sketchbook

Contextualisation

2007-09-03T14:48:00.000-07:00

Mexicanity

How it started?

Some how everybody assumes that I live close to the ocean, that I drink tequila really quickly; “do shots” (I like tequila but I wouldn’t drink it fast), that my moustache can grow really long (as Pedro said in Napoleon Dynamite) in just a couple of days, people in pubs trying to be friendly say things to me like “ay caramba” (Bart Simpson), or “andale andale arriva!”(speady Gonsalez), “banana” (The Spanish world for banana in Spanish is plátano), “hola amigo”, “taco”, “burritos”, “tortilla”, “Cancun”, “Acapulco” all kinds of stereotypical words etc. People usually ask me “how do you say in Mexican…?” (We speak Spanish in Mexico) and some how I am not American anymore; if I said I am American people interpret that I am from the United States of America.

Artist Alfredo Jaar from Chile, with his piece “a logo for America”, invited several artists to make a 45 second animation, which was to projected on a gigantic screen in Time Square; presented the map and the flag of the united states, and on top of it the inscription “this is not America”. This exposed the alteration of realities and explored the relations between identity and language. 1

I carry an identity, and the rest of the word carry pre-fabricated assumptions of who I am, and what it is to be me, a Mexican.

Whilst living and studying in the UK I have noticed many of the subconscious auto imposed characteristics that as a Mexican I am expected to project, as I said before I like tequila and I definitely like spicy food, and interestingly I find myself fitting many of the categories that describe the stereotype of the Mexican. But, I would like to clarify that we all fit some categories of different sorts; “categories help to give a sense of order to the social world”. I wouldn’t say, however, that I should accept these stereotypes, because this is different from categories; “stereotyping attempts to deny any flexible thinking with categories”. 2 I find funny when people associate me with “tequila”, etc, however, I know it could be offensive or even racist to another Mexican, or even more offensive to another Latino that has simply been mistaken for a Mexican. What I mean when I say I find it’s funny, is not that it is necessarily acceptable, just that I think it is a good chance to express my opinion on the mater, laugh about the mistakes we all make when we stereotype, and even make people aware of the subconscious mistake they could be making.

The Concept

This project explores the relationships between identity and stereotyping; taking advantage of the freedom cyberspace offers, I have developed a web community with the objective to show an identity which I call “Mexicanity”; many individuals with different backgrounds including different nationality, interpret what it is to be a Mexican, the result is solved with the following equation:

[1 web community ÷ (Mexicans + non Mexicans)] x

[1moderator ÷ (own identity + interpretations)] + I space + 2 projectors + sound =

“Mexicanity” a VJ performance = Globalising a non-bias interpretation of a very stereotyped persona, crossing all the boundaries of space, time, culture, cliché, and categorisation

The community

In the past 9 months I have found it very satisfying to discover so many practitioners in the fields of art and design concerned with how the world works and how to make a difference, and how to change the protocols and divert the system.

Web communities such as “RTmark” (http://www.rtmark.com/) are a platform where activism can reach more people in their fight to make a difference on the injustices of economics around the world and “SUPERFLEX” (http://www.superflex.net) is a great place to develop collaborative projects of “experimental models that alter the prevailing economic production conditions.”

Mexicanity began with research into, and finally the construction of the community; I sent an invitation via email making use of three different sources: a Yahoo group “Mexicans abroad”, the Netbehaviour mailing list and Flickr, a photograph sharing website.

“Netbehaviour” “is an open email list community engaged in the process of sharing and actively involving critical approaches, methods and ideas focused around contemporary networked media arts practice.” (http://www.netbehaviour.org/about.htm)

Flickr is a photographic community that aloud you to have your own page for your photos, other members can leave comments or make notes on them.
Flickr provide you tools to customize your photos on line
You can set different privacy level on each or your photos.
You can tag other photographs
You can form and subscribe to different groups and join into their discussion lists.
The invitation

The invitation I sent out via these communication networks read:

“You have been invited to the Mexicanity web community. For this project you are requested to input any kind of information and media (videos, sound, illustrations, photos etc.) referencing what it is to you to be a Mexican. You do not have to be Mexican to be part of the project. The idea is to collect different points of view, and opinions on the Mexican reality of life. All this information will be part of the University College Falmouth Interactive Art and Design exhibition.
You are granted with complete access to the community blog, feel free to add anything you want. Please don't destroy the blog or other people inputs, but you are welcome to change the colours, the fonts, add images, and links, etc.
Any offensive material will be removed by the artist.

Welcome and enjoy

How does it work?:
To see the blog Go to:
http://mexicanity.blogspot.com
to sign in:
username: mexicanityproject
password: mexicanity
or:
if you are a flickr user you can add your pictures to the group Mexicanity: http://www.flickr.com/groups/mexicanity/
Or simply e-mail me anything you want to be part o the project.
Mexicanity@gmail.com.”

The feedback from this invitation was very satisfactory: the input included; more than 400 original photographs from 100 different participants collected through the Mexicanity flickr group in a period of two months, more than 40 videos, both original and taken from the web were uploaded on the Mexicanity web blog, several quotations of important Mexican writers, several songs and artists were suggested to be played during the exhibition, were either submitted on the blog or e-mailed. I was overwhelmed by the response from so many people from different places in Mexico and the rest of the world; a community really began to take shape through the sharing of incredible images and information of places, people, political movements, art, and crafts.

Why VJ performance?

Following the invitation and the many responses, I found myself with a vast compilation of SAMPLES, “the bricks that can then be used to construct new meanings”. 8 These are strong representative media of Mexican culture, amazingly rich and diverse, but they only work as a collection because they could be seen as stereotypical images if they are displayed individually. Mexicanity is playing with the possibility to show trough sound and visuals the globalize image of a nation that is a lot more than a ‘exotic land’ (whatever that means) and that is why I needed to create an environment In which I could dislocate the images from their stereotypical connotations to create a personal language” 3

“In the VJ project memories by d-fuse he uses old photographs with the intention to play with memories and associations” 9 in the beginning they seem to be no more than old photos as time goes by I started to give them some kind of meaning as if I was seeing images of my own family, I was mixing my own memories with the images presented, I was reconstructing realities in the back of my mind.

Why live performance?

I wanted to allow for natural spontaneity; if I was to decide what is representative of Mexican culture there would be no collaborative element to the work, and I would have no way of knowing if I was acting in a non-bias way. The main interaction takes place in the web community, as I have discussed, however, the audience in the gallery space, during the exhibition, will also have the chance to interact. They will be able to do this by selecting prints of the images submitted by the community, and placing them under a video camera, once they do this, it will be mixed with more images, and subverted by the VJ. Integrating these into a more inclusive image and trying to find an understanding with the user, blurs our prefabricated assumptions to compose and decompose and recompose an identity. 4 The result: a broader view; a combination of images that inform the cultural diversity of the Mexican reality.

The place

“To move something from one place to another might seem the most insignificant of the actions … The avatar of cultures and, of course, of their frontiers, can be woven into that apparently dull act of moving something from one place to another … the traces of mobility are left in those frontiers and end up by themselves been influenced by the inertia of the initial impulse” 5

Mexicanity is trying to find all the traces of mobility: the mobility that happened in physical and mediated systems; what you saw on TV; the postcard you received; the video on you tube; the book you read; the food you ate; the trip you made etc. Mexicanity re-defines the places to create an environment, in which consciously we can get a sense of place, not based on geographical fixations, instead with the objective to provoke a feeling of a wider world free from geographical boundaries. 6 I like to think that we can all construct our identity a construction a process never completed always in process.7

Mexicanity, Screen grabs

2007-09-03T14:37:00.000-07:00

Mexicanity postcards

2007-09-03T14:00:00.000-07:00

Mexicanity project sketch book

2007-08-31T03:14:00.000-07:00

Brief

2007-02-22T07:39:00.000-08:00

This is a short brief just to start thinking on the different possible issues.
click here short brief

This is a BRIEF provided by the client.
click here for client's BRIEF

Definitive BRIEF
This is a brief based on the two previous briefs and the agreements acorded on "meeting two"

1. Client
Video artist Christiaan Bailey started a project originally called "signal" with the aim to provide health and drug information to young people aged 11 years and older via mobile phone technology, but this has proved very difficult, so the objective has been adjusted to provide similar info through a website.

- Develop a website that provides information on people experiences of drug taking (including alcohol and tobacco) and sexual health matters and provide them with links and information to enable them to be better informed on all levels.
- Empower teenagers with the proper knowledge to gain control of their own life.
- Provide online space gallery facility where our target audience can view and post material.

2. Project Goals and desired outcomes.

- Design an interface suitable for teenagers
- Design a public space to provide information on addictions and sexual health in the Cornwall area.
- Provide the option to publish personal experiences trough e-mail filtered and edited by a moderator.
- Design a video and image gallery space (advertisement free)
- Design web page able to expand for new features.

