Tate Archive print visit:
(open mind 1) Concept:
To look at the idea of how mass destruction that has gone on in the world in recent times, and how it affects personal emotions, and feelings towards more minor more personal death, like a car crash or death from an illness in the family. I feel this is an important concept to look at as it is personal to me and my own experiences.
I want to look into the emotional trauma of mass destruction and how it can affect how a person feels about their own losses. I want to angle my research to the ideas around both of these juxtaposing ideas, and how it can affect us mentally.
To see how PTSD/c-PTSD can affect out through of localised family or friend loss, and how the constant traumas of the world today dull down or emotions to be less affected by personal loss.
Ideas:
Research:
Nick Cave Albums, Murder Ballads, Skeleton Tree (During the sessions Cave’s 15-year-old son Arthur died from an accidental cliff fall. Most of the album had been written at the time of Cave’s son’s death, but several lyrics were amended by Cave during subsequent recording sessions and feature themes of death, loss and personal grief.)(use this to explore my own loss)
Peter Kennard unofficial war artist (Wars and genocide, Vietnam)
Jerry Uelsmann photoshopped images
destruction of architecture as a form of terror
mass terror
personal loss and how PTSD affects that.
Tracy Emins work at the white cube on loss.
Jackson Pollocks work at whitechaple gallery, abstract black and white works
Mediums:
Concept: create provocative work based on the personal destruction, worldly destruction, and mass destruction.
Personal destruction to be based on person experience with death and how the world is becoming more and more messed up with terror attacks and mass genocide and natural disasters that personal death within families feels less important, basing this off my own experience of 5 people in my life dying within 2 years of my childhood between the ages of 9 and 10. With this personal experience I want to look into the idea that I felt as a child and that was a lack of emotion and sadness as I didn’t feel it was bad in comparison the death in the world.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4119479/ (Unexpected death was the most common traumatic experience and most likely to be rated as the respondent’s worst, regardless of other traumatic experiences.)
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19361521.2011.545048 (Although most children are resilient after trauma exposure, others develop significant mental health problems including symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, behavior problems, substance use disorder, and physical health problems.)
Worldly destruction is more focused on the idea of humans destroying the planet through pollution like plastics waste, carbon emissions, and general waste made by humans over the years, essentially killing the planet.
Mass destruction is to show the idea liked to personal destruction, with the detrimental things going on in the world being more important and more saddening than personal loss. I want to look at the media and how it polluted with information and news about some disaster going on somewhere, taking away the meaning of personal disasters.
https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1031&context=engl_176 The Effects of Media Coverage on Mass Shootings in the United StatesLisa Chen
Santa Clara University, lchen3@scu.edu
(Those who may be looking to commit a future shooting may also look at past offenders and events reported in the news to gain knowledge on how they can emulate a similar crime, causing contagion, copycat effects, and imitation. As a result of competing for attention, these fame-seeking offenders are extremely dangerous as they often try to kill more victims than previous shooters. The attention the media places on these aspects of mass shootings has caused the increase in occurrences and fatalities.)
As human beings, coping with the loss of a loved one can be extremely difficult, but when the loss is unexpected and due to senseless violence, the sense of safety that was once had is taken away, leaving people feeling vulnerable, angry, and hopeless (Kamp, 2017)
interesting information about how the media is affecting mass shooting in America and how basically advertising killing to the usa and to ‘aspiring’ mass shooters.
More ideas as to why I want to do this project:
does mass murder effect person emotions greeving?
how does mass destruction effect personal emotions and how humans respond to personal loss?
I want to either focus on personal loss/mass destruction, or souly on worldly death and pollution.
I feel as though the personal and mass is more my style as it gives me the chance to explore my personal issues ,and look at the wider picture.
Use my own experiences as a vehicle to look into the bigger picture that is the world’s issues! or use the worlds issues as a vehicle to explain my issues aka use cars/ smoke/ dead/ bodies/ explosions/ enemies
Worlds issues: bombs, smoke, starvation (people), greed, stupidity, ISIS, enemies,
Personal: cars, people, death, mutilation, old-age, enemies, ptsd, people’s death, glass, tree, ditch, smoke,
Aim:
I want to look at creating 2/3 a1/a0 screen-printed images incorporating:
duo tones,
spot colours (transparent),
CMYK,
black sand (represent death and burial)
foiling (explosions),
bitmap double exposed shapes to integrate images
potentially mixed materials cotton and Somerset paper deckle edged
Inspo images:
from Jerry Uelsmann, John Heartfield, Scott M Fischer, Sally Mann and Peter Kennard.
