IM: Thinking a bit more about the map.

Going on the "keeping it simple so as not to detract from the audio" I thought a good idea would to simply have a patchwork of the different districts in Bristol.

Here's a literal patchwork map: http://quilting.craftgossip.com/files/2011/05/scrap-map.jpg (The HTML options appear to have dissapeared from Blogger?!) Anyway, the mix of different patterns for each area I like, it defines the boundaries and has the potential to give the viewer a little clue as to what the area is like, it's aesthetically interesting too, but not complicated.

I'm giving it a go using Artweaver. A free program similar to photoshop which I've used for several years now. I have photoshop too, I just prefer Artweaver for familiarity.

Here's my first attempt at a patchwork style map:


Larger Image: http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/2779/testermap.jpg





And here's all the source images
Money: http://elsmomentsintime.blogspot.com/2011_01_01_archive.html
Graffiti texture: http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-15668935/stock-photo-abstract-graffiti-texture-on-a-wall.html
Rusted metal: http://privateerpressforums.com/showthread.php?3484-Berkzol-s-Khador-Army
Ceiling: http://www.flickr.com/photos/archidave/2201836291/
Grass: http://www.deceptivemedia.co.uk/photoblog/grass-2.html
Clifton Houses: http://www.flickr.com/photos/knowlesteve/5560941894/
Bunker: http://www.flickr.com/photos/samuelirving/5105387434/
Waterfront: http://fightingmonsters.wordpress.com/tag/local-government-ombudsman/
Market: http://visitbristol.co.uk/things-to-do/shopping/markets
Cathedral: http://www.oldukphotos.com/gloucestershire_bristol_page_III.htm
Ball planeterium: http://iku-saiko.blogspot.com/2010_08_01_archive.html
Knitted trees: http://emilyelixabeth.blogspot.com/2011/01/i-knit-therefore-i-am.html
gold glitter: http://walkthesand.blogspot.com/2010/12/d-is-for.html
Wood: http://www.freestockimages.org/2010/09/13/free-stock-images-part-32-old-wood-textures/

IM: The map itself?

Ye Olde Maps

http://www.antique-maps-online.co.uk/bristol-town-plan.jpg

http://mappery.com/maps/Medieval-Brussels-Map.mediumthumb.jpg

http://www.churchcrawler.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/bristolchurches/thommap.jpg

In all of these maps the level of detail is very high, that which I think may distract from the sounds which are the main interest of the map. As well as the style being outdated because of the size and shape of buildings these days, I personally would find it too difficult to replicate over such a small time frame.

Modern Road Map

http://www.microcolour.com/mm_bristol_bath_map_area_image.jpg
As with those above the detail is hard to replicate and will distract from the sounds which are the important bit! As well as being something people see very often, they are not very interesting to look at if you're not trying to find a location, in my opinion anyway.

"Modern Art" Maps

http://i-cdn.apartmenttherapy.com/uimages/dc/MetroModernArt.jpg
Here's a play on the traditional underground map, I like this because as well as simplicity it plays with bright colour so the eye is always interested in the piece no matter if it is simple. The viewer is also kept interested via the "liveliness" of the picture, this is done by the rough outlines of the lines, probably done by a dry paintbrush. Aesthetically it seems to represent the way light looks in long exposure pictures with fractures and bright colours, which of course connotes the city and nightlife, something definitely valid to the Bristol music scene!

http://rlv.zcache.com/bogus_franz_kline_art_map_card-p137343449943629609z857a_400.jpg

In this map the boarders are the focus, similar to the FM map I mentioned in the last post (but with the river) it allows you to create points inside of the reference, hopefully people know the contour of either the borders or the rivers etc to know where things are in relation to them.

http://gb.fotolibra.com/images/previews/755142-washington-dc-smithsonian-american-art-museum-modern-art-video-installation-neon-lights-us-map.jpeg

I really like the style of this map, although in sculpture form it could be replicated on Photoshop. It works better in American cities than English however because of America's planned and "block" system where it is built at speed to a plan, whereas in England, cities and towns tend to have grown much more naturally and organically into small alleyways, and odd shapes, not as easy to stack a bunch of TVs for anyway. The neon however is really good, I like it because again it refers to the night life, the slightly undercared for part of the city, where all the interesting things happen basically.

Another great source of map inspiration is the Video Game Map

http://myepsilon.org/maps/gtasa_2player_map.jpg

This is a map of the GTA san andreas map, I like it because of the simple colours and easy to understand locations, however I would love to have a map that dosen't focus on roads. (Ignore the little numbers and green and red key at the bottom, that's not actually in the game)

To be continued later.

IM: Soundscape map? Some more research.

After some googling, the obvious first port of call, I found a few soundscape maps:
http://www.soundaroundyou.com/#3

This one is the entire globe, it seems like a lovely idea, and very similar to what we are doing but the subject area appears to be way to big, so the ammount of actual sounds are very limited, far less are scattered across the world map than we hope to put on just our Bristol map!