3. Target Audience
- Primary audience: Teenagers from 11 to 19 located on the Cornwall area (the information provided can be useful to anybody)
- Possibilities of expansion to the rest of the UK

4. Schedule
- Meetings every Thursday
- With deadline on the 7th of May.

Robin B. Hamman

2007-02-18T10:52:00.000-08:00

Computer Network Linking
Network Communities
George Hillery, Jr., subjected 94 social definitions of the term “community” with only one concept in common: they all dial with people.O/C p.74 Here is a definition by Robin B. Hamman based on Hillery’s analysis of definitions of community: the social term:

Community should be understood here as meaning(1)a group of people(2) who share social interaction(3) and some common ties between themselves an the other members of the group (4) and who share an area for at least some of the time (in some cases some shared area my be occupied by every member of a community at one time. However, it seams more likely that members of the community will move in and out of this shared area meating most often in pears or small groups.)
network communities consist of a grouo of people. Members of the community share at least one common tie. Even if it is only that they know an individual within the network community. They also interact with each other, although this is done indirectly through an intermediary. Within network communities the area shared by community members may be offline and tangible or may be electronically created.
Falmouth University College reference 303.4833ONL

Andrew Calcutt

2007-02-18T10:46:00.000-08:00

White noise an a-z of the contradictions in cyber cultures

Other commentators have looked into cyberculture and seen alienation not community

-kevin robins described cyberculture as a new way of shutting oneself off physical reality… there is the desire to rise avobe reality… the notion of liveration esto be free from reality
-In the guardian, John gray dismissed virtual communities as a designers utopia customized for people who belive in technical fixes and not in morality or politics.
- Vivian Sobchack dissected the “cyber culturists” enthusiasm for “getting rid of the meat” and detected disdain for the “imperfect human body” and stragement from the imperfect world”: This is alienation raised to the level of ecstasies: “A being out of its place”. It is also a political fantacy of escape.
Cyber communitarians are enthusiastic about the new forms of conversation facilitated by digital communications, but the new communities is perhaps more remarkable for what it excludes than for what is included in it.
-Ziauddin Sardar appoint that a online community is essentially the a club which represent a retreat from the street and other publics thoroughfares… The essence ofreal community is it presuntiveperpetuity – you have to worry about other people because they will olways be there. In Cyber space community you can shout people off at the click of a mouse and go elsewhere.
Virtual communities also define themselves according to who is excluded.
In cyberculture, therefore, community and alienation are mutually dependent rather than mutually exclusive, in that the tie that binds the cyber-communitarians together is their alienation from the rest or the world.

Shawn P. Wilbur

2007-02-18T10:05:00.000-08:00

AN ARQUEOLOGY OFCYBERSPACES
VORTUALITY, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY

- An increasing number of people are finding their lives touched by collectivities which have nothing to do with physical proximity
- We might think of virtual community as a next arrival on the cultural scene
- Internet it is largely a text based affair
- (Referring to Howard Rheingold’s definition) “Sufficient human feeling” is a rather imprecise measure, full of assumptions about “the human” and about the ends of this human feeling would be “sufficient”
- The key ingredients are communication and feelings
- Community seems to refer primarily to relations of communality vetween persons and objects, and only rather imprecisely to the site of such community. What is important is a holding-in-common of qualities, properties, identities or ideas,
- The virtual seems most often to refer to that which appears to be (but is not) real, authentic, or proper. - Although it might have the same effects.
- The roots of “virtuality” are in “virtue”… the virtual and the virtuous were synonymous
o Cristian church can conjure the “virtual body” of Christ any place “where two ore tree are gathered together in Jesus name.
o Morality virtue is equated with hearth, strength and sexual purity
o The optical definition of the virtual undoubtedly shares some elements of the miraculous but refers specifically to the realm of appearances. Optical technologies deceive us in potentially useful ways, by bringing that which can’t be seen into view.
o Perhaps it should not be surprise that this extreme form of optical vituallity ha given rise to a fresh outburst of moral concern, such as the media’s titillated fascination with “cyber sex”
o Paul Virlo has suggested that technologies of the virtual are destinated to not only simulate the real, as Jean Baudrillard has suggested, but to replace it.
-The I in cyber culture – It is likely that those who become more immersed in Internet culture develop a sort of synesthesia which allows them to exercise all of the senses through their eyes and fingers.
o Many computer users seem to experience the movement into cyberspace as an unshackling from real-life constrains.
o The (emancipatory) discourse of the cyberspace suggest the possibility or stepping beyond and remaining one’s self in some lasting way through virtual identity-play. (Avalon)
o (Through a experiment with mirrors) In Lacan’s diagram, the virtual space “behind” the plane mirrors is where the subject imagines (through misrecognition) that its self exixts as a unity (rather than a some disorganized collection of identifications… howeverit seems likethe virtual is where all the action is.
o The persona that appears in cyberspace is potentially more fluid than those we assume in other aspects of our lives, in part because we can consciously shape it.
o What is clear at this stage of the game is that an engagement with virtual community in any adequate, rigorous way will involve us in the painstaking negotiation of a complex field of meanings and associations – one where the possibility of choosing between the real and the as good as real will constitute only one more question among many.
falmouth university college reference The cybercultures reader 303.4833 BEL

