Rebuild
http://www.kongregate.com/games/sarahnorthway/rebuild
Hands of War 2
http://www.kongregate.com/games/Djugan/hands-of-war-2-expanded-edition
The Dreamhold
http://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/dreamhold/
Castaway 2
http://www.kongregate.com/games/likwidgames/castaway-2
London Road
http://varytale.com/books/book/fox-london-road/info/
Choice of the Dragon
http://www.choiceofgames.com/dragon/
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Friday, October 12, 2012
Photo Essay 'The Forgotten'- Maureen Elvy, 42885914
Photo Essay &
Rationale- Maureen Elvy
Title: The
Forgotten
Theme: Manholes
Sub Theme: Design, Pattern and Shape
The theme for my photo essay is ‘manholes’ with the sub theme of 'design, pattern and shape’. The manhole is used as the entry to many
underground systems for example sewerage, gas and water, a necessity of our everyday life. Located throughout
our city and suburban streets we walk past them every day and perhaps rarely
stop to look at them. This mundane, non-spectacular notion of the ‘manhole’ is
a representation of the shifting notions of the ‘everyday aesthetic’ (Murray
2008: 147) displayed in contemporary amateur photography and which is now
commonly found on photo sharing sites such as Flikr.
Digital camera technology has enabled photography to be a relatively
inexpensive, immediate and transitory practice (Murray 2008). No longer are we
bound to the 24 reel photo unable to see our image until it is printed. We can
now take 100’s of photos on devices that can be viewed immediately and either
kept or reshot instantly. This transition has helped shape our photographic
subjects. The ability to snap and re-snap has created a shift in the
everyday image being “less about the special and rarefied moments” and more of
a collection of the "mundane" (Murray 2008:147).
‘The Forgotten’ manhole photo essay exemplifies Murrays (2008:155)
concept of fascination with ‘compilation and comparison’. Various images
capture the different patterns, shapes, colours and beauty of the manholes.
Each photo was taken on an iPhone, transferred into iPhoto and then iMovie with
a little editing to maximise the visual aesthetic. The Ken Burns effect was
used to add movement, dimension and emphasis. Music ‘Sleeping Soul’ by Skyleo
(2012) was used to emphasise the somewhat overlooked beauty, diversity and
mystery of manholes. It also is used to highlight their underlying importance
within society. The viewer is taken on a not so ordinary journey of the ordinarily
overlooked and disregarded, a concept explored in
photography today.
Bibliography
Murray, S. (2008), 'Digital images, photo-sharing, and
our shifting notions of everyday aesthetics', Journal of Visual Culture
August 2008, vol. 1, no. 2:147-163.
‘Sleeping Soul’ by Skyleo (2012)
Everyday Aesthetics Photo Essay: Staircases
MAS 110 Assignment #2: Everyday Aesthetics Photo Essay
by Amelia Webb and Katie Rooney
Sub Theme: The Built Environment
Murray (2008) states that in the new generation of online media “photography has become less about the special or rarefied moments of domestic/family living and more about an immediate, rather fleeting display of one’s discovery of the small and mundane" - namely the everyday aesthetic. It is for this reason that the subject of the photographs in the essay focuses on stairs, an everyday aspect of life however overlooked they may be. This essay greatly reflects the temporal aspects of the everyday that Murray discusses. The photographs in it are fleeting and immediate moments, taken on journeys to and from work and university. The photo essay itself remains temporary, with no hard copy of it once the assignment is done and forgotten there will be little memory or acknowledgement of it from anyone.
The main theme of the essay, which comes through in the selection of music, is everyday sexualisation with our subtheme revolving around stairs and the built environment. The theme is a comment on the over sexualisation that the media play a part in everyday, by choosing stairs as our subtheme we are parodying this through the use of an everyday aesthetic. It reflects journalisms tendency to focus on stories that centre around sexual themes and less so on the everyday, which may remain more relevant to viewers.
Video:
Music:
Karim (2012) "Get on Up (Karim Roller Disco Edit)"
Creative Commons License: 3.0 Attribution
Reference List:
Murray, S 2008, ‘Digital Images, Photo-Sharing, and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday Aesthetics’, Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 7, no. 2, p. 147
"Putcha rubbish inner bin!" Ron Au & Jack Bartlett
The theme we chose is rubbish. The sub-theme is its unclear and transitory state. We attempted to look at the way rubbish used to be a part of something or have a specific use. And we set out to answer whether it is instantly rubbish the second someone throws it away and whether the aesthetic is lost at this moment, because it is now trash. Or, can rubbish be art?