(A much more successful version of the map abouve) http://www.soundcities.com/

Based around specific cities, but only based on their ambient noises (as far as I have seen so far) so in Bristol it is mainly just traffic noise and the hustle and bustle of people talking. Again just the same old boring google maps map, but on a giant world map it makes more sense that way as it would be difficult to cover the entire world in such detail by hand.

http://www.hasa.org/soundscape/map/
This one is based around one city, Baltimore. With much more sound clips, this appears to be a lot more like what we are aiming to create, but the map is the same old google map and the interface dosen't seem to actually allow me to listen to the sound, although I do like the short description of the sound in each area as well as the decibells. The sound "markers" also are far too large on the zoomed out map, causing a mess of markers meaning the map is barely visible underneith anyway when zoomed out!

http://soundsofmycity.tumblr.com/map

This map Lara found is the closest to the map we're hoping to make, and it's based on Tumblr, something we can easily replicate, and it's made with this application (which is also free and easy to use! YAY). As well as the map being an individual, visually new and interesting map, the points do not disturb from it until you choose to click them, the sounds included may mostly be ambient but there are also sounds of "the game" in a stadium and "buskers" on a street, so it is moving towards what we hope to acheive!

Just to look at map styles, here's a map of London based around purely the Thames. It tells you about where fm radios around the city can be heard. The simplicity of the map yet recognisableness of the Thames still is lovely, it really shows that the radio stations are the importance, not the buildings and landscape but the points specifically drawn up for your interest.

Integrated media (IM) , some research.

Me, Laura, James and Isabell have an idea of a "soundscape map" (a map which you hover over and hear the sound of that area on the map). Which will include musical venues, ambient sound such as open spaces and cafés/pubs and other sounds such as buskers and places valuable to Bristol's city. As well as ending up with a (hopefully aweosme looking) soundscape map, we'll learn a lot about Bristol and it's vibrant music scene along the way.

Our main source of interest for this map is of course the music scene, which unfortunately besides Isabell's good connection with a couple of bands around Bristol and his involvement in the BBC, we know relatively little about something we need to know deeply.

SO the research begins, I must find out about the music scene, how do I do this? As well as google searching the usual "Bristol music scene" etc, I thought I should post in the forum of a community which is very into helping eachother our and sharing, I post in the subforum /r/Bristol of reddit.com and ask for their advice!
here's the link

http://www.reddit.com/r/bristol/comments/mxila/interesting_places_in_bristol_sound_wise_help/

as you can see "TropicalUnicornSong" appears to be a really good contact to have and offers himself to help us out, he also offers up some good Bristol bands "RIOT:NOISE", and "Los Conios". Hopefully we can get into contact with these guys and use them in our Documentary as well as learning about Bristol and what it means to them.

Project work - Media Futures.

Ideas

For the project I really wanted to get into the fact that Bristol is a dock city "Bristol owes its status to the sea", therefore it is used to many people travelling to and from here for various reasons. It is vital to its rich history and mixed background. I was thinking that perhaps we could have had interviews with ourselves mixed in with people of the past that could have been in Bristol such as perhaps pirates (Bartholomew Roberts), fishermen, slave traders, butchers, wives, children, romans etc. (as well of course the large range of people who must have traveled here from other countries) Eventually everyone blurring into one, everyone being so different but with Bristol in common. I would have also heavily focused on media based persons and history. I feel like the format for each interview would have been the same, as in a head-and-shoulders shot from the front of each person individually, everyone asked the same questions. (everyone being us in costume, which would have been fun too) If there was enough time, it would also have been interesting to have brought in other transportation in Bristol such as the hot air balloons.

Unfortunately I didn't get to tell my group my full idea because another had already been decided, as well as anything to do with docs being "cliché" apparently. Group work is about flexibility though, so I had to deal with that.

Research

Visiting M-Shed showed me how versatile and rich the background of Bristol really is, before moving here I did not know much about Bristol (as UWE was my second choice, I did little research into the city) M shed definitely made me proud to be here, the section on Wallace and Gromit I particularly enjoyed (besides the point) I noticed the museams particular attention to people's lives as a whole picture. Rather than the object from their life being the history, the people themselves were made to be the history, this made it all the more interesting, and inspired me to think of the project in this way.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bristol/in_pictures/360_panoramas/docks/

http://www.buildinghistory.org/bristol/index.shtml

http://www.bristol-link.co.uk/history/

http://web.archive.org/web/20080612095123/http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/nav.17488

http://www1.uwe.ac.uk/whyuwe/unbeatablebristol/aboutbristol/bristolfacts.aspx

http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/5188/1/5188.pdf

http://www.bristolfloatingharbour.org.uk/about/why-was-it-built/brief-history-of-bristol-as-a-port/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqt5XVtJVSc <--- I take a lot of inspiration from this, I would hope that our final piece would have ended up a little like this, but more historical and less angry.

(So many interesting resources!)

Concequences

This project made me learn a lot about how I handle conflict. Not very well is the answer to that, I tried to avoid it so much that I ended up not knowing about some vital work. The communication between the group members was not great, which didn't help either.