Howard Rheingold

2007-02-18T08:21:00.000-08:00

THE VIRTUAL COMMUNITY

- Virtual communities are social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace.
- People in virtual communities use words on screens to exchange pleasantries and argue, engage in intellectual discourse, conduct commerce, exchange knowledge, share emotional support, make plans, brainstorm, gossip, feud, fall in love, find friends and lose them, play games, flirt, create a little high art and a lot if idle talk. People in virtual communities do just about everything people do in real life, but we leave our bodies behind. You can't kiss anybody and nobody can punch you in the nose, but a lot can happen within those boundaries. To the millions who have been drawn into it, the richness and vitality of computer-linked cultures is attractive, even addictive.
- Some people use virtual communities as a form of psychotherapy. Others, such as the most addicted players of Minitel in France or Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) on the international networks, spend eighty hours a week or more pretending they are someone else, living a life that does not exist outside a computer.
-The technology that makes virtual communities possible has the potential to bring enormous leverage to ordinary citizens at relatively little cost... this latent technical power must be used intelligently and deliberately by an informed population. More people must learn about that leverage and learn to use it, while we still have the freedom to do so, if it is to live up to its potential.
-A continuing theme throughout the history of CMC is the way people adapt technologies designed for one purpose to suit their own, very different, communication needs.
-CMC might become the next great escape medium, in the tradition of radio serials, Saturday matinees, soap operas--which means that the new medium will be in some way a conduit for and reflector of our cultural codes, our social subconscious, our images of who "we" might be, just as previous media have been.
-CMC has the potential to change our lives on three different, but strongly interinfluential, levels. First, as individual human beings, we have perceptions, thoughts, and personalities (already shaped by other communications technologies) that are affected by the ways we use the medium and the ways it uses us. At this fundamental level, CMC appeals to us as mortal organisms with certain intellectual, physical, and emotional needs.
The second level of possible CMC-triggered change is the level of person-to-person interaction where relationships, friendships, and communities happen.
The third level of possible change in our lives, the political, derives from the middle, social level, for politics is always a combination of communications and physical power, and the role of communications media among the citizenry is particularly important in the politics of democratic societies.
-Community is a matter of emotions as well as a thing of reason and data. Some of the most important learning will always have to be done by jumping into one corner or another of cyberspace, living there, and getting up to your elbows in the problems that virtual communities face.

- Many people are alarmed by the very idea of a virtual community, fearing that it is another step in the wrong direction, substituting more technological ersatz for yet another natural resource or human freedom. These critics often voice their sadness at what people have been reduced to doing in a civilization that worships technology, decrying the circumstances that lead some people into such pathetically disconnected lives that they prefer to find their companions on the other side of a computer screen. There is a seed of truth in this fear, for virtual communities require more than words on a screen at some point if they intend to be other than ersatz.
- Some people--many people--don't do well in spontaneous spoken interaction, but turn out to have valuable contributions to make in a conversation in which they have time to think about what to say. These people, who might constitute a significant proportion of the population, can find written communication more authentic than the face-to-face kind. Who is to say that this preference for one mode of communication--informal written text--is somehow less authentically human than audible speech? Those who critique CMC because some people use it obsessively hit an important target, but miss a great deal more when they don't take into consideration people who use the medium for genuine human interaction.
- Because we cannot see one another in cyberspace, gender, age, national origin, and physical appearance are not apparent unless a person wants to make such characteristics public. People whose physical handicaps make it difficult to form new friendships find that virtual communities treat them as they always wanted to be treated--as thinkers and transmitters of ideas and feeling beings, not carnal vessels with a certain appearance and way of walking and talking (or not walking and not talking).
-in traditional kinds of communities, we are accustomed to meeting people, then getting to know them; in virtual communities, you can get to know people and then choose to meet them. Affiliation also can be far more ephemeral in cyberspace because you can get to know people you might never meet on the physical plane.
-Words on a screen can hurt people. Although online conversation might have the ephemeral and informal feeling of a telephone conversation, it has the reach and permanence of a publication.
-One important social rule was built into the software that the WELL lives inside: Nobody is anonymous. Everybody is required to attach their real userid to their postings. It is possible to use pseudonyms to create alternate identities, or to carry metamessages, but the pseudonyms are always linked in every posting to the real userid.
falmouth university college reference 303.4833RHE
complete text online

Queen

2007-01-20T05:48:00.000-08:00

Jimi

2007-01-12T14:54:00.000-08:00

Services

2007-01-11T14:02:00.000-08:00

This are the services that will be offered in the community

1.-Theory for a better understandig of the concept
2.-Contacts for help
3.-Join The community
4.-Back to the intro

Main page

2007-01-11T13:55:00.000-08:00

This is the main page where you will find the members of the community and the houses that will take you to the different services that the comunity offer.

