research video - global warming 101

This is a video from National Geographic, stating how humans have added too many greenhouse gases into the atmosphere which has caused global temperatures to rise, which has seen the hottest year on record being recorded in 1998, and that the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere is at it's highest in the last 420,000 years. It also says how wildlife will have to adapt to the changes of the Earth or face extinction.

Overall the video is very informative, but it doesn't have much of a viral aspect, which is key for this project.

review: an inconvenient truth

Today we watched the film 'An Inconvenient Truth', presented by Al Gore. The film is very factual, and uses statistics to enforce the severity of this situation. However, the film ends with Al Gore telling us how we can prevent this disaster, and how we already are, which makes this film both worrying and motivating.

Trailer:

Antti Laitinen - My Island

I have chosen to do my write-up on this piece from the Earth event. In the videos that accompanied the photos, "Laitinen builds his own island in the Baltic Sea by dragging two hundred sand bags into the water over a period of three months - using nothing but a spade, sand and sacks. Individually filling each of the bags with sand, the three simultaneous videos go on to show Laitinen painstakingly dragging each bag, one by one, into the sea, braving the harsh waves and conditions, until the island starts to appear over the water" [1]

The work was not originally intended to be concerning climate change, he says, “Climate change is not the main thing, but people have started to look at my work through this theme. I understand this well since climate change is currently a trendy topic”. “The will to build oneself an own independent micro-nation inhabited by a single citizen - I would consider themes such as these to be the starting point for my works, not climate change” [2]

Here are a few images of the work [3]:








Here is a video of the exhibit:


Find more videos like this on artreview.com


Sources:

[1] http://www.nettiehorn.com/It%27s%20My%20Island.htm
[2] http://www.finemb.org.uk/Public/default.aspx?contentid=181969&nodeid=35864&culture=en-GB
[3] http://www.nettiehorn.com/Exhibitions/It%27s%20My%20Island/It%27s%20My%20Island_Installation.htm

Earth - Royal Academy of Arts II

Here are a few of my favourite pieces from each section of the exhibition:

Amazonian Field - Introduction

This work, by Anthony Gormley, contained hundreds of clay figures covering the floor of a room. This piece could denote the crowding of the Earth, all the figures were hand-made and were made from the material of the Earth - clay. Every figure just has one feature that make them identifiable as 'human' - eyes. Every figure is looking up at the viewer, making it look like they are appealing for help from the viewer.



Paper Bags - Perceived Reality

In this piece, by Chris Jordan, he layed out 1.14 million brown paper bags, the number of bags used in American supermarkets every hour. Of this display, Jordan said ‘my underlying desire is to affirm and sanctify the crucial role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming’.



Endless Series - Artist as Explorer and Reflector

"A major concern of Tomas Saraceno’s work is to consider the challenges of the way we live and to develop ideas of fantastical habitable environments floating in the sky that would afford us the freedoms that such a way of life appears to promise." These photos "develop this notion further by depicting a figure in this imagined environment, exploring the possibilities of creating a secure future in this new home."



Doomed - Destruction

This is a video montage of disaster scenes from films. Created by Tracey Moffatt, the work demonstrates the huiman races' fascination of disaster.



400 Thousand Generations - The New (Reality)

This piece, by Mariele Neudecker, "her fragile, constructed realities exist within ‘tanks’, as if they were preserved in stasis, as museum objects, despite the fact that they are slowly but constantly changing".

Earth - Royal Academy of Arts

Today we went to see the "Earth: Art of a Changing World" exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts.

The exhibition was split into 5 sections: Introduction, Perceived Reality, Artist as Explorer and Reflector, Destruction & The New (Reality).

Introduction

The show begins with an introduction to the key factors that make up the natural world and the actions and activities that are impacting upon the equilibrium.

Perceived Reality

The second section of the exhibition represents our world as we imagine it today.

Artist as Explorer and Reflector

At the centre of the show sits a group of exhibits that help us understand the role of the artist in the cycle of our evolution. In this section we are able to consider the role of artist as communicator, reflector and interpreter of key issues of their day.

Destruction

The penultimate section of the exhibition confronts the visitor with the consequences of human behaviour through natural disasters and physical collapse counterpoising the beauty of the planet with the damage that is being inflicted upon it.

The New (Reality)

In the final section of the exhibition we enter a world of vision and of hope, but through the glass of reality as our world, and our sense of beauty, is being re-defined by the impact of climate change.

review: age of stupid

Today we watched the film 'Age of Stupid'. The film "stars Pete Postlethwaite as an archivist in the devastated world of the future, asking the question: "Why didn't we stop climate change when we still had the chance?" He looks back on footage of real people around the world in the years leading up to 2015 before runaway climate change took place." [1]

The film is very insightful and tells you the story of people from each corner of the world: the wind power activists in the UK; the man who stayed at home during hurricane Katrina; the Indian businessman; the French hiker; the Iraqi family and the African woman who wants to go to medical school.

Trailer:

new project: climate change

We have begun a new project. For this we will be creating a minimum of two fifteen-to-thirty second movies promoting the need for action against Global Warming. We can create these movies through any combination of moving image, motion graphics or animation.

placing the poster in magazines

I have placed the poster into two seperate magazines, as to get a look at how it would look in a magazine.

This is it in the FourFourTwo magazine:



This is it in the PSM3 magazine:

creating the billboard

For the billboard I decided to adapt my poster.

I used a billboard image I took from outside Lewes train station, and I placed the poster onto it, the result was this:

creating the right size image for the billboard

To make the billboard image fit to the frame of the real-life billboard. I looked up a list of billboard sizes. I found the correct size on this website.

The billboard looks like this: