The Origin of Food

Yesterday our year hosted a exhibition at our university for a project we were doing on food. This was a continuation of my project on the potato and were given this the week before when we were coming close to finishing our A2 broadsheets.

The exhibition that we have done is using 3 dimensional typography to get across our research we all did for our picked food as well as a message we wanted to give across. What I think was good was that we got to see every ones thought process of how they came up with their designs as well as why they have done them.

The design I have done for my wall was very simple. I took the idea of the black dot from my research and broadsheet and wanted it to be very basic and simple, hoping it would be affective. The idea I chose to do was simply spelling the words black dot with ping pong balls i sprayed black and stuck to individual pieces of board. This was done as potato starch is used to make plastics and goes with the topic I mentioned in the previous blog about supermarkets wanting the perfect food, so instead of using good potatoes to make plastics and through away the ones infected with black dot, why don't they just use the infected ones for the starch and keep using the good ones for the markets. This would save so much time, money and labour as well as saving wastage which could be used for something else. This is part of why I chose the ping pong balls as they are made from plastic.

I do think that the exhibition was very good, and thought that everyone has done a really good job at making strong and imaginative pieces of work so think everyone in my class should be proud of what they have done. It will be a shame when they have to come down.

I do not think that we will have another exhibition during 2nd year but am looking forward to the next one we will have and see what everyone will come up with for next time.

Black Dot Potato

Life of a Potato

The potato is the fourth most important food crop in the world and is a staple dietary component in many countries. The potato was first domesticated in Peru between 3000BC and 2000BC and was the main energy source for which the Inca Empire flourished, then later on became a similar energy source for its Spanish successor.

The Problem With Black Dot

Like humans, potatoes also suffer from disease and one in particular that should raise some interest in the potato is Black Dot Disease. This is a common superficial fungal blemish on potatoes and the black dots are often just visible to the naked eye. This can be found on potato tubers, affected areas may show a light brown back colour, which can darken during storage.

The name black dot accurately describes the numerous dot-like, black sclerotia that can appear on tubers, stolons, roots and stems both above and below ground level. A significant portion of stem may be covered with sclerotia which are easily seen after vine kill. Total root growth is reduced and appears brown to black in colour. The fact that this disease is so common how can it really affect the world as we know it, even though not a disease lethal to humans there are other ways that it can affect us. There are ways in which to prevent this disease and have more control over them by doing very simple things such as deep ploughing the fields, cleaning the tubers for planting and having long rotations of the crops which will give each potato a longer life.

The Big Picture

Black dot is bigger than you think, if this disease is not carefully monitored it could lead to all sorts of problems for big businesses, such as McCain's and McDonald's which are a few companies that rely on naturally grown potatoes as they refuse to use any sort of genetically modified products and McCain could be badly affected by any disease as the mainly use only potatoes. Supermarkets such as Salisbury's and Tesco believe that customers will not buy anything that does not look nice, they demand the best to keep an image, even though people really would not care about it as long as it was edible and we knew more about what the disease was about.

It is partly because of this high demand for as we would say pretty looking, smooth potatoes, that a potato which has been infected with black dot has to be picked out and thrown away, and this can be devastating if an entire crop has been infected, so much would be wasted and thrown away with the rest of the rubbish, and this would waste not only time, but work labour, money, as well as equipment used to harvest the potato, and all just because a supermarket has to keep up the right image and their belief that the best looking things will sell more, this does go to show that not all the proper research has been carried out.

What SCRI do

SCRI is a centre for sustainable cropping, where researchers are trying to develop new ways of growing healthy genetically modified food such as fruits and vegetables. What they do is find new ways to modify food so it is can taste better, is able to grow in areas it couldn't before and to find ways in which they are immune to their diseases, such as cross breeding them with other potato types that are already immune, so how can they do this? How can they combine more than one type and keep the taste the same and keep all the good substance of the spud intact? This is what groups such as SCRI are trying to do every day, to improve the quality of our food sources.

This was all part of a project we had to do. we were given a presentation from a man who works at SCRI and what it was they did exactly. We then had to research our given crop of which they do and find out as much about it as we could before putting our thoughts in the form of an mood board and by producing an A2 broadsheet of the crop. As you can tell from all of the above I got a potato but when I was researching into it I came across Black Dot disease and thought this would be interesting to base my project on.