Intro

2007-01-11T13:51:00.000-08:00

In the Intro you will have a short description of the concept.

NIN

2006-12-08T04:17:00.000-08:00

Right Where It Belongs (With-Teeth Tour Screen Visual)

Bill Viola talks about internet

2006-12-03T07:23:00.000-08:00

physical proximity

2006-12-01T10:07:00.000-08:00

Jean Jacques Rousseau--The Communitarian

The Well--This is a site
worth visiting. It raises some interesting questions about what we mean
by community, particiapation and friendship.

http://www.wiu.edu/users/mfcjh/wiu/web/modern/modern.htm

confessional poet

2006-12-01T05:08:00.000-08:00

Lowell’s poetry has been a long struggle to remove the mask, to make
the speaker unequivocally himself. […] it is hard not to think of Life Studies as a series of personal confidences, rather shameful, that one is honor-bound not to reveal" (M. L. Rosenthal, The Modern Poets: A Critical Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), 226, 231)

who we are?

2006-12-01T04:06:00.000-08:00

The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are
-jim morrison

jim

2006-12-01T03:59:00.000-08:00

xpose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.

Jim Morrison

2006-12-01T03:56:00.000-08:00

The first time I discovered death... me and my mother and father, and
my grandmother and grandfather, were driving through the desert at
dawn. A truckload of Indians had either hit another car or something —
there were Indians scattered all over the highway, bleeding to death. I
was just a kid, so I had to stay in the car while my father and
grandfather went to check it out. I didn't see nothing — all I saw was
funny red paint and people lying around, but I knew something was
happening, because I could dig the vibrations of the people around me,
and all of a sudden I realized that they didn't know what was happening
any more than I did. That was the first time I tasted fear... and I do
think, at that moment, the souls of those dead Indians — maybe one or
two of them — were just running around, freaking out, and just landed
in my soul, and I was like a sponge, ready to sit there and absorb it.

logo

2006-11-29T07:08:00.000-08:00

logosketch.jpg
Originally uploaded by Alejandro Kambal.

This will be logo for the project

Krishnamurti's freedom from teh known

2006-11-26T12:45:00.000-08:00

http://www.omalpha.com/jardin/krishnamurti-en.html

Krishnamurti

2006-11-23T04:08:00.000-08:00

A mind which is competitive, held in the conflict of becoming, thinking in terms of comparison, is not capable of discovering the real. Thought-feeling which is intensely aware is in the process of constant self-discovery-which discovery, being true, is liberating and creative.
BookOfLife

Confucius

2006-11-23T04:03:00.000-08:00

"Tell me and I will forget.

Show me and I will remember.

Involve me and I will understand."

Input / Output poster Design

2006-11-10T16:40:00.000-08:00

robotoiletoriginale.jpg
Originally uploaded by Alejandro Kambal.

Input / Output is the group of MA Interactive Arts & Design studentes at University College Falmouth

Imput / Output logo design 4

2006-11-10T16:37:00.000-08:00

heartyellowweb.jpg
Originally uploaded by Alejandro Kambal.

Imput / Output logo design 4

Imput / Output logo design 3

2006-11-10T16:36:00.000-08:00

heart2web.jpg
Originally uploaded by Alejandro Kambal.

Imput / Output logo design 3

Imput / Output logo design 2

2006-11-10T16:35:00.000-08:00

manocolorweb.jpg
Originally uploaded by Alejandro Kambal.

Imput / Output logo design 2

Imput / Output logo design 1

2006-11-10T16:25:00.000-08:00

manocolorweb.jpg
Originally uploaded by Alejandro Kambal.

Input / output logo design

Curriculum Vitae

2006-11-10T15:51:00.000-08:00

CV

Alejadro García Martínez

PERSONAL INFO:
****

Degree
Professional Graphic Designer (Industrial Design)
University "Ibero Americana"

Languages
Spanish 100%
English 100%

Programs:
Adobe illustrator, Photoshop, Macromedia Flash, Freehand, Corel Draw, PageMaker, I movie, Painter,
Microsoft Office.

Abilities:
Finding creative solutions for design and web problems, Photography, Painting, Video.

