Saturday, August 16, 2008

The Greater Good



My family used to invite military personnel home for the holidays or would ask a person from a homeless shelter to dinner on the holidays. My dad was an epicurean chef who worked at various large restaurants in New York and Boston and his idea was to share what we had, that he was grateful he could provide for six children and his wife. The original image came from the National Geographic Magazine of the 1990's and shows the World Food Day Anniversary which was October 16th. The Food and Agriculture Organization was created in 1945 as part of the United Nations.

My remix shows how we can make a difference in the world, not by just offering people food, but by being part of the community and sharing your good fortune with others not quite so fortunate. My idea was to make a day (or days) throughout the year to provide food to others in your own community. By sharing what you have, the ties to the community grow stronger and you develop a greater sense of what is around you and connect to that energy.

Meg

Plan-t




Here I have remixed a beautifully photographed plant. The original looks life like. I was drawn to this picture in a magazine "give and take box" at the library. The pictures were so authentic and timeless that I did not realize it was from 1985!
In my remix, I have surrounded the plant with the remaining colors of the Earth. These three colors represent: water, dirt, and rock. The green is simply all the living things. The remixed version leaf veins are 3-D, I hope they pop! The bottom leaf was hard to give an equally remarkable effect. I thought recycled aluminum foil would create a real presence. Sadly, I was wrong.
Overall, the plant has a new sense of life. The veins produce color and the background encompasses our life necessities. Life keeps keeping on here.

Source: Unknown

Stephanie

The Marriage of Art & the Environment



I find it disturbing that the media is focused on depicting the marriages and romances of celebrities. This picture perpetuates the “fairy tale” notion of marriage and, in so doing, repeats and re-instills in our minds all of the gender, racial, class, and cultural stereotypes and inequalities learned through reading traditional Western fairytales like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. There needs to be more journalism and photography in the media that engages the public’s critical thinking skills so images like these are not taken for granted, and so these kinds of injustices do not continue to be seen as “normal” or “okay”. I have chosen to remix this image to show the “marriage” between the Arts and the Environment! If I had my way, I would have also remixed their outfits to be less mainstream Western cultural as well and/or I might have even depicted a same-sex marriage. For now, I have chosen to provide this image as a suggested alternative to be included in Women’s Day Magazine so that women who buy such magazines can fill their brains with alternative things so that our social and cultural “environment” will be much healthier

Source: Australian Women's Day Magazine, 2004.

Diem Dangers