We are currently working on the final part of the project which is to produce a 3D typography piece that is to go on display this Friday at our little exhibition. I will post an image of my final outcome next week. Up above is the outcome for my broadsheet.

Goldilocks the Chav

One of our first projects we were given for the start of our second semester was on Pictorial Narration. For this were yet again had another lucky dip, of which we had to pick out the title of a fictional fantasy or real life event of the past. I felt that on this lucky dip I had a little bit more luck as the title I picked was Goldilocks and the Three Bears. With these were were to research thoroughly and eventually end up with and image or images that represented each tale, and this being through any medium of 2D or 3D imagery.

I began my research by the most obvious choice, reading the story and it's origins, and I actually learnt quite a bit about it. Did you know that it was not the original version? The first few tales along the same plot involved a ugly, little old women before as the original Little Red Riding Hood, then this progressed later into a fox who ventured into the three bears home. The bears at this time were three male bears, one huge, one medium and one small before being turned into a family of them.

Throughout my research I looked at how I could use this story as a pictorial narration, so I looked at animal crossing signs, porridge oat packaging, but the thing that caught my eye the most was the word porridge. This word made me think about the classic T.V show Porridge with Ronnie Barker who played a criminal locked up in prison serving his time or Porridge as in the title. This got me onto thinking that Goldilocks, well in the story she is a criminal. She breaks into the three bears home, steals their food, breaks there furniture and sleeps in their beds, this was the main idea I went on to further develop as I really believed that I could have the most fun with this.

So how was I going to represent this as a visual language, well I will tell you. I decided to make a report of the crime scene and in this I would involve short descriptions of the entire story, making things not too obvious so people had to read and think to understand what story it was they were reading. I had to think very hard of how I was going to make this believable instead of a little girl wandering into the house I made Goldilocks a teenage "Chav" named Blondie who had broken into the house and also gave her a criminal record. I added things throughout the report that would link into the story. Other things I included were evidence from the crime scene such as porridge oats, spoons, hair and DNA samples, and photographs of the crime scene and CCTV pictures of a girl fitting the same description as the suspect.

So now onto today. To finish up this project we were to talk to a small group of seven people in the class to present our final outcomes, and I am glad to say my tutors liked my result but did mention is needed a little bit of tweaking to make it all look a bit older and more used, but these are only little things that need done and will do it all in plenty of time for our assessment after the Easter break.

I will admit that I was not too sure about this project to begin with but once I got into it I really enjoyed it and was pleased with what I came up with.

Its the End of the World and I Feel Fine

How many documentaries does there have to be about Nostradamus, 2012 and the end of the world? how many times do they need to be repeated on a weekly basis? Just what is the point in so many of them? They are all the same, the world is soon going to end.

I recently noticed this as I do like to just sit down and watch a good documentary, but all there seems to be on the Discovery Channel, History etc. There seems to be a lot of the same sort of programs of the world ending in the year 2012. Maybe this is because of the film that came out about October, or maybe we really are all going to die and they just want us to know it, well we will all find out on the 22nd December 2012, if we survive the 21st.

The prophet Nostradamus foretold many predictions such as communism, Hitler, the twin towers and so on, well so called predictions as the were all told in riddles and people who assume a while after like to believe in these sort of things so they connect them all together. The other is the ancient Mayans who predicted the world being consumed by a wall of fire then being consumed by a giant flood and that this would be in 2012 but what many people have concluded for this date is that this ancient civilization had begun to crumble and never got to complete their calendar, so their calendar only reached up to this date before their Empire fell.

I am not so sure that we will all die on this supposed date but do think that if it will happen then who will care as we will be all dead and so will have nothing to worry about. We will just have to wait and see. But to all the documentary channels..... PLEASE STOP showing the same type of programs let alone the same episodes over and over again.

Assignment 2E - Singing and Frolicking

For the final part of Assignment 2 we had to go back to the three pictures we chose but this time add a single word to any one of the images. This was too see if it helped people interpreter the same story in the same way. The word I used was "singing'" with the image of the bird. It was after I had asked people to do this that they were all pretty much the same stories.

1. One day a bird was singing as a girl was jumping about in a hay stack.

2. There was a girl who was jumping playing in a hay stack, jumping and running about then stopped to listen to the bird in the tree sing to her.