Experience:

March 2006 Toluca Mexico State.
Rock band Tryte: Logo Design

January 2006 Toluca Mexico State .
General Coordination office, University "Autónoma del Estado de México": Graphic Solutions

August 2005 México City.
University Ibero Americana Communication department: Web and graphic design

January 2005 Toluca Mexico State.
TELE-RED Toluca: Graphic Designer

October 2004 Toluca Mexico State.
Adelita Bar Logo Design

September 2004 Mexico City.
Kallista SA. de CV. Cataloge Design

August 2004 Toluca Mexico State.
"Instituto México Toluca" Logo Design

June 2004 Toluca Mexico State.
Arathos High school Booklet design, Light sign

February 2004 Toluca Mexico State.
Mexican Dermatology Society, Logo Design

PDP / action plan

2006-11-10T15:48:00.000-08:00

Schedule of Work
Part 1 (Gathering of stories) from 1st of November to 17th of January
1 Nov. Deliver stage 2 Essay 1A
2-4 Nov. Design structure for web interface
5-6 Nov. Work PDP/CV
7 Nov. Deliver PDP/CV
7-12 Find out how are made Dream weaver Text boxes
13-14 Work Stage 3 Essay 1
15 Nov Deliver Stage 3 Essay 1
15-20nov take pictures of “normal people”
20-25Nov Design animations for web page
25-30nov Design web page
1-2 Dec. Work assessment Presentations
3-4 Dec. Work Concise description of work 1
5 Dec Deliver Concise description of work 1
5 Dec Deliver assessment Presentations
5 Dec Work WIP presentation
6 Dec. Deliver WIP presentation
7 Dec. Work Essay Assignment
8 Dec. Deliver Essay Assignment
9-10 work unit 1A presentation
10-11 Work Artist’s Designers statement 2
12 Dec Deliver Artist’s Designers statement 2
13 Dec Deliver unit 1A presentation
20 Dec Deliver unit 1A presentation
13 Dec Review PDP/ Action plan (living to Mexico on the 15th)
14 Go to London
15 Catch flight to Mexico
16 Dec The web page must be working already
5 Jan work PDP/ Self evaluation form
9 Work Images Screen Grabs
10 Jan Deliver PDP/ Self evaluation form
10 Deliver Images Screen Grabs
10-12 get ready all tasks for the 13th
13-17 prepare installation
17 Exhibition opening
16-17 Assessment Week
Part 2 (making Video) 17th of January to 25th of April
Part 3 (start Community) 25th of April to 31st of august

Unit 1B

2006-11-10T15:44:00.000-08:00

MA interactive Art & Design
Alejandro García Martínez
Unit 1B
Negotiated Project Proposal
Delivery date: 31th October
1
Title: In my life

2
Description:
I attempt to Gather as much stories as I can about family background and how this affected us to develop an addiction problem, I am going to create a interface where anybody can come into a web page and share with a lot of people how it all started. (This is the first stage out of three the following stages will be a small video made out of the different stories posted on the web page. Finally as the third part of the project and final objective we will have a web community focused in develop material useful for the subject such as video conferences, Chat groups, written material).

3
The relevant Context:
We all are part of a system and usually we don’t have a choice we have to stick with the system we were born in to.
William Blake Said “I must create a system of my own or remain slaved by somebody else’s system” ("Prophetic Books" The Book of Thel(1789) The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,(1790) The Book of Urizen,(1794) America(1793), Milton(1804-8)and Jerusalem.(1804-20))
Our family is usually our first social group, and it is our first source of knowledge in all different levels (spiritual, emotional) so we are forced to be part of this system but some times it is not a healthy environment or we simply get restricted by the established rules that limit our “been” when this happen most of the times we search for easy ways out of our unpleasant reality.
ADDICTIONS: Your Questions Answeredby Deirdre Boyd
children most in need of natural "feelgood" chemicals can be deprived of them due to the effects of abusive parenting or other trauma. Research after research, for example, has shown that a vast percentage of addicts have had an abusive childhood. This can range from shaming messages to physical and sexual abuse. And the children have not been taught "boundaries" to protect themselves.The stage has been set for potential addiction and/or psychiatric illness.
I been working a lot in web blogs and web communities (blogspot, flikr) and everybody is searching to express themselves, so I am providing a tool in which all people interested in the addiction subject can express an get a fit back.

4
The Aims
Create a web page that provides very honest and real material about addictions.
Gather enough information to create a story
Have a nice installation for the presentation
Have a web community in which a lot of people feel identified and find answers to their particular experience.

