seen on http://www.ewapater.ovh.org/) permitted me to use parts of her work and my tutor said it is OK to do it. I want to make a reference and devote one page to introduce Ewa to the audience of my website. I will also present the authors of music (band called MASSKOTKI).

I will scan the storyboard and upload it until the end of this week. I really hope I manage to get down to the exact production next week.

Card- I will put the finishing touch on Saturday when (hopefully) I will be able to use the lab.

that's it for now.

carrot

Somewhat Overwhelmed

I am stuck with my project:(

I have been working on the images for my forest but I didn't manage to achieve the effect I have looked for (dark and murky forest, ambience of mystery) I spent a lot of time on Monday on manipulating images but I feel it was waste of time.

And we are supposed to present work in progress whilst next workshops... I feel somewhat overwhelmed... Thus I am going today to the mentor session run by the MA students; I hope to get inspired.

A short note on IDENTITY and business card

It is almost November and I haven't written anything about my identity as a producer.

For the needs of this project I am using an identity of CARROT CREATIONS! The reason for that is that this name is quite outstanding and unusual. I hope it becomes easily recognisable. Besides, carrot is such a lovely vegetable and can be used to prepare many nice foods such as carrot cake! Carrot juice! Carrot salad! Yummy!

OK, this IS SUPPOSED to sound silly:) A punk mode of giving random and funny names (for example think of Dublin-based band The Radiators from Space or American group called Tutu and The Pirates) is very close to my punk-ish heart.

I hope this original name makes people retain my ideas in their memory. Communicating the message is my main aim though:) I plan to create my card tomorrow whilst at workshops and use Adobe Illustrator. I think of matching orange and black colours, this will give nice contrast. According to Robin Williamson (2004)* there is nothing better for design than deliberate and strong contrasts. I think of creating a black-background card with carrot-shaped logo in orange colour. But the rest will be decided while creating. There is nothing better than spontaneity!:)
I want to create a card which will be as unusual as name of my 'brand', preferably not reminding the business card at all:)

Spontaneity is the answer!






*Williamson, R. (2004) The Non-Designer’s Design Book. Design and Typographic Principles For The Visual Novice. 2nd edition. Berkeley: Peachpit Press.

Slow but progress. Plus bits of chaos.

I am working on the forest images that will constitute background for my project. I am seeking for the best ideas- I have been searching for proper tutorials online and took out some books on Adobe Photoshop in hope of getting an inspiration. The effect I am interested in is forest of mystery and darkness- so not exactly what you can see in the left. This is my today's record of attempts and I am keeping it only because I find it aesthetically pleasing.

I keep reading for the theoretical part of my project. I picked Susan Faludi's Stiffed. The Betrayal Of Modern Men. I only read a few pages but found some inspiration towards my argument.

Another inspiration- this Saturday my friends and me wanted to attend the Reclaim The Night March in Central London. (Please have a look online http://www.reclaimthenight.org/) Unfortunately, I got ill and had to stay in bed. That's such a pity though. As a part of my "Forest of Femininity" will relate to the violence and rape, I deem the Reclaim The Night relevant to the issues I am concerned with in this project. As we can read on the website of The Reclaim The Night "An ICM poll commissioned by Amnesty International in 2005 found that over one third of the British public surveyed believed that women were sometimes wholly or partly to blame if they were raped, for example if they had been drinking, if they flirted or dressed outrageously(...) Today we march, as so many women have done before us to say that we are NEVER to blame for rape and male violence. Those men who choose to commit these crimes are to blame. We march today to demand our right to live without the fear or reality of rape."

This quote reminds me an article by Kate Clark* I used last year when I was doing an analysis of a sexist discourse of British tabloids. In this very interesting piece of writing Clark states that tabloids used to construct their stories on sexual violence in 2 distinct way. In the first, an aggressive man attacks an innocent woman and in such stories male is presented as a fiend and his victim as virtuous. In the second pattern of stories a man is constructed as normal and female is labelled as morally fallen. Clark argues that there is a rigid way of constructing the news stories- fiends attack sexually unavailable women such as wives or mothers, whereas the non-fiends attack sexually available women such as unmarried, sexually active girls. The recurrence of these patterns demonstrates clearly how the structure of the news reflects the patriarchal world view shared between the readers and editors of the newspaper. Clark's article shows how due to usage of certain language tools and methods meaning can be distorted and even responsibility for violence shifted from the aggressor to a victim. Language is a powerful tool indeed and can impact the way we think. The more we talk about something the more we make it real- that's my opinion. Using Michel Foucault's idea of discourse we reinforce some discourses simply by repeating them and talking about them. That's why I think is vital to clear up misunderstandings and talk about issues such as who is responsible for sexual violence. The data provided on the Reclaim The Night is striking- so many people are ready to blame a victim of a rape for 'provoking' the attacker. How ridiculous is that?! This is why I consider events such as the March yesterday very important. Maybe it's not going to change the entire situation immediately but it is something to kick off and raise people's awareness. It is a visible sign that society's way of thinking about rape has to alter.

