Camey Falcone
Darcy Rothbard
Seminar
14 December 2017
“The Project Reflection”
My name is Camey Falcone, I’m 18 years old and I’m from Morganville, New Jersey. At Parsons, I’m a photography major as well as having many interests in film work and further, drawing. I’m excited to be in New York City exploring my artistic expression as well as honing into my creative headspace.
For my research paper assignment, I chose to base it off the social misconducts of the film Ex Machina by Alex Garland. The main issue I wanted to cover was the ways in which large tech companies, in the films case, BlueBook, control the lives of the masses. My preliminary work for the paper came in studio, where we were asked to create an immersive zine as if we were part of the world in which these issues occurred. For my zine, I wanted to create a haunting narrative of a woman being stalked by her technology. I did this subtly by showing computer interfaces with minute details indicating her being watched. This then transferred over to my seminar assignment and I took the approach to compare this fictional company to modern day companies and the ways they peer into the lives of their consumers. As my research progressed, my topic had broadened for solely tech companies, to large companies through the decades. So, rather including exclusively Apple, Google, Amazon, and BlueBook, I included companies such as Rockefeller Oil.
Because many entrepreneurs have strong feelings on this topic, majority of the resources found were interviews of people discussing this issue. This then gave my essay a more personal feel as the citations had an emotional drive to them. In Alex Garlands Ex Machina, privacy stood as a big issue as hints were dropped that the worldwide company of BlueBook was collecting personal data from people around the world to form an AI person. For my zine, I challenged myself in creating my works with using found works as the company of BlueBook used collected data to form this robot. The cover stands as the BlueBook search engine with details such as “Bluebookmail” and “Bluebook Pixelbook.” This was a satirical approach of Google due to the fact that all these components of the front page were originally here and I just changed the name. The first page includes photos of the zines protagonist “Robin” as the photos zoom closer into her to show that BlueBook will be watching her throughout this story. The next is a scrapbook of Robin and her assumed Boyfriend (which we later find out is Samuel Freedman). The centerfold consists of a desktop screen filled with random and not so random artifacts. On the left, there reads a text chat between Robin and her friend where we learn that Robin and Sam have broken up. While Siri listens in the corner. The next page is an email to Robin from Bluebook giving their condolences for her break up with Samuel. In the email, Bluebook mentions things to cheer her up that were either searched by Robin or texted between her and her friend. The next photo was a collection of images by Heather Dewey-Hagbord, an artist who is famous for her collection of 3D printed faces. The concluding image was a statement on how the technology world is often merged with the real world as the face of Robin has now become digitally rendered. The most interesting aspect of this assignment was the ability to use the styles and aesthetics of our chosen films to make each zine. We were able to follow the films create take in order to approach our zine.
In conclusion, this assignment was and interesting way to approach a research paper. Rather than studying novels with ideas discussed time and time again, students were able to research problems that are often still occurring today. This then emphasizes the ways in which life imitates art and vice versa (the ways in which films satirize society). This assignment might generate students to make promotional posters urging to help their chosen cause as well as explore their theme through other art aspects.Robin Zine-1ub5vty