Claude Cahun
As you can see later on in my experimentation I start to play around with collaging and I stubled upon Claude in the Whitechaple Gallery book shop.
Claude is a a surrelaing photographer, sculptor and writer. Best known for his self portraits that assumed a variety of personae.
His work really caught me eye from his small book and flicked to this phot here on the right. It really captured my imagination and gave me a feeling of joy, although the majority of his work is black and white.
Jochen Lempert
I also found at the Whitechaple Gallery library, was Jochen Lempert a photographer from Germany, and this work, and Untitled peice. Long exposure images taken while lying down with the camera to his chest to capture the movement of his breath from the light of a star. A concept that really confused me but I was captivated by the outcome.
Keiichi Tanaami
Also an artist I found at the Whitechaple Gallery. I wanted to look for more collage artists, and I found Keiichi, a japanese artist who became very popular postwar.
Tanaami lived through WWII, experiencing the devastating bombings of the war’s end, which left a lasting impression on his life and art. The source material for a series of astonishing small collages, each one packed with energy and ideas, mixing pinup images with war comics and advertisements, and this idea is something I loved, mixing completely unrelated things and putting them together.
Sr. X at Saachi
After finding this artist on the Saachi website I had to see the work in person, and I was not disapointed. I disocovered many things that I loved. Like the use of resins which I could replicate with gloss, layering, the use of mixed media, compositi0on and colour, the use of black space, and faces, bitmapping in a more pop art style. Espaically in his peice ‘Long Live’ which says it is made in four colours. I also love ‘The Flame’ and ‘Ready to Begin’ which uses resin and a bird skull inside the resin.
His work has really inspired me for certain elements of my final piece.
Initial ideas:
Initial plans for experiments:
With this project I want to open up my mind to some new possibility’s with materials and elements to my work. I want to play with using sand in my work to give a different dimension and to also emphise death and burial for the personal loss side of my work.
I also want to experiment with printing onto copper or a metal of some sort to bring in an element of industrialisation and production on mass, and print a more personal image on a material that is something that is contributing to mass destruction. with metal and industrialisation being a huge contribute to global warming, I feel that using metal is a great way to bring in a point of mass destruction into an image that is about personal loss.
However once finding out that to print onto metal I would need catalysed printing ink that is two pack which means it is mixed with a catalyst. However this ink is really expensive about £36 a pot.
Therefore I have thought of another way to achieve the effect I wanted. It is to print onto acetate or a plastic of some sort and scratch away at that, to reveal an image or to revel a metal underneath. So I will be testing out printing onto plastic and scratching away in different ways.
First test print:
With this print I was really testing the warm tones and the huge amounts of black and shadowing, and really minimal colour, I was intruded on how it would turn our, and I really loved all stages of this print.
The deep kaki green from the cyan and yellow, the roughness of the magenta, and the solid block colour of the black layer, however I think if I was to do this again I would put markings the black layer, similar to the effect the magenta had where it did not lay down as well onto the paper, you can see the green coming through which I really like.
I really want to do this print on plastic and scrape away at the image to experiment with images, metallic or other colours I could have behind, I also want to test a sand layer on one too to see how it effects the feel of the print.
More ideas:
While brainstorming I wanted to think of more concepts that I can create with my new ideas of having a transparent layers, and imagery.
One idea is to just have a interestingly composition imaged with a skull bomb and car crash.
another idea id to have a face inspired by Sally Mann on one layer then under that layer to have, to have a painting of a ripped off jaw and a mushroom cloud coming out of it.
A zoomed in image of a car with a ripped part out of the middle of the image and stuck over an image of a face.
or an image of a crashed car, rip it in half and have a kids face in the middle.
or a picture of an America school that had a shooting and have a mushroom cloud behind it.
Photoshop edit for next print:
Print Progress:
(open mind 2 with composition and reasoning) New Print idea:
For this print I wanted to do 3 different layers to represent the personal and the impersonal tragedies that we endure as humans. comparing the severeness of a bombing like 9/11 and the minor car crash, yes it results in less death but it is still resulting in death just like a bombing.. so how do we feel toward it? less sympathetic? that is because we have seen bombings like 9/11.. it could always be worse in our eyes.
So I want to create a three layer print using acetate and white space in the prints so you can see through the face to the car crash, to the bombing. With the viewer being able to decide which is worse in their eyes.
Rear view mirror concept:
I think the element of the rear view mirror is a concept that works for my work, and I am comparing the death from a car crash to the death from 9/11 or an explosion. having the car we see crashing but with the rear view mirror distracting our view to concentrate on the explosion. I want to play around with where the viewer is focusing their attention in my work, and having the contrast of the car crash got the bomb is a good way to use elements of both incidents in my work to distract the viewers attention from one accident to the other, and they can decide which they want to focus on.
With the elements of the bomb being in the middle of the car crash we cannot focus souly on the car crash without thinking about the bomb.
I want to keep playing with concepts, and use these ideas in a more free way over the next week and create more abstract concepts through screen print however having these elements in mind.
Drawings for more print ideas:
use the skeleton head a a tool for more images to come out if it and around it. Use hand to reach up to other images. use shapes gradients and mushroom cloud positives to create some abstract free work
Going Forward:
To move forward I want to make sure I can incorporate: spot colour, gradient, handmade textures, cmyk, block colouring, figurative illustration, boarders, gold leaf, A1 on A0 boarder, sand/mud.
Keep to my own style with influence from Peter Kennard, Micheal Peel, Sally Mann, Richard Serra,
Ask Interviews over easter for primary research, write out my own reasoning and experience, finalise ideas and cut fat off project, focus on specific things.
Initial edits for next test print:
(open mind 3 with techniques) Experimentation:
With this experimentation I wanted to be free with my mark making, discovering new colour combinations, and ways to create texture in printing, and I want to look into how I can incorporate texture and free colouring into a cmyk more figurative work, which is what I want to try next.
Ideas for more experimentation:
Make collages from imagery that relate to loss, death, mass destruction and personal loss
(open mind 4 with idea again) updated concept:
I want to maybe focus more on the idea of being de-sensitised to tragedies that happen today, through personal experience with mass loss, I feel like I am personally emotionally dulled to death today, seeing shootings, stabbings and bombs and not really feeling the sorrow for the family of the dead, as much as I think I should according to social media, and the voiced opinions of others.
The intention of terror attacks and the media coverage is what I feel is meant to make us feel collectively scared and controllable, and in that idea, I am personally inclined to not be scared by the death of others, and I feel no sadness, so that I don’t feel scared, I feel I am dulled to the emotion of death to try and be strong, and to not be constantly scared and controlled by the media.
I feel if I make this project more personal I will be able to be more creative in the imagery that am using, (which will still be the dame due to still using mass loss and personal emotional imagery) but I want to adjust the angle slightly, to a slightly more personal view.
Research to support this:
Can PTSD cause dulled emotions in relation to other traumas?
People with PTSD can also experience social detachment and a blunted or numbed affect in response to emotional stimuli.
Can constant exposure to traumatic events through social media dull our emotions?
Some research has even suggested that viewing traumatic images in the media can cause PTSD-like symptoms. It’s important to note that exposure to negative news is unlikely to cause depression, anxiety or PTSD in individuals who are not already prone to these conditions. But it can still lead to a pessimism and world-weariness that leads us to perceive the state of the world in an overly negative light — leading us to ignore and overshadow the many things that are working.
In particular… negative news can affect your own personal worries. Viewing negative news means that you’re likely to see your own personal worries as more threatening and severe, and when you do start worrying about them, you’re more likely to find your worry difficult to control and more distressing than it would normally be.
The work of British psychologist Dr. Graham Davey, who specializes in the psychological effects of media violence, suggests that violent media exposure can exacerbate or contribute to the development of stress, anxiety, depression and even post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Not only in traumatic events but in constant reminders that we are killing the planet, with waste, constant pollution, and warfare. All things we try to fix but can’t do unless everyone collectively does this. Causing the world rot crumble more and more. With the weight forever growing on our shoulders as young people, we may feel that.
