Blog Assignment 10-Respond Advertising &Culture Jamming

Culture jamming is a subverting phenomenon which can be seen in forms like TV programme, product images, advertising and so on. Culture jammers are simply aimed at exposing questionable political issues behind commercial culture or emphatically illustrate the dark side of an object which can not be seen from surface or is hided. Commercial ad is really popular at the moment, many jamming artists jam culture by re-figure original ads.
"Something not far from the surface of the public psyche is delighted to see the icons of corporate power subverted and mocked," Naomi Klein writes, a New York journalist . Take a McDonald's ad for example, this is a video called McDonald's Culture Jam Montage from YouTube. In this video, at the beginning, we can see some scene about ronald McDonald playing with kids and several colorful burgers and chips images keep moving. Approximately at 0:28, the happy atmosphere changed, followed by a illustration about obesity trends among U.S. adults. After that, some obese people come out and followed by an visual animation which showing people how a little chicken by killed and cooked. At the end of this video, there are some short strips displayed. It's about the results by over eating McDonald's. Especially at the end, a close-up of a sick man's gut which is gathering up by a doctor is really make viewers feel disgusting, make McDonald's disgusting. In normal times, McDonald's consumers don't realize those dark fact. On the contrary, what they can see normally are some yummy hamburger images and the new McDonald's foods ads. I believe some one won't eat burgers in a while after they saw the video.
In my opinion, the main function of this video is not letting people stop eating McDonald's but expose extreme truth. A good jam, in other words, is an "X-ray of the subconscious of a campaign, uncovering not an opposite meaning but the deeper truth hiding beneath the layers of advertising euphemisms." In the movie Super Size Me, the main character Morgan Spur lock consumed nothing but food from McDonald's, an experiment in bad living that frames a jaunty critique of junk food. This movie is an entertaining statement of the obvious, but it let viewers thinking about a question- Is the food enjoyment more important than health? Through culture jamming, people can understand more things which can not be seen from surface. It's also a good tool of exposing social problems.

Blog Assignment 9-Respond Site And Surface

Site-specific art is a kind of art medium which use to create artwork in a certain place. Christo and Jeanne-Claude were a married couple who created outdoor site-specific art and environmental artworks. One of their most influential artworks they created is the Wrapped Reichstag in Berlin. The Reichstag was the former German parliment building and is located right next to the Berlin wall. Christo and Jeanne-Claude designed it could be transformed to something special. By making this masterpiece, more than 100,000 m2 of fireproof polypropylene fabric were used, covered by an aluminum layer, and 15km of rope were needed. When viewers look at the wrapped building, particularly at night, there were yellow lights around the building, the dark side color is deep blue and the color between the bright side and dark side is purple. It looks like a white castle comes from fairy tales or dream. People who viewing this will just enjoy this beauty thing instead of talking about Reichstag's negative symbolism.

Lot's of significant environmental artworks all over the world, just like wrapped Reichstag or surrounded islands Christo and Jeanne created have the function of making a big impact. Because they have large scale and millions of people can view at the same time. However, huge artworks are not the only medium to make big impact, little scale can also astonishing people. Like surface artworks, many artists create beauty through hand drawing, copy or print. They probably not large like outdoor artworks, they may small. Such as Andy Warhol's Artworks.

Andy Warhol was an American artist who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. In 1962, Andy Warhol's first one-man art gallery exhibition displayed his artworks 100 Soup Cans, 100Coke Bottles and 100 Dollar Bills which made him famous. He always using those mass media images like coke bottles as his basic elements repeatedly setting on his artworks. He intentionally remove the emotive color. In fact, viewers can find a specific dull, repetition in his works. He tried to describe a blank, alienated feeling.

Different art methods can give viewers different impact and enjoyment. If you like use Large scale to deliver nature, universe, then you can also use surface or small scale to talk about something inside people's heart.

Blog Assignment8-Characters Analysis In Original Star Wars

Star Wars are a series of science fiction movies conceived and directed by George Lucas. Up to now, George Lucas has directed six films and the final one is released on May, 2005 called Revenge of the Sith. The first one is originally released on May 5, 1977, called A New Hope, in this one, there are two characters which give me great impression and let me focus on. The first is the small droid R2-D2, it is one of the four main protagonists to appear in all six Star Wars films. If you don't know this droid before and you see it from a long distance, you may think that is a dustbin in error. I consider this would be one of the reasons why R2-D2 is special from other robots in other science fiction movies. In A New Hope, The with small droid Leia's plans and C-3PO escapes to the surface of the desert planet Tatooine where is the place Luke Skywalker living in. In many plots, R2-D2 is always play a key role. When Luke, princess Leia and Rebel Alliance are fall into the big dustbin and almost be crashed. In this urgent moment, it's R2-D2 who saves all these three most important figures. And with the cute appearance, R2-D2 become one of my favourite characters in Star Wars. R2-D2 also be designed and manufactured in different fields. Like R2-D2 dustbin, toy, souvenir, etc.... it seems like R2-D2 has become the symbol of the Star Wars series.

Another character I want to talk about is droid C-3PO, this gold surface droid looks more humanization cause it can speak and keep breaking jests. In the movie, C-3PO bring lots of happiness, without this character, the movie may possibly looks more boring. In fact, a large number of movies use this kind of character to make film plots more humorous. For example, in Transformers 2, we can also find some characters like C-3PO, except Leo, we can also see a red and a green Chevrolet autobots. These two brothers have the function of producing a lively and happy atmosphere in the film. When Prime transfer his body for fight, audience will scream"awesome". The red and green small autobots are not that strong, but their attitude are always optimistic, they are not important, but they are absolutely necessary elements in films.