It seems to us that it is only when you take a photo of some rubbish that you can appreciate it. This brings me back to the sub-theme and the above questions. We tried to “have some sort of artistic aspirations or pretensions in [our] composition[s], [and] use of lighting or framing (Murray 2008)” to bring new appreciation for these “small objects in life that often go unnoticed” (ibid). Of course this may not be to everyone’s taste; as Murray states “for the most part, the meanings of … individual images and the collection itself are in the eye of the beholder” (ibid). At the end of this essay, we can answer in the affirmative: there is a beauty in refuse. It is admittedly “fleeting, malleable [and] immediate” (ibid) but it is there if you have the right ingredients.
Some of our photos show animals, cars and people moving while rubbish is surrounding them, oblivious the fact they are so close to these eyesores. Not only is the rubbish part of the everyday aesthetic, but the ignorance of society to a problem they created is an embedded part of the everyday aesthetic, as we have clearly demonstrated. There are photos from a wide variety of locations showing evidence of our “exploration of the urban eye and its relation to decay … [and] ability to locate beauty in the mundane” (ibid). We believe that for the above reasons our collection can be included in the photographic category of ‘ephemera’.
Reference: Murray S, “Digital Images, Photo-Sharing, and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday Aesthetics”, Journal of Visual Culture 2008, 7(2), 147-163.
Music: Elepheel (Omar Al Fil) - Garbage Man (2012, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0))
Link to source: http://soundcloud.com/elepheel/garbage-man
Photo Essay: Nicholas Johnston and Penny Constanti
Photo Essay
Theme: Music, Subtheme: Instruments and Vinyl
The theme of our photo essay is ‘Music’, and our sub-theme
is ‘instruments and vinyl’. We believe that we have reflected the notion of
‘everyday aesthetics’ (Murray 2008) by taking photos of musical instruments and
a various array of vinyl. Everyone has experienced the feeling of when music
has had the ability to “preserve moments in time”, to make you remember the
smallest memories or feelings because of the music that was playing. Whether it
is in the car, on a laptop, using an ipod or even just browsing in a shop, we
all take pleasure in the simple moments that music gives us. We believed that
by taking photos of our personal instrument and vinyl collection, we could give
light and beauty to the mundane objects that create the music, with which we
have compiled a “display and collection of (our) discovery”. We also wanted
make sure that we included vinyl and an iphone. This allowed us to portray how
technology may change how we listen to music, but the simple sensation that
experiencing music gives us, has not differed.
The song we chose to include in our video is called 12 Bar
Bruise by Melbourne band King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard. We felt it was an
interesting choice because it was actually recorded using four iPhones; one
placed in front of the drums, one for the bass amp, one for the guitar amp and
one to sing directly into as well as a normal microphone. Because all the
levels are high enough, the four iPhones placed across the room actually pick
up all the instruments. It creates a highly reverberated sound. The point of
choosing this track was to tie in with the choice we made to take our photos on
smartphones in an effort to make a statement about multi-faceted usefulness of
smartphones. This again is used to juxtapose the images of instruments, which
portray the tradition way of playing and producing music.
Though our photos were not put in any particular order, we
believe that by including instruments, vinyl, an iphone and an
smartphone-created song, we can take you on a journey of music, showing the
differing avenues of which we can create and enjoy music.
References:
Murray, S (2008) Digital Images, Photo-Sharing, and Our Shifting Notions
of Everyday Aesthetics. Journal of Visual Culture August 2008 vol. 7(2).