Nick cave research:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/may/04/nick-cave-death-son-struggle-write-tragedy
20,000 days on earth quotes:
Put in when I open my mind into blog, eg update my idea narrow back down
Putting 2 things together and seeing what happens. Like putting a small child and a Mongolian psychopath in the same room, and seeing what happens. Then you send in a clown on a trike and you wait and watch, and if that doesn’t do it you shoot the clown
20,000 days on earth 19:43 memory is our very bring, it’s our purpose
Traumaixc experience
40:40 understand your limitations it’s your limitations that makes you the wonderful disaster you most probably are
1:06:10 soon the weather is gonna put on a real show
I can control the weather with my moods, I just can’t control my moods is all
Books:
Media Madness:
Wahl, O. (2006). Media madness. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Art and Mass Media:
Heartfield, J. (1985). Art and Mass Media. New York, NY: Tanam Press.
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind:
Harari, Y. (2011). Sapiens. Israel: Harper, p. 72, 73, 74,
I want ot focus on a spesifc part of sapiens for my research. In the first chapter, it mentions that humans were origionally in the middle of the food chain, but when man descovered fire, they shot up to the top of the food chain. When man whated to travel ascross oceans, they didnt develop gills like all other mammals, they cut down trees and build boats.
When man discovered Australia, they burnt down the jungle and drestroyed hundreds of flora and fauna species in the process of trying to concor the island. Man have always been a destuctive speices not only to nature but to each other, when bands of neaderthals and sapiens met, they killed eachother.
Imperial War Museum
On one of my trips to the Imperial War Museum, I stumbled across this bit of imfoamtion on sound on the 4th floor and this quote made me think about gallery enviroments and how silence can speak so loudy in art as well as way, like it can give us an anxiety, expeically in london where we are so use to the stress aorund us. I also saw that they have used a CMYK image on the walls on the forth floor too, and it looks really effective as you cannot see what the whole image is.
Oruroboros
The ouroboros is an ancient symbol of a snake or serpent eating its own tail, variously signifying infinity and the cycle of birth and death.
I felt that this symbol could represent the idea of the vicious cycle that the media had put us in, of showing us news about terrible events, weather that is man made like terror attacks, or natural like earthquakes or tsunamis, and the more and more anxious, scared we get from it, with the weight building and building on young peoples shoulders. This cycle is never ending in the media.
(Open mind 5) Collaging images:
freeing myself up with collaging again to being more ideas to mind.
Metallic Ideas:
I started to think about how I could intergrate metallic into my peice.
It would be to represent the future of the world, the idea in the future the world will be nothing but a sphere with no life.
OR to represent the destruction in the world, like a bomb, or the erth with noting on it.
But physically it would be a really affecrive way to use cmyk or a metallic duo-tone.
(open mind 6) Distorted Imagery:
I also thought about using distorted imagery in this project to represent the manipulation the media can put us through mentally, for example brexit, the idea that we had no clue what we were voting for at the time, or the idea of blowing things out of preportion in order to scare us into being controllable, being brainwashed and manipulated to have PTSD and anxiety by constant exposure to devistation.
(Fire edit to show show how I would use manipulation)
Distored view on the world because of misrepresentation from the media.
Creating a confused and strange view on the world.
Medias affect on mental health (essential messing it up)
Cinema 4D
With this idea I wanted to create a refected image of something other than the default enviroment, which I found out is not actually possible. Therefore I would either need to scrap this idea of fins another way around it.
First Sphere Edit:
I decided to use photoshop in order to physucally show the idea i had in my head, Although the image is not as successful as I want it to be, i feel it is a good start to where i want to go with the 3D element to my idea. Have a 3D metalic and CMYK image would be really challanging and interesting to have.
Print plan:
1st layer: Metallic gold or silver highlights
2nt layer: CMYK Cyan, Yellow Magenta no black fire image
3rd layer: Bitmap positve duo later on top (black layer)
(open mind 7) Final Image Elements:
• Woman lookng up, head on fire, coming out of fire: pin up grils, burning building, earth quakes, crashed car, old tv with fire in it, distored imagery all coming out of each other, collage style. Limited effects to only CMYK.
• Sphere in the centre with distorted fire idea, one layer of gradient, or texture and half layer of black, imagery on the left: woman pin up girl, distorted, bombs, buildings, devistation, dominos leading to the right. from the right: open skull head from right , with open mouth, plastic bottles coming out of eyes, ands mushroom cloud coming out of head. tv set with tenticles coming out of it.
Good amount of effects with duotone, cmyk and metallic, narrative with left to right, landscape image, good background idea
• Top of head looking up bottom of frame, tv set with distorted images with bubble idea, tenticles coming out of the top, protest posters (inspried by the Brexit march for different things) skull with bombs, crashed car plastic bottles, pin up girls, and broken buildings coming out of head. Alternative for skull or face, to have plasticbag effect around face in bitmap, to represent killing ourselves.