3. The girl who was jumping about a haystack heard a little bird singing as it flew in the sky.

4. The girl who was playing in the middle of a bunch of hay stacks was jumping and skipping and singing with the birds.

I decided to add a second word, "frolicking" to the image of the girl.

5. There was a girl jumping and frolicking in a haystack and listened to the bird sing.

6. The girl in the hay stack was jumping and frolicking when she saw a singing bird.

7. The singing bird saw a young little girl frolicking about the hay stacks in the field.

I then had to go back and read the "Rhetoric of the Image" by Roland Barthes again and see if any of many thoughts and understanding of it had improves. I can actually say I am no entirely sure. When I read it before I carried out the experiments I had a general understanding of what it was about, but after carrying out the experiment it is more difficult to connect everything with the same story.

I find that when connecting 3 random images, then a fourth then adding text was a bit different from what Barthes was saying. He for one was using an advertisement that was clear what it was about, all the items on it formed the advert immediately, without the logo or anything else you clearly saw it was products made for an Italian meal. With the random images we were having to make up the scene. But I do understand what we were supposed to do, but for me personally found it to be different from the essay.

I do know that as designers we are supposed to use words and images, on their on and together to express well any task we have been given. And also the way in which we do this, such as if we use different fonts then the image it is with can completely change. How we change something visually with text can change the meaning and understanding of it all.

Assignment 2A - Rhetoric of the Image

The reason that this part of the assignment has been done a bit later than b-d is because I had to read "Rhetoric of the Image" by Roland Barthes a few times before it started to sink in. Like everyone else I found this quite difficult, thinking about it most of the reads this semester are quite difficult, this is possibly to make our minds think and try to understand more. Anyway this was a difficult read but I'm not sure if this is down to Roland Barthes but more to the translating of his piece. Like a few others I know I had to find a summery of the text then go over it again, slightly understanding it a little better.

So the "Rhetoric of the Image" goes on about linguistic message of how the text of an image can end up relating to the feel of an image. This can be down to anything such as a familiar word being used that can hep identify it. This is done by the image Barthes used of the Pates Panzini products where the products are clearly by an Italian company, but this is also conveyed by the text, just by the word and font used helps express the companies origins. This is the way it was meant to be. With this it makes you think that a word can explain it all, an image can explain a great many things, but a single piece of text can give an understanding that we can all immediately recognize and know. This can be the same with how we perceive colour in an image, the logo is in red and green like the Italian flag, but it would be a bit difficult to see if it were in black and white.

The Coded Iconic Message is about how the important parts of an image are perceived by a viewer. In the image of the pasta products the coded message is that of reliability and how fresh, ripe and appealing the food is, this is done by using the best products allowing us to get the impression of the standards they produce.

The Non Coded Iconic Message is basically what you see is just what you see, there is no coded message for us to see, only what is there is important and nothing else. I would say that from the image, the products that we see is what they do.

After we had read this my seminar group got together and discussed what it was about and what we ended up talking about was the latest in Diet Irn Bru adverts. We all talked and said what we thought about the adverts, whether they worked or not. People had different opinions about this. It is a spot the difference ad where one picture is the original and the second has sugar free on it. I personally do think this works and understand how it works and what it does but think it has not been done well. Diet Irn bru is supposed to be similar to the full fat stuff, as seen in the adverts images, it is supposed to look the same and meant to taste the same but the only difference that it is sugar free. Maybe not having sugar free may have worked better but a slightly less obvious thing could have worked better.

Assignment 2D

This was again continuing on from the previous part of the assignment. What we had to do here was to choose one of the stories that we got and add a fourth image and ask other people to once again connect the now four images together. The fourth image I added was to get people to think about singing but not a famous singer in any way as this would contradict the girl in the previous picture. This is what I got:

1. Young girl is enjoying a summers day in the country side. As she runs, and jumps in a field of hay stacks she can see birds over head. The tweeting of the birds encourages her to sing!

Female 1988 waitress

2. A country girl grows up on a farm in the american mid-west. She trys her best to break free from her small community and make it as a professional singer. She eventually has her break through single about a bird.

Male 1980 bar staff

3. There is a young girl who likes to dance to the sound of birds. Her dance studio is in the middle of nowhere in a farm as she has nowhere else to go to do the thing she loves he most. Then one day someone found out about the girl and she became a star.

