FMP Bar-code Experimentations

Fig. 1 Bar code Collection (author's own)

Fig. 2 Bar code Ink (author's own)

Fig. 3 Bar code Acetate (author's own)

Fig. 4 Bar code Tracing Paper (author's own)

Fig. 5 Bar code Masking Tape (author's own)

I decided to go with the 'spend money, scan lines' concept, so I started to collect bar codes from around the college. I then photocopied them and printed it on acetate creating a blurred affect (Figure 3) layering it with text and more colour. I created a whole double page of bar codes (Figure 1) because the layering and combination of colours and along with the contrasting direction of lines create a beautiful visual effect. 

I used ink, pen, pencil, tracing paper, acetate, masking tape, etc. different ways to imitate bar codes and lines. I personally like Figure 2 and 5 because they are so simple, and usually the work you tend to do quickly tends to be more effective because the process is just based on doing rather than thinking, and sometimes that is all that's needed. More practical, less theory. 

FMP Some Experimentation

Fig. 1 Read Between The Lines (author's own)

Fig. 2 Beauty Outlined Wired (author's own)

A few experimentations on the 'line' topic. Playing with the meaning of words, I wrote 'Read between the lines' on lined paper, where you have to literally read between the lines. I also took the spiral wire from a notebook and shaped it into the words, 'Beauty outlines' as the style of writing looks like a joint handwriting style. Taking the words and making them physical. 

FMP Beauty In Lines...

Fig. 1 Beauty In Lines (author's own)

The turning point of my project. Lines! Lines are the way forward, the word fits in so many times in so many ways through so many meanings. This is what I found:

• The outline of beauty
• A guideline for beauty
• Get rid of all lines
• Following lines
• All over underground lines
• Spend money, scan lines
• Blurred lines

Here are the explanations behind each sentence:

• 'The outline of beauty' is about the way the media shows us what beauty is meant to look like, the actual image of "perfection", what beauty is supposed to be.
• 'A guideline for beauty' is again about the media's effect and how it gives us a guideline on how to become the impossible perfection, promotes products and methods on how to get there.
•  We go through the struggles to 'get rid of all lines', these lines are wrinkles! Because the nature of growing old is seen as wrong. Women in magazines don't have even have one line on their faces, and this isn't even because they actually do not have any wrinkles or blemishes, it is because they have been touched up by software, because even the "most beautiful" woman isn't beautiful enough. 
• We are 'following lines' because we follow queues of people in shops, lines of people in society. We have become sheep. What is the aim, to look the same?
• Advertisements are 'all over underground lines', we are unable to avoid them, they are everywhere we go, the underground is just one example of where they are seen.
• We 'spend money, scan lines', these lines are bar codes.
• Last but not least- these lines are 'blurred', we do all of this, but we don't think it through much, we say we know why we buy what we buy, but we do not realise insecurities cause by what we see around us could play a big part in what we buy and do! Yes, the lines are blurred indeed.  

FMP The Outline of Beauty? II

Fig. 1 Double Outline (author's own)

Fig. 2 Makeup Outline (author's own)

Fig. 3 Outlines Overlapped (author's own)

Sticking to the outline idea, I experimented with overlaying them, flipping them and even attempted colouring one in with makeup, (Figure 2). I started to introduce some text into my work, using phrases I created, 'DISTORTION OF REALITY', 'WHAT IS BEAUTY?', 'THE BIRTH OF INSECURITY', 'IS PERFECTION BEAUTY?'.

Throwing around statements and questions that will make the person reading them think, and I think I have decided to make this my aim, getting the viewer to think deeply. 

FMP The Outline of Beauty? I

Fig. 1 Beauty Outlined (author's own)

I have now started to experiment with ideas, the topic I am working on is very broad, so I had to narrow it down. I had to main topics within my subjects that I was working around;

1. The sexualisation of women within the media
2. The idea of beauty within the media

I have decided to go with the second topic. I want to look at how women are made to look impossibly beautiful, and the lengths we go to just to try and reach this impossibility.

I started off with tracing images of women in magazines in the most simplest form (as seen in Figure 1) and while doing this I used the phrase "The Outline of beauty", I started to question whether this was the outline of beauty, because beauty is measured by physical aspects rather than what's within.

I created two layers on top of the images, one layer has sections such as the hair, eyes etc. blocked in with one colour, whilst the top layer is just a simple outline of the original image. This is just the start of my experimentation, let's see where it's going to take me.

FMP Questionnaire + Results

I have conducted a questionnaire and given them out to 60 people, 34 females and 26 males. The questionnaires were just slightly altered to fit both genders. I wanted to find out people's views on the topic of beauty and the media, I wanted to see how affected people felt by what they were exposed to on their day to day lives.

FEMALES:

Question: 'Would you say, the way women are portrayed within the media has an effect on the way you view yourself?'

YES- 67.6%
NO- 32.4%

Some of the reasons given for why the media has an effect:

• "Women are stereotyped to look a certain way, be a certain size etc. through advertisement. I want to be an ideal size."
• "The media lowers confidence sometimes, you tend to measure your attractiveness against the women there."
• "I constantly look for parts of my body or face or hair or whatever which aren't perfect like the airbrushed models+celebs in the media."
• "The media surrounds us of women looking flawless. Men then have this idea of women and expect this of us!"
• "Sometimes I compare my body weight."
• "If adverts are good, you don't think they're affecting you."
• "I feel unfashionable, my make up isn't good enough- men wont like me. I'm never happy in myself."

Question: 'Do you wear make up?'