FINITO for now. However, a completely new post is coming soon:)

*Clark, K. (1992) ‘The linguistics of blame: representations of women in The Sun’s reporting of crimes of sexual violence’, in M. Toolan (ed.) Language, Text and Context: Essays in Stylistics. London: Routledge.

Catching up continued

Right. 

I decided to submit my proposal here so you and me will be able to observe what my aims have been and in what ways my idea develops and grows into a fi

nal product. 

Ladies and gentlemen, here is the proposal!

 

I)              AIM

The aim of this project is to explore the issues of gender with special focus on femininity. A small to medium-sized website will be produced taking into account various theoretical approaches. The final product will make use of digital images and audio.

 

II)            INSPIRATIONS

The issues of gender and sex difference have been my interest for the last two years. I read and attempt to expand my knowledge on these issues on my own and I plan to 

deploy the various readings I have come across so far, for instance Judith Butler, Margaret Atwood, Eve Ensler and many more. Last summer I worked as a translator for a photographer who delivered a series of lectures on the female genital mutilation. This topic is extremely shocking and I feel it should be included in my project too. I am deeply considered that women are discriminated in many respects in the whole world and we have to think what we can do to change the status quo. It is important to underscore that I want to shun a pessimistic approach of the overwhelming oppression of the females. There are some voices which say that the subordinate position of the women in the West might be the result of that they implicitly consent to their lower status in the society (this might lead to the theories of hegemony by Antonio Gramsci). As a German psychologis

t and theorist Ute Erhardt states women lack assertiveness and use specific linguistic structures that make the society treat them as worse. Finally I want to mention my most recent inspiration. Having watched the collection of Madonna’s video c

lips made me think about the ambiguity of femininity. Women are not only victims but a lot of them are strong and dominative. I realise that the scope of my project is very wide, but I want to present my reflections and search for ways to empower women.

 

III)          QUESTIONS FOR THE RESEARCH

There are several aspects I am interested in. First of all, I will try to examine whether the females are really “the worse sex”. Assuming that we are living in the world where “the masculine” is

 a standard I will ask to find a females’ way through it. I will investigate what it is to be feminine considering both positive aspects (such as motherhood, creativity, independence) and negative (violence, 

prostitution, circumcision etc.) The issues of discrimination through language will be examined. Finally, agreeing with Michel Foucault that language is not only influenced by thought but also influences the way we think I will be investigating what can be done to change the discriminatory patterns of talk.

 

IV)          SHORT DESCRIPTION OF THE PRODUCT

            I will produce a middle-sized interactive website using software as following: Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Flash and Dreamweaver. The navigation will not be obvious; the structure will resemble the spider web. I want my audience to wander like in haze, discovering the narrative consisting of various elements. This will be like a journey in jungle or forest to underscore how complex and multi-dimensional is the issue of womanhood. As I want to keep the visual feeling simplistic, I will use mainly black and white, and limit other colours to minimum.

            The project will use digital audio. I have already selected some soundtracks from the             repertoire of the electro-punk band called MASS-KOTKI (It is a Polish feminist                      group, they also sing in English) Their rough music will fit with the metaphor of the                imagined jungle that I am going to use in my project.

 

I)              TARGET AUDIENCE AND SUITABILITY

My product will be aimed at people aged 16 and more who are interested in arts and society. Ideally those people would be frequent gallery-goers and familiar with some aspects of visual culture. The project is aimed at wide range of social groups; feminists, chauvinists, sexists or media students are all welcome.

The finished product will be uploaded online. Through use of interactivity and original ideas regarding the interface design I will attempt to keep attention of the audiences.

 

II)            TIME MANAGEMENT OVERVIEW

 

a) Pre-production

Until the end of week 7- Although a lot of research has already been do

ne, there are few theoretical aspects that will need to be expanded. First drafts. Taking pictures of the forest, most probably in the Richmond Park. Manipulating pictures in Photoshop.

Weeks 7-9- Developing visual formulas and further selection of the materials. Producing a business card.

 

b) Production

Week 10- The start of actual production. Creating of a poster.

Week 11- Presentation of work in progress to the group in order to get feedback. Further work with consideration of the group’s feedback.

 

c) Post-production

From Christmas vacation on- final polishing of the product. Testing on audiences plus eventual corrections. Evaluation and submission of the final product.

 

VII) BLOG ADDRESS

My blog address is Ewak0634996.blogspot.com

From the week 5 I am starting to keep regular notes on all issues relevant to the production. 

AFTERWORD

Looking back I can say that I have kept my time objectives so far. I have most of the visual material collected and I started working on the images of the forest. The picture on the right is a sample. I want to work out an ambience of a mystery. I am thinking of reducing  the amount of colour just to black and white and a bit of gray. I will put some more samples of my work on the forest pictures soon and I will be grateful for feedback. I am intending to use these forest pictures as a background. There will be a white text field spreading on the background when the audiences click a button. 

I have 2 ideas regarding the buttons:

I) A invisible button that will have to be found by the audience

II) A visible button created that would fit with the topic of the background picture, for example button in shape of a leaf or a bush. 

Probably I will use both types of buttons. I intend to create some mysteries and riddles for my audiences and such an invisible button they would click by accident on would add to a sense of being lost in the forest.