147-163
Written permission from 'King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard' to use their music:
The Forgotten Beauty of Manhole Covers
THE FORGOTTEN BEAUTY
Have
you ever stopped and thought that the ground under you feet is hiding a world
of art? If not, look under your feet and explore the forgotten beauty of manhole
covers. It is for this reason I decided to photograph them. These objects are
very much over-watched in everyday life aesthetics. During my project I have
been exploring manhole covers in a variety of locations such as in the cities
and their surrounds. I have been taking photos of manhole covers on streets,
footpaths and basements. I believe that photographing manhole covers is closely
associated to Murray’s concept of amateurism photography. Manhole covers are
objects that humans tread on daily without noticing them. Today, photography is
not only about capturing posed family portraits it’s also about capturing
instant moments of ignored objects at any time of the day. They say that a picture
is worth a thousand words. Photographing manhole covers enriches you to see the
beauty of the unnoticed. Manhole covers are all unique, and each has its own
design and symbol. They exist to prevent people and things from falling into
the holes they cover. Originally, manhole covers were installed for visual
inspections of sewers. Now, we can see the beauty of manhole covers; they
create an unseen pattern in our every day life while they contemporaneously
save our lives from falling into holes.
I
have included a poem from Karl Shapiro below as it portrays the beauty of
manhole covers. The poem emphasizes that the beauty can be found anywhere, even in the most unusual
places.
Manhole Covers
The
beauty of manhole covers--what of that?
Like
medals struck by a great savage khan,
Like
Mayan calendar stones, unliftable, indecipherable,
Not
like the old electrum, chased and scored,
Mottoed
and sculptured to a turn,
But
notched and whelked and pocked and smashed
With
the great company names
(Gentle
Bethlehem, smiling United States).
This
rustproof artifact of my street,
Long
after roads are melted away will lie
Sidewise
in the grave of the iron-old world,
Bitten
at the edges,
Strong
with its cryptic American,
Its
dated beauty.
-
Karl Shapiro
CREATED BY GIUDITTA NIELSEN (43015107)
Photo Essay
Mundane Moments: Drinks We Drink
Bryce Gleeson & Hamish Chapman
Phones, a culture has developed in which people take and collect images of objects and events from their everyday lives and share them using online social media. Susan Murray suggests that photography is no longer only used for immortalising special moment’s in one’s life, but is more frequently used for the “immediate, rather fleeting display and collection of one’s discovery of the small and mundane”.[1] This is clearly reflected in the theme and subtheme of our photo essay, ‘Mundane Moments – Drinks we Drink’. Our photo essay comprises of different things we drank in the past few weeks, referencing the now common practice of sharing photographs of food and drinks that we now see all over Facebook, Flickr and other social media. The theme of drinks relates to the idea of the everyday aesthetic in that it captures a highly mundane and fleeting event (or non-event); drinks are consumed within a few moments, and we would rarely stop to think about or observe the process of drinking. In keeping with Murray’s concept, photographing drinks also has autobiographical references. Furthermore our photo essay creates a compilation of these unspectacular moments, rather than a narrative. For this reason the photos are not arranged in any chronological order and were not edited to resemble one another. To exhibit 24 pictures in 30 seconds required quite a fast progression through the images, which we matched with upbeat music and made smoother through the use of transition effects. The final product reflects both the idea of the everyday aesthetic and the contemporary culture of sharing our day-to-day lives through digital photography.
[1] Murray, S 2008, ‘Digital Images, Photo-Sharing, and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday Aesthetics’, Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 7, no. 2, p. 147
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Emily Barnier & Kirsty Judges Photo Essay
Theme: Shoes, Sub-theme: Laces
Rationale
The theme for our Photo Essay is 'shoes', and our sub-theme is 'laces'. Our stimulus was the exploration of ‘Digital Images, Photo-Sharing, and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday Aesthetics.’ (Murray, 2008). We believe that these everyday objects perfectly reflect Murray’s notion of “amateur photography” as well as the representation of the “digitalized (and decentralized) aesthetics of the everyday.”
Since the development of digital photography, Murray suggests that there has been a significant shift in the way people utilise cameras. Nowadays, photography is “less about the special or rarefied moments” and “more about an immediate, rather fleeting, display and collection of one’s discovery”. Photographers; amateur or professional, are able to store and erase images on memory
cards, as well as viewing them immediately after being taken. There is now a sense of “disposability and immediacy” to photography.
Our photo essay represents these characteristics through the collaboration of images focused on shoe laces. Shoe laces are an element of the “creator’s work/home life” which have been captured and edited on iPhoto in order to be transformed into something beautiful through the use of lighting, colour, texture and angles. It is an example of the modern day fascination with the process of “compilation and comparison.”
