This document contains a brainstorm of ideas for a project focusing on technology in the environment. It includes photos taken of technology in the person's environment, along with edited versions of two photos. It also discusses various artists who incorporate technology in their work, including Michael Wolf, Susan Stockwell, Yuri Suzuki, and Franco Recchia. The document outlines plans for a stop-motion animation using a broken computer part as a set and plasticine characters. Inspiration is drawn from the film Tron and the animator Katsuhiro Otomo. Practice animations are presented using wire figures and a computer monitor.

1. sky
plants
stars
atmosphere
weather
nature
space
architecture
animals
concrete
ENVIRONMENT
buildings
glass
city
brain
emotions
mind
body
dreams
imagination
personal
people
culture
country
home
society

2. architecture
technology
robotics
modern
CCTV
futuristic
buildings
Tower blocks
cities
computers
Personal
brainstorm on
environment
PC/Laptop
Circuit
boards
Tokyo
Hong Kong
compression
Central
London
electronics
home
TV
Arcade games
Neon lights
Subway
smartphones
8-Bit
Gameboy

3. Initial Thoughts
For this project I want to focus on technology in
our environment. In is day and age technology is
an integrated part of our culture and we are
surrounded by different forms of it every day
whether we want to be or not.
The first thing I have done is take photos of
some of the technology in my personal
environment.

8. Edited Photos
I chose to edit two of the photos that I liked the
most. I tried to edit them in different ways, the
first picture I just experimented with colour and
curves. The second picture was more focused. I
wanted to make the television screen look
pixelated so I selected only the screen and used
an effect on it. I did both of these in Photoshop.

11. Michael Wolf
Michael Wolf is a professional photographer who lives and works in
Hong Kong and Paris.
In a lot of his series Wolf took photographs of Google Street View
scenes on his computer screen. Wolf compared his method of finding
interesting scenes online to those of a street photographer walking
around in a city. He has called his Street View series ‘’a statement about
art.’’
This series is quite controversial as Wolf raises the question, ‘what can
and can’t be considered street photography?’. Wolf won an honourable
mention in Daily Life in the 2011 World Press Photo competition for his
A Series of Unfortunate Events work. Some people didn’t think that he
deserved the award as they said ‘the appropriation of Google images
should not count as photojournalism’. I think whether some people
think he deserved the award or not there is no denying that his the
pictures in his serious are quite interesting to look at.

17. My responses to
Michael Wolf’s work.

23. I was looking at broken computer parts and I
thought they looked interesting as there were
lots of details and surface mounts on the
insides. I chose to look at once piece in
particular as when I was looking down at it all
the component looked like a miniature city.

24. I took pictures from different angles and positions around
the computer piece. I had the macro on so that in some
photos the only thing in focus would be one of the
components at the front while the rest of the picture would
be blurry. I think this gives the photos and interesting effect.

25. Since I thought the pictures looked like a city I tried
to edit photos in a way that would enhance this
idea for example in picture one I edited in such a
way that it looks like the light of sun set is against it
and in the picture two it looks like sun rise.

26. Susan Stockwell
As I was looking for artists who use technology I came across
Susan Stockwell. Susan Stockwell is a contemporary British
artist. Her work addresses themes of technology, ecology,
politics, identity and migration using her trademark motifs of
recycled computer components and other everyday materials.
As I am only familiar with Stockwell’s work with paper dresses
I was very interested to see her work with computer parts.
With these components she recreated the image of the world
as you would see it on a map. She also made models of South
America and Great Britain. I think Stockwell’s work relate to
my own as she focused on using computer parts and making
them look different by using them to build something else.

28. Yuri Suzuki
Yuri Suzuki is a sound artist, designer and electronic musician who produces
work that explores the realms of sound through exquisitely designed
pieces. Born in Tokyo, he has lived across many European countries
including Switzerland, Sweden and the UK.
Suzuki’s work investigates the workings of consumer electronics. He has
made a collection of working objects that attempt to simplify electronics
and give the user a better understanding of how things work.
His work explores communication systems in consumer electronics. In his
piece ‘Tube Map Radio’ a printed circuit board is used as a base from
which to develop an electrical circuit influenced by Harry Beck's London
underground map diagrams. By strategically positioning certain speaker,
resistor and battery components on the map, users can visually
understand the complex networks associated with electricity and how
power is generated within a radio.

30. In response to Yuri Suzuki's work
I attempted to recreate ‘Tube
Map Radio’. I used an image of
Tokyo Subway Map I found on the
internet and one of the photos I
took of the computer part. I
opened up both pictures in
Photoshop and overlapped the
images. I experimented with
different effects and filters. Below
are the results.

33. Franco Recchia
Creativity has no limit for this Italian artist Franco Recchia. He uses computer parts and makes
city landscapes and skyscrapers out of them. They are amazingly detailed. Recchia shows how
you can make modern art with simple materials, but only he knows how hard it was to make it.
Like Susan Stockwell, who also uses computer parts in her work, Recchia cuts computer parts into
shapes to recreate places but unlike Stockwell he also makes 3D sculptures as well. His work
interests me as I am exploring the relationship between technology and cities.