TO BE CONTINUED...

In order to catch up...theories, inspiration and photographs

Having submitted my proposal my project was stopped for a while (That's true and I feel quite bad about it...)

Anyway, I was reading The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler again and again (this is such a powerful text!) and decided to relate to it in my project. Then I visited the website of the V-day (www.vday.org) which is an international movement inspired and initiated by Ensler in order to stop violence against women. The first V-day event took place on 14th February 1998 in New York and when many famous women such as Winona Ryder, Glenn Close, Gloria Steinem, Whoopi Goldberg and many more joined and performed The Vagina Monologues. The event was such a success that money raised at that moment allowed to launch a movement. Since then the V-day has been organised at many schools and colleges around the United States and in Europe too. The students direct and perform The Vagina Monologues; thanks to organising the event they raise not only consciousness but also money to support the local groups which want to stop violence against women.

There is a vast amount of information on the V-day and how to organise it. They give clear tips how to take action. I feel I lack confidence to organise such an event at university on my own, maybe this idea could be passed on to the Student Union or maybe some drama students would like to direct it and perform? I am going to see their production titled Corpus Christi next Friday and I hope I will have chance to talk and spread my ideas. As I found on V-day website there is also a range of other texts that are suggested to perform at the V-day events and they also include the roles for males. This is definitely worth checking.

In the foreword to The Vagina Monologues Gloria Steinem lists the different forms of violence against the female body such as :
- rape
- anti-lesbian violence
- sexual harassment
- female genital mutilation
- terrorism against reproductive freedom
- psychical abuse of women
Although my project is supposed to depict the femininity I deeply feel these sad issues constitute the experiences of many (too many) women in the world. The V-day.org provides some useful statistics as well.

I am thinking of organising the content of my website around the various issues that relate to the theme of femininity. As my audience will move from page to another they will get to know these aspects, and these good (such as motherhood or strength) will intertwine with those bad (as listed above) I decided to take FOREST as a metaphor for this entanglement of ideas and issues. As I remember from the literature lessons in the seventeenth century it was common for the noble men of Poland to write a sort of diaries in which they put all the issues they deemed relevant; such books were known as SILVA RERUM what means ""forest of things". My project will be such a forest of things relating to the issues of femininity and gender.

Therefore I went to the forest in Addington Hills to take some pictures of trees and bushes. I will start to work on them tomorrow and will manipulate them using Adobe Photoshop. I plan to reduce colours to black and white and probably adjust threshold to gain an impression of an unreal ambience. Depending on the effects I might change the strategy. I want to use these pictures as background for each page and in a sense give a feel of walking in the forest. Each page will have two or three links to other pages and I want navigation to be far from obvious.

I am working on the flowchart now- it looks quite chaotic now... When I finish I will post it here. I want my website to be informed so I am also reading two more books:
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir and Media, Gender and Identity by David Gauntlett. As I stated earlier I do not want to produce a website which will be a one-sided expression of oppression of the females, this is not exactly the way I perceive the world. I agree with German psychologist and theorist Ute Erhardt that in the Western world this is women's failure that they allow to be constricted and treated as "the worse sex". Females lack confidence and assertiveness, she writes and observing other girls and myself I can confirm this is true. Thus, as my project aims to look for some positive solution to the inequality I will be thinking how to evoke changes at the 'micro-sphere'. Maybe my project will make some girls think about what they really want? Maybe someone will get inspired to organise the V-day? Maybe some people will start thinking about their attitudes towards gender and sexuality? I wish my project could get people think about what they probably take for granted and never question in the everyday life.

I already started to work on the sound- I want to use mainly fragments of songs by a Polish band called MASS-KOTKI. The name of their group is ambiguous as 'masskotki' might mean 'toys' or 'mascots' but it also relates to the word for 'pussycats' in Polish language. The group consists of two anarcho-feminists playing electro-punk. I like the roughness of their music and I think it will match especially the issues of violence and rape. I am looking for music for the positive aspects of femininity though.

There is one more thing I would like to mention. My friend gave me a permission to use some of her photographs for the needs of the projects. She is a photographer who recently started to exhibit her works in our city (Wroclaw, Poland) As she is also interested in the issues of gender and femininity the most of her photographs constitute those of women. I really like these pictures and I already picked few of them. I hope such incorporation of my friend's photographs is OK if I provide the references... I will talk to my tutor on Monday to clarify.

To be continued...

who I am and what I am going to do

Right.

Generally, I have two ideas for the independent digital media project.  I will describe the first one bit more detailed than the second as the other one is brand fresh and not developed yet though.

First one is connected with the issues of gender- in what ways feminity and masculinity are constructed and what it actually means to be a female/masculine. I am planning to draw on a wide range of writings of several authors such as Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler, Jung. I will also take into consideration literature and authors including Margaret Atwood and Waris Dirie. Being a girl I want to focus on feminity as I deeply believe that we are living in a "man's world" and so much space and time have been already devoted to the interests of the guys. But women's world is completely different though... Not worse or better, but different. I want to shun taking a radical-feminist-ish attitude and want to search for some affirmative answers... TBC