Rationale

The first research I did for this project was to look at how cut and paste montages and how some people are real life cyborgs and then started to look at adverts and films related to cyborgs and technology, with this in mind I decided to watch the film Wall-e. Watching this film gave me my starting point and idea.
       While watching Wall-e I found it interesting how it showed how people would become if we completely relied on technology and the changes that would happen to us physically and mentally.
       After doing this I decided on focusing on about how technology would change us and how we have started to rely on it. I decided to look at the brain and the different parts and how it works, and which parts would change the more we relied on technology. And how we would lose the ability to use certain parts of our brains. My view for this project is a dystopian view, I have chosen this view because I don’t think that it is a good thing that we have all started to rely on technology as much as we have and are starting to become more and more like cyborgs ourselves.
       The audience I have decided to aim my work at is for a gallery wall, I have decided on a gallery wall because it is more fantasy art because it hasn’t been scientifically proven that it will actually happen to us in the future and I thought this would be more appropriate. 

        My work and image I have created is about how technology has become a big part of our lives and how we are starting to rely on it and how it isn’t good for us to rely on it so much. It’s also about how our brains would change the more we rely on technology because we wouldn’t have to use our brains so much because technology would do everything for us. My final image is a person with a small brain connected with wires from the brain to a hard drive. In my image I like how the face in it has no emotion, I feel like that shows even more that technology has took over the person. I have also shown in my image how the brain has got smaller my explanation behind this is that if we rely more and more on technology parts of our brains won't focus and work as much as they would if we didn't. With the hard drive I have shown how we plug ourselves into technology and that it's connected to us more ways than one. I think that I have shown what society could be like in the future and that this could happen to us unless we do something to change.
        To create my image I got pictures from online (like the people who did montages who I researched) I think that the images I chose to use work well together and I got my point across well. To put my images together and change, cut out and add certain things I used photoshop, I have used photoshop for simple things but before doing this brief I didn’t no a lot of the stuff I used to create my image, I have learnt loads of new photoshop skills that I didn’t no how to do before which I feel has added a better quality to my image.
       To start off with I wasn’t sure where my project would be going and what direction in would go in, this being the case I started off with loads of different research until I found out which direction I would be going in. I decided on a dystopian view and came up with the idea of technology controlling us. At the beginning I found it hard to get into this brief but after a while I think that I have shown understanding of what we needed to do and think that my idea worked really well. 

Final image

This is my final image for this cyborg brief. I think from all my research and experimenting this image has all different parts of that within it. I like how the face in this image has no emotion, I feel like that shows even more that technology has took over the person. I have also shown in my image how the brain has got smaller my explanation behind this is that if we rely more and more on technology parts of our brains won't focus and work as much as they would if we didn't. With the hard drive I have shown how we plug ourselves into technology and that it's connected to us more ways than one. 

Final ideas and image

 Once I had figured out what kind of image I wanted my final piece to be like I did another sketch and then started experimenting more on photoshop and by doing this saw all my ideas and research coming together. 

I had deciding that it made more sense to make the brain smaller because we wouldn't be using it so much because of all the technology. And then having the veins/blood vessels connect to the wires into a hard drive to show that we fully rely on technology. 

I then started experimenting on photoshop to see how I could create my final image. 

  

After doing this I saw my final piece looking more like I wanted it to be. I then decided to add the wires and hard drive to the image. 

I thought that this worked really well but was missing something so decided to give my image a background. 

This is my final image I think the background works really well for the image. 

Ideas

 To start trying to put my idea together I did a sketch to start off with of how I thought my idea would work. 

I had the idea of showing what the impact of technology would do to us. Show I decided to show a before image of the normal sized brain connected to a device then an after image of a small sized brain connected to a device.

I also decided to do a sketch of what it would be like if the brain got bigger and did some things on photoshop to try and show this also.

I think that my experiments have worked well, but need to maybe expand more on my idea.

The Brain

For the next bit of my research I have decided to look at the brain and the different sections of the brain and how the impact of technology would change us physically and mentally over time.

These are the different sections of the brain and what they do for us.

Frontal Lobe 

The Frontal Lobe controls are emotions, reasoning, planning, movement, speech, creativity, judgement and problem solving. 

Parietal Lobe


The Parietal Lobe controls nerve impulses, senses, touch, pain, taste, pressure, temperature and language.


Temporal Lobe 


The Temporal Lobe controls hearing, memory, meaning, language, emotion and learning.


Occipital Lobe 

The Occipital Lobe controls ability to recognize objects and vision.



The Cerebral Cortex

This controls thinking, voluntary movements, language, reasoning and perception.

Cerebellum

This controls movement, balance, posture, coordination, thinking and emotions.

Hypothalamus 

This controls body temperature, emotions, hunger, thirst, appetite, digestion and sleep.

Thalamus

This controls sensory integration and motor integration.

Pituitary Gland

This controls hormones and helps turn food into energy.

Pineal Gland

This controls growing and maturing.

Amygdala

This controls your emotions such as regulating when your happy or mad.

Hippocampas

This forms and stores memories.

Mid-Brain
This controls breathing, reflexes and swallowing reflexes.


Looking at all these different things within the brain makes me think how technology would change them and which parts we would lose or what would change. I think that if we came to the point where we relied on technology for everything are brains would get smaller because we wouldn't have to think as much as we did before. I feel that we would also lose the skill of using different parts of the brain because technology would be doing everything for us and would become very different people because of this and not ourselves anymore.

Photoshop Experiments 2

 In another session we had learning about photoshop I created this image which stuck to the cyborg theme of the brief but again was not one that I was going to use for my final image just an experiment. 

I felt it was suitable for me to put this image on here to show how i've experimented with my photoshop skills.

To create this top image I added parts of these two pictures below to my portrait image I had taken. 

 

I then added text over the image, I think this image worked really well to fit in with this cyborg themed brief. 

 

Cut and Paste Montage

When I was still thinking of ideas for what my final piece could be I took in a photomontage to uni that I made of what could happen to people if we relied so much on technology showing that we'd turn into technology and cyborgs ourselves. This is what I did that I have scanned into the computer.