Good amount of effects with tv idea, good idea with plastic bag death, portrait piece, change protest posters not much context.
Sketchbook idea brainstorm:
Refining idea and narrow down imagery:
Try and concetate on human destruction mentally. On not only the planet but each other. Social media was created by man, therefore the breakdown of mental health in young people is our own fault. Breaking each other down
E.g. the tv coming out of the head with the distorted fire inside
Elements of things that make us anxious, e.g.:
Body image -pin up girl.
Terrorism and death -twin towers and mushroom bomb to represent nuclear war.
Tentacles – to represent how social media takes hold of your mental health and makes you feel certain ways!
Police – to represent control over our thoughts ands emotions
Face looking up with open head for tv OR tentecles to come out of – to reprsent us and our brains.
Tv and fire – represent almost a brainwashed state and to look into what we have to deal with everyday.
Car crash to represent person loss. ? Maybe take this out to refine down!
Initial Imagery:
Initial Final Imagery Collaging:
This image to the left is my favourite out of the 10 I made, as I feel is it alot more liniar in its message.
I also think the imge will need more work in layering spot colours and line work.
I enjoy the head at the bottom to journey up to the explosions and imagery.
Another thought is to find more appropriate imagery for social media, or make the tv more porminant.
Photoshop edits:
When creating this Photoshop edit I wanted to add in a more significant element and some more amusing elements like the pin up girl with the tentaclrs coming out of her mouth to show how much rubbish infomation comes from the media and attaches itself to our minds.
Favourite Element so far:
Pin up girl with tentacle mouth
Tentacle TV, nuclear bomb, and oil slick. However I want to add more busimess into the top half with a more collage style.
Gold Leaf Tests:
Learning through trial and error, I found that if I want to print A1 and use foiling to create highlighted accents then I will need to use gold or copper foil rather than using a heat press as that distorted A1/AO paper as the press is only A2. I also feel that gold or copper foil is alot more raw and natural when painted with a brush rather than through a screen, and I hold more control.
Newest Edits:
(open mind 8) More concept ideas:
I wanted to come up with a deeper concept that meant something to me, I wanted to make the face at the bottom of the image more prominent in its meaning and how it looks.
I think that doing a ripped collage effect or layering 2 different faces over each other will represent the idea that this is about everyone not about specific people who use social media a lot, its about the internet, convosations, relationships, the idea that the internet is promting us to talk about specific things like global warming, the stabbing that happened last night, the shooting in America, the ice caps, the great barrier reef being dead. SO many things affect us and I want the persons face to represent this.
Having a ripped up face will represent a brokenness in us as human beings, the fact that no-one is perfect and we are all being pushed down by the huge amount of destruction in this world.
More evidence to support my idea that social media is breaking us down:
Social media, news, manipulation and constant exposure to bad news is what started this project. I wanted to look back over the soul reason as to why im doing this. The idea that we look at our phones, watch the news, and talk to people about all the bad going on in the world, whether that be about the murder the other day, 9/11, politics which is sending our country down, news about drugs, plane crashes, or that instagram model that makes you feel bad about yourself but can’t stop following.
This project is personal because I feel the constant exposure to shocking news makes us un-sensitive to others pain or even our own.
That hearing news about the amount of plastic pollution or loss of animals in the world, adds more weight to our young shoulders, not knowing how to fix it. Being aware that we are destroying the planet is a huge weight on our shoulders.
Discovering that parliament has become a bunch of monkeys deciding the fate of our country.
The one thing that ties this all together is the fact that as humans we are destroyers, we destruct everything in our path, and its just over publicised, manipulated to make adverts and tells us that we arnt good enough.
This project is here to show my own frustrations with the world and that social media is a vehicle to make it worse for our mental health, the world is already dying why do we have to tear each other down too?
With the iPhone today you can swipe left and see the up to date news, and without knowing you have read some devastating news about a plane crash, or how a livestreaming camera has been found in an Airbnb (touching on how we are always being watched and listened to).
After all of this research and venting my own frustrations, I want to re edit my final design to focus more on the fact that we as humans are ultimately the destroyers off everything. Rather than showing us as the victim we are the problem.