35. idea
Make a really small model person (or people) and take
photographs of the figures in different parts of a broken part of a
computer. This idea is inspired by the film Tron as the film is
about a man trapped in a computer mainframe. I was also
inspired by the art of Slinkachu because he makes tiny models of
people and puts them in different places in the street.

36. Ideas for the lesson. 9/12/12
• In the lesson I am going to break apart a
computer tower and chose a piece to use as
my base. I am going to create a set of
characters out of clay and paint them. I will
make each of these characters alike but they
will have different designs and poses. Their
designs might be inspired by Tron.

37. • I tried the previous idea and it did not work
out. Clay is hard to use for making miniature
models as it dries out quickly when you use it
small scale. Also I didn’t think about the fact
that you cannot move clay after you create
something so I would not be able to use the
clay models in the animation. A better
material to use would be plasticine as it is firm
yet mouldable so I would be able to use
change the models in each frame.

38. Stop-Motion Animation
•
Stop motion animation of a character exploring a broken computer part. The
character could be made of plasticine. Because I do media studies I know how I
would create the animation. I would take photos of the character in different
poses and then put all of the photos on Adobe Premier Pro. I’d have to cut and
edit each picture and put them into a sequence so that when I pressed play all the
pictures would play one after the other and make the character look as though it
were moving. Before doing this though, I’d have to create storyboards so that I
could plan the plot of the animation and know what pose the character has to be
in for each frame. I know how to put music into the animation as well. If I was
going to use music I would use an 8-Bit song or a remix of a popular song like you
would hear on a Gameboy or a song that used sounds that you would hear on a
game console. I’d make the animation last between one and two minutes. I’ve
been looking at stop-motion animators like Henry Selick, Tim Burton and Nick Park
(of Aardman studios). I don’t think the animation I make will have a plot but I don’t
think that matters, I think it’s more about just exploring animations as a medium
rather than actually creating apiece o dramatic cinema.

39. Katsuhiro Otomo
Katsuhiro Otomo is a Japanese manga artist, screen write and director. He is most
known for his epic 1980’s manga Akira and the 1988 animated film based on the
manga.
Akira is set in a dystopian version of Tokyo called Neo-Tokyo. Otomo uses
conventions form the cyberpunk genre in the manga. Cyberpunk is a sciencefiction genre which focuses on ‘’high tech and low life’’. It features advanced
science, such as information technology and cybernetics, coupled with a degree
of breakdown or radical change in the social order.
Otomo wrote and illustrated the manga himself and the art in the manga is
considered ‘outstanding’. I have the read the manga myself and was blown away
by the detail in all of the illustrations. The way the characters are illustrated looks
very stylized yet the destruction and technology in the manga are drawn with
immense detail and accuracy. I was blown away while reading this manga
because of both the storyline and the art.
I think Otomo’s work relates to mine as he usually works with the themes of
technology. Since he draws wires and metal his work is an inspiration to me as I
can look at his work when I find drawing those objects difficult. When I was
drawing the computer parts as part of this project I was inspired by Otomo’s style.
His drawings are so detailed and the proportions are all very accurate. His
drawings are all in black and white and he conveys tone very well. He fills a lot of
parts of the drawing in black and will leave a lot of the pats in white so there is
great contrast in all his drawings.
The drawing on the right is called Bionic Hand with Reflecting Sphere, inspired by
M.C. Escher's 1935 lithograph. Instead of a portrait of himself being reflected in a
sphere he has drawn a robot holding up it’s head and it’s own headless body is
being reflected. I like this piece because of the detail in the hand and the way that
the head is shaded in. I think it’s quite an interesting take on the original piece by
M.C. Escher

40. Jean Tinguely
Jean Tinguely was a Swiss painter and sculptor.
He created a series of sculptural machines which
he titled métamatics: machines that produced
art works.
Jean Tinguely created his métamatic sculptures
between 1955 and 1959. The sculptures
resemble machines made in the time of the
industrial revolution. The drawing that were
made by a motor-driven arm that holds the
pencil or other drawing tool against the paper.
The resulting drawings were very abstract.
I don’t think the focus is on the drawings
themselves but on the fact that they were
created by these amazing machines. I think
machines are far more interesting than the
drawings they produce.
Just like the machine in the photo on the right, I
am drawing on a long roll of paper.
One of Jean Tinguely’s machines shown on
exhibit in Paris. The photo is from a 1959 feature
by LIFE magazine, shot by Loomis Dean.

41. Practise Animation
As preparation towards my final piece I made a short animation. created a figure out of wire and took a series of photographs. In
each photograph I changed the position of the wire figure to make it look as if it were climbing over something. Each picture was
only on screen for 20 seconds so that when the whole series was played it looks like the figure is moving.
Some screen shots from the animation.

42. Practise Animation

43. I made two more animations. The first one is like my previous animation. I used a wire figure
and I wrapped coloured computer wires around it to make it look more like it was part of a
computer. I hade the figure coming out of a computer. My previous animation was quite slow
so the animation didn’t look very good so in this one I made sure the editing was smoother so
the pictures would play quicker so it looked more like the figure was actually moving rather
than a sequence of photos played together. I also added music which I thought made it better.

44. I tried to do something different with this animation so instead of use a figure I used a computer
monitor as the subject. I tried to use more camera angles and have the monitor move around a
larger area because it was a bigger object than the wire figure.

45. Final Piece