Female 1985 Receptionist

4. A girl is dancing in a sun lit field singing away to her favourite song as a glass eyed bird watches from a distance in a weathered tree.

Male 30 cleaner

5. A girl is dancing and singing around and over a hay stack, she hears a bird is also singing then starts to sing to the birds tune.

Female Waitress 25

6. A bird is sitting in a tree minding its own business when it notices that a girl is singing and jumping over a hay stack.

Male 21 Student

7. When a girl is playing about a hay stack she sees a bird on a low branch singing, she skips over to it and starts to sing with it.

Female 20 Student

From these stories I can see that most of them are similar to the original that I chose. I have had trouble trying to understand this a bit as it does become a bit more obvious what the story is going to be when you add the fourth image. Not all of the are the same, but similar. I will now go on for the next part by adding a word of text.

Assignment 2C

After I had collected my three images I was then to go out and talk to people, show them the pictures and let them connect the three together in the form of a small story. As short paragraphs. All I did was ask the following people to connect what they see, this was the only question I asked, the rest was left to them. These are the stories that were made:

1. Today I saw the funniest thing ever, a very small bird pecked at a hay stack and it started to roll. What was funny was that it was a hill and the hay stack was basically chasing a girl as she ran and jumped to get away.

This was done by a male student, born on the 9/6/1990 making him 20 years old.

2. A girl who was playing in a field jumped over a massive hay stack and landed on a bird. The girl feeling so bad wrapped the bird up in some hay and took it back to hers to look after.

Again done by a male, this time an electrician born on the 12/10/1979 making him 30.

3. There was a little girl rolling and jumping about a hay stack when suddenly a bird pooped on her and she ran away crying.

By a boy in secondary school born 10/9/1995.

4. A girl was jumping and frolicking in a field with hay stacks and flowers and the birds sang to her as she played.

A female sales assistant born 8/6/1990.

5. While cutting grass for the hay, the young women scared a nest of blackbirds and the parents never came back. She looked after the chicks, feeling responsible for the loss of their parents. And once those chicks were grown, they lived in the apple tree at the bottom of her garden.

This one is by a female aged 21, and is a hairdresser.

6. A young girl is very carefree running over hay stacks while scaring the birds.

A short one by another female born 2/6/1988 and works as sales assistant.

Now that I have done this part of the task I find it very interesting that the stories were all similar but also different at the same time, all had the same connections but told in different ways. I found this quite difficult to understand at first but found it interesting to see the results people came up with.

Assignment 2B

Here are the 3 pictures that I have chosen.

Assignment 1D

Here is the final part of the photo analysis where we had to tell the other person on we thought of each other from the photographs, I was actually surprised at how accurate Kyle was about me, He said such things as:

"From the way you've taken the photos, too me it seems clear you are extremely into your 'things' such as books and DVDs. you seem very organized and neat. i think you like to know where everything is at all times. Which then might be transferred into your personality as well? (I'm just thinking out loud here.) For example you might be a very organized person when you go traveling and know exactly how the trip is going to be and where you will go, and know the things you will see. Also could mean you are good with time management and planning. You seem to have a wide range in movies which might mean you appreciate movies of all kinds. maybe you are into something else other than just the outline of the story. e.g directing/acting/editing. and you might think of DVDs as books as a collection of yours. so they might be pretty important items.

Also seen you have a few games consoles out, neatly as well. And also having more than one controller. maybe you find the best way to socialize with people is through games/movies?

Although at the same time. i don't know if it seems you spend a lot of time in your room? unless you are just extremely neat, there doesn't seem to be a lot of signs of things happening. no plates, nothing left out from something you might of been doing. so maybe you are pretty busy at the moment and haven't had a lot of time to be in your room just relaxing?"

This is mostly true, except for that fact that I am not at home a lot of the time. I do however like to be organized so I have control over things such as projects and yes I know exactly what to do when I go on holiday or on a trip, this means I can relax as soon as when I get to a destination.

I am a really big movie fan, I would say half of my DVD collection is mainly Christmas and birthday presents, but if I see something I like that's a decent price I will buy it.

I would say that the consoles are out neatly but this is mainly due to me not playing them lately and would say this is because of uni work and also because I have been doing a lot of overtime at work as well.