Include:
fire, broken faces, bomb, tv phone, news headlines, plastic bag over face, cctv camera, knife, gun,
Plastic Face:
Newest Designs for final print:
I wanted to come up with something a little different with different elements and composition to my other idea.
This idea focuses more on how we as humans are the problem and that everything destroying us is a human construct that is destructive! Rather than the idea that we are the victims, I found myself becoming increasingly annoyed with the human race.
Mixing up my editing for my final print:
I want to be really meticulous with my final print as it is my last one for the year and the one that will be in the show. Therefore I am making as many different options as I can before I have to choose one. These next ones are inspired by Micheal Peel and Peter Kennard.
I want to play with backgrounds and white space, I want to create a feeling of doom for the human race due to constant destruction of eachother and the planet, mental health and sanity.
Presentation:
My Self initiated project has been about my own personal frustrations with human kind and our unknowing need to destroy. My idea for this project came from reading Sapiens for a previous project, which spurred me onto doing my current FMP. The idea of humans discovering fire and how we then shot up to the top of the food chain through destroying the worlds wildlife thousands of years ago, really make me think about how destructive we are today, we as a race are destructive beings, and I wanted to bring this idea into the modern age. We are now not only destroying the planet but each other, whether that is through social media and bullying, or looking at people who we think are better, bringing ourselves down, or through pollution, politics or terrorism. Human are destructive things. And this is what my project focuses on, I am really passionate about showing this through my imagery.
Reasoning:
I stated looked into how social media affects our mental health and the more I started to look into social media I noticed more on how it is a human construct and that we created this platform that enevitably brings us down. And this made me look more into pollution and how we are always remember of all the bad in the world. And what makes it worse is that we did this to ourselves! at the start I was more looking at how these things make ya feel bad, but the more I saw and researched the less bad I felt for our race, and I was just getting more and more annoyed that we feel bad because of us.. that humans tear each other down, not how social media tears us down
More Research into more things humans are doing to kill ourselves and the planet:
Attenborough, D (2019) Our Planet, Netflix https://www.netflix.com/title/80049832
BuzzFeed. (2019). 38 Tweets From People Watching “Our Planet” Who Are Not At All Okay. [online] Available at: https://www.buzzfeed.com/whitneyjefferson/our-planet-david-attenborough-netflix-tweets [Accessed 12 Apr. 2019].
When watching episode 8 on forests, and learnt that when nature uses fire it is for regrowth, and can start more life, for example forest fires, when they finish burning they let new light down from the open canopy, therefore can start new growth on the ground. However when fire is harnessed by humans is can be used for bad, and isn’t natural anymore therefore no good will come out of it
Screenshots from the series that really inspired me:
Climate change:
https://www.edf.org/climate/9-ways-we-know-humans-triggered-climate-change
Some of the most hard hitting problems I saw on this series was the fact that Albatros birds are not growing as large as their parents are dying at sea due too fishing lines.
The salt lakes that flamingos breed on are drying out affecting the grown and lives of baby flamingos due to the salt build up on their legs.
elephant seals that try to find space on high ground but due to their bad eye site out of water they fall to their deaths off cliffs.
Overall this is a nock on affect from humans constructs like the industrial revolutions, plastic waste, nuclear war, and now social media brings all of humans mistakes to the surface and remind us of how destructive we really are! and that it is getting to the point of no return.
So what’s the evidence?
The research falls into nine independently studied, but physically related, lines of evidence:
- Simple chemistry – when we burn carbon-based materials, carbon dioxide (CO2) is emitted (research beginning in 1900s)
- Basic accounting of what we burn, and therefore how much CO2 we emit (data collection beginning in 1970s)
- Measuring CO2 in the atmosphere and trapped in ice to find that it’s increasing, with levels higher than anything we’ve seen in hundreds of thousands of years (measurements beginning in 1950s)
- Chemical analysis of the atmospheric CO2 that reveals the increase is coming from burning fossil fuels (research beginning in 1950s)
- Basic physics that shows us that CO2 absorbs heat (research beginning in 1820s)
- Monitoring climate conditions to find that recent warming of the Earth is correlated to and follows rising CO2 emissions (research beginning in 1930s)
- Ruling out natural factors that can influence climate like the sun and ocean cycles (research beginning in 1830s)
- Employing computer models to run experiments of natural versus human-influenced simulations of Earth (research beginning in 1960s)
- Consensus among scientists who consider all previous lines of evidence and make their own conclusions (polling beginning in 1990s)
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/global-warming-causes/
The average temperature of the Earth is rising at nearly twice the rate it was 50 years ago. This rapid warming trend cannot be explained by natural cycles alone, scientists have concluded. The only way to explain the pattern is to include the effect of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted by humans.