YES- 85.3%

NO- 14.7%

Some of the reasons given for wearing make up:

• "I am less self conscious with make up."
• "I look unwell without make up."
• "Competition."
• "To hide my hideous skin."
• "I prefer the way I look with make up."
• "Habit."
• "Confidence."
• "It's fun and I feel prettier."
• "To feel more feminine."
• "To express myself."

Question: 'Would you ever consider plastic surgery?'

YES- 33%

NO- 67%

MALES:

Question: 'Would you say, the way women are portrayed within the media effect the way you view women?'

YES- 61.5%

NO- 38.5%

Some of the reasons given for why the media has an effect:

• "Stereotypes."
• "The media idealises "perfect woman" in the media"
• "Made to think the way women in the media are viewed is acceptable."

Question: 'Would you ever consider plastic surgery?'

YES- 4%

NO- 96% 

Through this questionnaire I have found that the media, especially advertising plays a big part on how the younger generation is made to feel about themselves and about each other. They are aware, it is not just unconsciously happening, we all register what we see up on billboards and in magazines and purposely strive to be it, eliminating true happiness from our lives as we will never feel good enough by sticking by the idea of just being ourselves.  

FMP Collaboration Week: Final Outcome

We finally brought together our idea and created a film out of it. Unfortunately, due to time limitations and technical difficulties, our outcome did not turn out to be perfect, but it is the ideas behind it that count so I am pretty pleased with what we have achieved.
This project has helped me develop my team working skills immensely, listening out to what other group members have to suggest, and taking that on board, considering everyone's ideas and not seeing any idea to be absurd, as no idea could be deemed too crazy and/or impossible.
There are some things that we discussed that we would of liked to do more differently as a group, one of the things was the length of the film, it was a little bit too long therefore could cause the viewer to lose concentration. Another thing that we would change is the lighting, so the viewer can make a clearer connection between the female voices and the bottles themselves. Thirdly, we would have altered the text, instead of having a line for each sentence, we had the lyrics written in a two line form, making it more difficult to read.
We eventually managed to make the topic fit all members of the group's personal projects, the sports channel branding project also took the collaboration project as an inspiration for his channel to be appealing to all genders, not just men, as most sport related brands and products tend to be.
This short project has made me eager to question reasons why some people (not only women) do what they do, for example, dress up when going out, wear makeup, etc. I may create a questionnaire on this particular topic and analyse my results.
Working with lens based media students pushed me out of the whole graphics mentality and forced me to think even more openly than before. I don't usually play around with cameras and think of film ideas, this was a great opportunity to do so.

Here is a link to our short film:  http://youtu.be/mataVKArP18

FMP Collaboration Week: Creating

Fig. 1 Oppression Box I (author's own)

Fig. 2 Oppression Box II (author's own)

Fig. 3 Oppression Box III (author's own)

Fig. 4 Oppression Box IV (author's own)

We started to put the items together. I wrapped a box with newspaper and made specific words stand out, such as, 'darkness', 'sense', 'feel it', 'pain', 'strike', 'price', 'guilty', 'threat', etc. This was the initial idea for the final piece, but then remembering that one group member's topic is music, we decided to look up rap lyrics which are quite misogynistic, but not the type that refer to women as sexual objects, but the type that in someway tell women to "shut up and sit down", lyrics that create a hierarchy.

The plan is to wrap the box up with plain white paper and project these harsh lyrics on to it. The mouth of the bottles are taped with red strips of paper in order to symbolise mouths, the flaps of the box are spray painted red for the same reason. All the red sections are representations of female lips.

Here are a few examples of some of the rap lyrics we have selected for projection:

• "Slut, you think I won't choke no whore, 'til the vocal cords don't work in her throat no more."
• "Beat your bitch in her mouth just for talkin' shit"
• "Bitch I'ma kill you, you ain't got the balls to beef!"
• "Take them mothafuckin' panties off, you ain't no nun."

We have decided to create a short film, we created a melody and then 4 other melodies to harmonise with the original one. The idea is to create a sound per bottle. We recorded our voices (female voices only), when each bottle is recorded being placed into the box (by a female hand), a voice will enter, and this will continue happening for each bottle. The bottles symbolise the women and each voice is the representation of her sound. After a while, a male hand (to illustrate the behaviour some men show to women in society) will come in and stuff a sock into the bottles one by one. As he does that, each voice will fade away until you hit silence, and this is when the rap lyrics would be projected onto the box. The voices will fade to show that the male is silencing the females. This whole film is based around physical symbolism, and I really enjoy coming up with ideas on how to make it work.

 It has become a bit of a feminist project which works perfectly for my topic. The idea of using random items rather than direct messages seems like a rather interesting way to go about exploring a topic. I may adapt this approach within my personal project and see where it takes me. Maybe not with items but a play on words. words that do not relate directly to my subject matter.

FMP Collaboration Week: Combining Ideas

We were put into small groups with lens based media students for a collaboration project for the week. We were each asked to bring in the following items:

• A sock
• A torch
• String
• 2 different buttons
• A sponge
• Blutack
• Rubber bands
• A book
• Paper clips
• A map
• Masking tape
• A ball
• A plastic bottle
• A box

We started to play around with the materials whilst discussing our separate projects with each other, my project is on women in advertising, one group member's project is on oppression. whilst another's is on dreams, the other's is on music, and the other on sports channel branding.

While we were playing with the items, we found that we started to stuff the bottles with the socks we have brought, this .immediately lead to the expression, "put a sock in it". We were quite amused by this, we then thought of the expression, "bottle it up", then after placing the bottle in a box, we said "boxed in" All of these are expressions that we physically symbolised through using items.

So we managed to make this project suit 3 of our separate projects, but how are we going to make it fit in with the other members' projects?