From my analysis of Kyle he said I was pretty much spot on, this is what he said about my analysis:

most of that is correct. obviously I'm really into music. sadly. i forgot to take photos of my graphic novel collection. so only thing missed was the part about the books. since i only showed you the ones to do with the course.
I am really into having my own space. and doing work there and relaxing there. i think i would prefer to live on my own as well.

And yeah! I have tried to explain that too everyone when they comment on my mess in my room. and they say something like 'how can you find anything in this mess' and I'm like, 'easy, cause this is how i want it to be and i know where everything is.' or like, when i was living at home and my sister/mom got tired of my mess. they would clean it up a bit. but then i just got confused, since i couldn't find anything... even though they were a lot more organized then before.

I think this was a good part of the assignment overall as it gave an insight of what other people outside of our friend zone would think of our personality type.

Assignment 1A

This assignment involved us having to read chapter 4 of the book, The Culture of Design by Guy Julier. This I have to admit is one of the annoying books I have ever read, I don't mean this as though it is not a good book as it raises a lot of good points, but feel that it is just so hard to take in, it took a few attempts re-reading the same chapter over and over before it even started to sink in. So many apologies in case this is a bit of a rant and doesn't make any sense as I have tried to understand it the best that I could.

So on chapter 4 the consumption of design. There were a few theories in this that I found very interesting but one that caught my eye the most and made more sense to me and this was the section Passive or Sovereign Consumers? This was a section that was all about the manipulation of branding and consumer demand, companies try to give their own products an edge so that consumers will stay within that brand when upgrading, this allows the steady sale of products keeping the company at high profits and ahead of it competitors within the same range of products.

This relates to designers in advertising and I can relate to this as well as a student as it would be my job to help promote the products, it is a designers job to increase product demand as well as keep sales steady. By doing this would require proper promotion of the products that have the typical trademark of the company. This would be done through t.v advertising, and also within a products packaging, this itself would also need to have the quality that the company has kept with in the past allowing consumers to keep the trust they have with them and recognize anything they produce if and whenever an item is upgraded.

The manipulation theory sort of explains that advertising helps brand loyalty so that consumers buy within the range of products produced by the same manufacturer, but if it is done in the wrong way people would abandon this current brand and choose another more reliable manufacture who has a reliable quality of products. This is known as a 'brand ladder'.

The writer also states that at the opposite end of the manipulation theory is the notion of 'consumer sovereignty' which basically flips the theory around and that companies must meet the standards of the consumer rather than the consumer meeting the standards of the product. What the consumer doesn't like the consumer will not buy, so there is a high demand for companies in a designer to keep up to date and ahead of others to produce something the consumer expects from the company. J.K. Galbraith is basically saying that over producing is creating a service that is not required and has nothing to do with the product through advertising.

Assignment 1B and 1C

For this assignment we were told before the Christmas holidays to take photographs of either our lives growing up or of our home so for this I ended up taking pictures of my room as this is the place where I do of my work and is the place that is my own and personal, unlike the rest of the house which is obviously my parents home and this would not best describe who I am and what I am like. The person I swapped with was Kyle who like me had taken photographs of his room and with these I had to analyze his interests, influences, possessions and environment.

What I saw from Kyle from looking at all of the items in his room was,

A passion for music

Organized in his own way

Into film and t.v

Nostalgic

Cluttered

Likes to relax by himself

Doesn't care what people would think of him

Collector

Prefers to think alone away from others

Sense of humour

Doesn't like to show off

Has a great interest in course

Doesn't feel the need to express himself

Is reliable

Prefers to keep out of others way

Maybe a little bit lazy

Proud of things he has achieved

Has a contrast between fact and fiction

Possession

Kyle is really into his music as seen by the turntable he has along with his guitar, hi fi and old records in his room and has a really good taste bands from the posters on his wall suggesting that he may have gone to some concerts and brought them back to a memorabilia or may have also just seen them while shopping and just picked them up, the type of music I would say kyle is into is more rock and possibly alternative rock but also think that he may just respect most types of music.