Current levels of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide in our atmosphere are higher than at any point over the past 800,000 years, and their ability to trap heat is changing our climate in multiple ways.
Fifty-three percent of people polled called climate change “extremely or very important.” This may be the first time a majority of U.S. respondents assigned climate change such a high level of concern. Indeed, climate is often viewed in political circles as a “low-salience” issue, one that people profess to care about but don’t act on via political channels.
This graph shows the projected rise in temperature through 2100, compared to the rise in temperature we’ve already experienced since 1900. (The “thermometer” on the right shows warming since the late 1800s. On average, temperatures have risen less than one degree since then.) The highest projections of greenhouse gas emissions, known as “Representative Concentration Pathways 8.5” (RCP8.5), are shown in red; temperatures could rise a full four degrees Celsius above recent temperatures. But if we’re aggressive about mitigating the effect of climate change, we could wind up in a low-emission RCP2.6 situation of a one- to two-degree temperature rise, shown in blue.
Look into episode 4-5 on our planet talking about how we had humans have done more damaged in the past 30 years than ever before, over 90 of all large wide life is gone due to human intervention. Over fishing has really affected the sea and is causing imbalances everywhere. Animals are having to adapt their diets. Over 100,000 sharks are killed for shark fin soup and blue fin tuna go for 1 million in japan, causing their over fishing!
Pollution:
100,000 marine creatures a year die from plastic entanglement and these are the ones found. Approximately 1 million sea birds also die from plastic.
Efforts to cut down on disposable plastic bags by applying a 5p charge are being cancelled out by the sale of “bags for life”, according to campaigners.
More than one billion of the more heavy-duty bags, which contain more plastic than their single-use equivalents, are being distributed every year in major UK supermarkets.\
Most British people are still happy to purchase disposable plastic bottles of water, and only a third of the population drink from reusable bottles when out and about.
These findings emerged from a survey in which people were asked about their attitudes to plastic waste and water consumption.
They run contrary to the increased awareness of plastic pollution that appears to have pervaded the nation.
The results were based on a YouGov survey of more than 2000 people conducted for Keep Britain Tidy in the wake of the BBC’s screening of Blue Planet II.
Bringing heartbreaking scenes of the impact of plastic pollution on marine life into the nation’s living rooms, the Sir David Attenborough-fronted show was the most watched television programme in 2017.
In its wake has come a raft of highly publicised measures to tackle the “scourge” of plastic pollution – including the recent announcement of a bottle deposit return scheme and the government’s pledge to eliminate avoidable plastic waste by 2042.
However, despite media coverage and local initiatives across the country to deal with plastic waste, the survey suggests there is still a lag in the nation’s behaviour change.
In all, only 44 per cent of those surveyed admitted to feeling bad for the environment if they bought bottled water, and a fifth still purchased bottled water to use at home.
I want to make a survey to ask the question of why we think we can change but when it comes to it we don’t, we are almost incapable of being non-destructive. Although a lot of us do try and stick to it, a huge number of us revert back to the ways we like best. Not caring.
Background idea:
Make textured red, orange and purple in background, then fill in a lot of areas with black sand to leave small gaps and patterns of colour
Tests on images below:
To do list:
create new bag faces,
create new looking up face,
zoom in on flames make image and print,
list project changes (open and close mind),
gold foil some edit printouts,
start presentation for Wednesday on meat eating project,
Refining my final edit for printing:
Make fire bigger, change bomb image to oceans with plastic and fishing nets coming out of triangle! Make face bigger
I came up with the idea of making the image on the phone a fb page, with a quote that the viewer can read to make the whole image more coherent. this will focus the idea of the image to the viewer. and the idea that it is a facebook page just reinforces my idea of social media throwing all the bad in the world into our faces
more ideas for the phone:
More book research to support final idea:
John Heartfield collage posters. Taking images from the news and agitating them to give them a different message.
The Mass Media Power in Modern Britain, pages talking about the idea of overexadrduration and over estimating casualties in order to keep the population under control, to make things seem worse than they are. The media dramatises in order to create ‘control culture’.
abicorrigan.wordpress.com 