5
The objectives
1.- Create a web interface where people can share their experience about their familiar background causing an addiction problem
2.- Develop a small video based in the true stories posted in the web page to be shown in the same web page.
3.- Create a Web community for people interested in the subject.
6
The Method
Identification: by making the video I pretend that people that see it see themselves reflected in the characters, this particular task will be done by the interactive process that the viewer is actually the scrip writer of the video.
This will be the start point for a “real” web community concerned in addictions trying to recover or simply learn about the problem interactivity will be a important part of this community because it pretend to have different sources to contact addicts or recovered addicts.

7
The outcomes

1.Create the image that I want to project in the interface of the web Page (graphic design)
2.make the interface for the gathering of stories
3.making the video
4. develop interface for community

8
Assessments
1Graphic design Take pictures of “real people” and use them as the image of the webpage (to create a sense of identification)
Interface 1 part one web page Dream weaver
Making of the video with volunteers and class mates
Develop interface for community Dream weaver
Flash

9
Resources required
Web
Video
Sound
Photography
Illustration

11
Schedule of Work
Part 1 (Gathering of stories) from 1st of November to 17th of January
1 Nov. Deliver stage 2 Essay 1A
2-4 Nov. Design structure for web interface
5-6 Nov. Work PDP/CV
7 Nov. Deliver PDP/CV
7-12 Find out how are made Dream weaver Text boxes
13-14 Work Stage 3 Essay 1
15 Nov Deliver Stage 3 Essay 1
15-20nov take pictures of “normal people”
20-25Nov Design animations for web page
25-30nov Design web page
1-2 Dec. Work assessment Presentations
3-4 Dec. Work Concise description of work 1
5 Dec Deliver Concise description of work 1
5 Dec Deliver assessment Presentations
5 Dec Work WIP presentation
6 Dec. Deliver WIP presentation
7 Dec. Work Essay Assignment
8 Dec. Deliver Essay Assignment
9-10 work unit 1A presentation
10-11 Work Artist’s Designers statement 2
12 Dec Deliver Artist’s Designers statement 2
13 Dec Deliver unit 1A presentation
20 Dec Deliver unit 1A presentation
13 Dec Review PDP/ Action plan (living to Mexico on the 15th)
14 Go to London
15 catch flight to Mexico
Part 2 (making Video) 17th of January to 25th of April
Part 3 (start Community) 25th of April to 31st of august

Essay A1 part 1 satage 2

2006-11-10T15:40:00.000-08:00

MA interactive Art & Design
Alejandro Garcia Martinez
Essay A1
part 1
Stage 2
Delivery date: 1st of November

First set of Criteria
Graphic design, Politics, people, human feelings and emotions, playful, Interactive, communication, psychology, technological, digital, artistic, society, identification and youth.
Fallowing this criteria I would say that my work as a graphic designer is about Communicating with people, creating relationships between the viewer, my work an my self, where everybody involved can express and feel with the final objective of acquire knowledge that will lead us to be a more transcendental person.

New set of criteria
Universal humanism
Spiritual traditions
Human freedom
Philosophical vision

Generes of Work
Online Platform
Collaborative work
Use new technology to express
Use of different kind of media

With the new set of criteria
I feel that my work involves a lot more philosophical an psychological aspects than I thought. Is more about Humanism and Spirituality than plane communication we are talking here about sensitive areas of study, is not only about acquiring knowledge is about rediscovering ourselves and it is not about transcending but about health and mental balance.

Essay A1

2006-11-10T15:38:00.000-08:00

part 1
Stage 1
Delivery date: 25th October

1
Statement 1 (politic)
My work attempt to express the inconformity with the kind of leadership of others, making decisions based on economics, law, and other politics aspects, more than the real necessities and wishes of the people.
In my projects I attempt to show in a playfully and funny way the incoherencies of our governors, not meaning only the state leaders but at every level of society, institutions and persons trying to impose their rules.

Statement 2 (psychology)
I am constantly trying to make people FEEL. I want people get in contact with their emotional site, I want them to experience thinks such as sadness, enthusiasm, joy or any other feeling by interacting with a piece of work. So it is always about delivering messages to a specific target and trying to provoke reactions, I like knowing how our minds work, and how everything in our surroundings affect us, I think we can assume most of my work is based in humans psychology.

Statement 3 (Technology)
Technology is always been an important part of my work, as a graphic designer most of my creations are made for a digital output or it requires digitalization before we have a final product, in the practice of this discipline I have discover that I can reach different kind of people with different media, so I been exploring different technology such as video, photography, animation, and Internet also different software.