However after receiving a shot list I filmed some "filler" shots for our project of the sun setting over Bristol, using my own camera and tripod. Later, I sped up some of the shots hopefully to show Bristol's fast paced exuberance. I hoped that these would come in handy and some of my work would actually be included in the final piece. Giving the shots to the group the next day, asking if they needed any help, to which they responded no. It is also very unfortunate that our contact was unavailable I was looking forward to finding out their thoughts and feelings on the media nature of Bristol, as well as hearing about their own experiences.

In hindsight I should not have been scared by the "stubborn" and "strong mindedness" of some of the other members of the group. It prevented me from putting as much into the production as I would have wished to have done, and consequentially I missed out both on the experience and contributing to the final product nearly as much as I would have liked to have done. I am rather disappointed in my own fear and therefore inactivity.

Project work - Live TV studio

Using the campus' studio set up and green screen, a group of around 10 of us set out to experience what it would be like to work in a real live scenario.

For this we needed to first of all decide who of us were to get which roles, I personally wanted to try something new so I opted for the prompt. More thought went into using it than I initially thought, as well has typing out the script and formatting it so that it was easy to read for the presenters, with suitable gaps in the words, you had to take into consideration the speed at which the presenters read and change yours accordingly. The speed changed often, and if you went to fast or slow, it would confuse the presenters.

After several practice runs we did the "live" run, it was exciting to do. It was good to see the large group of people coming together and working in union to create the final news segment type piece. Everyone was important in making it run smoothly. There was only one little hiccup with the vision mixing which was the greenscreen image was turned to the image of the other presenters, which ended up looking a bit odd.

Project work - Sweding

Sweding is basically re-creating films in a short space of time with a very small budget, the named activity originating from the film "Be Kind Rewind" (2008)

Working in a relatively large group we all had to find a film we had either watched and knew or had a vague idea as to what it was about so that we could all contribute towards the end piece and feel involved.

One of the initial ideas was E.T. A classic that most people have heard of or watched as well as having some great scenes to re-create on a low budget (e.g. the bike scene across the moon)

After the initial bouncing around of ideas on different films we set to making a basic shot list so that we would know which scenes needed props, as we were to set out for the scrap store later.

The scrap store was a cove of interesting things and a very useful resource for creativity.

The next day was fun we ran around campus filming various scenes, most people had a shot at acting, filming etc, we shared roles. I learnt that I hate acting in front of a camera.

Hopefully the videos will be uploaded to Vimeo soon.

#1 - Modernism to Postmodernism

Modernism (1850 - 1950)

A complex and dis-unified field of activity

A history of experimental film and video - Rees 1999 (A book)

Activities whose output felt other contemporary or traditional forms of art or daily life were outdated.

In 1923 the combustion engine was invented by Samuel Brown allowing for industrial activities to be done with speed and in mass.

(Here we watched a documentary "the perfect suit" where about 50 minutes in the presenter gets very excited about the mass, and precise, production of suits in a factory)

Up until now there had been a smooth progression between different phases of human progression, 1836 - Theory of evolution, 1920 - Theory of relativity, 1914-18 - WW1. Modernism brought on a rejection of this smooth change to be replaced by the machine.

Bauhaus, part of the modernist movement, literally translated means "House of construction" as it was constantly being made by those students there, all cutlery, furniture, etc. was made by those who lived there. It was made in tandem with the first German republic, just after WW1.

Its manifesto held "Composite character of a building as an entity" and "no essential difference between artists and craftsmen" in its manifesto.

Important people to consider are Kandinsky and Lazlo Mohony (1923 joined bauhaus, considered the camera to take your eye somewhere the camera could not, art as a force for positive change and subversion of traditional boundaries)

Telimatic art

Used graph paper, Mohony used transition of data to a remote location, anticipating internet, printers and the pixelation. i.e. the digital age.

Futurists

Bertelli - At the same time as Baurhaus.

It had an 11 step agenda which can be read of you scroll down here: http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/T4PM/futurist-manifesto.html

Basically glorified war and speed. There was a complete and naive faith in technology as if it was a replacement for the recently disproven religion.

Take into account Brocconli and Tullio Crali

Avant Guarde Film (1920 - 1945)

#1 - The Beggining

What is Visual Culture?

(Everything of a visual nature, i.e. most things)

We will be taught a critical framework with which to make sense of contemporary culture and forms.

We must keep in mind:

no one is neutral, our moral views are soley based upon the environments and scenarios we have encountered during our lives. These specific positions in which we occupy will also be studied, why is it that a female, white, middle class student such as myself has this moral compass?

"Our reactions are culturally constructed and constantly change depending on other factors"

Death of the author: What you mean may not be interpreted in the same way as it was meant to be, contexts of production and reception mean your intended meaning is often missed.

The course we are doing is a mostly Eurocentric account of visual culture, simply because of time restrictions in the course, media is a broad subject, it is not to suggest that european media is superior.

Not all authors and sources are trustworthy, one must take into account the backgrounds and motives of those producing texts.

12 week program of study

Subject specific lectures on historical context of discipline

Address themes and issues that are cross disciplinary (e.g. creativity, ethics, identity)