Looking at his shelves I saw a few Dragonball Z action figures still in the box so this could suggest that he is a bit of a collector and keeps things that would remind him of his childhood and things that he was really into, this also shows that he maybe a slight geek ( I say that in a very nice way as I am the same) as well as some of the films and books he has which tell me that he likes fictional films that have special effects, action and comedy but in books he reads they are more on factual topics for his course and may not like to read fantasy books.

Influences

From the book Kyle has I say that people who have influenced him the most for his course is mainly Stephan Sagmeister, but because I did not see any photo's in his room that he possibly may have been influenced in his course as he found it more interesting and followed in something that he alone found enjoyable.

When looking at the room again I saw that there was a plate and glasses in his room which could say that he prefers to work on his own away from everyone so that he can think and reflect without anyone there to say anything, so this could also say that he influences himself as well.

The DCA bag that is on the floor can also mean that he likes to go to places where he knows he can find inspiration and find out more of what he prefers to look at telling himself the kind of person he is.

Environment

His room is slightly cluttered, this could mostly be due to the size of his room as it is quite small and the bed takes up most of the room, but his desk area says that yes it is cluttered but he knows where everything is, this could be because he may be slightly lazy but has things left about for a purpose so he will not loose anything and is simpler for him to pick things up when he needs it right there and then.

This could also be that Kyle is a very relaxed person, his laptop is on his bed could mean this is where he prefers to work, he can just lie back, work on projects, listen to music and not have to move around a lot.

Other things I have noticed about Kyle are that from the clutter in his room he does like to spend time on his own, he may well go out with his friends but at times just prefers to stay in and have some alone time and let the world pass by where he can do things that he wants to do instead.

I think that when Kyle speaks to people the main topic may be about music or film etc rather than politics or events that have happened on the news, maybe does keep to himself but may prefer this as he doesn't care about what people think about him, what you see is what you get is what he may be to other people.

I think Kyle wants to do well but would rather do it all on his own instead of asking or accepting help, this could be to prove to himself that he can do it, he may also find that what he does at university enjoyable otherwise he may of changed subject, he may well be doing it because it is something he thinks will be more of a passion than a job one day.

Terry Pratchett: Living With Alzheimer's

During the Christmas holidays on one of the really bad days of snow we had, and there was no chance of me going outside for any reason at all, decided to spend the day watching t.v which is something I have not done since I was about 13. I think it was just after lunch when I was looking through the Sky Anytime shows that I saw the two-part documentary, Terry Pratchett: Living With Alzheimer's. This was a program that documented how Terry Pratchett has been dealing with Alzheimer's disease, his preparations for the future as well as him finding out about the disease.

It began with him six months after he was diagnosed with it and throughout the show said just how much it had changed his life, it was here that I realised just how very little about Alzheimer's that I actually knew of, just how he explained it all started off a small tiny things such as forgetting where you put your car keys and in his case he mentioned that he hates misspelling, and never really needed to use the spell checker on his computer and then gradually he got worse and worse up till the point where he was using it all the time, and after a certain amount of time gets his assistant to type for him instead as you really saw him struggle with it.

There were two thing that made me really think about just how this can be very frustrating especially when Terry Pratchett took about 8 attempts to do his tie up and you really saw him struggle with his, this was no act, you saw just how embarrassed he looked and how frustrated he became at both himself and the disease. The next was when he visited a support group where he met other people who suffer from it, this was where he saw just the beginning of how bad it was going to get, but when he spoke to a retired professor of science who has dealt with this for a few years now so just how much strength he had gained from it, even through all the frustrating and forgetting times he sought strength from his family and friends.

I admittedly say that I barely knew anything about Alzheimer's until I saw this program, obviously I knew what it was and what it did but I never really knew what it really did to a person, juts how much it subtly affected their lives, how you forget the simplest of things, how when a person is reading they can actually see the next line jump up to the next. The feelings that people who suffer from this disease are all things I will never and hopefully will never understand, to know that you will only get worse and then one day not knowing and remembering anything such as who your family is or even who you are.

Did you even know that a person can suffer from this for 10 years before it becomes noticeable that they have it, there would be no signs for years then one day it decides to show up.

There has also been some debate recently due to the author's thoughts on assisted suicide, even though many people would disagree with it they have to understand and respect a persons decision to take this course of action as no one would like to know that they would live one day without a clue of who anyone was, this is something that I do not know whether I am with or against it, I would really need to think about it but I do however understand why a person would want to do it.