Sunday, November 16, 2008

Contextual System: Sleep Debt and Deprivation

The idea of slept debt asserts that ones record of sleep is like a bank account; that when missing sleep, you never get a "clean slate" and that every missed hour hangs around affecting your mental and physical health, until you repay it. As a country we are sleeping significantly less than we did a century ago, and some believe this has lead to a widespread loss of creativity. The effects of sleep debt are slow to manifest, but can lead to a myriad of health problems as serious as heart disease, or heart attack. To repay, one doesn't need to go on a "sleep marathon", and this is unlikely to work anyway. Most doctors and experts agree that the debt can be paid by maintaining a consistent, and if possible natural, waking time, and simply going to bed earlier every once in awhile. After a few of these sleep boosts, it is best to maintain a consistent sleep to wake schedule to be healthy.

Although there is some skepticism as to the validity of this idea of sleep debt, there seems to at least be a consensus on REM debt. Not everyone needs eight hours of sleep a night, but they do need some amount of REM sleep. Studies where subjects were deprived REM showed that the body would attempt to make up the lost REM sleep on it's own by increasing the time spent in REM. And when constantly denied REM, hallucinations and a loss of touch with reality begin to occur.


sources
http://www.sleepdex.org/deficit.htm
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=fact-or-fiction-can-you-catch-up-on-sleep

Angie Budd 2nd round: Received Revisons

Monday, November 10, 2008

Friday, November 7, 2008

Final Appeals


Logos (original Colors spread)


Pathos


Ethos

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Friday, October 17, 2008

Final Voting Posters:

Greek Americans have an overwhelming sense of pride when it comes their heritage. This starts with their immigrant roots in this country, but also reaches much further back to their distant relatives of ancient Greece. As distant as they might be, Greek Americans feel that they really do have a bond with the ancient creators of democracy, architecture, civilization. The symbols of ancient Greece are almost inherent in the minds of the modern Greek American.

Final PDF Poster


This poster attempts to play off this reverence for ancient roots, and uses ideas of the “birth of democracy” to empower voters in our current election.

The formal technique of the collage is utilized to reference the beginnings of democracy and voting in ancient times, mixing with contemporary elements to speak to modern voting; Vote Like You Invented It.

The poster employs the rhetorical trope of parody on a few levels; parody on modern voting systems with ancient Greeks in line for modern voting and a Krater pot in place of a ballot box; Krater motif is parodied by replacing scenes of Greek gods with modern voters in booths.


Final PDF Poster

Keeping in mind how important heritage is to this demographic, I made reference to the honor of the Greek flag. But here, I employ a heavy dose of irony to get my demographic stirred up by trashing their heritage and pretending that it’s okay. The Greek flag, made out of trash, becomes a metaphor for discarded heritage as a result of not voting. The vulgarity of encouraging the disregard of something so important to this demographic becomes the motivation to vote.

Process Documentation

Thursday, October 16, 2008

More Refinements


Found voting campaign:

GAP's Vote For ___________.

Gap is getting out the vote by encouraging individuality; vote for whatever makes you you. This has a nice customizable aspect to it, allowing you to purchase a shirt (or button ect.) and write in what you vote for. Unfortunately, as can be seen on the website, this has lead to things like "vote for cupcakes" and "vote for fannypacks", and some insightful reasons to vote from The Cool Kids like "I vote for more bass" and "I vote for looking good, like I should." wtf?

With the addition of Bill Maher's satirical "vote for BBQ", it's hard to tell if Gap is serious. Do they really think that a vote from personal aesthetics is always valuable, or is there some subtle (maybe unintentional) message here about the uneducated vote. Either way it's at least got me thinking about my own reasons.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Refinements



Jr/Sr Crit

It was great to get some fresh perspectives on my work as I move into the final iterations. This seemed like a good time to introduce this dialogue; major problems had already been resolved, and fresh set of eyes helped to work out those final bugs that may have otherwise been missed.

The Gregs both voiced there feelings on the general message and use of rhetoric devices as being powerful and effective, and working well in terms of my demographic. They confirmed that both text and image content were working to create two variations of a call to action; one being more urgent and inciting (heritage isn't important), the other being a little more lighthearted but still empowering (vote like you invented it).

more specifically on the "trash" poster, everyone seemed to be responding to the potential of the more constructivist inspired composition. Gentry suggested we view theses posters from a distance, and then noted that there were two levels of read; from a distance the poster seemed to depict the flag alone, drawing someone from my demographic in close to then reveal that it is made of garbage. While they encouraged more exploration towards the constructivist composition, they emphasized that this was an asset to hold on to.

I got some good feedback on the use of red and blue in the collage poster, and also some issues of the contrast between the people and the pot. Greg K also showed me a great photoshop technique for adding color to my black and white collage.

Round 2 iterations