Statement 4 (Arts)
Even do I am always looking for new ways of communication I love the traditional art. I work a lot with illustrations, paintings, drawings and collage. I like to combine this analogue media with new digital media. I like to keep the sensation that even it is made on a computer or required a lot of digitalization it is yet “made by man.”

Statement 5 (sociology)
I am concerned about how people interact with each other, how we are limited by society, how we have to live in this system that we have created with all this prejudices and stereotypes, and how we get involved in it, how we feel identified with someone or something an some body else don’t. So I have to say, that I love the natural human process of growing and how the interaction with the world make you become what you are.

2
Graphic design, Politics, people, human feelings and emotions, playful, Interactive, communication, psychology, technological, digital, artistic, society, identification and youth.
Fallowing this criteria I would say that my work as a graphic designer is about Communicating with people, creating relationships between the viewer, my work an my self, where everybody involved can express and feel with the final objective of acquire knowledge that will lead us to be a more transcendental person.

3
Practitioners:
1 Dave Mackean, illustrator
2 Alejandro Gonzalez inarritu, Film maker
3 Terry Jones, Magazine Editor (i-D)
4 Ray Gun, Anarchic design, (ray gun magazine)
5 Dface, Street Artist
6 Rob Reger and illustrated by Buzz Parker (Emily the strange)
7 Hyao Miyazaki, Director (Princess mononoke)
8 Mamoru Oshi’s anime film maker, Ghost in the shell
9 William Arntz director of what tha bleep do we know
10 Darren Aronofsky Pi, réquiem for a dream
11 Isabel Coixet La vida sin mi
12 Further field network community
13 Bill Viola Viola uses video to explore the phenomena of sense perception as an avenue to self-knowledge. His works focus on universal human experiences—birth, death, the unfolding of consciousness—and have roots in both Eastern and Western art as well as spiritual traditions, including Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and Christian mysticism.
14 Mary Ellen Mark has earned steady recognition for her images published in magazines and books since the mid-1960s. One of America's best-known and most prolific photojournalists, she readily credits her identity as a woman as instrumental in enabling her to gain her subjects' trust.
http://www.maryellenmark.com/
http://www.maryellenmark.com/images/large/gallery/istreet_performers/207X-001-010.jpg
15 Howard Rheingold consultancy for virtual community building.
http://www.rheingold.com/howard/
http://www.smartmobs.com/
16 Alexander R. Galloway
"Protocol," Theory, Culture & Society
everyday social practices, systems of representation, and media environments
17 Michel Foucault
For Foucault, people do not have a 'real' identity within themselves; that's just a way of talking about the self -- a discourse. An 'identity' is communicated to others in your interactions with them, but this is not a fixed thing within a person. It is a shifting, temporary construction.
18 William Blake

19 Matthew Barney: the cremaster a story made out of circumstantial factors to meke other stories
http://www.cremaster.net/
20 Jim Jarmusch coffee and cigarettes

4
1William Blake
2Michel Foucault ('real' identity)
3 William Arntz (what tha bleep do we know)
4 Isabel Coixet La Vida sin mi

5
William Blake
1 He used different media (visual art and written poetry) to create a product with a major impact
2 He made use of his creativity to express. "The imagination is not a State: it is the Human existence itself."
3 Philosophical vision
4Blake hated slavery and believed in racial and sexual equality. Several of his poems and paintings express a notion of universal humanity.
5He retained an active interest in social and political events for all his life.
Michel Foucault
1 Foucault is known for his critical studies of various social institutions, most notably psychiatry, medicine, parameters of educational timeframes, and the prison system, and also for his work on the history of sexuality.
2 Knowledge should transform the self.
3 The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning
4 Foucault preferred not to claim that he was presenting a coherent and timeless block of knowledge; rather, as he says: I don't write for an audience, I write for users, not readers.
5 he believed strongly in human freedom as he believed that something positive could always be done no matter how bleak the situation. his work is actually aimed at refuting the position that Reason (or "rationality") is the sole means of guaranteeing truth and the validity of ethical systems. Thus, to criticise Reason is not to reject all notions of truth and ethics as some of these critics claim.
William Arntz
1 The power of the mind using leading edge science,
2 The power of the mind spiritual inquiry,
3 He used film as an output of his work
4 Explores basic aspects of life
5 Use new technology to express
Bill Viola
1 He uses video to explore the phenomena of sense perception as an avenue to self-knowledge.
2 His works focus on universal humanism
3 Intersection of Spiritual traditions, including Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and Christian mysticism.

Further Field
1 Online platform
2 Creates imaginative strategies that actively communicate ideas and issues
3 Offer a subjective voice that communicates beyond the medium.
4 Is a collaborative work of artists, programmers, writers, activists, musicians and thinkers.
5 create technically innovative projects