http://www.themediastudents.net/im1/2014/yilingyang.hannahandrews.angusward
Integrated Media – Korsakow Essay
Stress is the body’s reaction to a change that requires a physical, mental or emotional adjustment or response.
Stress can come from any situation or thought that makes you feel frustrated, angry, nervous, or anxious.
Stress is caused by an existing stress-causing factor or “stressor.”
When creating this piece based on the subject of stress we noted that it is caused by an external stressor. This ‘stressor’ will be different for everybody.
For example a student may find balancing work and study stressful however a young mother may find her children cause her stress.
Furthermore what some people find stressful others thrive on. For example a high school student might find public speaking stressful yet a youth worker might thrive on the energy of presenting in front of a crowd.
Upon discussing with the group we quickly realized that many of our responses to stress and our lifestyle choices when stressed in many cases universal. to not have our work misinterpreted we decided to focus on the response to stress.
The aim of our piece was not to create a list of things that cause stress but rather report on the response to stress.
Content
We used colour as a tool to show what stress does to a person and did this by creating three groups of clips, each with an increased focus on stress.
The first group represented a mindset that is stress free. We discussed that when a person is relaxed, they the time to study things, to look at colours, textures and details. We focused on bright colours, living things with a focus on health. Some of the clips focused on movement, a reflection on being active and healthy and some simply took the time to study a single subject. We also incorporated clips based on relationships based on the idead that when relaxed happy we tend to spend time with family, friends and even pets.
Then we had a level of saturated clips. Using Instagram filter ‘Maven’ the clips appeared more saturated and focused on things that weren’t as overtly colourful or playful. They were darker and weren’t as concerned with details. In this second group of clips we added an element of ‘daily grind’ to reflect on our subject matter – stress which was gained a lot from travel. The idea that you don’t stop and enjoy life when stressed. Rather you simply go from place to place. Clips of trains and cars became a motive in this section and the final third group of clips. We orginally had just colour and black and white however felt there needed to be a gradual reduction of colour to better achieve the idea of steadily increasing stress.
Our final group of clips were filtered in black and white and aimed to depict what it feels like to be stress. They were trying to represent how one doesn’t take time to focus on the beauty of everyday life when looking through a lense of stress. Here we were able to counter many of the ‘healthy’ lifestyle choice with unhealthy lifestyle choices. Our clips contained things such as bad food, coffee and cigarettes. Between the group we easily found common ground between our group based when reflecting on out personal responses to stress as it came at a time in semester when a lot of work was due. We found the large amount of assignments we needed to finish, and the stress of running on deadlines takes away from the appreciation of the beautiful things in life. We used this as inspiration for our piece.
Here are the sub-categories of each group of clips and their SNU ratings:
1 – mate, pet, home, food, city, print, plant
10: 7.8.12.13.14.
8.92: 2.6.10.
7.84: 17.18.
6.94: 4.19.
6.04: 3.11.15
5.86: 5.
5.50: 9.16.20
2 – mate, pet, home, print, food, city, cigi, work, work2a
4.96: 12.13
4.06: 2.3.4.11
3.70: 9.14.17
2.98: 5.6.18
2.62: 8
2.62: 10
1.90: 7.15.16
1.72: 19.20
3 – work, human, pet, home, food, city
1.00: 1.10.12.14.16.20
0.88: 2.4.15
0.76: 5
0.64: 9.13.17.18
0.44: 3.6.8.19
0.28: 7.11
Sub-categories were added for the clips such as food, pet, home, mate, work, city and human were put into in and out keywords to link all the clips together in a specific order.
Interface
The major element of the work is create a work that illustrates how a persons mindset can change dramatically over time. The idea was to have a temporal element to it, wanting to show a gradual change in mindset over time. Therefore how we holistically showed this meant our interface design was vitally important.
The piece is designed so that in the beginning the mood is, happy, relaxed. Then gradually the second groups of saturated, darker clips get phased in and finally the black and white clips which essentially ‘take over’ the work representing the all encompassing nature of stress.
We considered a range of interfaces for the piece.
One that didn’t work was two large squares adjacent to each other as it essentially was a comparision of two clips. Therefore the emphasis was on finding patters or relationships rather than holistically looking at the work. Furthermore it forced the viewer to focus more on individual clips and their individual content which wasn’t the strongest or most important element of our piece.
This simply didn’t work and there was a need for a different, more hollistic visual approach.
Creating a grid like formation with each clip the same size and close together visually was the best way to represent a mindset. We took inspiration from David Shields piece; ‘Reality Hunger: A Manifesto’ reading. He describes collage of ‘a matter of adjacent data’ which is the exact approach we took to our interface design. A lot of the content if watched in isolation would not overtly represent stress. Context is required and achieved through the interface design as the collage we have created consists of ‘fragmented materials’ that are ‘out of context’. However based on the keywords that aid navigation through the work the overall effect of all of the clips represents a persons mindset when stressed.
Ultimatley the importance of out work as a collage was to create something that reflects ‘Not what you look at but what you see’.
Originally we had music intended however it did not work for a few reasons. For some of the clips the original sound was a very important element of the clip, so example the speaking and laughing between friends we thought had a strong association with being relaxed and happy. We looked at using very heightened, dramatic music however that made opening mood of our work very tense and we lost that change in mood over the course of the work.
We considered using a white background but felt when we tried it that it made it fresher and happier feel which was not the mood we intended. The black background better portrayed that dark feeling particularly toward the second half of the work.
Pattern
As mentioned previously, by using the wrong interface the piece could encourage those to make direct links between clips, which wasn’t the purpose.
However between the groups there were relationships between clips, that although subtle showing similar or related subject matter through two lenses; stressed and not stressed.
Food was on obvious choice of content. Simply we tried to illustrate that without stress you make healthy choices and with stress you often don’t. The colourful shot of the fruit relates to the black and white shot of a person eating chips.
Another element explored was a speed element. Again in regards to the use of time in our piece we wanted to show how when someone is stressed that they take the time to look and study things from everyday life. For example the street art, that would be easy not to notice, was focused on showing the detail of the work. Alternatively we wanted to show how things when rushed go unnoticed. A clip of pegs on a washing line, quickly whipping past, not stopping and looking at the colours or textures.
Ultimately the works general yet relatable content and subtle relationships between clips controlled by specific keywords and a strong interface design creates a piece reflective of the how people respond to stress and its all encompassing nature.