Our intent was to capture a range of images which when collaborated, illustrated the subtle yet striking differences of a mundane object. We then assembled them with an accompanying soundtrack “Runt - Blackbird (The Beatles)” (Runtalala, 2012) in iMovie. Our finished product has been uploaded to Youtube and posted to Blogger. This process exemplifies one of Murray’s key arguments; these images help “alter the way that we construct narratives about ourselves and the world around us.”
Reference: Murray, S (2008) Digital Images, Photo-Sharing, and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday Aesthetics. Journal of Visual Culture August 2008 vol. 7(2). 147-163.
Video
Shelving - Bookshelves
Photo Essay – Shelving/Bookshelves
Shelving, particularly bookshelves, in an
individual’s home are deemed a very mundane object in their everyday
surroundings. Due to the constant unchanging nature of this common fixture in a
persons home, it is typically overlooked. The intention behind this photo essay
is to “preserve moments in time” (Murray, 2008, pp. 154) showing a beauty that
these objects possess. Shelving, especially bookshelves are known as an
everyday aesthetic as they “contain a type of liveness in its initial
appearance” (Murray, 2008, pp. 157) which is quickly lost, as it becomes a
constant element in a room. The photographs in this video are an attempt at
portraying the simple beauty that can be found in a simple bookshelf.
In an attempt at retaining the simple beauty
of these bookshelves, the editing choices made for each photograph was done so
aiming to highlight the beauty they poses. The colour saturation, temperature
and tints used during the editing process were chosen in order to re-enchant
the viewer with these mundane objects.
However, there is no intentional “narrative
coherence” (Murray, 2008, pp. 155) as the main focus of this project was in the
creation and compilation, or as Murray states “a fascination with the process
of compilation and comparison” (2008, pp. 155) of the final video.
Bibliography
Murray, S., 2008, 'Digital Images, Photo-Sharing, and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday Aesthetics', Journal of Visual Culture August 2008, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 147-163.
Tracy Leong
4284 5556
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Photo Essay - Katherine Bineham and Hamish Conroy
Playgrounds
Structure and decay
Children's playgrounds have, for many years, been symbolic
of the frivolity of youth. However, as entertainment has become increasingly
synonymous with technology, the role of the children's playground within
society has diminished. As playgrounds have been made obsolete by digital forms
of entertainment they have gradually decayed, leaving many cities and suburbs
with structurally disparate installations.
In this vein, this photo essay illustrates the structure and
decay of our once proud playgrounds, as we seek to demonstrate the
juxtaposition between the playground and the world around it. Through the eye
of the camera, with its angles and effects, it allows the viewer to observe the
natural aesthetic of the structure and decay of the everyday object, playgrounds.
In Susan Murray’s journal of ‘Digital
Images, Photo-Sharing, and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday Aesthetics’, she
explains that this type of photography, in ‘its ability to locate beauty in the
mundane’[1]
has been alleged a new category of photography, called ‘ephemera’.
These photos depict how photography doesn’t just be the
beautiful, meaningful or unique moments in time, but can be just as powerful
and meaningful when not typically beautiful, like a simple, rusted, metal hook.
Photo 10 in photo essay
By Katherine Bineham (42459206) and Hamish Conroy (42455421)
[1] Murray, S, 2008. Digital
Images, Photo-Sharing, and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday Aesthetics. Journal of Visual Culture 7 (147) p.155
SWITCHED ON
Photo essay of light and power switches
Photography of everyday aesthetics focuses
on capturing every day objects, which may otherwise go unnoticed. Murray (2008) discusses that such photography engages with these mundane, common
elements of our lives as opposed to “special or rarefied moments”.
‘Switched On’ reflects this concept through
the capturing of various images of light and power switches. The importance of these
switches in our daily lives is easily overlooked as a part of the every day
experience. These initially unremarkable images display essential parts of
accessing power throughout our lives.
This photo essay begins by displaying
simple, singular switches and moves through multiple-switch boards towards
larger power boards. The building progression of intensity of the images
symbolizes the growing expansion of electricity from switch to power. Throughout
the compilation of images for this essay, we became increasingly aware of the
variety of switch designs, realizing the vast array of ignored aesthetics that
surrounded us.
The essay takes viewers on a visual journey
to appreciate the unobserved, everyday objects that the contemporary practice
of photography is beginning to capture more and more.
Steph Bissett (42873827) & Georgia Turner (42858100)
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