#asst2

Concept Statement

My work takes on the form of advertisement and marketing dealing with Aesthetic Judgement, the reason why I chose this format was because the process where an item is being promoted is shown to be superior than anything else before it. This process intrigues because first, it demands our attention for something that we’ve already seen, an example of this would be iPhone ads, the advertisement of these devices are simple yet effective, why? Because they show us why iPhones are so unique, yet we know they are. It’s the irony that I find intriguing and therefore, that set the layout of my work. Second, it shows what is wrong with our society when mainstream is overcoming our sense of individuality and creativity is slowly diminishing.

Alien methods, as introduced in week 4, was a form of experimenting where we would take on radical ideas of outside the human standard of object/subject relationship. The idea of the ad was to advertise our planet earth. Animating an inanimate object by giving it personality was what we did in the week. In the work I mentioned “Our hospitality is the greatest in the universe”, this was intentional to establish the scope, as if literally aliens were to come visit us.  The narration was going for over the top Australia accent, as experimentation, the use of my voice gave the work much more emphasis and allowed me to make it more interesting.

With desire in week 5, the act of desire itself can be destructive because we consumers in this capitalist society are unaware of the future outcome or process prior to the creation of the item that is being promoted. Our desires are fuelled by our sense of need and fantasies, but by also considering that desire is a first world sense, only a minority would be accessible to technology that allows us to be exposed to these desires. Causing us to be distracted and become less aware of the real problem that is of inequality, hence the third world footage of child labour used in the ad sewing clothes contradicting the fashion world that exists in the first world.

Also the desire of experimenting allowed me to create contradictions within the work itself. From the visual imagery that is shown, contradicting what is being said, truly makes the work ironic and an oxymoron. The viewer would question with what he/she is seeing and think. That was what I was aiming for.

With the idea of context and time, it was important that this ad, resembled what we have today, the race cars, to the clothing, or the problems that existed in the video (car crashes, anorexia). I wanted to set a contemporary statement about the ad, showing how aesthetic judgement form the basis of our society today and it isn’t getting any better.

All due to the fact that with technology, life has become more rapid and fast, we steadily become de-sensitized to explicit material that we no longer feel there is anything else left to shock us. Therefore in this work, it was important that the set up in the first 30 seconds was vital so that when the audience sees car crashes, they are suddenly realising that this ad wasn’t promoting or highlighting the world, it was stripping the façade and humiliating it, where we realise the irony of our time, our desire and our perspective on life itself.

As value being a topic in week 7, we experimented as to what makes some valuable. I licked a piece of fruit as a way of valuing it in such a way. But argued that if a celebrity was to lick something, that object that once had no value would become something idolized. Or perhaps the hair of a celebrity being cut and sold on ebay, would gain hundreds of dollars. The value of something lead me to celebrity culture and how in light of recent leak picture incidents where celebrities had their photos leaked, showed me how surrounded we are by celebrity, wanting to compromise their privacy, for the satisfaction of our own. This in a way is a dehumanising lifestyle, where we are not living for the sake of our own selves, but for the aesthetics.

Which also brings back to the idea of context and time where technology In our contemporary society has gotten to the point of hacking and invading the private lives of individuals causes humiliation and psychology harm over the internet, etc. trolls.  

Therefore in my work, the main concern with the ad was the controversy that would evoke people if they were to see this and provide us an alien perspective of our world. The confronting reality of our aesthetic judgement and how destructive we are as human beings, hopefully allows me the make the audience assess the world and how we function as a species, also further stating that first impressions are redundant once we actually come to the realization of our capitalist world, and the inequalities that is present among the world. Overall this research was an insightful task.

Bibliography:

References

Anon, (2014). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rg6_e9eMp-s [Accessed 11 Sep. 2014].

Apple, (2014). iPhone 6 Commercial. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0THVt8DwtA8 [Accessed 14 Sep. 2014].

Blog, M. (2012). IS APPLE TOO MAINSTREAM? WILL APPLE BECOME “UNCOOL”?. [Blog] Marblue Blog. Available at: http://blog.marware.com/is-apple-too-mainstream-will-apple-become-uncool [Accessed 2 Sep. 2014].

BMW, (2013). BMW M6 2013 Gran Coupé First Commercial Carjam TV HD Car TV Show 2013. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5fNInc9OoE [Accessed 13 Sep. 2014].

Oxford Union Society, (2014). Leaving Game of Thrones Jack Gleeson. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpBq_jBUY6I [Accessed 6 Sep. 2014].

Shame. (2011). [film] UK: Steve McQueen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5j_EcmRvaI 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1723811/

In the movie Shame, directed by Steve McQueen, starring Michael Fassbender, the film focuses consumption, addiction and the flaws of being a human being, the film explores the concept of the tragic human condition of love. The agony the character played by Michael Fassbender is constantly trying to satisfy his sexual urges, but is incapable because of the world he lives in. From the movie, the quote "We're not bad people, we just come from a bad place" is stated the the main character's sister. What does this quote mean? Is it to say that our world is not a place that we can find complacency. Is there no real sense of love in this world? Is it an illusion? These are the question that are brought up to me upon viewing the film. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODmfmUWqlSA